Volume 2, Number 1
Apr 1989

Immortality

I know I'm mortal, OK? The stuff I do is forever, because it isn't mine. I'm only a radio for the cosmic voice. Unfortunately, there is a snag. The cheap twits who run American publishing are bent on robbing me of my immortality. And not just me. Everybody writing today is doomed to turn to dust in less than 50 years.

Listen to this: "Right now 76 million volumes in major research facilities in our nation are turning to dust. In the Library of Congress over six million volumes--eleven and a half acres of books--are too brittle to read." That's from the Author's Guild Bulletin, from an article which asks authors to band together to demand that their publishers print their books on acid-free paper. Almost all books, newspapers and magazines, with a few notable exceptions that include the nation's small literary presses, are now printed on acid paper. Acid paper is self-destroying. It has been suggested that this might be a kind of poetic justice, given all the garbage being published, but still... our children may learn more from our garbage than our masterworks. Shouldn't they have a chance to study it?

If something isn't done soon, the only books left Will be the old ones, before the Industrial Revolution, which had such high rag content they are in perfect shape today. Our age is about to be erased. The Library of Congress is frantically microfilming the disappearing books, but not all of then, a grim decision-making process. Which books live and which ones die? Books are "guillotined" when they are microfilmed, and disposed of afterwards. Says Hilda Bohem, a California librarian, "Personally, I would be horrified at the thought of trying to curl up in bed at night with a good roll of microfilm." Me too. I'd rather watch TV.

It wouldn't take much to save the book. Conversion to alkaline-based production methods could produce paper good for 200 or 300 years. It doesn't cost more than acid-based paper. Three hundred years is all I ask for. That may not be exactly immortality but then neither time nor money are what they used to be.

Andrei Codrescu is a commentator for National Public Radio and the author of A Craving for Swan (Ohio State University Press), a book printed on acid-free stock. This commentary was originally broadcast an National Public Radio's news and information magazine "All Things Considered" on May 31, 1988, and is printed with the permission of National Public Radio. Any unauthorized duplication is prohibited.