The Book

The Book is not quite a novel although almost half of it takes the form of a narrative neither is it an essay although quite a lot of what is said in it adopts that style. It is actually closest to that rare type or para-genre of satirical prose embodied in the exemplary In Praise of Folly by the famous humanist from Rotterdam. Instead of the Folly of human manias and absurdities here in a similar kind of double-talk the books themselves speak those monuments to our intelligence ambitions and self-importance and they primarily speak by making an analogy between mans fate and that of books--to mans detriment of course.