View one: display no book that you have not read, Says Matt Seigleman, a blogger for Time. Stern. Honest. This is about the work one has done. I do not abide by this maxim. (though for the record, since i live in my parents' house right now, 95% of my books are in 30 or so banker's boxes in the basement, labeled "Theory Althusser -- Bataille" or "Religion Ayurveda -- Buddha Diamond" or "Poetry Sexton -- Whitman" and similar, and i can't find shit when i need it, so it's not modesty people) In regular life, I do not abide by this maxim because I never know when I will need to read that which I have not read and -- in response to another book, or for a new project, or because it has simply become Time To Read That Book. Truth is, as a hardcore reader, I often need/want to read only part of many of my books, like cirtical anthologies. Hence, indexes. And, if the book is hidden, I go have a coffee rather than look for it. Still, if you come to my (future) house and ask, incredulously, whether I have read all those books, I will answer honestly: I have read parts of most of them.
As for Time to Read That Book: books-qua-objects often come into my life as signals, post-its if you will, of thinking in the future. Part of any decent bookshelf, I think, is this reminder to myself that That Thought Is Waiting For Me. This is both inspirational, and a little bit masochistic since I'm often irked with myself that I haven't gotten to that thought or subject just yet. Something like 30% of my books are yet-to-read, and of them, about 1/2 are really for the future. The other 1/2 are books meant to round out or fill in stuff I already kinda know and need more of, I think.
View two: Ezra Klein responds to Matt, "Bookshelves are not for displaying books you’ve read,” says Klein; “those books go in your office, or near your bed, or on your Facebook profile. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be." Our author Scott McLemee finds this rule equally silly,and so do I. While I am the type of person would read dense and poetically slippery Derrida, the fact that I have not read every one of the Derrida books I own in no way cancels the fact that I have read 10 out of 12. The fact that I have not read many of the feminist political anthologies I own in no way cancels the fact that I have read many such anthologies -- it's just There's More! I have a Very Impressive library of texts in and about Buddhism. I have not read most of them. Why? Because I have issues with surrender, and because what I should do is go learn it the experiential way, but I have issues with surrender... And I'll tell you as much, right before pulling one of the self and saying, "Listen to this! passage! from the Fire Sermon!!! It's amazing!" In the same way I read everyone the first and second Duino Elegies after three glasses of wine.
So, all this is rubbish, and Scott thinks so too because
My experience (which can’t be unique) is that some books end up accumulating out
of a misguided attempt to win the approval of authors already well-entrenched on
my shelves. A few years back, for example, Slavoj Zizek started to insist that I had to be familiar with the work of Alain Badiou – a French poststructuralist philosopher whose work I had never heard of, let alone read. Well, OK, sure. Thanks to some busy translators, Badiou volumes started crowding in, next to all the Zizek titles.
But in short order, Badiou lets it be known that I am expected to understand something about mathematical set theory — and furthermore should come
to appreciate one particular approach to formalizing the basic axioms.
Because, god help us, books lead to other books, either in Scott's psychologically interesting way (proving something moral about himself to someone he does not know) or simply because, Books Are All Connected to Each Other in a way that nerd-addicts like me find totally compelling.
Scott has a very interesting analysis of all this, and you should read the rest of it, and likely both Matt and Ezra in toto. I will not. I am skimming. Besides, one commentor put it well: real readers dip in and out of many books at once, and it's the marginalia that Really Shows Who You Are Or Want To Be Anyway. Always the "real" you is not display-able. Performable, sure, but never made completely transparent.
Now, all these views, whether they are about the sociality of books in some way or not, are moral. Show only what you are, show only what you want to be, or show yourself to be working on what you are. But, let's get real. There is no promise like the promise one imagines invested a New Book -- I digress.
French Literi Big Man, Pierre Bayard, published a book, How to Talk about Books You Have not Read. A guide to a way of presenting oneself that our Americans clearly do not approve. The Telegraph reviewer Sam Lieth ultimately sides with the Americans, but let's consider this:
Most of any books we've read, we have forgotten; many books are skimmed or half-read; our knowledge of those books - and of books that we haven't read - is mediated through commentaries on them, our discussions with other readers, our apprehension of where they sit in the canon, and our personalised mis-rememberings. So, he argues, we need not feel too guilty about not having read certain books; and it is reasonable to express views on those you haven't. He introduces at the outset a neat notation system that he uses to footnote any of the books he mentions: SB for "books I have skimmed", HB for "books I have heard of", FB for "books I have forgotten" and UB for "books unknown to me".
Most English speaking reviewers seem to go the same way. Bayard is poking a hole in the notion that there is some moral good in reading, or, to be more precise, that there is a Competition to be morally good, and the proof of goodness is how Much one has actually read. Really? What about all those scholarly articles downloaded from databases that are so neatly hidden on your harddrive, and which you may have read not nearly all? He's thinking salon-talk, he's really thinking about performance, and he's thinking too that there's more to know than one can. Ever. Even what one once knew.
And what is this competition about? It's academic nerd suave, social cache. I for one have mostly Books I have Forgotten. I have to re-read, or re-skim them all the time. In fact, I can hardly remember Who wrote them, and therefore am not good that the great academic pasttime of name dropping in conversation. I know what it said, generally, somtimes. I know what I want to say about it, but the author and title are really fuzzy. (It's the ideas in them, not the book or person, that I'm with, and let's just skip how embarassingly metaphysical That is for now.) It seems to me it's not about Truth in Self-Re-Presentation. It's good old American One-Upping. The question seems to be: to bluff, or not to bluff? And we all know that the bluff can pay off.
And why the unit of the book? One learns in preparation for one's qualifiying exams that reading the Whole of every book on your areas lists is simply not possible, not if one wants to graduate. Part of that lesson is a honed sense of selectivity -- of what I might call Deep Skimming.
So, to hell with all this worry and moralizing and post-strucutral undoing. Books, for book nerds, are very like every other thing we buy. They are useful to us, they represent us accurately or not (what health food do you buy and not eat?, what 'cool album' did you buy and not listen to?, do you really Like your suit?), they are markers of our aspirations (as noted by Ezra) and our aspirations are as real of us as what we are, they are status objects, and depending on contexts are objects for intimiation or overwhich we bond as friends, and they are very very pretty and smell good, and how I love the oddly shaped ones!.
My books, before they were boxed and categorized like the phone book (thanks Karen), were on shelves in general categories: Religion/Myth/Yoga, Poetry, Lit Crit, Theory, Philosophy, Fiction, Unassimilable. Working Books were on my desk (which had a book shelf on top!) and were changed out as projects moved along (now they're in my room, next to my desk). Inside of those categories, they were not alphabetized. I found them by color of jacket, then by title. Authors? Schmauthors.
Hence, Skye and others send me these pics of books organized by color. They're very attractive this way. (some artist noted in the last did up a whole used books store by color...... holy cow!) I would do that inside of categories and I think my scholaraly life would progress just fine -- let the associational magic happen! Then, this is even better, you can make bookshelves out. of. books! Make the shelves out of Books You Will Never Read, or Never Read Again Because They Sucked (as lots of books do -- don't write the scathing review, display your disdain and superiority by using the books as the wood they are!!!). And, rather orgasmically, build stairs that store books!!! Oh. pant. How much more room is That!!!
Now, back to, ahem, writing a book.
No comments:
Post a Comment