Category: words

“The idea of owning history may thrill those who trade in exclusivity. But when collectors do not afford scholars and the public access to important documents, private ownership conflicts with democratic values.”

In the early 1990s, all of the city’s libraries were shut down and the books inside destroyed. Sudan became an authoritarian, single-party Islamic state following Bashir’s military coup in 1989, and censorship ruled. When Bashir came to power, the writers’ union was one of the first organisations he banned. “They don’t want gatherings, that’s all. They don’t want the people to meet,” he says.

“The cultural services of the French Embassy in New York has been signing up independent bookstores across the United States to create special sections, called French Corners, to display French works in the original and in translation. The goal, a spokeswoman for the embassy said, is to plant the French flag in one bookstore in every major city in the United States, other than New York.”

“Getting an author booked on ‘The Daily Show’ was often the Holy Grail for book publicists,” says Kate Lloyd, Scribner’s associate director of publicity. Her authors loved Stewart, she says, because “his audience is made up of smart, book-buying readers who respond to the thoughtful treatment and authentic passion he customarily expresses for the books he features.”

“There are cultural currents afoot, beyond the book’s iconic power as a social document, that give the absurd situation a rational aspect and keep it going. One is the fear of the helplessness of old age. The spectacle of an author – and a beloved American author at that, one who has abided in our deepest feelings since many of us read her in childhood – being taken advantage of in old age is chilling at a time when so many people are living long lives.”

“Numbering pages started out not as a tool for readers but a guide for those who physically produced books.”

“In 1991, there were 176 certified librarians in city schools. Now there are 11 – for 218 schools. Studies have shown that students who have access to a school library and librarian – particularly students who live in poverty and students of color – achieve more. Increasingly in Philadelphia, school libraries are regarded as a frill, and librarians even more so.”

“While some scholars may shun such developments, others are embracing them, leveraging analytical tools and techniques to account for a landscape of authorship and reading that is no longer confined to simple geometries and lines of influence, and no longer served by the established critical schools.”

“The book is now so central to our culture that it exudes an air of inevitability. But that wasn’t the case one Christmas Day on the Upper East Side of New York, when the literary existence of Scout and Atticus and Boo depended on a tired but determined Harper Lee. And on an envelope in a tree.” (audio)