What's the point of books?
(this is a bit of a loaded, self-obsessed question for me, because I might as well be asking 'What is the meaning of my life?' I work in books. Although the fact thatI pathetically rely on work to give meaning to life is horrific, and not to be dwelled on here.)
I really love looking at what people are reading on the tube in the mornings. Marian Keyes got a look in this week. And a man in a very nice grey duffle coat (with those nice tuggy tag button things) was reading Peter Ackroyd on the night bus just now. There's a woman I see almost daily at Finsbury Park, she is almost through Les Miserables now.
But books are more than just passing time from one end of the Piccadilly line to another, no? Betsy Lerner (Elizabeth's Wurtzel's editor, now an agent) writes that the more popular culture fails to present the real pathos of our human struggle, the more opportunity there is for writers who are unafraid to present stories that speak an emotional truth.
Apparently the Writers who Matter to Us are the ones who dared to say 'I am a sick man'.
