Behind the Flap

Last night while reading this first edition library copy of Nicholson Baker's U and I, I was delighted to find a tiny artifact peeking from behind the book's rear flap...
It was a fortune cookie strip: "All progress occurs because people dare to be different."


More of a proverb than a fortune, really, like the contents of most fortune cookies these days -- but how appropriate for Baker's book. And what an affecting reminder of the tangible, material, solitary, and yet simultaneously and mysteriously interpersonal joys that only books in tactile, material (non-digital) form can afford.