Teller doesn’t talk, but he writes. His story A Memory of the Nineteen-Nineties, a sequel to Max Beerbohm’s “Enoch Soames” (which I read sometime in the Eighties), almost makes me wish I’d thought of making the same pilgrimage.

Teller’s account is now behind the subscribers-only gate, so I’ll summarize. Enoch Soames “was” a minor writer who sold his soul for an opportunity to see what his reputation would be after a hundred years. The Devil brought Soames to the British Library on a specified date in 1997, then returned him to his friends in 1897. Teller (and a few others, independently) went to the Library on that date to see if anything would happen. Something did.

Soames reported that everyone in 1997 wore numbered yellow jumpsuits, if memory serves; but Teller did not touch on that point.