Page 2 of 2 <

Making Books

Discussion Policy

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

And it seems to me that it is we who are paying no attention, that we hurry home past that empty bookstore, looking blankly in the window, thinking instead about our dinner plans and our weekends, while the last lion of publishing is memorialized and then forgotten and the old houses of legend are abruptly, savagely shuttered. ·

André Bernard, a former publisher of Harcourt, is vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

< 2

Find More Reviews and Features in Books

A pandemic waiting in the wings

Alan Sipress's superb and sobering "The Fatal Strain" details the shadowy progression of a virulent avian flu now moving across Asia.

The captive imagination

In "A Good Fall," Ha Jin turns a new prism on the question of freedom, showing that life in a foreign culture may be the most isolating situation.