I recently read a blog post by Luke McKernan, ‘Lost Books’, in which he discusses his attitude to the ownership of books. His key point is that the act of reading a
book makes it part of the reader, and looking along a shelf of them is a reminder
of the intellectual journey to which they have been the accompaniment. He tells the story of how, when moving house,
he gave a quantity of his books, perhaps a couple of hundred, to a charity shop
and has regretted it ever since because in a very real way he had disposed of a
part of himself. He can recall where he
bought all his books and where he read them, so at a meta level they contain a
story over and above that found in the content, which in reading them became
part of Luke’s own story. If they’ve
gone, they’ve gone, and not even an identical replacement will carry that sense
of having been absorbed; it would be merely a ringer, not the same. To reinstate the meaning that the original
copy had would mean rereading it, and overlaying the first set of associations
with a new one.
I can understand this view, but my engagement, while
I hope as intense, is somewhat different.
After a time I do not as a rule recall where I bought a book, nor often where
in particular I read it, though I do often associate particular books with
certain times, usually longer books read in summer holidays when young – War and Peace, Don Quixote and Ulysses spring
to mind. As a rule it’s the words that
count, not the book as an object, but it was not always so: at one time (my
teens and 20s) I had the ambition of owning every book I read. This proved impractical but I still built up
large sub-collections. Unfortunately
space is the enemy, and I eventually decided I had to weed out some of the
things I had read and would probably not need again (a dangerous assumption). Early victims of this culling process were
the poetry pamphlets which I had accumulated during my regular trips to
Compendium at Camden Town, and later, when married with a small child, many of
my science fiction and crime novels. It
hurt at first, but I found that I gradually became less sentimental, and didn’t
consider that I was diminished by their absence. I certainly don’t feel, as Luke suggests,
that their absence tells an incomplete story about me, and if it does, who
cares?
In general I still find that I don’t miss the ones
that are gone, with exceptions. Some
books I do kick myself about, like the one I got a few pounds for on eBay which
I later discovered was worth rather a lot, or the politics books from my
student days I sold to a specialist dealer that I wish I had kept (but I really
didn’t think at the time I would want to consult Lenin’s What is to Be Done? again, or what must have been everything
Trotsky wrote that was in English translation at the time, let alone reread them,
and perhaps I mourn the loss of the younger me they represent as much as the
volumes themselves). Mostly I take a
pragmatic view, keeping books I think will be useful, notably on cinema,
psychical research and the nineteenth century.
I don’t read ebooks for pleasure, but I do have a large collection of
PDFs for reference or just-in-case, and some of those have replaced physical
copies that I have read and am unlikely to want to reread in their entirety.
I am not a slave to the editions I have read
either. If a more recent version comes
out, I’m happy to replace my old one, invariably when I find a cheap second-hand
copy. Thus recently the 2003 revised
Penguin edition of Frankenstein, which I haven’t yet read, replaced the 1992
Penguin edition, which in turn replaced the still earlier one I had read, simply because it is more up
to date. On the McKernan system I would
either have to eschew the new one, or
else read it in order to make it part of me, overlaying the trace of the old
one I had read which had gone. The
latter I may or may not do, but should I need to consult it – and who knows
where research will take one – it’s good to know that I have the copy that has
been revised and which can be considered more authoritative than its
predecessors, including the one I read.
There are some books I won’t part with, such as the
battered copies of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn my father bought me
when I was a child and which evoke the original pleasure of reading them
whenever I look at the covers. The
Beatrix Potter books I received from relatives fall into the same
category. For most of them though I do
not feel that strength of attachment. I
certainly do not regard them as part of me in the way that Luke does his. I’ve already mentioned, in reviewing
Penguin’s compilation of covers, Seven Hundred Penguins, how I once thought nice hardbacks were preferable to
Penguins and changed them over as a matter of course when I had the
opportunity, only to change them back where appropriate when I came to
appreciate that it was the content that mattered, not the format. These days I divide books into those which
are keepers and those which are disposable.
The latter, mostly modern fiction, go off the charity shop when read, yet
they often achieve a kind of permanence in my memory through the act of writing
about them. If space were limitless I
would have a grand library in which to retain every book I acquire, with no
disposal policy, and once something like that was an ambition. They are wonderful to have about the place,
but one has to be practical, and moving thousands of books is a nightmare. Some balance is required.
One thing I disagree with Luke about is his
definition of a bibliophile, which he characterises as someone who collects
books or reveres them for their own sake. He sees the bibliophile fetishizing objects,
and by that narrow definition neither am I one.
It is too narrow, and I think
we both are really, or else why would we be writing about our books with such
affection? They are obviously important
to us both. We may have different
approaches to the books we own but I bet he loves them as much as I do. I love the texture, the weight, the design,
above all the promise contained inside.
Sometimes the promise is unfulfilled, at other times it exceeds expectations. Bibliophilia is about the attitude one takes
to one’s books and what they contain, which is essentially a deep
connection. I feel it, and the fact that
Luke mourns those lost paperbacks puts him very firmly in that category as well.
