That Which Is Unique, Breaks

Sarris sets the reader in the dark corner of a pub and produces a pile of old photographs — meditations, in image and prose, on impermanence, attention, and the value of unrepeatable things. The argument running underneath is Chestertonian: tear down the irreplaceable too quickly and you discover only afterwards what it actually was for. A gentle case for conservation — of buildings, customs, friendships, selves — by way of looking carefully at what is breakable.