October 9, 2006

Books and People

Category: Miscellaneous :: Permalink

“There is no frigate like a book, To take us lands away.”  So wrote Emily Dickinson, who stayed in her cabin and seldom if ever encountered her fellow sailors.

It seems to me that she missed the best part of the trip.  The lands to which books bear us are fascinating, sometimes; but we who are borne to them are fascinating all the time.  I have never met an author, a collector, a bookseller, an editor, or a habitual reader who was not an interesting person.  Some have been detestable; none have been dull. — Gene Wolfe, “Foreword,” Bibliomen: Twenty-Two Characters in Search of a Book (Cambridge: Broken Mirrors, 1995), p. 7.

Posted by John Barach @ 8:50 am | Discuss (2)

2 Responses to “Books and People”

  1. Elliot Says:

    Interesting! I’ve never read that Wolfe book. How is it?

  2. John Says:

    I haven’t read much of it yet, but it looks interesting. It’s a bunch of short stories, many of them very short, and many of them just sketches of characters with all kinds of stories implied, if that whets your appetite sufficiently. Kinda Borges-ish, I guess.

    Lewis Gold, from Peace, makes an appearance in one of the stories, I see.

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