It is too cold for the book table guy, apparently, because I wanted to go buy a book from him and he's not there. The book table guy -- or, I might say, my book table guy, because there are others -- is a guy with a van who sets up several tables of books along West 4th Street, near the NYU library, and sells them to you for smallish amounts of cash. I don't totally understand his operation; there are five tables, and some of them seem to have their own dedicated workers: I do not know whether these men are his underlings or his competition. And his level of knowledge of his wares is uncertain: sometimes he seems very excited to sell me books (he knew an awful lot about the Man in the High Castle) and other times it appears to be just another transaction, commodities for dollars.
There are certain things for which I can rely upon my book table guy: he always has a bunch of cheapie Wodehouse mass markets, he always has at least two copies of the Second Sex, and he always has several things edited by Marshall McLuhan. I don't know where he gets his Wodehouse and de Beauvoir and McLuhan, but he's always got them. And it wasn't until I met the book table guy that I decided that I don't like e-readers. Up to now, the arguments against the e-reader, and for the e-reader, have been all academic for me. I don't particularly want one, but to each her own. But thinking about the book table guy, and the trunks of old books that his van wouldn't hold if all of his wholesalers or donors had bought electronic files instead, made me feel at least slightly philosophically opposed to them. (I know that I have blogged earlier about the failure of e-readers to show off how recondite my personal reading is, but that was more a vanity statement than a philosophical one.) The book table guy (when it is warm out, anyway) reminds you that the book as a thing that sits on its shelf is something that sits, which is to say it is something that is. It can do things you don't intend. When one buys her shiny new copy of the Code of the Woosters, she does not imagine that someday that copy, yellow and with is back cover mysteriously flaking away, will delight someone she's never met while he flies home for Thanksgiving in the relatively distant future. And that is something about books to go all swoony over.
Our namesake essayist writes about knowing the history of one's books from the point of view of a collector, and his namesake essay suggests a man who takes pride in knowing whence the physical objects that make up his unpacked library. What I like so much about the books I've got from the book table guy isn't their history so much as their futures; as these books, lumps of paper and glue, have come to me, so might they get dumped off from me to people I've never known. And the truncation of those futures is, to me, the first frightening thing about the advent of the e-readers that I've ever felt at all viscerally.
Showing posts with label Walter Benjamin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Walter Benjamin. Show all posts
Friday, December 11, 2009
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Vacation, All I Ever Wanted
So, today is the first day of my vacation. Since about June, I have not been doing much of anything other than being nervous and earning my keep around the house, so this trip to North Carolina is sort of a vacation from already being on vacation. That said, I am excited: the annual Schratz family trip down here is SUMMER READING TIME, even though my reading time at home has been largely unimpeded and summer is about two thirds over. There are several reasons why going to our house in North Carolina represents ideal reading time, and that show what an ideal reading situation has on offer.
ONE: Chairs. The chairs here are better than the chairs at our house in Lockport for reading, hands down. I don't think we have any chairs in our house in Lockport, actually, except at the dining room table. It turns out that I can read for like 20-25 more minutes per sit-down of reading, when I can put both of my arms on an armrest at once. This is a critical improvement over our couches. Beyond that, we also have like a hammock swing-chair apparatus, which begs to be read upon. The more utilitarian chairs one might take for granted. When you see a hammock swing-chair apparatus, you know that it has to be sit on; and what better thing to do while so sitting, than read your book? So, lesson: Get yourself a chair you can appreciate, and appreciate it.
TWO: A relative paucity of books. I own too many books. I have to read Benjamin's Unpacking My Library essay constantly, to reassure myself that it is ok to have as many freaking books as I have. In that essay, Benjamin recounts an admirer of Anatole France's asking him (France) if he had read all of the books in his library, to which France said, "Not one tenth of them. I don't suppose you use your Sevres china everyday?" Point, Anatole. Anyway, I don't know if my unread books make as bad a portion as 90% of my book volume, but whatever they make, it ain't great. They take up five-ish shelves, and I stare at them. Often. Half of my unread books have bookmarks on page 3 or 4, from where I decided to start reading the book after staring at their spines before returning, like a chastened philanderer, to the books I was already on pages 50 and 300 of. In North Carolina, I've only got ten books, so way fewer opportunities to spread myself too thin. It's like committing, for two weeks, to use your Sevres china and use the hell out of it, until it is properly appreciated. Lesson here: it may be necessary to take physical measures to curtail the reader's wandering eye.
THREE: A massive body of water. This is more of a societal issue than a me-issue, but it is surprising to me how much people are more willing to let you go sit and read all day if you do it in front of an ocean or a river or a lake or whatever. Thousands of times, I have huffily told my brothers that I am BUSY READING; the only times that they have retreated with dignity in the face of this huff has been with their backs to bodies of water. I tried this once at home at the Erie Canal, but that didn't really work. There is not a lot soothing about the Erie Canal. This isn't much of a lesson; it's hard to find somebody who will really sell you on being against the contemplation of oceans.
So those are three of the reasons why I am excited for my little vacation I'm on. The books themselves, obviously, are exciting too: I've got more Proust (Proust forever), Mason and Dixon by Pynchon, The Spoils of Poynton, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and a few more. So GET AMPED to be bloggified (and now tweeted! @CaptainSchratz) in the coming days. The reading chair is a good blogging chair, as well.
ONE: Chairs. The chairs here are better than the chairs at our house in Lockport for reading, hands down. I don't think we have any chairs in our house in Lockport, actually, except at the dining room table. It turns out that I can read for like 20-25 more minutes per sit-down of reading, when I can put both of my arms on an armrest at once. This is a critical improvement over our couches. Beyond that, we also have like a hammock swing-chair apparatus, which begs to be read upon. The more utilitarian chairs one might take for granted. When you see a hammock swing-chair apparatus, you know that it has to be sit on; and what better thing to do while so sitting, than read your book? So, lesson: Get yourself a chair you can appreciate, and appreciate it.
TWO: A relative paucity of books. I own too many books. I have to read Benjamin's Unpacking My Library essay constantly, to reassure myself that it is ok to have as many freaking books as I have. In that essay, Benjamin recounts an admirer of Anatole France's asking him (France) if he had read all of the books in his library, to which France said, "Not one tenth of them. I don't suppose you use your Sevres china everyday?" Point, Anatole. Anyway, I don't know if my unread books make as bad a portion as 90% of my book volume, but whatever they make, it ain't great. They take up five-ish shelves, and I stare at them. Often. Half of my unread books have bookmarks on page 3 or 4, from where I decided to start reading the book after staring at their spines before returning, like a chastened philanderer, to the books I was already on pages 50 and 300 of. In North Carolina, I've only got ten books, so way fewer opportunities to spread myself too thin. It's like committing, for two weeks, to use your Sevres china and use the hell out of it, until it is properly appreciated. Lesson here: it may be necessary to take physical measures to curtail the reader's wandering eye.
THREE: A massive body of water. This is more of a societal issue than a me-issue, but it is surprising to me how much people are more willing to let you go sit and read all day if you do it in front of an ocean or a river or a lake or whatever. Thousands of times, I have huffily told my brothers that I am BUSY READING; the only times that they have retreated with dignity in the face of this huff has been with their backs to bodies of water. I tried this once at home at the Erie Canal, but that didn't really work. There is not a lot soothing about the Erie Canal. This isn't much of a lesson; it's hard to find somebody who will really sell you on being against the contemplation of oceans.
So those are three of the reasons why I am excited for my little vacation I'm on. The books themselves, obviously, are exciting too: I've got more Proust (Proust forever), Mason and Dixon by Pynchon, The Spoils of Poynton, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and a few more. So GET AMPED to be bloggified (and now tweeted! @CaptainSchratz) in the coming days. The reading chair is a good blogging chair, as well.
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