Lets Burn Them Damn Books
(A post in Bibliobibuli inspires this post)
I followed the links, strayed to some new ones, googled some. Amazing, the number of books we have burned through history, the number of libraries we have razed to the ground. No culture, no people have been immune to this. Every single culture, civilized or not, at one time or another, has been a perpetrator.
Something at last, apart from not talking about sex, in common among the sons and daughter’s of Adam. While we are so divided by sense of self, be it the Western sense of superiority of their democratic way of life or the Asian sense of the superiority of their Values, we are a more divided than many optimists would like to believe.
Read “Book-burning” at Wikipedia. One incident, however small, was not there.
When British captured the fort of Tipu Sultan, one of the first casualties was the library. Gidwani, in his book “The Sword of Tipu Sultan” creates a fictitious character of a traveling father and son watching the bonfire:
“What are they burning father?”
“They are burning humanity son.” Or was it civilization that he said, can't remember, read the book a quarter of a century ago.
Dalrymple has very apt article on Tipu Sultan and Imperial villain making that is relevant even today.
An afterthought:
Have been guilty of the desire to burn books at times myself. Some that I thought should not be left on my bookshelf for posterity to judge me by my reading habits. I have, though, dumped some in the trash can.
If you were given a guilt free coupon to burn one book, which one would it be?
10 comments:
I'd burn not just one but all of my dreadful true crime books!
I had a taste for the macabre when I was in my teens until my early twenties. Nonetheless, I did learn a lot from that genre.
i love the question! at the moment it might be "the secret' ... but only after i've finished the review
i don't know why but everytime i cull my books, i find myself rebuying (or begging back) the same copies later on
btw do i link you as a litblog? i love what you've written so far and hope you're going to stick around for the long-haul
and am so curious to know who you are lah!
those useless textbooks that i found useless throughout my studies from standard 1 until end of varsity years. well, not all of them. only the useless ones.
now that you mentioned about book-burning, the government's act of banning books can be seen as "burning" as well. in the past, kings ordered books to be burned so that whatever influence related to the books will be put off, and any evidence that could lead to a breakdown of their ruling system can be erased. i just hope that is not the hidden intention of our government.
Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss! But burning it isn't going to bring back the hours I wasted reading this piece of crud...
okay i'd burn annie proulx's shipping news because
1)i want to read it so badly because it's beautiful
2)it's beauty is really hard to digest
-fizzzzz
radical: Isn't that the intention of every government on earth? :)
sympozium: Haven't read it, but heard it was good, well you can't tell until you have done it yourself. There are some books I found myself yawning at and they were selling well. Some that I really loved, hardly made a ripple.
Fizzzzz: I haven't read Annie Proulx, none of her books, my loss certainly.
You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
fizzzzz - I loved the Shipping News when I first read it, but for some reason, when I went back for a second read, I couldn't get into it like I did the first time.
I think how we take to a book depends on the time and maybe place, too. For years, I couldn't get into Joseph Heller's Catch-22, and then, on the umpteenth try, a light went on in my head, and I thought it was such a hilarious book.
It is always the time and place. I struggled with 'Crime and Punishment" for years, that is one book that scared me as a youth. Then a decade later, I read, and I am sure understood it better.
I suffer with Sharon when it comes to Hemingway's "For Whom the Bells Toll." Never been able to finish more than a few pages... not yet anyway, before moving on to something else.
"Old man and the Sea" on the other, bought a copy again just a few months ago, sat in the cafe at the midvalley MPH and finished it.
well, yeah, that has been the intentions of all governments. though in the end, such act would always lead to a disastrous end for the government. take a look at our community.
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