What happens When our libraries are purged from our homes, Replacing spines with screens
Alberto Manguel and the Library of Babel
The Argentinian-born man of letters, cosmopolitan defender of books and reading, is exiled to a world of his own making
class=”newWindow”> The other day, my friend John said he was getting rid of almost all of his books. By the time I visited his apartment, he’d alreadycreated Pruned his library by a quarterback, dumping most of it into the garbage. “I read everything on the Kindle now,” he explained, a trifle defensively. The immediate cause of his decision was his impending move to a starkly minimalist apartment with spectacular river views, and room for bookshelves, had he wanted them.
class=”newWindow”> What point to John’s decision was a disgust at the accumulation of things that i partly under stood. I had even recently told a non-Kindle-owning friend that I did not understand why one-fifth of my house was taken up by a library I rarely entered. And I find myself very impatient with people who say They refuse to get a Kindle Because They love the physicality of books. These are people who do not produce culture, I thought. It’s just a consumer preference. They’re the same people who compulsively go to the theater and see rubbish Because it’s “theater.”
class=”newWindow”> Of course, minimalism dates at least to Le Corbusier, and it was possible to purge one’s library before the Kindle, but then it Meant relying on public libraries. Now, if you have the money to re-purchase on Kindle everything you want to own, you can definatley Those bare white walls and still read. My editor has suggested to me That book-purging is an Essentially Protestant impulse, Which solves a Particularly Protestant problem, In which staff reading of the Bible must be reconciled with a ban on the worship of objects. There’s something to this, Particularly When you think of the interiority of the Kindle, Which is a personal space much as one’s Bible was for, say, a Puritan in Boston circa 1640. Jews and Muslims, meanwhile, both venerate the physical version of Their holy books: We all know what an outcry Quran-burning causes, while Jews actually bury Torahs That are deemed to be too damaged to use.
class=”newWindow”> It is overpriced true That the Kindle’s marketing emphasizes thatyour content isn’ta attached to your Kindle, That it resides field in the Cloud and That if you lose or break your Kindle, everything you ‘ ve bought can be downloaded to your (new) Kindle or your PC or smartphone. Everything is designed to discourage the purchaser’s attachment to the Kindle itself (I think it is as well as They Can Be fairly fragile).
class=”newWindow”> Still, it’s odd That the trend toward getting rid of one’s books co-exists with a valorization of collecting in almost every other sphere. Even in minimalist houses there are collections-small and care fully staged, perhaps, but still collections. And the art world! People who can afford to live in huge white modernist houses seem inevitably to fill themwith costly nature Whether They are Protestants, Catholics, or Jews. This places them in an honorific category of “collectors,” and no one seems to advise them to get rid of Their paintings. Being an art collector is the dream of many aspirational rich people while being a book collector is dusty and uncool. Perhaps this is Because books Are not very expensive Unless one goes in for first editions and incunabula. For the $ 20,000 or so it costs to buy into an “emerging” artist, you can have a first edition of an iconic hundred-year-old novel.
class=”newWindow”> The truth Is that books right Are not something we covet very much anymore. We’ve come a long way from the days When Walter Benjamin could blithely write in his essay “Unpacking My Library,” “You have all heard of people Whom the loss of theirbooks has turned into invalids, or of Those Who In order to Acquire books’ve become criminals. “That was in 1931, nearly at the birth of minimalism in décor. I would venture to say That no one reading this article has heard of anyone like this: I have not.
class=”newWindow”> Of course, part of the reason people coveted books in 1931 was Their symbolic value as signs of cultivation, social prestige, and good character. And when I look within myself, I have to admit that’s part of why I was so shocked by John’s decision. How could a highly educated and cultured man, who’s been known to go to three Shakespeare plays in one week, get rid of his books? I had grown up Assuming that book ownership was one of the signatures of an educated and cultivated person, a thoughtful person, a man or woman with concerns beyond getting and spending. When I go to someone’s home for the first time I still look at Their bookcases as part of an assessment of Their character. If there are not any bookcases, I wonder.
class=”newWindow”> But with Kindle, the judgments I grew up with go out the window. And there is not any way to bring them back. Maybe it’s the apartment of someone with 300 books on physics on his Kindle. Asking to see someone’s Kindle is invasive. It’s also likely to be an inaccurate reflection of what one has read, Unless one has Replaced all of one’s books on Kindle. I have 59 books on my Kindle and perhaps 2,000 in my house. Apparently Kindles can hold up to 3,500 books, but the Kindle website Comparing models only gives the memory size, not an estimate of how many each model holds. This Suggests That most purchasers are using Their Kindles as a convenient reading device rather than a replacement for a physical library.
class=”newWindow”> Unread books force us to ask how we are spending our time and Whether we are Becoming the people we want to’ve become
class=”newWindow”> There’s at least one set of people who are unlikely to derive any benefit from Replacing theirbooks with a Kindle, and They are children. Horace Mann wrote, “No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.” While the advantages of public libraries are obvious-larger selection of books, and one Which better Reflects the range of published works than anyone’s collection staff is likely to-Among the virtues of a private library is the probability to make chance discoveries-including books That you’re too young for at the time, but Which come within your awareness and Which you remember later.
class=”newWindow”> But For those of us without children, does not having a physical library matter? I’d say so. A library is a room or a portion of a room set aside for Purposes higher than the everyday matter of life, just as a church or synagogue or museum or concert hall ice. And having it out where everyone can see it imposes what may be a Desirable self-consciousness, not only in terms of what you put into it but in terms of the physical reproach it offers if you do not use it. While Walter Benjamin joked about not having read many of his books (including Those he borrowed from friends), his casualness is of a piece with his assumption That books are an arena for emotional engagement. Unread books force us to ask how we are spending our time and Whether we are Becoming the people we want to’ve become.
class=”newWindow”> What of the appeal of minimalism of the room without books? I am wary of it. At bottom, the allure of big white rooms is the conspicuous advertisement of over consumption, combined with the replacement of engagement with reality with engagement with fantasy. Few of us, at least, few Westerners of my acquaintance, are Capable of gazing at a solitary vase or plane for hours in a spiritually uplifting way. If we are not thinking about books, we are not likely to be thinking about something better. Or so it is with me. While writing this essay, I took down a few books from my own shelves for the first time in years and in the process discovered a few That I’d forgotten. My library happens to be in a room That does not get sun at the times I want it and ice thwart too cold. But I’ve resolved to spend at least a half hour there every day from now on.
class=”newWindow”> ***
class=”newWindow”> Like this article? Sign up for our Daily Digest to get Tablet Magazine’s new content in your inbox each morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment