27 October 2006

why it is hard to have the conversation we're having

Apropos—at least in an oblique, if dazzling way—of our ongoing conversations about which texts to read and which to teach and which to write, this statistic I stumbled across today in the latest issue of Poets & Writers:

Last year a total of 172,000 books were published in the United States, a number that represents a ten percent decrease from the year before.

1 comment:

blonde said...

i'm still thinking about this, and trying to decide if that's a BAD thing, since so much motherfucking trash is published commercially that some part of me wishes it would continue to dwindle until the books published requiring a mind had currency again.

and i use that word currency very deliberately in a high capitalist moment.

lid