Let
us admit that, for all their heft on the shelves,
books
are flighty, become souvenirs of themselves,
appealing
no longer to intellect and taste
but
playing to sentiment. Why else keep on hand
Look Homeward, Angel, except in the hope
that the schoolboy
who
turned its pages may show up some afternoon?”
Not
likely, not even in the guise of my sixty-two-year-old self. Some childish things I’ve put away for good, but I accept the dilemma posed by David R.
Slavitt in “Culls” (Falling from Silence:
Poems, 2001). As an otherwise non-acquisitive man, why have I accumulated
so many books, and why do I not let go of them? In the pecuniary sense, I own few
valuable volumes (signed editions, first editions) – not enough to pay for a
year of college tuition, though maybe they’d cover the cost of textbooks -- but
none is essential to my present reading life. Half a shelf of carefully culled,
bibliophilically undistinguished volumes would take care of that. I hold on to
a surfeit of books out of what Floyd Skloot calls “a talismanic impulse.” I
feel stronger and more secure in the company of good books, mine or another’s.
Likewise, I feel uneasy around large quantities of lousy books (visiting
libraries can be dicey). So what persists after a life of reading? The computer
metaphor is irresistible: After downloading (reading) thousands of volumes
(programs), what is preserved in memory (RAM)? Very little, Slavitt suggests:
“What
remains when we’ve finished reading a book?
The
impression is vague, like the aftertaste of wine
or
the scent a woman was wearing that stays in the room,
which
seems to remember and then imagine her presence.
Such
residues, I used to assume, compounded,
changing,
enriching the reader. And an education
was
what persists and accumulates. The figure
is
homelier now: imagine a porcelain sink
that
over the years hard water has stained; look up;
and
see what wisdom the face in the mirror has earned.”
Slavitt
admits that literature helps “make the world make sense,” but only momentarily,
while “it all coheres,” and not for everyone. He calls it an “abstract
affirmation.” Books first must reliably provide pleasure. There are purely utilitarian
uses – field guides, cook books, dictionaries – but even they are
pleasure-givers for some of us. Slavitt lists his “keepers”: “the tools / of
the trade, the grammars, atlases, dictionaries, / and reference works I consult
rather than read.” He writes:
“Poetry
I keep close, in the room with my desk—
To
consult or, say, confer with. For company. Prompting?
That,
too. In a kind of conversation
I
sometimes believe in, the work of others will speak
To
elicit answering speech.”
As
a boy I was an animist. I knew the toy soldiers left on the floor went back to
work when I left the room. So too with books, Tarzan chatting with Sherlock
Holmes and Ben Gunn. Guy Davenport was convinced every book was a response to
another. Books are for writers, yes, more importantly for readers, the truest
critics. Like the rest of us, Slavitt speculates about the fate of his books,
including those he has written, when he is gone. It’s a happy thought:
“That
home I like to imagine my books may find
is
not in my house but in that of some amateur
not
in the business—not a writer, reviewer,
editor,
critic, or teacher, who every so often
has
to do this, go through this dreary process
and
cull. Instead, he keeps in his single bookcase
those
few volumes he has made part of his life,
that
speak to him somehow and in his head
resonate.
And one of them is mine.”
For
me, that one among Slavitt’s more than one-hundred books (including five in
2014) would probably be The Eclogues and
the Georgics of Virgil (1972). Or his translation of Boethius’ The
Consolation of Philosophy (2008).
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