Tuesday, January 27, 2026
An Intellectual Desert
Alberto Manguel, quoted in Jorge Carrión, Against Amazon and Other Essays, tr. Peter Bush (Windsor, Biblioasis, 2020), p. 72:
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It's true that bookshops have disappeared from many places. New York, which was a city of bookshops, has endured a genuine extinction, although a few survive as relics of bygone times. This has an impact on a city's intellectual life, on conversations, and changes the way one thinks. In Madrid, Buenos Aires, or Paris, you see people holding books. In New York, people are always holding their iPhone, and I find that disturbing. Not that I think that virtual reading is evil, but it is quite different. The equivalent of that intellectual desert in the world of transport would be Los Angeles, where one never walks, and goes everywhere by car: a city where one never walks is a city of ghosts.Hat tip: My daughter, who gave me the book as a gift — she bought it in a bookshop, not on Amazon.
