And I cried.
The culture in which I live does not value books any more. You can download a book on Kindle. No need to have book shelves, beautiful furniture, and books, beautiful ideas, history, facts, memories. But I am culling books, and crying, for the loss of a majority that was easily persuaded to listen to those beautiful harmonies that came out of family voices, and to keep books and reach for them.
I am discarding books I have not read in years and will not read for the rest of my life, no never in the coming 25 years, and I will not miss them.
Look at these books that tell views of the world that are so wrong now, so out of date. Noam Chomsky's Hopes and Prospects. I don't think so, Sir. Not any more. The one prospect is 30 years of terrible weather, wars, famines, fires, droughts, a whole planet reducing its populations of humans and other species.
Larry McMurtry's Streets of Laredo. It was the sequel to Lonesome Dove. I remember it as a boring downer.
Robert Reich's Aftershock; the Next Economy and America's Future. Dear Bob: fasten your seat belt my dear friend. There are plenty more shocks and the American economy is not going to be how you forecast it when you wrote this book.
The Everly brothers' voices got such lilting harmonies because they came out of the same family. I have read something about harmonies that used them as an example but I can't find the article on line where I read that. Maybe if in a book and in a library. . .
I called St. Rita's second hand store but Sandra said she had too many books to take more.
I can not bring myself to dump books in the paper recycle bin.
What am I going to do with The Old Patagonia Express by Phil Theroux, that sexist bastard? Stupid White Men by Michael Moore? We didn't change a thing, Mike. The Ink Truck by William Kennedy. Yes, a well written memoir of a terrible time. Someone else may read and enjoy these books, people who can't afford a Kindle. . . .maybe Goodwill? Yeah, poor people go to Goodwill. . . but Goodwill doesn't take books. No room.
Don and Phil are singing Rocking Alone in an Old Rocking Chair.
I dusted and polished this beautiful old book case and moved it into the bedroom, and now I'm going to put some books in it, those I'm going to save and keep, On the strength of one paragraph, one for the ages, I am keeping Christopher Hitchens' The Trial of Henry Kissinger.
"His own lonely impunity is rank; it smells to high heaven. If it is allowed to persist then we shall shamefully vindicate the ancient philosopher Anacharsis, who maintained that laws were like cobwebs; strong enough to detain only the weak, and too weak to hold the strong. In the name of innumerable victims known and unknown, it is time for justice to take a hand."
Isn't that stunning, strong, forever writing?
Hitchens is dead. Kissinger is still free. rich, and unindicted. Hitch's words apply more broadly than to Henry the K. Ergo, Anacharsis Rules.
Don and Phil are singing about Claudette. She's the greatest little girl that I've ever met, I get the best loving I'll ever get from Claudette. Pretty little pet, Claudette. Oh, oh, Claudette.
What the hell am I going to do?