These students began distributing copies of this book and were literally selling it out of the trunks of cars and under the table. It was created by Berklee College of Music students in the 1970s. To give a brief history of the Real Book, it’s a book that contains the melodies and chords to hundreds of Jazz Standards. ![]() It was also surreal to think that I was traveling to buy the famed The Real Book. It was cloudy and grey that day, but as I passed by on the Red Line train bound for the Morse stop, the sun’s rays squeezed through the darkness and shone its light on the old ballpark. I remember this because the Chicago Cubs were in a tooth and nail battle with the Pittsburgh Pirates at the historic Wrigley Field in the last series of that infamous season. The poet Milton called this quality in books “the potency of life.” I wasn’t sure I had it in me to be a killer.I remember the day I bought The Real Book. Once words and thoughts are poured into them, books are no longer just paper and ink and glue: They take on a kind of human vitality. A book feels like a thing alive in this moment, and also alive on a continuum, from the moment the thoughts about it first percolated in the writer’s mind to the moment it sprang off the printing press-a lifeline that continues as someone sits with it and marvels over it, and it continues on, time after time after time. To have that same feeling about a book might seem strange, but this is why I have come to believe that books have souls-why else would I be so reluctant to throw one away? It doesn’t matter that I know I’m throwing away a bound, printed block of paper that is easily reproduced. The sensation of dropping a living thing into the trash is what makes me queasy. The only thing that comes close to this feeling is what I experience when I try to throw out a plant, even if it is the baldest, most aphid-ridden, crooked-stemmed plant in the world. Many times, I have stood over a trash can, holding a book with a torn cover and a broken binding, and I have hovered there, dangling the book, and finally, I have let the trash can lid snap shut and I have walked away with the goddamn book-a battered, dog-eared, wounded soldier that has been spared to live another day. At the last minute, something glues my hands to my sides, and a sensation close to revulsion rises up in me. But I can’t throw a book in the trash, no matter how hard I try. I am happy if I can give them away or donate them. I pile them up with the intention of throwing them away, and then, every time, when the time comes, I can’t. ![]() Even books I don’t want, or books that are so worn out and busted that they can’t be read any longer, cling to me like thistles. The problem was that I have never been able to do harm to a book. Actually, doing it was a breeze, but preparing to do it was challenging. Burning a book was incredibly hard for me to do. I decided to burn a book, because I wanted to see and feel what Harry would have seen and felt that day if he had been at the library, if he had started the fire. Susan Orlean | The Library Book | October 2018 | 6 minutes (1,525 words)īurning Love: Calendar Men Series, Book 8 (2014)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |