Some years ago, after presenting a talk on one of my books, I was setting copies of the book on a display table, in case someone wanted to buy one. A woman who’d been in the audience for this event – I think it was at a library – began flipping through a copy of the book. She asked me a couple of questions and then noticed the price on the flap of the dust jacket.
“Gee, that’s a lot… for a book,” she said.
There’s a story I learned back at school. It tells the tale of an extraordinary deception. Two civilizations, the story goes, were at war – one inside a fortified area, the other outside it. The siege between the two had gone for years, without a victor. Then, those outside the walls withdrew, leaving behind a relic of war – a wooden horse. Rejoicing at their apparent victory, the people inside the walls, pulled the relic into their midst. That night, spies hidden inside the wooden horse crept out, opened the gates and allowed the outside army inside the walls.
“Trust not their presents,” the Trojan priest Laocoon had cried. “Is surely designed by fraud.” But his countrymen had ignored him. And victory belonged to the Greek outsiders.