The Book Problem

Izumiōtsu The Book Problem Were the problem book people like us, it would soon go away. It is not our weaknesses, or our sentimentality, or our nostalgia. It’s As If’ we’ve become obsolete and we haven’t. By ‘we,’ I mean We the People of the Book: Jews, Christians, Islamic people and a lot of people who […]

Maxims by the Pound

From ABC of Reading. Ezra Pound. Literature is language charged with meaning. Literature is news that STAYS news. If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays. Your legislator can’t legislate for the public good, you commander can’t command, you populace (if you be a democratic country) can’t instruct its ‘representatives’, save by language. […]

from my forthcoming, Principles of Retail

On the Commodification of  Ideas Somebody other than me must have said Reading is a finer world within the world.  Most can’t be bothered to read but I prefer it to much of what otherwise passes for a spiritual or intellectual life in this most worldly of worlds.  I have always preferred reading to writing.  Most […]