“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
~ Ray Bradbury, from his Coda to Fahrenheit 451 (1979 edition)
Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina…
It was Argentina’s greatest writer – and undoubtedly one of the country’s greatest readers – Jorge Luis Borges, who said he “always imagined Paradise will be a kind of library.”
It is perhaps no coincidence that his beloved city, Buenos Aires, has the most bookstores per capita of any major metropolitan area on the planet. According to a study, conducted by the World Cities Culture Forum, the “Paris of the South” beat out the “Buenos Aires of the North” (also known, simply, as Paris), along with Hong Kong, Madrid, New York and London for the top spot.
With 25 bookstores per 100,000 insatiably literate souls, Buenos Aires came in ahead of Hong Kong (22) and the aforementioned western capitals, which boasted between 9-16 bookstores per the same number of citizens.
Thus the city at the End of the World was, and still is, a Paradise on earth for the blind bard. (Dear readers can learn more about Borges and his incurable bibliophilia in this Notes classique…
Unread Piles
Of course, it’s not only the books you’ve read that count, but those still calling you to action from your dusty shelves. Leave it to the Japanese to come up with a word for collecting books you may never read: tsundoku, which comes from (tsun) — from tsumu, meaning “to pile up” and (doku) — from yomu, meaning “to read.” It refers, somewhat humorously, to the act of buying books you never quite get around to, rather letting them accumulate on coffee tables, nightstands, mantlepieces.
The Italian writer, Umberto Eco, had a version of this… which he called the “Antilibrary.” It is the growing library of books you collect that simply outpace your reading, your “library-in-waiting,” if you will. Various English translations of Eco’s sentiments circle the interwebs, including this one…
“It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.
“There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion.
“…The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books.”
But perhaps more than simply accumulating “screwdrivers and drill bits”… more than surrounding yourself with inspiration from history’s greatest thinkers… more even than filling the bookcases and nightstands with knowledge as yet unknown to you…
… is the notion that a well-stocked library, and the solitary hours you pass within its sagging shelves, provides the mind a kind of cultural resilience, not to mention a philosophical independence, which shields us from the fickle whims and caprices of the online rage mob.
Indeed, in the age of infinite, intangible information… of ubiquitous screens and anti-social media… of biometric state IDs and digital public infrastructure… actually reading a physical book, quaint and anachronistic though it seems, may well be considered something of a revolutionary act.
As the American author, Ray Bradbury, said in an interview back in 1967, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
If you’ve ever wondered why people go along with intrusive censorship… with mass surveillance… with a state’s totalitarian control over the minds… consider the possibility that they lost the struggle before it even began, when they put down their books, surrendered their culture, and yielded to a hollowing apathy of mind and soul.
In this week’s Notes, we looked at the philosophies behind two classic dystopian novels, both by English authors – George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In the context of the UK’s recently mandated digital national ID, they help us comprehend the frightening nexus between total surveillance and total censorship, and why a Brave New World might be closer than you think. Read on, below…
And now for your Notes From the End of the Week…
Final Notes…
At times like this, when power-hungry politicians appear to be riding roughshod over peaceful citizens, it can seem a bit like hope is lost… like our overlords will take what they want, regardless of the “will of the people.”
But there is reason to be sanguine. The mainstream media’s narrative is collapsing. Trust is lost. Ratings are down. And the legacy media has one foot in the tarpit.
Meanwhile, platforms like this, where independent writers reach tens of thousands, even millions of readers every week, are helping to fill the void, providing open-minded readers with critical analysis and opinion that dares question the mainstream.
Incredible as it seems (certainly to us), the three Notes From the End of the Week mentioned above had, at time of writing, been viewed almost 30,000 times (well, 28,337, to be precise).
We may be small… but we are many… and we grow in strength from week to week. If you value the work we do, and you’re in a position to become a member (its less than 20 cents a day), please consider supporting our work today.
As always, enjoy your weekend… and stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
