JHR

There are a lot of people who don’t grow limp with hatred when they’re kept waiting. I know a whole bunch of people who don’t consider the concept of fifteen minutes time at all. So if they they’ll meet you at 11:00 and they show up at 11:25, they apologise (if they remember) for being ten minutes late - the other fifteen minutes never existed and there is some sort of common understanding among most people that those fifteen minutes are a grace period.  Since I’ve started carrying a book everywhere, even to something like the Academy Awards, I’ve had a much easier time of it, and the bitterness that shortens your life has been headed off at the pass by the wonderful Paperback. Light, fitting easily into most purses, the humble paperback has saved a lot of relationships for me that would have ended in bloodshed.

continuing on despite it all

Among the most poignant scenes in contemporary literature, ever pertinent today, is Winston Smith in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four cradling his paper diary out of view of the panopticon of his telescreen and privately writing down his opinions. Except the telescreen isn’t all-seeing, it’s downright primitive compared to contemporary surveillance capitalism, where Big Brother doesn’t eavesdrop but Alexa does. By contrast, printed books are a zone of resistance against the neon god of the algorithm since tinkering with code can’t delete their contents, as hackers recently did with the Internet Archive. There is a safety to books, where Smith is able to enter the private realm of literature simply by sitting a bit off camera. That’s a freedom which, I fear, will become increasingly rare.

If Parasite doesn’t win Best Picture, I’LL BE TAKING IT PERSONALLY