Aug 032012
“Our lovely vulgar and most human art is at an end, if not the end. Yet that is no reason not to want to practice it, or even to read it. In any case, rather like priests who have forgotten the meaning of the prayers they chant, we shall go on for quite a long time talking of books and writing books, pretending all the while not to notice that the church is empty and the parishioners have gone elsewhere to attend other gods, perhaps in silence or with new words.”
— Gore Vidal on Writing quoted in the LA Times review of The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal
Okay, I was thinking about this yesterday. I think about this often, in terms of books and film. My son recently read five of Chester Himes’ books, went on a binge. I don’t read as much as I used to, indeed, I’ll read one book over and over for a year, but there are new young people reading books. The desire to read story is alive and well. And while it seems like movies, cinema is also at an end, we keep expressing ourselves. Can it ever really end? Maybe that’s why faith is needed for an empty church, that a story wants to be told. If no birds sang in the forest…
Thanks for checking in, Tom. Nice to see you here.