Calm Down, America, Marie Kondo Isn’t Trying To “Fahrenheit 451” Your Books
Not since Lauren Conrad showed America she’s a first degree literature MURDERER has the U.S. been this pissed! Tidying Up starring Marie Kondo involves telling people to get rid of shit that no longer brings them joy, and she always tells people to go through cluttered bookcases and toss the books they’re no longer as connected with. People took to social media to accuse Marie of being a one-woman army of trying to make the U.S. illiterate. Well, even more illiterate, since the president can’t spell “hamburger.” Marie now says the whole thing is a misunderstanding.
IndieWire talked to Marie after online critics said she was trying to destroy personal libraries across the country. Here’s a sampling of what people were saying:
Do NOT listen to Marie Kondo or Konmari in relation to books. Fill your apartment & world with them. I don’t give a shite if you throw out your knickers and Tupperware but the woman is very misguided about BOOKS. Every human needs a v extensive library not clean, boring shelves
— Anakana Schofield (@AnakanaSchofiel) January 3, 2019
Don’t worry, someone at least had the sense to be like, “That pleasant lady who talks to T-shirts likely isn’t hear to throw your books in a pit to ignite.”
WHAT MARIE KONDO SAYS: Think about getting rid of books you aren't going to read or reread.
WHAT TWITTER HEARS: Let's burn all books and slay the writers! Let the streets run red with their blood as our literary pyre's smoke blocks out the sun! FUCK BOOKS.
— Kevin Church ?? (@Kevin_Church) January 5, 2019
Marie cleared the air to say she isn’t trying to make you get rid of Harry Potter if you don’t want to. People are missing the point of her exercise if all they get from it is that she wants to throw every book in the trash:
“The most important part of this process of tidying is to always think about what you have and about the discovery of your sense of value, what you value that is important. So it’s not so much what I personally think about books. The question you should be asking is what do you think about books. If the image of someone getting rid of books or having only a few books makes you angry, that should tell you how passionate you are about books, what’s clearly so important in your life. If that riles you up, that tells you something you about that. That in itself is a very important benefit of this process.”
Basically, if you get the dry heaves from a Harlequin romance novel, toss it! If it gives you a boner, keep it! The whole point is everyone is going to have a different approach. Also, she says part of the reason she even calls books out specifically is because it’s humid AF in Japan and keeping that shit could mean the pages stick together:
“I grew up in Japan, and the climate there is very humid. So it’s damp and the moisture in the air causes lots of damage to the books. It’s not great to have a lot of damaged books. The books themselves won’t even open, they’re so damaged.”
Marie says she’s learned a lot from coming to America, and one thing is that people here are able to hoard, uh, keep a lot of books lying around in good condition. Good thing – I’d die if my copy of A Shore Thing by Snooki ever got ruined!
Pic: Wikimedia Commons
