[These aren’t the books I’m reading right now.]
Have wasted the morning reading funny articles about Hillary Clinton’s terrible book. I do think that’s been one of the highlights of this literary moment in history–delightful take downs of Dan Brown and Hillary Clinton. It makes me think that God must still care and want us to go on as a human family in some desultory way.
I mean, the democratization of words means that any of us boobs can have them. All of us can fling them wildly in any direction we please, and then more clever people will come along, gather them up, and laugh with joy.
In the spirit of being grateful for these modern circumstances, imagine struggling along in your icy, drafty shack, hunched over next to a smoking oil lamp, trying to muscle through your Latin Vulgate, and then later, your Gutenberg bible, which isn’t even yours because you’re not wealthy enough to have one, you probably stole it from your neighbor which means that later you’re going to be strung up on a rack or something. Maybe the only other book you’ll ever get your hands on is something pious like The Pilgrim’s Progress (don’t go looking up the years, its very possible I’ve compressed all of western history into rather too short a minute). This assuming, of course, that you even know how to read.
No, really, its better now. My book shelves are stuffed to overflowing with interesting volumes–so many in fact, that sometimes it can be overwhelming so then I just like to go and read the internet. Anybody can write Anything. This is a marvelous moment in time. The greatest trial now is wading through all the dumb stuff to get to the good stuff
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In