Cohen was shocked. ‘Bonfires of books?’ ‘Yes. Horrible, isn’t it?’ ‘Right,’ said Cohen. He thought it was appalling. Someone who spent his life living rough under the sky knew the value of a good thick book, which ought to outlast at least a season of cooking fires if you were careful how you tore the pages out. Many a life had been saved on a snowy night by a handful of sodden kindling and a really dry book. If you felt like a smoke and couldn’t find a pipe, a book was your man every time.
Cohen realised people wrote things in books. It had always seemed to him to be a frivolous waste of paper.
Cohen was shocked. ‘Bonfires of books?’ ‘Yes. Horrible, isn’t it?’ ‘Right,’ said Cohen. He thought it was appalling. Someone who spent his life living rough under the sky knew the value of a good thick book, which ought to outlast at least a season of cooking fires if you were careful how you tore the pages out. Many a life had been saved on a snowy night by a handful of sodden kindling and a really dry book. If you felt like a smoke and couldn’t find a pipe, a book was your man every time. Cohen realised people wrote things in books. It had always seemed to him to be a frivolous waste of paper.