A Book Judged By Its Cover
In the news, today. Tired of being judged by its cover, Book ends up face down on the gray cement of the city's riverside walk, possibly in a demonstrative act meaning to express generalized dejection at society's obstinate indecisiveness between penetrating superficiality and frivolous profundity.
Having, of late, undergone a thorough and polychromatic makeover in a conspicuously vain attempt to attract favorable attention from foreseeably insouciant strangers, Book was reportedly engulfed in existential angst for having faced the paradoxical anthropological indifference between surface and depth, appearance and essence.
Cognizant that symmetry conducts to allure, Book had sought to avoid unaesthetic lopsidedness by bending over backwards on its spine so as to produce, by virtue of contact copy, a perfectly specular coinage of its two sides, each of which could now so exquisitely stand for the other that beholders would get a complete picture from a partial one, leaving no need to circle about for whatever leftover traits may have been lost in the balance.
Disappointingly, the resulting differential reproduction (predictable to anyone familiar enough with coin metaphors to notice the inappropriate application to the case at hand), introduced variations - both small and large - that inadvertently spun the intended spectacle on its affective axis until it resembled an uncharacteristically colorful Rorschach blot in which the onlooker saw, like in a mirror, not the bearer but the borne.
As paralibrarians carefully attempted to lift Book from its prostrate posture to convey it to an institution specialized in jacket treatments, bystanders reported having heard the actant-turned-patient exclaim, bewildered and incredulous, "A plain line... so unexacting... ha... ha ha..!"
Although the significance of these last, puzzling words remains a mystery, first responders, the public, and city officials are united in wishing Book good luck on the way to chromatic well-being. Today, in the news.
