I drove past the old Border's Book Store on Peachtree Road just north of Lenox Square. I was sad when the chain went out of business and closed this store.
Today I felt even sadder when I saw that this marvelous book store has been replaced by a Container Store. What a commentary on our times.
We used to have a store stocked with the richness of fiction and literary studies, the classics, history, psychology, languages, travel, photography, art, sports, science, newspapers from far and wide, obscure intellectual magazines and journals of critical thinking -- you name it.
Now we have a store to help organize our over-busy lives. A place to buy every imaginable size and shape of empty containers to put all our stuff in.
Life somehow feels diminished when we prefer to buy empty boxes rather than books filled with experience and ideas.
The one bright note is that they do sell book shelves. But who needs shelves? The books have all gone digital.
Ralph
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A letter writer to the NYTimes today referred to literature as helping society "see beyond itself."
ReplyDeleteThat's good. I want to remember that as one explanation of the "usefulness" of serious books.