BOOKS

Books are in a sad way these days. It's especially sad to think that this major way of communicating with other minds has dwindled to a point where it does not have the significance it hadwhen we were young (and just think how important the printed word was in the 19th century).

Books on the mid-list, for the intelligent and the literary have really taken a beating. However, we can get our books out through self-publishing, and due to the internet and digitalization they will be there forever so that those who want tofind them can find them.

Saul Bellow said many decades ago that in the future those who read literature will be a small group like those who read Latin, and maybe form clubs to discuss books. But it has reallyalways been that way, with the best-sellers supporting the mid-list,and the mid-list paying off over time.

The agglomeration of the book industry has meant that short-term pay-offs have replaced the investment in good books for the future of the company. And while serious book readers have always been a very small percentage of the population, the debasement of what is published is what is thesaddest. The sharing of great minds cannot take place on TV, not evenin discussion programs; unless viewed as history.

People who write will always write, because that is what we do. We write. No matter what. But at least the delusion so many have that money can be made writing serious fiction will fade, as it should, and we will havefewer books by the less serious, at least in the literary world.

Ah,well, acceptance is the key to all my problems. Neither of us is going to be around long enough to really see the loss of the book's importance to the growth of humanity.