We Read To Understand, Or

At One Magical Instant In Your Early Childhood, The Page Of A Book—that String Of Confused, Alien Ciphers—shivered Into Meaning. Words Spoke To You, Gave Up Their Secrets; At That Moment, Whole Universes Opened. You Became, Irrevocably, A Reader.

The Shelves Of Books We Haven't Written, Like Those Of Books We Haven't Read, Stretches Out Into The Darkness Of The Universal Library's Farthest Space. We Are Always At The Beginning Of The Beginning Of The Letter A.

In No Way Am I Demeaning Writing Or Any Other Form Of Art Because It's Popular. What I'm Saying Is That Anything Fed Into The Industrial Machinery To Comply With Rules Of Size And Length And Shelf-life Has A Hard Time Surviving As Art.

We Can Roam The Bloated Stacks Of The Library Of Alexandria, Where All Imagination And Knowledge Are Assembled; We Can Recognize In Its Destruction The Warning That All We Gather Will Be Lost, But Also That Much Of It Can Be Collected Again; We Can Learn From Its Splendid Ambition That What Was One Man's Experience Can Become, Through The Alchemy Of Words, The Experience Of All, And How That Experience, Distilled Once Again Into Words, Can Serve Each Singular Reader For Some Secret, Singular Purpose.

Our Society Accepts The Book As A Given, But The Act Of Reading -- Once Considered Useful And Important, As Well As Potentially Dangerous And Subversive -- Is Now Condescendingly Accepted As A Pastime, A Slow Pastime That Lacks Efficiency And Does Not Contribute To The Common Good.