In Heaven there is a Half Price Books store. I can't prove that in scripture and it isn't really my desire for an ultimate destination. As I vacation, however, I would happily put a cot and my tooth brush here and stay a while. You don't go to used book stores looking for anything specific. They are a place of discovery and require huge blocks of time. Where else can you get two hours of entertainment for four buck though? I have come to see what can be seen. Here is my find for the day.
Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary. Bierce was a witty curmudgeon and a man of words. A veteran of the civil war, he died in 1914. This book was originally printed in 1911 and reprinted from his complete works on its 100th birthday, 2011. (Dover Publications, New York, USA)
Ambrose Bierce was a humorist, journalist, author and professional cynic. He made fun of things and his definitions appeared in newspapers from the late 1899's through early 1900's. This book makes fun of dictionaries. His definition of a dictionary?: "n. a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however is a most useful work." So there.
He describes a minister as, "an agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility", diplomacy as "the patriotic art of lying for one's country", a hearse as "death's baby carriage.", and a lawyer as "one skilled in circumvention of the law." There are hundreds upon hundreds of these clever and often caustic "definitions".
Want a copy of your own? Amazon has a download for two bucks or hard copies in several covers. Abebooks, halfdotcom or one of the other used book sites would have them too.
But wait a minute. The gift of this book is not that I own it but rather that I discovered it. Authors pour out words that score emotion, transformation and art. How will we rediscover the works of the past without used book stores? Will the search for a reading gem be reduced to reading ads from Amazon or Barnes and Noble?
You can't dig through a resale shop for a download. They don't get dog-eared or get sold for a quarter with a love note or piece of junk mail used as a bookmark. Digital copies can be shared but carry no marginal notes or other marks of the person that read the book. Yes, I reluctantly got a Kindle last year and love it but it has no soul. Technology provides for a way to warehouse every work we create but does create the longing to rediscover. Books bear our essence as people as much as its own message
There is a French saying, "A recherche du temps perdu". It translates, a (re)discovery of lost time. It describes that powerful memory of a past event that floods our being when we touch something or someone from our past. The touch of a book creates a story, sometimes from the author and sometimes from the owner.
Ever touch your grandmother's Bible or the bulletin from a funeral and have that rush of memories? I pray you have that "recherché" today in some way or another. Old books are a means of Grace. I pray that our quest for technology doesn't take that desire to discover things that we don't know exist. This is the way Christian Spirituality works too. It is the journey into the not-knowing that gets us where God wants us to be.
Want a copy of "the Devil's Dictionary"? Dig for I!. With any luck you won't find it but will discover something far greater, something left on a shelf or in a paper sack at a garage sale just for you.
Ambrose Bierce gets the final word....
"Review, v.t.
To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it,
Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)
At work upon a book, and so read out of it
The qualities that you have first read into it.
Another book with many of Bierce's quotes in "The Portable Curmudgeon" edited by John Winkour.
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