Timeless. Placeless. True.

Woe lives in the hallways of mainstream publishing (or much of mainstream publishing). That much is clear. It's being reported on, debated, blog flogged. It lurks in the corners at night, while writers write and dream.

And then what happens? One picks up an unusual-looking book with an unusual-seeming premise by a writer, John Berger, who is a giant. A book (in this one instance, this single exemplar of many exemplars) called From A to X: A Story in Letters, which defies summary, but is (in most basic terms) a collection of letters found in a fictional prison. Letters penned by a woman who may or may not be named A'ida and addressed to a man whom we think is named Xavier. They are lovers, tender terrorists, revolutionaries. They speak in code. Or rather, she speaks, in letters that are no longer contained by chronology, about their life before and her life now without him. He writes marginalia in her letter's empty spaces— the drop notes of his mind from the spare space of his prison cell.

We readers are made responsible for piecing together a life, a world, an invention of places and events. Which sounds so much harder than it actually is, for what we are in fact given is a record of intimacy and understanding between two people in love.

We are given lines like these:

I am looking into your eyes, and I am not your friend, I'm your woman. And I want to tell you something.

The ephemeral is not the opposite of the eternal. The opposite of the eternal is the forgotten. Some pretend that the forgotten and the eternal are, when it comes down to it, the same thing. And they're wrong.

Others say the eternal needs us, and they are right. The eternal needs you in your cell and me writing to you and sending you pistachio nuts and chocolate.

Tell me about your foot. I need to know.

Imagine this book coming across the desk of an editor at a publishing house where the powers at be are operating under the premise that the only new books will be market-safe books, beach-readable and movie bound. Then look at its spine and see that From A to X was published by a house called Verso, whose stated mission is this: "Verso stands today as a publisher combining editorial intelligence, elegant production and marketing flair."

Ah yes, you think. We're going to be okay.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all—near, far. No. Always near.