Nicholas Basbanes on The Written Word

“Over time, communications across the generations has typically come by way of the written word, carried out in a striking variety of ways and recorded on an astonishingly rich medley of surfaces, the impulse always being to make contact and to give an account of ourselves – which, it turns out is the point of the exercise.”

Nicholas A. Basbanes from a Splendor of Letters: The permanence of Books in an Impermanent World.

Basbanes is a journalist who wrote a nationally syndicated column on books and authors. He also is the author of several books on books and book collecting.