Clove Cigarettes and Indonesian Books: An Armchair Traveler’s Pleasure

The idea for a published "national library" is nothing new. Perhaps the most famous in English, The Library of America (LOA), was founded in 1979 to provide easily accessible classics of the American literary pantheon. A sort of literary museum, such projects participate in something that college lit majors call "canon building", but might be more closely related to the "hall of fame" phenomenon. Once a writer is added to the list, his star in the national literary firmament is fixed, his relevance forever assured.