Two Steps Back

As a collegiate user of the original Whole Earth Catalog in the 1970s I read with keen interest the article on Stewart Brand (“Always Two Steps Ahead,” by Katherine Fulton, Oct. 30).

I noted that Fulton had a prodigious task in trying to explicate a personality that is characterized by constant internal motion. I began to wonder whether Brand’s excitement with his brain’s ability to boggle itself hadn’t begun to obscure the goals of his “lazy officer,” who uses his inventiveness to accomplish a task.

When I read that Brand described his 17-year-old son, Noah, as a “wonderful leftover from a romance,” that convinced me that his brain had indeed lost contact with his heart. It is that contact that this 70-hour-a-week “lazy officer” must rekindle if he expects to be remembered for anything.

Jed Pauker

Culver City