Piled at random

Another fascinating obituary in the Independent: Brian Cummings on English scholar Stephen Medcalf (1936-2007):

"He was a difficult man even for his friends to know well. He was solitary and soulful, often seeming to be lost in thought. Yet he loved company, long walks and pubs, and although it was as impossible to imagine him marrying as him finishing his book on Eliot, he had many women friends and would no doubt have agreed if one of them had proposed to him. His family and friends despaired of his chaotic home life, in his little house below Lewes Castle in which clothes and 16th century books were piled at random."

There's hardly a single detail there that I share with him, yet I feel an affinity.