ZapTown

J.D. Salinger passed away a few days ago. He’s most famous for Catcher in the Rye of course, although he wrote several other stories as well, but I have the sneaking suspicion that, if he were here, old J.D. Would prefer I not talk about him, so let’s focus on something else instead:

How about the fact that it’s mid-winter, and, although we’re closing in on Spring, the pile of unread books on the bedside table keeps getting bigger and bigger. Fantasy novels, crime thrillers, literature, graphic novels—I’m still working my way through Stephen King’s Under the Dome, which is taking longer than I expected (I seem to be slowing down in my old age. I’m pretty sure I read The Stand in a week and a half when I was younger. It’s not that Under the Dome is a bad book, it just takes me longer to turn the pages these days), and I’ve made the decision to try and get my hands on a copy of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Why? That’s a good question. I guess, since 2008, when the financial crisis hit, and lots of people started suddenly losing their jobs and/or houses and/or savings, I suddenly, (like a lot of people) became much more interested in the business section of the paper (yes, I still read the paper. And I don’t have a kindle! Dinosaur, I am) and in the months since that uncomfortable Fall, I’ve become, in my own layman-ish way, a more avid reader of arguments over who caused that, or what caused this, or why capitalism is doomed to fail after getting us into this mess, or why capitalism is the only thing that will save us from this mess. There’s a lot to take in, and invariably, different people seem to namedrop Adam Smith’s landmark tome in varying argumentative ways, usually to try and prove to the readers that the other guys are wrong.

With that in mind, it seems like a good idea to actually try and crack the Adam Smith open, and see what it is he actually said, that people are still arguing over a hundred years later, so vigorously. The only problem is that Wealth of Nations is a very thick book (most ‘portable’ editions range at about six hundred pages) and I’m somewhat intimidated of cracking it open and getting sucked in, perhaps at the expense of all those other books currently piling up in my backlog. I’d better finish the King first, otherwise this is going to turn into a column where I talk about books I’ve not yet read, but am going to finish someday, honest, and nobody wants to read that. Maybe I should stick with comics. Did you guys hear that Captain America’s alive again? Just in time for the upcoming Hollywood movie! (I bet they’ll get Sam Worthington to play him). Anyhow, tune in next week, where I’ll either have completed Under the Dome, or I’ll have another handful of new books I haven’t yet read, and the molehill will have become a mountain!