"Our lack of originality is something we usefully forget as we hunch over our--to us--ever-fascinating lives. My friend M., leaving his wife for a younger woman, used to complain, "People tell me it's a cliche. But it doesn't feel like a cliche to me." Yet it was, and is. As all our lives would prove, if we could see them from a greater distance--from the viewpoint, say, of that higher creature imagined by Einstein. "