Here We Go Again

It can seem as though there’s a conspiracy in media outlets – both written and spoken – to report the coming “death” of printed books. The death is attributed to “villains” such as Amazon; so why is the tone of these reports usually comic at best, and gleeful at worst?

One reason is that the written media (like TIME, for example) enjoys “live streaming” in addition to the text that's in the printed edition, as new and more pointed ads are possible every few minutes rather than only once a week. 

I’ve tried reading those "feeds," and I don’t really understand how they serve me.  I go to TIME for a thoughtful presentation of the news of the week:  if I want on-the-spot news; if I want film snips like “The Funniest TV Clips of the Week;” if I want to instantly know “The Number-One Way to Get a Flight Attendant Angry” or that “Chess Championships Lose Sex Appeal with New No-Cleavage Rule” – all from TIME’S latest “feed” – I can go to Google or Yahoo or YouTube, or even to PEOPLE magazine and the numerous “gossip” sites on the net. 

And sometimes, I do:  but that’s not what I want from a [supposedly] sober round-up of the week’s news.

So:  not only do we have the Amazons against us, but printed material doesn’t get adequate support even where we most expect it.

I’ve already posted a funny (funny?) NEW YORKER cover depicting book stores without books; here are two more funny (funny?) covers:

Package from Amazon

Even Angels read eBooks

Then there’s their “joke” of books being obsolete, an “artifact” one recognizes no longer:

"Holy cow! What kind of crazy people used to live here anyway?"

The Internet is rife with jokes concerning life without printed books:

“We’ll need to buy real doorstops.

We’ll have to find another way to press and dry flowers.

Our bathrooms will no longer be cluttered.”

You get the picture.

And even when printed books are appreciated, it can be for reasons that make book lovers and sellers uncomfortable.  Here, an ad for a Prius tells us that although we have e-readers, we “need books for decoration.”

Would you buy a car to help you find books for home decor?

As noted in an earlier post, books are also being used not for their original function, but as a new “medium” for visual art. Here are examples from artist Brian Dettmer:

And a video of artist Su Blackwell's work:

Exquisite works, but why use books for these?  Why not just use paper and make bases of wood or leather?  And isn't this somewhat disrespectful to books?  (Or don't you think so?)

Libraries and librarians offer little help.  With the growth of ebooks and the advent of new laws requiring wider aisles for patrons in wheelchairs, many libraries have had to rethink their “mission” – as repositories of great books? as lending institutions meant to serve popular preferences? – and decide what to discard in order to create the required space.

The Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield MA is one of the oldest libraries in the United States; it's a lending library that was also a repository for fine and rare books.  When faced with the need for more space, they decided that their primary function was that of a lending library; to that end, they sent to auction all books that hadn't been “borrowed” for 50 years. 

Except for their extraordinary Melville and Berkshire collections which aren't part of the lending library, we – in our “Bibliofind Book Auction 'hat'” – auctioned off thousands of their books; 14 of them earned world record prices.

The main branch of the venerable New York Public Library had an even more arbitrary way of choosing what books they would discard.  In their wisdom, they decided to get rid of any book in which the page “broke” when its corner was folded!

Never taking into consideration the quality of the paper typical of the period; or the book’s value; or the importance of it as an artifact and historical document – the information was on microfilm, after all! -- among the things the library threw into the trash were thousands of early American pamphlets, including coveted ones from the time of the Revolutionary War. Thomas Payne, Benjamin Franklin, and the like:  all went into the trash.

Fortunately, a diligent bookseller was tipped off, and he rescued them before they could be carted to the dump.  Every year at Christmas, he sends a greeting card on the cover of which is a photo of one of these pamphlets along with the date it was discarded and its approximate value. (Often enough, in the thousands.)  Inside, a single line reads, “Your tax-payer dollars at work.”

And new libraries?  More and more, they contain row upon row of videos; row upon row of popular paperbacks like those of Danielle Steel; and they give classes in meditation and yoga and crafts.  I don’t have anything against a places like these, but what makes them “libraries” and not community centers? 

Where libraries treat videos and mass paperback fiction as equal to – or more important! – than other books, they do no service to the future of printed books.

Now, the latest blow:  Congress has accused Apple and some publishers for “price fixing” by charging between $9.99 and $12.99 for ebooks.  As a result, it's expected that ebooks will go down to $5.99 each.  What will that do to the market for printed books?

Full disclosure here:  I read ebooks.  I travel a lot and I can carry far more ebooks with me than I can printed books.  And I can always keep old favorites near me.

But it is a totally different reading experience.

My bookseller friend and guest-poster, Pamela Grath, had a recent post on her blog, Books in Northport, which I urge you to read.  There she tells of an opinion that ebooks are a “purer” form of reading in that one is not “distracted” by the object that is a printed book.  The writer she’s questioning also claims that “we’ll get used to it” just as people got used to going from reading hand calligraphed parchment scrolls to reading printed books. 

This is not quite true, as the experience of reading scrolls is very different from that of reading books: and it's the experience that makes the difference. 

I like to go back and forth when I read a book; I like to keep a finger on an earlier page so that I can jump around easily; I like to curl the page and read both sides of it seamlessly.  I like to hold the page between my fingers, the book in my hands.  

Hasn’t it been said that “the medium is the message?”  Well, it’s certainly a big part of it.

There’s nothing “pure” about the ebook experience of hyper-links and pop-out definitions, and the changing of fonts and of the brightness of the background; there’s nothing “pure” about glass-encased photos of beautiful hand-colored illustrations or photogravures. 

On the walls of Bill Gates’ home hang huge screens on which there are ever-changing full-size photos of many important paintings.  Is this pure?  More to the point:  are these art?

As I noted in an earlier post, one learns a lot about history and taste and materials when something’s read in its original form.  Scrolls, for instance.

The Torah consists of the five books of Moses.  You can read these five in a printed book – the first five chapters in the Bible – or you can read them in a scroll, as originally presented.  In synagogues throughout the world, heavy Torah scrolls are lifted, unrolled to that week's pertinent passages, and read.   

Torah Scroll 

Torah Scroll

You can hear the crackle of vellum, parchment, paper; you can see cracks in the ink from years of rolling and unrolling; you can physically appreciate that this is one story, one continuous history that rolls on and on like the scroll itself; you can feel a sense of awe as you are reminded that this is how the words have been read for centuries. 

It’s a different experience from reading these five books in a printed book, one page at a time.  Reading it as an ebook would be yet another and quite different experience.  But better?  Purer?  I think not….

Perhaps it’s just a matter of preference which of these experiences feels best to you, feels “purest.”  But I think it’s more than that; and I think that the “more” is what will keep printed books alive.  

In THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE, Henry Miller wrote,

“When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched.  But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.” 

There’s a gratification that one gets from a printed book that cannot be duplicated, and the sharing that books make possible is part of that gratification, part of that experience.

Last week, NPR had a story about little libraries – sometimes only the size of a birdhouse! – which are popping up all over cities and towns; many even on front lawns. 

“Put a little library on a short post like a mailbox, put it in your front yard and fill it up with books. Then people can help themselves for free.“

A Little Library in the Suburbs

A Little Library in NYC

Take a book; leave a book.  And people love it.

"My kids will run over there.  I've run into friends of friends who I don't know well dropping off a book at the free library and finding, oh, this is just the right age and reading level for my daughter and taking it home.  I mean, there are all of these nice, little serendipitous connections that happen with your neighbors."

 And

"One of the things that always just amazes me is how many people hug [us] when we actually put [books] in.  We constantly get emails that say 'I've met more people than I have in 20 years.'  People are always happy.  My favorite thing to do is sit on my porch and read a book and watch people open the library."

A NYC Little Library

The “Little Library” movement hopes to build more libraries than Andrew Carnegie had built, and to have them throughout the world: they have already sprung up in 17 different countries.  (We have one at our town dump!) 

No yoga classes in these...!

What other “object” engenders such devotion, affection?  What other “object” can bring so many diverse people together?  What other “object” inspires so many memories: memories that we share with others, even strangers?

Here is something that was given to Farshaw’s Books by a grateful customer; he – and we – are linked to its author through time and a common passion:

To which I say: "Amen."

Enjoy this 2-minute film; it communicates a love for printed books; and tells us in a pleasing way that books are forever: that there is nothing more “pure” than a “real” book.

A Valentine Bouquet

This post is unlike any of the others I’ve done, but with only 18 posts in all, I suppose that I haven’t yet established a pattern....   

I’ve written about books as objects; about auctions; about theater and opera and film; about public and private libraries; about aspects of literary analysis and different ways of telling stories; and I’ve written about my store.  I’ve even had “guest posts” and plan more of them. 

Besides, this is my blog, so I can post anything I want!  

Today is Valentine’s Day and the airwaves are filled with the films and the music of love; and everywhere, flowers are being brought and sent. 

“Classical” music stations seem to be spending much of the day playing romantic waltzes and tangos; and primarily classical music that has been used as themes in romantic films.  Actually, this post is a perfect follow-up to my last one about telling stories without [necessarily] using words.  Here, music is the main story-teller, and it inspires the action. 

So as a Valentine from me to you – and through the wonders of the Internet – here is a “bouquet” of music and video to make this a romantic day, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. 

Enjoy.

Ravel's "Bolero" in the movie, TEN starring Dudley Moore and Julie Andrews:

Rachmaninov:
     THE SEVEN-YEAR ITCH starring Marilyn Monroe: 
 

  SOMEWHERE IN TIME starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour:  

Tangos:
    from an old Rudolph Valentino film:
 

     from Robert Duvall’s film, ASSASINATION TANGO: 

     from the film SHALL WE DANCE starring Jennifer Lopez and Richard Gere: 

              and several breathtaking clips from TANGO ARGENTINA:

            

Waltzes:

         from THE ARTHUR MURRAY DANCE PARTY, a television  show from the 1950’s:

the New York City Ballet performing THE MERRY WIDOW, choreographed by George Balanchine and featuring Peter Martins:

  
           Disney's spin on Tchaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty Waltz:"

And one of my favorite pieces, a “bouquet” of sorts: Natalie Dessay and Delphine Haidan singing the “Flower Duet” from the opera LAKME:

And finally, The Kiss: 

The Kiss

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Telling Stories Without Using Words

Is it possible to tell a story without using words?  

Yes.  

It’s been done for centuries; and sometimes — even today — it can be the most effective way to tell a particular story well.

Last month the Hollywood Foreign Press Association gave the prestigious Golden Globe award for best film in the comedy/musical category to THE ARTIST, a film without words:  a silent movie.  Never mind that this film was not exactly a comedy; this silent film was appreciated by both the critics and the movie-going public;  they were moved, touched, and involved in a story presented silently on the screen.  

Words and the stories they tell seem inseparable, but neither is necessary for the other.  

Cave paintings, of course, are an early example of story telling without words.  

Those who have been in or have seen photos of the caves in Lascaux remain astonished by the sophistication of the art and “stories” painted on its walls.   

Cave Painting, Lascaux

Cave Painting, Lascaux

Paintings, sculptures, music and dance continue to tell us stories: of devotion, of history, of emotion and thought. 

Pantomimes have been performed for centuries.  Even in the most sophisticated of societies, people like the famous beauty, Lady Hamilton, gave performances of what she called “attitudes:” frozen poses and tableaus from myths and other tales.

Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante, by Marie Louise Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1790–1791

Books, too, can tell stories without words. 
 

I’m not thinking about comic books with their “bubbles” of dialogue; I’m not even talking about more serious “graphic novels” like Art Speigelman’s Pulitzer Prize winning MAUS: A SURVIVOR’S TALE, which uses cartoon art to tell the story of his father’s survival in Nazi Germany; for in these, too, there is dialogue, and there are words to describe the characters’ actions or thoughts.

What comes to my mind is the Belgian artist Frans Masereel’s stunning woodcut novels: graphic, powerful stories and social criticism told without a single word.

 Through the stories he tells in woodcuts,

“Masereel pitilessly castigated man’s ugliness, while praising his beauty.  With rare force, he carved the image of the misery man calls down upon himself, but which he has the power to prevent if he would. With the intensity that characterizes him, he extols humanity, and a society…in which all men are brothers.”

— (Maurice Naessents, Preface to AVERMAETE)

Woodcut from Masereel's THE CITY

So powerful were Masereel’s novels — despite having no words — that the Nazi’s banned his books; and he was even forced to flee from Paris during World War II.

 

THE CITY

Masereel’s work had a lasting influence on many artists — most famously Lynd Ward and contemporary artist Eric Drooker — and his work remains highly esteemed throughout the world.

Lynd Ward from GODS' [sic] MAN

Lynd Ward

Film would seem a natural medium for telling stories without words; it was, after all, first called “motion” pictures!  But though that’s how film began, it's "talking" — speaking words — that's become the way to tell a story on film.   Even so, today's movies have elements of the silent film within them.  Chase scenes, for example, have become a staple of many films, and would be just as effective with silent movie style musical accompaniment as with the screeching tires which accompany them now. 

THE ARTIST has stripped away the words and is a throwback to that earlier way of story-telling on film. 

Anyone who’s ever seen a movie knows the basic story of THE ARTIST:  it's the story of Greta Garbo, moving gracefully from silent movies to “talkies” as opposed to her leading man, John Gilbert, who could not manage it; or it’s SINGING IN THE RAIN — the famous Gene Kelly film which tells the story of that change.  It’s also A STAR IS BORN (1937, 1954,1976) and countless other stories about show business success and failure. 

Yet THE ARTIST manages to make this old story new — and ironically, it makes it new by using an old format: it’s black and white and silent. 

And this film is much more than simply a retelling of those familiar stories.  As actor James Cromwell (who plays the chauffeur in the film) says in his article, ”Why the Quietest Movie in My Career is Making the Most Noise,” the film is

“not just an homage to a bygone era, it [is] a story that would be as contemporary today as it was [then]…[as it depicts] the idea of the world moving on without you, and the knowledge…that we are replaceable.”

Who among us cannot identify with that?  (Certainly, booksellers can!)  And what better way to make that universal fact seem timeless than to illustrate it using the storytelling methods of a “bygone” era? 

All of the other films released in time for the awards season are ones with words, often lots of them!  But the words do not necessarily move the plot along, or foreshadow what’s to come, or reveal a person’s character.

A DANGEROUS METHOD purports to show the birth of modern psychoanalysis through the interactions between Freud, Jung and their patient (the future — and first female — psychoanalyst), Sabina Speilrein.  This is a wordy movie in which the words serve to obscure what is actually occurring:  Jung is using word-therapy to rationalize an affair with this young woman; and to try to establish himself and his methods as superior to Freud’s.

Words, words, words:  yet everything important we learn about Jung in this film is learned from his actions:  the way he enjoys beating his female protégé; the way he “talks” his reluctant mentor, Freud, into joining him on a working tour of America, yet thinks nothing of taking his privileged, clueless self to a first-class berth and leaving Freud — speechless! — in tourist.   And finally, we get to know Jung’s driven personality best through the words written on the screen at the film’s end:  he had a nervous breakdown and emerged from that breakdown as one of the most influential of psychiatrists.  

In a better film, these written words would not have been necessary; perhaps the film needed more action.   Certainly, the spoken words didn't avoid the need for writing that explanatory note on the screen….

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY is a wordy film about British spies that is based on the John Le Carre novel of the same name.  This is no James Bond thriller:  there is little action; there are no car chases; and few murders.  Instead, it’s primarily about words, paper, and power.  As must be true of real espionage, the words are often meant to obscure, are meant to cover up what’s actually occurring.  (This slow-paced, wordy film can be so obscure that some reviewers joked that it should be seen early in the day, when the mind is still “fresh…!”) 

It’s an interesting film; yet perhaps the most exciting scene — the one that has you sitting on the edge of your seat, the one which makes you understand that these wordy old men do dangerous work and can themselves be dangerous — is a scene with almost no words. 

Throughout the film, one is silently shown stacks of papers that are housed in intelligence headquarters:  papers read, filed, put on dumbwaiters, stored.  In this suspenseful scene, we watch a spy try to steal a file.  There he is in a building filled with other spies, trying to remove classified papers from the building. Without getting caught.

He needs to sign in and out; he needs to relinquish his briefcase; he needs to make appropriate small-talk; he needs to keep his cool….  This scene is riveting, and gives one a fuller picture of the world of spies and spying:  a fuller story than the one they’d been conveying with words.

CARNAGE is a Roman Polanski film based on the play, GOD OF CARNAGE.  Like the play, this is a wordy story of two couples — strangers — meeting to discuss what’s to be done about a violent playground altercation between their 9-year old sons. 

Theater is a wordy medium.  Even when film was silent, theater was not.  Nevertheless, in this wordy play which has four adults say unbelievably horrible things to one another, the scene in the play which most roused the audience was a strictly visual one:  a guest  vomits all over a table laden with precious “cocktail table” books.  The audience roars. 

The film is almost like a stage reading, but even the shortening of the title shows an attempt here to be less wordy and more visual.  As with the play, that very visual vomit scene gets the most audience attention.  But the thing that brings the point of the story home — and is not in the play — is a wordless scene at the end of the film. 

For almost two hours, we listen to four adults saying the most outrageous and uncivilized things; we see all kinds of fighting — couple against couple, husbands against wives, women against men, men against women — in their attempt to deal with their children’s bad behavior.  We watch as relationships change, perhaps permanently.  Then, in this final scene, while their parents are still arguing, we're shown [from a silent and respectful distance] the two boys playing together again:  as though nothing bad had ever happened between them.  The boys are more civilized, more rational -- more adult! -- than their parents. 

Here, we see silence telling a story, and telling it very well.  Again, James Cromwell makes the point quite clearly: 

“Ultimately, acting on any film…is telling the truth while pretending it’s fiction.  It’s often very difficult to do with words...because [words] so rarely mean what we use them to say.”

I can end here — but I won’t; because although "a picture is worth a thousand words," often enough, it’s not:  you need words to know the whole story.  

I hope you enjoy this “story” that's been all over Facebook; the words are very important.

Comments Posted on My Blog

Many of the comments posted on my blog are quite interesting and insightful; and they leave much room for thought.  I know that many blog readers don’t read the comments, so I’ll share some of them here.

My last post, The Year (of My Blog) in Review, prompted some sympathetic comments on behalf of the author, Nina Sankovitch, whose book,  TOLSTOY AND THE PURPLE CHAIR, I’d panned.  The book was a record of her year reading a book a day as a means of  “healing” herself after the death of her sister. 

About this post, two people I respect felt that I was, perhaps, a bit hard on the author and her book.

Karen wrote,

“Ouch, go gettem, Helen!  I admire a mind that is clear on her opinions….”

And Pamela wrote, 

“In defense of Nina Sankovitch (I have not read her book), I want to note that grief is a very strange country to inhabit and that she was probably doing the best she could to go on after losing her sister….  Maybe it shouldn’t have been a book—clearly, it wasn’t a book for you at that time—but I have read essays and letters and such by other people who took up books in times of grief, and one of the things they have in common is that almost every written word the grieving reader encounters, however trivial, seems to take on a different coloration and become a personal message from the Universe.  And really, that’s quite wonderful, isn’t it?  Anything written out of that kind of grief is almost like a letter from another plane.”

I suppose I was feeling a little defensive when I responded, as follows:

“My initial reflex was to feel chastened by suggestions that I have been hard and unkind in my analysis of Nina Sankovitch’s book.  (I faced the same discomfort when I had to grade my students’ papers!)

I certainly don’t want to be hard on people; but I do want to be honest.

It’s interesting to note that when I wrote some pretty awful things about Tolstoy in my post on WAR AND PEACE, not only did no one complain about it, but I was cheered by many.  Of course, it becomes more sensitive when it is a living author who is being discussed; nevertheless, I think it’s important to remain honest in one’s assessment of a work, no matter the circumstances. 

I’m certainly sympathetic to the author’s grief:  but it does not excuse bad writing.  If one can grant Sankovitch the right to use reading as a way to ease her grief, and for finding in each book a lesson to be learned and a reflection of her own experiences, we can’t grant her the right to make statements which mean nothing—‘The book is perfect, a genuine communication of the heart.’—nor to use a false premise for her ‘project.’

If reading can, indeed, ease her suffering, why must it be a book a day?  Why can’t books or authors be reread?  Some books that could have helped her might take longer to read; some favorite authors might elicit new insights in a rereading of them.  Choosing an inch-wide spine has nothing at all to do with reading as a healing mechanism; instead, it seems more like an arbitrary decision—or one which she thought would help her get a book published!

In this day when it is more and more difficult for good writers to get their work published, I think we need to be extra diligent in doing what we can to discourage publishers from publishing books of poor quality—or from publishing them because they have some kind of “gimmick” to recommend them.

 It’s not called literary ‘criticism’ for nothing!”

As for Tolstoy:  although most agreed with my assessment of WAR AND PEACE, several suggested that I give Tolstoy another chance by reading ANNA KARENINA.  So, I plan to do that—but not quite yet!

I made some errors in a few of my posts, and those were caught by readers. 

I’d said that one could see Jude Law’s HAMLET on Netflix, but I was mistaken.  The best you can do is see scenes from it on YouTube; but there are lots of scenes there, so you’d practically be seeing the entire play!

In my post, Some Thoughts About Books as Objects, I’d said that I had friends who had Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s set of Homer.  Well, I was wrong on 2 counts:  The set was of Euripides, not Homer; and my friends no longer own it:  they’ve sold it!  If you want to see those amazing books, you'll find them at the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

The post on What Makes a Good Personal Library prompted someone to say that “Most of the voluminous private libraries I’ve seen are for show only.” 

In my reply to that, I noted that this is certainly true of some private libraries.  After all, there are people who buy books by the yard or beautifully bound books of blank pages and the like (see The Year (of My Blog) in Review for more on that).

But I also commented that such people still chose books to look at rather than a collection of Rolex watches—which I’ve also seen in some houses I've gone to!  And I noted that

“many private libraries can be ‘personal’ ones as well—which is what I titled my post—in that books in them need not be valuable, but only important to [the owner] in some way:  important enough to drag heavy boxes of books from place to place, as I (and others) have done over and over again.”

The post on Public Libraries had Marash Girl tell us the sad news about her local libraries:

"Here's to the little local library, the library that is disappearing, the library that opened our hearts to books, the library that we walked to on our way to [school], the library that is not economically viable in the greater scheme of things.  After Newton, Massachusetts closed all of its village libraries, it built the most expensive high school in the U.S.  Go figure.  If kids don't learn to love books/libraries/knowledge from their earliest days, what good is the most expensive high school in the U.S.?"

I agreed with her:

"One doesn't need an expensive school. (Didn't Socrates do all his teaching in a grove?)  All one needs are good teachers and good libraries.  Now, even universities  build libraries at the outskirts of the school, or in one awful case, underground!  You can go to school in these places and never even know that there is a library!  In days of old, the library was the center of schools and communities."

In What Readers Can Learn from Woody Allen, I used Woody Allen to ask the question of whether or not it’s appropriate to focus on the life of the artist when analyzing the artist’s work.  The answer to this question is not so clear, as is indicated by Freckles’ comment:

“My first reaction is this:  actors, writers, musicians, sports figures, etc. are lauded for their talents and then burdened with the public’s need to like them.  Why?  Why do I need to like Woody Allen and approve of his life choices in order to enjoy his films?

Because he is famous, I am exposed to ‘inside information’ that would otherwise be none of my business.  I may not like the information, but the facts themselves do not detract from his talent—just from my ability to enjoy his talent.  For me, Allen’s ‘scandal’ does muddy the waters of what used to be clear enjoyment.   It sneaks up on me and puts a damper on things.  I have, however, made a conscious decision to continue seeing his films and to try to enjoy them.

Mel Gibson, not so much….

I’m glad Shakespeare didn’t have to contend with tabloids and documentaries; he would have never made it.”

And finally, in my last post I had photos of sculptures made out of books and asked the question, “are they ‘art’ or are they the destruction of books by other means?”

Is it a book?  Is it art?  Is it craft?

One commenter suggested that these were not art, but “at best, a form of recycling…”  But commenter Karen made an intriguing point when she wrote:

“I share your uneasiness about the implications [of sculptures made from books], and THAT is probably what makes them ‘Art.’  The fact that they were left on the doorsteps of libraries and bookstores anonymously adds to their mystique.  They are skillfully executed, to be sure, but skill alone does not make art.  It’s the imagination, the edginess it causes, the attention it brings to a world that is morphing so fast that one can hardly hang on to what they love before it is swept aside by the winds of change.  It’s a commentary on the changing nature of choice.”

Let’s hope that in all this change and with all these choices, books will maintain their important place in our lives and in society.

Have you a comment on any of the comments?

The Year (of My Blog) in Review

You can hardly pick-up a newspaper or magazine; can hardly turn on the radio or TV, without getting a rundown of the year in review.  Here's mine:  The 2011 Year of the "Books Books Books" Blog in Review – and a few additions to begin the year 2012.

There are only 15 posts on my blog.  I began it in August with the post, “What I’m Planning, more or less” which told a bit about me and my reading history, and what I planned for my Blog. 

What it didn’t say was that I began the blog in a fit of pique over a book I’d been reading called TOLSTOY AND THE PURPLE CHAIR.  It’s a “project” book, and project books annoy me—whether it’s a recipe-a-day or a book-a-day, such projects seem artificial to me, not a natural part of one’s day, of one’s life.

This book’s project was to read a book a day for a year.  And the project had strict rules:  no re-reading books that had been read before; no author could be read more than once; only books “with a width of one inch” (!) would be chosen; mystery books were for Sundays; books must be finished by midnight; and every book read must be written about.

Nina Sankovitch’s book was well reviewed in the New York Times, and it is that which prompted me to read it.   I’d hoped it would provide me with a list of books worth reading; and that I would glean new insights into books and writing.

But much of this book illustrates the author's struggle to justify her project, to give it a plausible purpose; but unfortunately, she does not succeed.    

Sankovitch’s sister died after a short and devastating illness.  As a result, Sanksovitch was 

“caught in a bramble patch of sorrow and fear.  My reading…was pulling me out of the shadows and into the light."

 She tells us that

“Now that [my sister] had died [and my family was devastated], I was doing what I could to recover…for everyone in my family.  I was reading.”

"In reading books, I was finding my sister again.”

And--perhaps most unbelievably!--she identifies her reading project and herself with 

“an impoverished Cuban man," a character in one of the books she’s reading, because they both have “hope for the future.  He has faith in Castro’s revolution; I have faith in the power of books.”

What?  (Or as my children would say, “Puh-lease!”)

Which leads to another problem with this book:  Sankovitch tries to shoehorn every one of the books she reads into a lesson that will ease the pain of her sister’s death.  Sometimes this works, but more often, it doesn’t.

So many books read much too quickly!  Ultimately, we learn little about them other than a bit of the  plot, and how the characters and the lessons they learn feel similar to Sankovitch's own experience;

So many books read so quickly that we, the readers, get little beyond a series of platitudes repeated over and over again in different words, no matter what she happens to be reading, as in:

“We cannot control events around us, but we are responsible for our reactions to those events.”

“The meaning of my life is ultimately defined by how I respond to the joys and the sorrows…”

“[The character] comes to understand then that his own sanity depends upon his accepting what he cannot change.”

OK: we get it!

And although Sankovitch states that “the purpose of great literature is to reveal what is hidden and to illuminate what is in darkness,”(?) when she does spend some time describing and analyzing her one-day–to-read-it books, she uses words and phrases that tell us nothing: 

“This book is perfect, a genuine communication from the heart.”

“[We are] connected to the rest of humanity...by the size of our hearts."

“The world shifts, and lives change.

“I would find...the always within never.”

Here, once again I must ask—“What?”

I know how difficult it is to write, so I hate to say it, but I think that the New York Times was wrong:  this is not a good book.  Sankovitch is probably a good reader and a good writer, but I think that here—perhaps because she turned reading into a “project” and read the books too quickly, chose some of them too poorly—she couldn’t do the books (or herself) justice.

So my blog was to be an antidote to this approach:  I would read books over and over again, I would write about books and film and theater; and as a slow reader, I wouldn’t predict how frequently I would post.

And that’s how it began:  Analyses of WAR AND PEACE, books of food writing; a review of Jude Law as HAMLET; a reflection on the difference between Live in HD and Live at the Met, etc.

And then, the Blog took on a life of its own.  I'd posted my musings about book auctions and books as objects, and these generated a huge—and surprising—interest from readers in many parts of the world.  So, the discussion continued:  of private libraries and public libraries; a bit about literary analysis which used the films of Woody Allen for its examples; thoughts about the rising fear that books—and bookstores—would soon be a thing of the past…  And here we are.

As these thoughts continued to reverberate, readers sent me suggestions for posts, and even sent me things to post.  Here are some of them:

Danny wrote,  “Here's a magnificent blog I thought you'd enjoy:  <NeglectedBooks.com>
I do enjoy it.  And it’s the perfect companion to the book I’ve been reading and which I highly recommend:  SECOND READING. NOTABLE AND NEGLECTED BOOKS REVISITED, by Jonathan Yardley.

The posts on Personal Libraries prompted Johanna to alert me to an astonishing and rather depressing article in the New York Times called “Selling a Book by Its Cover” which talks about “book solutions” and expresses surprise that there are people who want “more than pretty bindings: [they] wanted the option of being able to read [their] books.”  (Imagine that!)

The article tells of “books wrapped in silver paper to match the silver hardware in the room….

You think that’s bad?  It gets worse:  

“For the spa in Phillipe Stark’s Icon Brickell, the icy glass condo tower in Miami, 1,500 books [were wrapped] in blank white paper, without titles, to provide a ‘textural accent’ to the space.”  They bought “mass-market hardcovers that flood the used book outlets — titles by John Grisham and Danielle Steel, or biographies of Michael Jackson— because they are cheap, clean and a nice, generous size.”

And worse:  

“A TV news program wanted linen-wrapped books chopped in half to fit the shallow, faux-shelves of a political interview program.”

Moreover, the writer of this NY Times article thinks "book lovers" should be grateful that physical books are being “kept alive” by the “library artist” who is more “than a mere book dealer.”  (“Mere book dealer?”  That would be me…)

A not-to-be-missed slide show is included in this article, and the last 2 items in it are “books” that have been used as a medium for the creation of “art.” 

Which brings me to Andre, who wrote to me about this very subject:  “I thought these very beautiful and mysterious sculptures [made from books] which have been turning up anonymously in honor of libraries and books around the world was worth a look....”

I took a look, and here are photos of some of those sculptures:

 

Staying on theme by having a Tyrannosaurus Rex bursting from Doyle's LOST WORLDS

I don’t know what to make of this or quite how I feel about it.  Some of these are, indeed, beautiful:  but are they “art” or are they the destruction of books by other means?  Do they “honor” libraries or make a mockery of them?

I'm curious to know what you think about this.

So that was my Blog in 2011: behind us now. 

Now it's the year 2012, during which you have 365 (make that 363) days to: 

Read. 

Make art using any medium you like. 

Write to me as much as you want; I will always reply. 

            And most importantly:

Visit your local booksellers:  we are not and never have been “mere!”

- - - - - - - - - - -

Postscript: 

Apologies to those of you who receive blog posts via email for receiving an unfinished post.  I simply pressed the wrong button -- publish instead of preview -- and off it went.  (Could this have been the result of too much celebrating?)

The internet is an unforgiving medium; but I hope that you will be forgiving...

Thank you, and have a very Happy New Year.