Against the Dying of the Light

It's overly fawning and self-referential, but Daphne Merkin's NY Times Stoppard profile was worth reading just to get to this gobsmacking thought:

One of the questions that haunts me—it’s a question for philosophers and brain science—is, if you’ve forgotten a book, is that the same as never having read it?

Extrapolate that any number of questions of memory and identity—plays seen, love made, miseries endured, milestones passed—and, well, yes, it is a question for the philosophers. It reminded of a dispiritingly funny quote from the movie Slacker, which I can't find online but which went something like: "I don't like to travel, because later I can never remember if I was actually there or I just saw it on TV."