“Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.” You just know there was some scribe in 1436 sitting around saying how moveable type made printing too easy and how we were gonna all lose the sense of wonder and magic and a bunch of other baselessly romantic doom and gloom about crap they knew nothing about.
“I hated it. It was like visual waterboarding being in that world where blacks are basically a step away from slaves. This is no metaphor: they discuss being willed down through generations and thus feeling owned. “We living in hell! Trapped!” a maid says. The specter of violence surrounds them, though it all occurs offstage, whether it’s the assassination of a black leader or domestic violence visited upon a maid by her husband. The total lack of physical consequences for the maids’ courageous act of literary civil disobedience is historically absurd, though it does fit with the sanitized tone of the movie.” Sanitized. Historically absurd. Visual waterboarding. Best Picture Nominee.
(1) I was stunned by the power of [ ]. This book will change your life. Or, (2) [ ] expresses an emotional depth that moves me beyond anything I have experienced in a book.” If the blurbs on some books seems oddly formulaic, well, there’s a reason for that.
“…in my years there we had never done a P&L — a profit and loss statement — that showed at what point a book would make money, if ever.” Ladies and Gentlemen, the publishing industry.
