Inaugural Proceedings

Welcome to the Inaugural Proceedings of Unpacking My Library! I have never emceed any Inaugural Proceedings before. Feels nice, thus far, but I’m not really sure what to do. I’m not even sure to whom to address myself – my esteemed colleagues in the book club, or the beau monde looking at it from the outside. So anyway. To whom it may concern, and whether I’ve told you it before or not: this is a blog dedicated to a book club, either of which has an affiliation with the words, “Unpacking My Library”, which is the title of an essay by Intellectual Rock Star Walter Benjamin. Benjamin means unpack literally – he is taking his old, collected, largely unread books out of crates – but I also like the connotative sense of unpack, beloved by English professors everywhere, as a verb meaning “figure out why these words were chosen to be arranged in the way they are”. It suggests, to me, a nuts-and-boltsy approach toward reading of which I am a fan, and which I hope will prove fruitful in the course of this blog’s existence. Which almost ominous addendum leads me to: a few words on How This Club Will Do What it Does, and Just What That Is. How the Club Will Do It is, read one book together, in order to focus what it is people have to say, and then post here on the blog whatever they would have said, had we been able to physically meet in ideal circumstances (say, a chain restaurant in Connecticut). And what I hope comes out of this is not just a set of smart things said about particular books, but smart things about Books and Bookishness. it seems fruitful to have this kind of club in order for everyone to stay sane about why we read anything at all. This will be good for you whether you're out of school, and read because you've had it drummed into you that you ought, or so that you don't go crazy bored commuting; or if you're in school and are too busy getting reading done for classes' sakes to wonder what other sakes you're serving. I for one have been concerned about this for most of my adult life, and cannot think of a better way for this sort of thing to get sorted out than by witnessing many people talk about what makes books good or bad, worth it or otherwise. The first selection we’ve made is Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Road, which has both prestige (Pulitzer) and indie-cred (very close association with the Coen brothers), and which also should be a very good book and motivate some very good things said about reading it, and about reading. So. I think that will conclude my Inaugural Proceedings. Stay tuned for next time, when the throat-clearing continues with a post devoted entirely to epigrams, and welcome aboard!