[Sca-cooks] OT: How to destroy a book
emilio szabo
emilio_szabo at yahoo.it
Sat Aug 21 13:46:00 PDT 2010
Adapting and even "manipulating" historical subjects to one's own literary
purposes has a long history. Genre names like "historical novel" indicate that
there are licences and no footnotes ...
Do you assume, that there is something like historical "truth". May I suggest
that you read some of Hayden White's or Arthur C. Danto's works on the role of
narrativity in historiography?
What you can destroy are certain copies of books. I guess you will have to buy
each copy in order to destroy it. Your proposal will not be a cheap endeavour.
If you are very rich and if you can buy many many copies in order to destroy
them, this will have the consequence that the book ends up on top of the
bestseller lists because so many copies have been sold. There is no distinction
between the copies sold for reading and the copies sold for burning. The more
copies you destroy, the more copies will be printed and sold ...
Of course, things are different when you are a dictator destroying/burning only
one copy in a symbolic way in a prominent situation and the media are present.
But I sincerely hope you are not in such a position.
If you do not like the book, write a review at Amazon or wherever you like
instead.
E.
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