the magic of books

 The magic of books is that they snatch ideas and images out of the intellectual and spiritual air, out of personal memory and the traditions of peoples, out of the learning of centuries, the great human inventory—and codify them in written and printed language, as books to be held in the hands and absorbed in the mind.

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Friends sorted through the dumpster books the other day and, out of that literate goo, rescued presentable editions of Shakespeare and Laura Ingalls Wilder. I salvaged a few myself. I like to think that when the world’s electricity winks out and all the screens are dark and dead and useless, perhaps those books that we rescued will be the only ones left on earth. A wandering tribe of survivors will come upon those precious things and (if anyone still knows how to read) will be astonished by the Highland romances of Sir Walter Scott. Or maybe, all unknowing, they’ll burn them to keep warm.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/requiem-for-a-dumpster-full-of-books-used-stories-new-york-7c4106cb?st=hngua6wlqxmrmya&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Also:

I was struck by Peggy Noonan’s observation that, through his work, “Tolstoy himself is still alive” and “continues in human consciousness.” (“My Summer With Leo Tolstoy,” Declarations, Sept. 2). David Foster Wallace once remarked that reading can be “an exchange between consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff we can’t normally talk about.”

Tolstoy’s most memorable characters serve as conduits to the reader to explore that “stuff we can’t normally talk about.” That stuff includes life’s inevitable suffering—loneliness, death, grief—as well as the joys that only art and literature can seem to describe: friendship and love, new life, faith. Tolstoy’s writing is accessible and his fictional Russian 19th-century aristocrats are surprisingly relatable. Readers who haven’t yet done so should follow Ms. Noonan’s lead and give Tolstoy a shot.

Christopher J. Manley

Montclair, N.J.