Google It!

I do what I know many of you do: I read something in a book -- a name, a painting, a building -- and I Google it.

Here is the most recent examples -- all from one book -- and here is the specific example that triggered this confession of a man who is truly besotted by Google

"With him I had the privilege of visiting the Chapel of the Magi...if you look at the procession...the figures in the foreground"    He was describing this wall painting in such detail -- and it was a small room almost off limits to the public.   "All art lovers know the Medicci Ricardi palace houses a chappel whose four walls are decorated with..."

I want to see these decorated walls.    Google "Chapel of the Magi" and Presto, a series of articles -- one of which contains pictures of the walls -- the very wall my writer, Carrere, was describing in his book of essays "97,196 Words."

Just a few pages earlier I researched a couple of people mentioned in the book -- saw pictures of Countess Beatrice Monti della Corte, and Gregor Von Rezzori.    I went to Amazon.co.uk to look up two of Rezorri's books.    Read reviews, seriously considered buying one of his books.

The references made by this French writer, Carrere, elude me.    He has lived in a vastly different culture than I inhabit.    I am old, of the generation of Hemingway, Sartre.    Carrere never mentions these people.    He is in another stew of intellectual ferment, and I am so pleased to follow him -- his recommendations, observations.

I cannot count the times I stopped reading something, or ended an evening of TV watching -- and immediately plunged into research.    Did Winston Churchill so hate a portrait of him that he burned it?    He did.    Google told me so, and I believe it is referred to in the TV show "The Crown.'

My computer extends real life experience.    Real life?    Whatever I encounter, hear see, I can learn more (extend the experience) by Googling -- for instance, a college friend who became famous, a "saying" -- Touch & Go? --and find its origin.    I'm just giving you a couple of recent examples -- ones that spring to mind because they are recent.

This habit, Googling, has been a part of my life for five years now?   Ten?    I'm not counting, I'm relating the realization that my knowledge is augmented, made richer, by googling the name of the murderer whose case you were just watching in the Documentary (Trial4).