THE FATE OF THE BOOK

In the West, I again found the fate of the book:  we stopped at Quartzite, Arizona... probably the largest temporary place in the US to which thousands upon thousands of RVs and every imaginable vehicle come--mostly in the winter--though it is still busy in the summer---there are ads for dental tourism in Mexico--- there were some very beautiful guns for sale at other temporary shops... DVDs: if I said a hundred thousand of them... movies and such being even more temporary than books..

Over the years we have stopped at this bookstore: at one time packed with books, many wrapped in plastic...but the heaps and heaps... now the store is slowly being stripped of its books and no new stock being added: I found these three paperbacks on the 3 for $1 table... the books were unread...and by listing and showing the covers: from the early 70s..the American Review was the most recent then of an attempt to publish a mass market literary journal...WORKS IN PROGRESS came from the Literary Guild and was available in bookstores...

I wish I had the energy to talk about these writers... many once famous and others... many I knew and was jealous of... but the desert is a good place to think... and to really know: this blog, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter have even less of a chance of being remembered... and while the READER'S OASIS BOOKS will also surely disappear... and knowing one's own books will also surely disappear... all... yet, one goes on... as even in such places one did see a younger person reading and in places like Ajo, in Douglas, in Tombstone one did talk about real books... and do I... maybe another day to talk about the woman I met who had been married six times and her husband had been married four times... a couple of hours of conversation: probably more interesting than these dusty books...