LOVE AND LIBRARIES

Saturday March 13, 2010

This morning, on the anniversary of Mom’s death in 1989, I prepare to listen to Bach’s Cantata 127 by reading the Biblical texts for that cantata.  This happens to be 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13. (The number 13.)

             

After warden’s meeting on Thursday S---- was offering to lend me his new reader from Barnes & Noble, the Nook, so I could see for myself what it was like.  I am somewhat reluctant to believe that these devices can ever adequately replace books.  Thought to myself defensively, “Books do furnish a room” – that being the title of one of Anthony Powell’s Music of Time books.  This morning thinking about Powell’s politics, which were Tory – and I remember reading a profile of him in Time or Newsweek (I think) in which the writer indicated that Powell was an admirer of Margaret Thatcher. How disappointing, if it were so. From the books one comes to recognize that most of the truly horrible people in it are on the left – notably, Widmerpool – but he also has a few who aresympathetic or at least non-monstrous.  I wondered if perhaps he’d been misrepresented – after all, in his memoirs he makes mention that he has been absurdly misrepresented on occasion (unfortunately, without providing instances).  Later idly pick up Alan Bennett’s Writing Home and open it to a passage where he refers to a conservative man who nevertheless deeply detests Thatcher.  I didn’t see who the man was, but turned to the index to look up references to Powell.  First reference:  “No book, whether from the library or otherwise, was ever on view.  Anthony Powell’s ‘Books do furnish a room’ was not my mother’s way of thinking.”  

Looked at the photo section of The Rest Is Noise to see a page with two pictures – Steve Reich with the Brooklyn Bridge, John Adams with the Golden Gate Bridge.