Time to Read

Confronted with the risk of having only "fast food" literature left to enjoy, I feel an urgency to resist the growing powers of the entrepreneurs of culture.

The book is such an inordinate life stake that it requires criteria of value other than the rate of its turnover. I believe the irreplaceable richness of the book comes from the slowness, the gravity of its making. These very constraints guarantee the book its lasting freedom.

Yes, the book needs another sort of time: a time for the writer in front of his work, a time for the craftsman in front of the papers, the inks, a time for the librarian to ruminate over choices, for the bookseller to trade, and a time for the reader to pleasure in the text.

A time, surely, for meetings to mature, for the unforeseeable metamorphoses to be completed.

Time for the slow wondering. Time for the urgency to love.

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