Dennis Lehane

When the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon last year, my first glimpse of the incident, via a shaky TV camera, was of the corner of the Boston Public Library. My first thought — wholly unformed — was: Whoever did this hates knowledge. In that moment, I had no idea that the intended victims were Marathon runners and spectators; I thought the target was the library. Time has proven me incorrect about the library but not, I feel, about the knowledge. All fanatics hate knowledge. And when I say knowledge, I’m speaking of the unfettered, unrestricted kind. The kind that isn’t easily contained or easily defined. The kind that doesn’t fit in a jar.

Read the rest of Dennis’s Boston Globe op-ed here.