So Many Lives

What do Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa, Jean Sibelius, Napoleon, Robespierre, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ernest Hemingway, Howard Stern, Aaron Burr, Abraham Lincoln, Father Damien of Molokai, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Thomas Merton, Julius Caesar, Ernest Shackleton, Ulysses S. Grant, G.H. Hardy, Paul Erdös, Srinivasa Ramanujan, H.P. Lovecraft, William Shakespeare, and Philip K. Dick have in common?

They are all men (and one remarkable woman) of whom, for better or worse, young Hopper has read their biographies.

What do Edgar Allan Poe, Albert Einstein, Father Walter Csizek, Saint Joan of Arc, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John Paul II have in common?

They are all men (and one remarkable woman) of whom, for worse it seems to me, young Hopper has not yet read their biographies, which are stacked up in the piles of books about him as he writes this.

So many lives, so many biographies, so little time!