I’m about to write another blog post, but before I do, I need to share this essay I wrote in my final high school English class… and I’m going to try and do it without flinching!
The store was aptly called “Book Sale”. We could not go to the mall without my asking to pass by, and we could not pass by without leaving with at least two new-old books. I took them all: tattered paperbacks with torn covers, with inscriptions made by previous owners. I covered those inscriptions with my own name, making the books mine.
It’s been years since I’ve visited Book Sale, years since I’ve found a similar place: a temple of sorts to the devout bibliophile. But a bookstore is a bookstore. As long as I have access to one, I cannot complain.
However, I remember when Borders closed. I remember how the Internet community of book lovers was outraged, disappointed, and yet—unsurprised.
While visiting family in California the summer before my graduating year of high school, my grandmother, mother, and I got lost in Old Pasadena, where I found a sign that read, “Borders Old Pasadena”, with an arrow indicating that it was up ahead. I was confused and intrigued. Had I found a survivor? Was this the last Borders standing? Had some resilient bookstores been left over, and was I lucky enough to find one of them? We continued down the road.
The building still stood. The large “Borders” sign remained, advertising its stock of books, movies, and music. But the windows were covered, the doors locked, the building empty. As we drove away, I felt almost heartbroken.
It’s the death of the conventional book, the world proclaimed, the year Borders closed. The rise of the e-reader. Barnes and Noble would be next. Hardcore bibliophiles rose up in protest, condemning battery-powered literature, holding tightly to those sacred, tattered paperbacks with their torn covers.
I thought about classmates, among them gifted artists and performers, opting instead for careers in science. I thought about friends and adults asking me, “What do you want to do with a degree in English?” About empty museums with unseen, unappreciated masterpieces. About limewire and 4shared and YouTube and all the ways you could listen to music for free. How it feels like I am witnessing the death of art.
At the same time, however, I cannot help but think…
It’s been years since I’ve returned to Book Sale, but I hope—I believe—that should I ever return, I might see a little girl crouched in front of the middle grade paperback section, where the books about horses and dogs and friendships and growing up are crammed, between mass-paperback romances and mysteries.
I can imagine her—and thousands or millions of others like her—lying on the couch for hours, pages denting to her sweating fingers. I can imagine her dropping the book in shock when it is revealed that Quirrell was Voldemort’s accomplice, not Snape. Hurling it across the room in protest when Aslan dies. Clutching it tightly to her chest when Anne finally admits that she loves Gilbert. Watching her tears fall and the ink spread when Sara Crewe lies alone in the attic, when Charlotte weaves her last web, when Jesse comes home to find out that Leslie didn’t make it to Terabithia.
The world has not always—if ever—been very accommodating to artists and their work. It is true, perhaps, that we do not need art to survive. Oxygen, food, water, a roof over our heads. To such a sophisticated species, survival is not a goal but rather a given.
Thinking of that little girl, however, I cannot help thinking—without the book-reading experience available to us, how could we survive? How could we survive without the teachings and the stories of those before us? How could we survive without what they have to say? How could we survive without each other?
I have faith in the traditional book because I have faith in us and our desire to be heard, to tell stories, to teach, to live, and to do more than just survive: it is for that reason that I believe that our art, whether digital or electronic or not, will outlive all of us, let alone disappear within our lifetimes.