imagine reading 'war and peace' via printouts

Whether you’re a serious Kindle evangelist or an (equally obnoxious, imho) print-books-only-or-i-will-actually-die types, check your reading privilege with this Paris Review piece, “In Praise of the Photocopy,” translated from Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra.

“As citizens of a country where books are ridiculously expensive to buy and libraries are poorly equipped or nonexistent, we got used to reading photocopies, and we even came to find it charming. In exchange for just a few pesos, some giant, tireless machines could bestow on us the literature we so desired. We read those warm bundles of paper and then stored them on shelves as if they were real books. Because that’s what they were to us: rare, beloved books.”

Tl;dr, you might relegate the days of reading big stapled print-outs to ye olde college days, but in Chile and other places around the world, photocopying is the distribution mechanism du jour to get your hands on literature at all.

Like Deez Links? Forward to your local library and hug ‘em tight.