Parry the blow, my friends

Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai was made for these times

I’ve been reading The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt while sipping from my Things-Could-Be-Worse mug. Oh, and preparing my shelves for the apocalypse. Read on to find out how these things are related.

The Last Samurai

Sybilla comes from a line of geniuses the world failed to recognize. She leaves Oxford, disillusioned with academia, but refuses to return to America under Reagan. She has a “Cat Person”-like one-night stand with a mediocre writer she code names Liberace, for his tacky sexual showmanship. She decides to raise the resulting son, Ludo, alone. She surrounds him with books, not just in English, but also in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Japanese. Ludo rises to the challenge. In between answering his many questions, Sybilla eeks out an existence as a typist from their flat. The two spend their days circling London on The Tube, trying to stay warm. At home, Sybilla watches The Seven Samurai compulsively, rationalizing it as a way to give Ludo some positive male role models.

By age 11, L…