De há uns tempos para cá, Douglas Coupland tem passado algum do seu tempo à frente da televisão a ver episódios de Law & Order e a mascar os seus próprios livros, cuspindo depois as páginas e esculpindo com elas estes ninhos de vespas para tentar responder a questões como: / For some time now, Douglas Coupland has been spending some time in front of the television set watching episodes of Law & Order and chewing his own books, spitting out the pages and sculpting these wasp nests, trying to answer questions like:
Is our bunkered mentality about the sanctity of books more genetic than cultural? Are we no different than wasps defending against intruders when we force students to read Henry James or Nadine Gordimer?
E para chegar, por exemplo, a este tipo de conclusões: / And, for example, arrive at conclusions like:
Since 1991 I’ve witnessed the triumph of the superstore, the near death of the independent bookseller, the rise of Amazon, the rise of the Internet, the comings and goings of the e-book and the rise of the P.D.A. Books are not under siege, but they are evolving and mutating. The more this process disturbs you, the more necessary it might be to try and engage with these changes. Right or wrong, they are inevitable, and the choice for anybody is whether they want to be able to live fully within the future, or whether they want to become a recluse and vanish into the past. The only way to go is forward. It’s all there is.
