'Books, Books, Books'

Our relations with books can be nearly as complicated as those with that other category of language-based objects, human beings. Some we love, others less so. Some we acquire and dispose of after a single use, while others remain with us for life. Some we discover are tedious at first only to find ourselves growing into them years later. And some early enthusiasms we keep secret out of embarrassment. A detailed history of our reading since childhood might serve as a useful first draft of our autobiography. We accumulate books, internalize some return for a second or seventh reading. Arthur Krystal begins his essay “A Sentimental Education,” published in the Winter 2022 issue of Raritan, like this: 

“Books, books, books. I figure I own around twenty-two hundred of them. Those that I haven’t read, I probably won’t, and those I have read, I doubt I’ll re-read. In fact, perhaps only one percent matter to me as material objects, but they do matter. These twenty or so books are neither rare nor valuable; some are even falling apart. Nonetheless, they have a place in my memory along the lines of tasting duck confit for the first time or coming nose to nose with a Siberian tiger in a gazebo.”

 

I resist the fetishization of books but I’m weak. My share of essential volumes is a little higher than Krystal’s one percent, and has nothing to do with autographs or first editions. Those things are nice and I’m not blind to their worth (financial, aesthetic) but that’s not why I prize them. In some complicated and not entirely romanticized way, they are parts of me downloaded into brick-shaped boxes of paper – my first Bible, my three-volume Heritage Press Shakespeare, my note-clogged Ulysses. All are worn and cracked and must be handled with care. I’m with Krystal:

 

“I doubt that I’ll reach again for my green, case-bound 1961 Modern Library copy of Ulysses, but I don’t see how I can let go of the amazement I felt the first time I read the damn thing.”

 

I’m not notably acquisitive, so it surprises me that I feel so attached to an object that literally not another soul in the world cares about. Like Krystal, how I acquired most of these books is a mystery, but some are stamped in memory with time and place. My Penguin paperback of Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories I helpfully inscribed with my name and “7-24-73 Chambéry,” a reminder of a librairie I patronized during my first visit to France. The pages have turned brown but the spine is intact. I hope what I’m describing doesn’t sound braggadocious. Again, I’m with Krystal:

 

“I mention these books not without trepidation. I worry they’ll be seen as the humble brag of someone who wants the world to know that he has read some pretty highfalutin books. But we can’t help what we read when we have no fixed idea about what we plan to do with our lives. These books had my number when the number of my years were relatively few.”