there's our catastrophe

Reading > books.

so, a lot of people on the internet get really mad about stuff made from books — hollowed-out book boxes, sculptures carved from books, mazes with walls built of books, etc. 

I’ve talked a bit about fetishisation of books before, and how I think it often has less to do with a love of reading than with conspicuous consumption and the creation of a marketable bookish identity.  (1, 2; see also ardhra, tojoursgai, capybaracommando on this.)  it makes me uncomfortable when the book as an object of desire completely overshadows the book as, you know, a thing that you read.  plus it’s boring.  But I think both Stuff Made Of Books and Anti-Stuff Made Of Books are tied up in that fetishisation. 

I mean, there’s nothing wrong with liking books as physical objects.  I love books on a few different levels as well.  I remember when I was a young teen my brother and I very seriously discussed how we couldn’t bear to damage or destroy books, that our will failed at the thought of it.  I grew up in a very bookish environment.  My family home has several thousand books and I’ve had a library card since I was two. 

my family’s book collection is also very haphazard and kooky.  It’s mainly op shop books, books from the remainder pile, ex-library books, stuff like that.  Teach Yourself Finnish, Simple Upholstery, a biography of Lenin’s daughters, nineteenth-century small business marketing tips.  They’re very big on finding the interest in overly-specific or outdated books.  it’s about never rejecting any knowledge you have access to, following any weird path that’s interesting, rather than building a program of study and following it carefully.  basically, growing up in my family home was like getting sucked into clicking through to seven thousand Wikipedia articles.  that kind of environment is probably bad for your ability to sit down and write a thesis but I think it’s very, very good for your general knowledge; also for your ability to piece together your own understanding of the world from fragments, like a historian. 

so I may as well have been purpose-built from birth to be as strongly opposed to ever destroying books as possible.  almost any book has some value, even if it’s just as an example of how not to do things. 

Having said that…I volunteer at a lefty bookshop that sells both second-hand and new books.  The second-hand section is stocked entirely by donations, and of course we never turn a donation away.  (I feel like that’s part of the unspoken contract of accepting donations — you have to take them off someone’s hands, you can’t make more work for them after they’ve already schlepped the stuff all the way to you.  And books are heavy.)

We get a lot of really awesome books.  A lot of classics, a lot of things I’ve never heard of before that are incredible.  We also get a lot of books like “Proceedings of the Australian Labor Party Annual Conference, 1986” and “User’s Manual for Corel Draw 1.0” and “South-East Asia on a Shoestring (1972 Edition)” and “The Really Easy Guide To The Internet For Australia And New Zealand” and really terrible self-published fiction.  I’m sure someone, somewhere would find them interesting.  But the possibility of such a person wandering into the shop and finding that book is vanishingly small. 

We sell them for a dollar, or for ten for a dollar, or give them away.  But ultimately, we have to throw out a lot of books.  Just chuck ‘em in the recycle bin.  If that appalls you, I invite you to fill your space with increasingly out-of-date conference proceedings and law textbooks. 

Has anyone read Jorge Luis Borges’ short story/essay The Library of Babel?  It’s about a library that contains all possible books of a particular length.  Sounds great, until you realise that “a library containing all possible books arranged at random is equivalent (as a source of information) to a library containing zero books”.  Your chances of finding a book that is even intelligible are very slim.  Your chance of finding the book you want is near enough to 1/infinity.  I think about the Library of Babel a lot when I’m shelving donated books. 

Archiving is also about throwing things away.  If you keep everything then you can’t find anything.  Your brain can’t remember everything.  External storage of knowledge (like books, like digital archives) can certainly expand upon your own memory, but it’s not infinite either. 

I don’t think craft with old books is interesting or neat.  It depresses me, because books are for reading, and book craft is the ultimate in valuing the aesthetic appeal of The Book over its content.  But the books that end up in those projects are almost always either unreadable or readily replaced and don’t need your cries of “blasphemy!”.  use them as insulation or fire-starters or something, I don’t care. 

A book is only worth something if it’s read.  Without a reader, it’s just taking up space.  You throw out old newspapers; you delete irrelevant text files; you throw out books nobody wants to read. 

concerns about book fetishisation aside, I am actually mostly in favour of large personal book collections.  I have several hundred books on my shelves and another 200-odd at my parents’ house that I could reclaim if I wanted to.  the house I grew up in has a couple thousand books, probably, and that was great. 

why? I like having a lot of unread books around that I don’t have to worry about getting back to the library anytime soon.  I’m prone to having eyes bigger than my stomach when it comes to going to the library, and having to return a pile of unread books after accumulating heavy fines; it’s nice not to worry about that all the time while still having yet-to-be-read books around waiting for me.  (at the moment my borrowing rights are suspended at all three of the libraries I’m a member of.  I really need to get on top of that.) sometimes I’m waiting for the right mood for a particular book.  I’ve found some of my favourite books through picking up something that looked interesting at an op shop or library sale, giving it a go, not being that into it, and finally reading the whole thing six months later.  or through picking a random book that hasn’t been read for years off the shelf in my family home.  sometimes I dip in and out of a book over a long time and never finish and still get a lot from it.  I like being able to recommend books to people and lend them out immediately.  I like being able to give people books and keep them in circulation.  a book is probably cheaper and can definitely be used more times than a movie outing, is how I think of it, and I wouldn’t beat myself up as insufficiently anti-materialist for going to the movies every once in a while.  

here’s the other thing: I volunteer at a not-for-profit second-hand bookstore.  we get a fuckton of books coming through that I just know would be super cool for the right person.  but on our shelves, as random items, not curated in any way, they’re less useful than if someone owned them, even if they didn’t get around to reading them for ages.  if nobody buys them they will just stay on the shelves or get put back in the storage room.  so that’s kind of a waste too.  shelf space in most libraries (municipal or otherwise) is at a premium, so it’s not like we can just donate them all to the local community centre.  these books have to circulate through personal collections and loans.  so if you have the means and it’s important to you, I think you should strive to read widely, own good books, make helpful book recommendations, and lend generously.  given that the society we live in produces a huge amount of stuff whether you buy it or not, I think it’s not necessarily more socially responsible to own less stuff. 

having said all that, I’m not any smarter or better-read than when I was moving every couple of weeks and had about two books.  the only difference now is that I have a little bit of spare money and a stable home.  you become better-read through reading, not through osmosis.  & it’s absolutely a luxury to have a large personal collection of books.  & it’s super, super depressing when bookishness becomes more about owning and displaying books and less about reading them and recommending them and circulating them and, especially, supporting public libraries. 

hmm that could’ve been about 70% shorter, oh well (is this a METAPHOR FOR EXCESS???  maybe!)

The Library of Babel

citationneeded:

In any case, it is clear that a library containing all possible books, arranged at random, is equivalent (as a source of information) to a library containing zero books.^{[citation needed]}

Link

I was like “lol, pretty sure this was a borges story” then realised the article was, in fact, about said (really famous) story, and not just a clever connection I’d made

god, I’m a wanker

anyway, this article is really worth reading even if you haven’t read the story.  you should also read the story though.