in parentheses

Luke Rebecchi is a junior at Boston University studying economics. Luke also despises writing short biographies. But he loves talking to people. Particularly about politics, and his sophomoric understanding of philosophy. Feel free to contact. Syracuse can get lonely.

Pride

Sometimes I wonder why I have so many books in my room. I have neither the space nor the time for them. To be honest, I have only read half of them, and I cannot foresee any time in the future where I will read the other half. And it isn’t as if I do not particularly enjoy reading. I love reading, hence why I constantly do it. But still, I can’t help but feel guilty of all the opportunities my ownership of them has withheld from more inquisitive and curious souls.

Take for instance my copy of John Rawls’s A Theory Of Justice. I have heard it is a great book. I have also heard it is terrible. But I am only familiar with about 70 pages of it, and it has been in my possession for well over a year. I know just enough of it to laugh at the philosophical convenience of a ‘veil of ignorance’, and to lose myself in a liberal euphoria over the enlightened difference principle. Ask me for a quote and with great confidence and equal pomp I shall declare that “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.” Ask me to explain it and I will silently object to the inadequacies of online quote websites. And so it goes.

I also read Vonnegut. He said that semicolons “are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” That quote sticks. Though lacking a photographic memory, with each passing semicolon in the texts of famous academics and other nobodies I see that quote in my tattered copy of A Man Without A Century.

Sometimes when no one is around, neither in the flesh or metaphysically, I wonder whether my infatuation with books is about you, and not me. Or you and me. A friend told me pride does not exist in a vacuum. So how could they be just about me?

You should all read books, seriously. Buy them and support the authors, or get a library card. Make little dog ears to mark your page when it is time for a break, and endlessly write notes on each page between and next to sentences, as if the author did not do a complete job him or herself. But make sure you are doing it for the right reason.

If you couldn’t tell, this has little to do with books. And, to be honest, if you truly could not tell, I truly do not care, because I could.