How to Treat A Book?

Anne Fadiman likes to read.  I know this because she tells us so (not explicitly (all the time); mostly by example) in just about every paragraph of her collection of essays, Ex Libris.  We have here a book about reading, which is always a curious beast.  Reading is the only hobby in which the act of reading about one’s hobby is also the act of engaging in it. 

There is thus a natural charm for those who like to read books when reading a book about how nice it is to be the sort of person who likes to read books.  And Fadiman's essays are most certainly charming.  Reading it is a process of getting that warm feeling of knowing that there are others like you in the world, others for whom reading is a compulsive pleasure.  And what do you learn in a book like this?  Sadly, this is where reflection is the enemy of pleasure.  I liked this book.  I enjoyed reading the essays.  But, all in all, most of the essays were mere fluff—nicely written fluff, charming fluff, fluff I am glad I read, but in the end, just fluff.  I don’t think Fadiman would disagree—this is a book that reads like blog entries; it is the reflections of a well-read person about her hobby and not a sustained argument of any particular sort.  I should have known this would happen when I finished the first essay; it was all about how Fadiman and her husband finally combined their two libraries.  Cute, to be sure. 

There were a few essays which made me think.  The most interesting, by far, was “Never Do that to a Book,” where Fadiman distinguishes between Courtly lovers and Carnal lovers.  Courtly lovers treat their books like sacred objects, keeping them pristine and looking like new.  Carnal lovers (like Fadiman) abuse their books, writing in them and bending pages and leaving them open face down on a table.  Who loves books more—the courtly lover or the carnal lover?  Each type of lover views the other with deep suspicion and disdain. 

Which type am I?  Oddly, and disturbingly, I am a bit of both.  I don’t venerate my books, I don’t mind writing in them at all, I leave them lying around all over the place in piles on the floor and my desk, but I do hate cracked spines and I never dog-ear pages.  (Actually, I recently started dog-earing the pages of Wired magazine—I still have a twinge of guilt every time I do that to a magazine which I only read once and don’t save.)  Being something in between and reading Fadiman’s essay made me feel like I need to choose a side in this grand debate.  I need to either treat my books better or worse.  I am in the no-man’s land of lovers, and I am not sure what kind of lover lives there.  Courtly love is a beautiful thing.  Carnal love is a beautiful thing.  In between are those milksops who are afraid of commitment and shy away from contact and never are bold enough to act.  Those in-betweeners are cowardly types, fools and imbeciles, those unworthy of love.  Which damsel ever loved the knight who was neither dashing nor roguish?  And yet, despite my newfound fear that I am neither courtly nor carnal with my books, I cannot decide which I would rather be.

And so, to assuage this tension, I started reading Sir Walter Scott.  In another essay Fadiman notes with horror that she found a book with uncut pages—an old book which nobody had ever read.  So she promptly cut the pages and read it.  I have the complete novels of Scott on my shelf—my mother found them at a flea market and gave them to me for Christmas years ago.  Much to my surprise, many of the novels had uncut pages—it was the first time I had ever seen uncut pages in a book.  I’ve been reading the novels over the years, duly cutting the pages when needed.  After reading Fadiman's essay, I looked for one of the Scott novels which still had uncut pages, and started reading it.  I figured if I cut the pages and read the foremost author of the Romantic age, perhaps I could solve my dilemma of how to be a better book lover.  It didn’t work.  (But, at least I had the occasion to read Scott—review forthcoming.)

And so, after reading a book of charmingly fluffy essays about my favorite pastime, I am left with little more than a deep angst which may well persist for the rest of my life.  Curse you, Anne Fadiman.  Curse you.