HAUNTED BOOKS: Some Thoughts about Textual Eschatology

	To some degree every book is a ghost
	in which the soul of the author
	seeks a new host

	The words on each page
	are designed to engage
	& haunt those passing by
	linguistic graves

	Too often the smell of death
	hangs around old parchment
	& as cellulose begins to flake
	& molecular bonds gradually decay
	countless mites
	begin to feast  
	with microscopic bites
	as respected authors become delicacies

	Perhaps tiny insects understand
	perfectly well how to read:
	wandering freely
	& devouring what they please

	They're unafraid
	to scamper across shelves
	& never worry about  
	what critics tell,
	or how narratives change unexpectedl...


Shu:     Tsk! Tsk! I wouldn't be unduly concerned about oblivion. (laughing) It is non-negotiable.

Ella:    Indeed. Why this morbid fascination? 

Juanita: Well, Ernest Becker would assert that this pessimism comes from an awareness that 
         the author's "immortality project" is failing.

Jack: 	 Yep. All literature is a sort of culturally-endorsed immortality project -
         a heroic attempt to construct some kind of symbolically meaningful world. 


=====================================================================================
from Lit-A-Rupture: A Post Literary Construction by T Newfields
SUMMARY: Reflections on textual decay, oblivion, libraries, and mites.
KEYWORDS: literary ghosts, textual eschatology, literary death, obscurity, libraries, book mites

by T Newfields [Nitta Hirou / Huáng Yuèwǔ] (b. 1955)
Begun: 2005 in Tokyo, Japan ⨳ Finished: 2017 in Yokohama, Japan
Creative Commons License: Attribution. {{CC-BY-4.0}} Granted

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