Be Bold

by Grix

A reason to still read books is that they’ve all got the price wrong in a world reduced to exchange-value. Reading Adorno costs £11.50, that is a few pence per aphorism. For that price you can understand your condition. For that price you can go back to the store and buy half a book of recipes or a fluorescent bookmark. Cortazar feared that his watch would own him, and it sure did. In this world everything has a price, and that price is no longer distinguished from the transcendental value of the objects and subjects we attribute that price to. How could it be distinguished when your number determines your social status, the quality of your food, the clothes you wear, the places you can see, the disciplines you practice? You have a number, your favourite book has a number, and the values you hold so true that you believe you would die for them, also have a number, a pretty low one indeed, for they have been devalued.

I am not here bringing any news to anyone, nor am I making an apology for robbery. I am just asking. What is your price?

How much for you to give away your house if you are so lucky as to have a house, and your family if you have one? You might say nothing, but we have all become great liars. Politicians offend us only when they do not lie well. How much for never having read and never again reading your favourite book? How much for you to turn off the sun, and regress to each memory to misrepresent it?

Come on, you’ve already paid less for a book than you pay for public transport. Come on, be bold, be one more.