A note on dead ends

I’ve been thinking about dead ends, probably because I’ve made little progress on a writing project.

I came across this story: In 1888, an airplane powered a steam engine flew about 50 yards near Paris. The plane was called the Aeolus. It was ahead of the Wright Brothers by about 15 years. It was the right concept just waiting for the internal combustion engine to be perfected.

The point of the story, which was told by Guy Davenport, is that you don’t see dead ends in real time. You see them clearly in figuring out the history — the story of the past.