Sacre Bleu-k

Janet Reid

Books are not sacred.
There, I’ve said it.
(stand back from the monitor, lightning is surely ready to strike us both)

I recently raised a kerfluffle on the DorothyL list by taking issue with some posts that implied people who don’t own books or have books in their homes are somehow the modern day version of the village idiot.

Cause I don’t own books either.
(lightning alert!)

Books are objects. Replaceable, for the most part, objects. It’s what’s inside them that counts. Defacing the pages, turning down the corners, throwing them across the room, none of that changes what’s valuable about a book--content. The rest is packaging. I’m enough of a design snob to prefer good packaging. Innovative packaging makes me very happy. I’m still my mother’s daughter enough that I don’t turn down page corners, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change the content.

Books changed civilization. We told stories for millennia before we had books but once we had books we could transmit knowledge indirectly. We didn’t need the wise old man in the village to interpret the omens of the heavens, we could put that knowledge down in a book and it could be transmitted to others even if the wise old man won the lottery and ran off to Vegas with the hat check girl. And if we made a copy of the book that wise old man could now be in three places at the same time, which was nice if he wanted to stay in Vegas and marry Miss Hatcheck.

Mostly though, the reason that “books are sacred” is muddled thinking is because we are on the cusp of a revolution about how content is stored, transmitted and read. If we all get caught up in thinking that it’s the actual object that matters, we’re going to be the buggy whip manufacturer who didn’t understand that horses are nice but the reason people owned them was they wanted transportation, not the actual horse. (Sad but true, I know)

I love books. I make my living from books. I don’t worship them. A very wise priest once said to me “a church is not holy. What happens in the church is holy” and I think that applies to books. Knowledge, and transmission of knowledge, even entertainment knowledge is the sacred part. Not books.

I will tell you though that some years ago (more than I care to reveal thank you very much) I was enrolled in Shakespeare 201, the first in a trilogy of classes required of all students who hoped to graduate with a degree in English. I had a brilliant teacher and wanted to make notes about his comments about the text. I literally could not bring myself to write in the book. My complete set of Shakespeare was a beautiful book and had been given to me on Valentines Day. I loved that book.

I ended up buying a tattered used version of the Riverside Shakespeare, stripping out the pages and xeroxing them so I could mark them up with impunity.

To this day I don’t write in books, but honestly I wish I could. That sense of personal interaction with a book, with a writer, is one of the reasons I love to read. And once I’ve read a book, it’s hard to go back and find that perfect sentence “Dear Reader, I decked the bitch” unless the page has been marked in some way.

I’m not suggesting you give kids crayons and books at the same time, and I appreciate the loving care that my mother took with books that she knew I’d value in later years (books my grandfather had in his bookshop; had kept after his years on the sales force at Simon and Schuster; given to me by other book loving members of the family troupe.)

But I also don’t think grownups need bibs with their lunch or to have their hand held crossing Fifth Avenue.

We’re grownups now. Write in your books! Feel free to throw them away (or better yet, give them to a charitable cause-see Abby's post below for a good first start).

And if you don’t own a single book, you’re not only NOT the village idiot, you’re becoming a Zen Bookist. Welcome to the fold.

Comments

[Susan Adrian]

Well said. I love my Riverside Shakespeare (and Chaucer), and I'd never write in them...but I DO allow myself to write on textbooks, and I do turn down corners (gasp).

I love the parallel to the buggy whip.

[Anon]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I've never felt books needed to be coddled, because it wasn't the physical product that mattered to me. In fact, I prefer mass market paperbacks to hard or trade paper.

[Abby Zidle]

I couldn't bear to write in my Riverside Chaucer either...but I would take it out to the barn and read aloud to the horses in the pasture. One of them in particular seemed to enjoy listening, but would occasionally smear grass across the page when looking too closely. (Or perhaps that's horsey highlighting?)

[Fiona]

I have many books, and I frequent the library because I can not afford to own all of the books I love.

Some of my most cherished possessions are signed first editions of special books friends and family have given me for special occasions.

I write in some books, throw some books across the room (NOT library books) and "love to death" some of my favorites.

That said, I can understand those who "travel more lightly" through life than I do.

[anti-wife]

I feel much better now. Once I've read a book, unless it's a signed copy, a recent reference book, or very special, I pass it on either to friends or through donation. In all this time I've only reacquired a couple of books.