AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Now to a literary construction zone. Commentator Andrei Codrescu is starting a building project using books.
ANDREI CODRESCU, BYLINE: I put out the word that I'm making a house out of books, and thousands of books started arriving by truck, big publishers' remainders, 100 years of bad taste in hardback. My building made of books grew from a shack to a palace the size of Versailles made entirely out of bestsellers.
It's hard to give stuff away, so I'm making art out of it. I took two old TVs, for instance. I painted the screens black and blasted them with a shotgun when that anthem of capitalism came on, the show called "Hoarders." I also unloaded a clip at the show called "Pickers" featuring two yoyos looking for junk who bought everything except books and electronics, obsolete technology made in China and other American labor colonies that makes up most landfills now.
The people who made it certainly won't take it back. Who can blame them? And this, for the horrible books poured by the millions over what used to be the American brain, it's a wonder we have enough brain left to brick them in. Art is the only answer because it is useless and beautiful. And, if you make your art tall enough and facing the road, you're sure to elicit an appreciative ooh or ah from the Chinese or Korean tourists in the double-decker buses who notice the logos of their own history as they go past.
They might even write about it in that new book of ism, which is tourism, where you'll be featured in the chapter ode to art, the last stage of capitalism.
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CORNISH: Commentator Andrei Codrescu, who says his contribution to the world's collection of books will be called "Bibliodeath: My Archives (With Life)."
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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
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