Before hanging out on my bookshelf, and countless others like it, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker and their friends (including Harpo Marx) gathered at the Algonquin Hotel. Apparently without effort they forged a living at a trade to which I idly apply myself each day before dawn. They wrote the America of their era. There are those who say Parker haunts the Algonquin, but in truth her words, like those of her companions, are her legacy. Some of us dream of making a life out of words, but this is not much valued in our society where even concepts must have salability in order to be deemed worth the time. If it had not developed independently millennia ago, religion could never have emerged in a capitalist society. Certainly there are religions that barely qualify for the non-profit status they claim, but the founders of religions in antiquity were believers in idea, sacred words, invaluable concepts.

No society pours much money into what it truly values. Religions were never designed to be money-making ventures. Those of us who work in the book trade know that authors would write even if they never got paid a penny (and many of them don’t). Art, like religion, is an expression of the depths of human need. In a Wall Street society, however, those who don’t manufacture something, or get rich from those who do, are merely taking up space. We measure the success of a person by the chattels they own, not the linear feet of bookshelves they can fill. But when we need to find a human touch, a book is a far better companion than a checkbook.

When I walk past the fashionable Algonquin just as the sun is beginning to penetrate the dark valleys of Manhattan, I sense that two worlds are attempting to coexist here simultaneously. One is a world of separation and power. The other is a world where Harpo Marx sits at your table. F. Scott Fitzgerald gave us the Jazz Age, defining the brief interlude when the world wasn’t at war, defining with words that just about every high school kid will eventually read. Fitzgerald was never good with money, and even The Great Gatsby was not an immediate success. The walls of privilege are locked with stout doors indeed. Such a situation calls for the unparalleled wit of Dorothy Parker, but for some scenarios the last word properly belongs to Harpo Marx.