BURN THE BOOK, BURN THE MAN

FOR THOSE OF US WHO BELIEVE THAT NOTHING beats curling up with a good book, the recent events in Gainesville, Florida, more specifically at the Dove World Outreach Centre, are rather confusing. As I write, Pastor “Doctor” Terry Jones, a second-hand furniture salesman who preaches from a church which is an extension of his garage and is a dead-ringer for Yosemite Sam in the Bugs Bunny cartoons, is confused about whether he has really heard from God or not telling him that he should not burn any Korans tomorrow. (Or Qur’ans as we increasingly see them written)

I AM NO EXPERT ON RELIGION, and thus am unable to give my own opinion as to whether the Koran deserves burning, but I have no intention to burn my own copy, which nestles on a shelf alongside my several Bibles, Torahs, Book of Mormon and Gospel of Zarathustra. Most of these were bought in second-hand or charity shops, and that is probably where they will end up in the future. I confess that none of them has been read from cover to cover.

OF BURNING BOOKS, MANY PEOPLE HAVE WRITTEN, and befitting his name, Francis Bacon (the serious one) uses a food comparison: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested.” (Of Studies) Bacon happily then goes on to explain how his aphorism helps us understand which books are “goodly” as he terms it in his essay. One could continue the food metaphor into this Floridian penchant for burning books, and anyone who has tasted Floridian cuisine will know that, like a lot of Southern so-called “finger-lickin’” fayre, there is a tendency to put a tad too much spice on the hog or chicken or burger and leave it a tad too long on the coals.

STATESMEN OF VARYING IMPORTANCE have apparently been in contact with the good pastor in an attempt to avoid tomorrow’s “event”, including decent Roman Catholic Tony Blair, but not including the Imam responsible for New York City and the building of the Muslim Cultural Centre close to Ground Zero. None of this intervention has been useful, and so I suggest another: Tony Blair could provide a sign from God himself by offering Dr Jones an alternative book for him to burn, the destruction of which would also be a service to mankind. Surely Blair’s publishers must have hundreds of thousands of spare copies of the useless “Tony Blair: A Journey”?