Books will save us
Well, nothing that is inanimate can save us, in the conventional account; but in a fair analysis of physical nature, a book will sometimes be in motion. Not always, but sometimes; and it depends upon what should be universally acknowledged as its animate “organ,” the reader, who will be wriggling about in extension of it.
I’ve been trying, quite unsuccessfully, to weed out of my library those books (or, beuks) which I do not intend to consult again, if I live to one hundred and fifty (as Elon Musk has discovered many American pensioners do). The books themselves conspire against me, and while I plot to eliminate as many as possible, they remind me of books formerly owned, that I should never have parted from. Also, I start reading just those books which I was certain to dispose of, and they live to trouble me another day.
This, perhaps, is the secret of bibliolatrical animation. Books move through one’s consciousness the more swiftly and dramatically, because they can hold still. And they change, through time — to that animate reader — in ways that the quick-moving newspaper or video cannot. For such things were never meant to be seen in alternate dimensions; whereas a book may be a “classic,” which will insist upon a tour of your mind, and may cause disruption in your soul.
Modern “media,” and perhaps the ancient equivalent, too, is designed chiefly to make you angry. With commercial luck, it will make you very profitably angry, but hardly will it ever suggest a way for you to get even. The more you read what is “in the news,” the more you see that you can do nothing about it.
I was trying to get rid of at least one copy of The Death of Virgil, by Hermann Broch. I have owned several copies, in both German and English. My hope was that I could reduce my current holdings of that book, but my emotional attachment to old copies gets in the way. Fortunately, one of them has an introduction by Hannah Arendt, which adds four unnecessary pages, so you may now find it in the Parkdale Salvation Army.