Book

No matter what’s inside it, there are certain things each has in common with all the others. The back cover and the front, the quire of pages, the nerveless spine. A book talks to you as you’d talk to yourself alone. Each one affirms there is an end to things. The last page is often blank, but few readers have the courage to fill it in. Eventually, the book demands of almost everyone a special pair of glasses. This takes a lot of cheek. Otherwise, though some have changed a country or a life, books are humble. They travel in a worker’s pocket or in a backpack, nestled in a bundle of gamy socks and tired underwear. All are lessons in failure and forgetting, yet they build “the greatest things from least suggestions.” Ignore the genius or longevity of those who pen them: it is the book that lasts, uncribbed, uncoffined. There’s something heroic and sad about the nom de plume printed horizontally in several places and running vertically down the spine. To the book, the letters of the name, though often gilded, spell Anon.