Hobbyistic

2012, Joseph O’Neill, Introduction in Amsterdam Stories by Nescio, New York: New York Review Books, p. xi, Yet still Nescio did not write much, which is consistent with the notion that his impulse to write was essentially hobbyistic—which is to say, profoundly voluntary.

Society but wounds itself when it seeks to discredit the teachings of Science, by setting against the comprehensive and well-weighed decisions of her true representatives, the crude opinions and hobbyistic dogmas of men whose perceptions are dimmed by the gloom of the den in which they think and move.

If history is no longer a realm of concatenation, if there are no necessary connections among discrete events and no possibility of a hierarchy of materials ranged along some scale of significance, any associative chain of fantasies, any crotchety hobbyistic interest, any technical fascination with the rendering of odd trivia, can be pursued by the novelist as legitimately as the movement of supposedly “significant” actions.