“Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”
— A Literary Legend Fights for a Ventura County Library - An interview with Ray Bradbury
“Ulysses by James Joyce
The most significant yet mysterious vegetable in literature is surely Leopold Bloom’s potato. “Potato I have”, he thinks as he checks his pockets on first leaving his house; he carries it everywhere. A prostitute takes it, but he retrieves it, explaining: “It is nothing, but still, a relic of poor mama”. Later, we hear phantom voices chanting, “Potato Preservative Against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us”.”
1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.
2. Vernacular means of everyday communication — cellphones, social networks, streaming video — are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.
3. Intellectual property systems failing.
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