There is another possible book that contains all that is not in this one.

 So says Teju Cole in the introduction to his wonderful essay collection, Known and Strange Things. Wide-ranging and deliciously exploratory, the collection tackles politics, art, literature, and travel. I love essay collections that are not narrowly defined, collections that lay the path open for surprise, as this one does. 
While Cole is referring, in part, to the many previously published pieces that he has not included in this collection, hos words ring true for me as a novelist. In every book I write, I fall short of my own expextations. For every book that I publish, there exists another one, just out of reach, “that contains all that is not in this one.”