Mimesis is not a list of the Great Books of the Western Tradition, but something far more fortuitous: its selection is governed by the fact that it was "written during the war and at Istanbul, where the libraries are not well equipped for European studies." Communications are impeded; holdings are incomplete, or outdated; things are overlooked, or just in error; there are no notes. There are frequent gaps in the chronology. There could have been more on English, German and Spanish texts: German realism and the sigla de oro, in paticular. But there are copies of Gregory of Tours, Ammianus Marcellinus, Antoine de la Sale.

"On the other hand," though, "it is quite possible that the book owes its existence to just this lack of a rich and specialized library. If it had been possible for me to acquaint myself with all the work that has been done on so many subjects, I might never have reached the point of writing" (557). This is not just special pleading (as if to say that the argument might be full of holes, but that only makes it all the more endearing). There is something more. Time and again, it is the story Auerbach reads in the very material with which he is dealing. Gregory writes a clotted, hieratic Latin quite unsuited for a chronicle of parish life, not because he is a bad Latinist (which he may very well be) but because it is the only thing available. Traditions themselves are a making-do with what's at hand, of making it do the job.