On Solely Reading One-Time Books

First published at Overland

‘A mass changes past times the fact that it does non alter when the footing changes.’ Roger Chartier wrote this inwards The Order of Books, although he knew it non to live alone true: merely a few pages earlier, he had remarked how the practise of dividing the Bible into chapter together with verse, originating inwards the seventeenth century, ultimately modified its agency of interpretation, a fact that troubled the English linguistic communication philosopher John Locke at the time.

Books produce alter sometimes, equally produce texts when they migrate to novel carriers. Yet they likewise rest the same. It’s this double nature – at in 1 lawsuit a physical artefact and, ultimately, a collection of sounds – that gives the mass much of its aura together with that contributes to it existence an enduring unit of measurement of culture. Eternal, perhaps, at to the lowest degree equally long equally human societies be – for haven’t the words survived? Don’t nosotros speak of digital pages and electronic books, inwards spite of the radically altered nature of these novel objects?

It’s the book’s capacity to resist, equally good equally to grade the passage of time, that draws me to it equally a form, together with pushes me dorsum whenever I test to croak on upwards alongside what is electrical current together with new, fifty-fifty to the signal of frustration. I eat a fair number of contemporary articles together with essays, equally good equally films together with tv shows, but when it comes to books, I struggle to muster the necessary involvement inwards novel titles. There are precious few novelists or nonfiction authors whose adjacent locomote I expect alongside genuine anticipation. And fifty-fifty when I dutifully purchase the books I know I ought to live interested inwards – together with that I volition belike savor – they languish at the bottom of my reading pile, constantly fighting a losing battle against library borrowings (which, I tell myself, must live returned before the due date), or second-hand acquisitions, or much older purchases.

It’s equally if I involve to hold off for the footing to alter around books, making them interesting inwards a novel way. This may receive got something to produce alongside the Italian educational activity organization together with its obsession alongside studying the things that came before inwards lodge to properly sympathise the ones that came after. This pedantically chronological approach led me to run into the ancient Egyptians together with Phoenicians at every phase of my educational activity (primary, intermediate together with secondary), though my teachers never quite industrial plant life the fourth dimension to delve into the Second World War – an interesting omission for the province that gave nativity to Fascism, I intend yous volition agree.

With this inwards mind, I test to care the ingrained habit. When, iii years ago, I in conclusion bought an ebook reader, I persuasion it would brand me to a greater extent than inclined to purchase novel books, peculiarly ones I would receive got previously had to receive got shipped to New Zealand at extortionate prices. In reality, the exact reverse happened. Bamboozled together with enraged past times Amazon’s segregation of its international catalogues (theoretically requiring ii split Kindles, 1 for books published inwards Italy together with 1 for those from the US), I discovered that my device unlocked vast repositories of out-of-copyright books – books I knew existed but never quite ventured into alongside my desktop computer. But inwards this novel form, I could accept them practically anywhere. So for some months I embarked on an apparent elbow grease to download the nineteenth century inwards its entirety. I industrial plant life almost every unmarried 1 of the books I plucked (almost at random) from these lists to live immensely fascinating, together with a constant source of cues to pursue other readings.

I tell myself that I should change. That it’s inwards my professional person interest, equally a putative cultural critic, to live upwards to appointment inwards my readings, merely equally it was my explicit duty when I wrote my doctoral thesis. At that time, I dreaded novel releases past times scholars inwards my field, non out of jealousy or anxiety, but because they mightiness forcefulness me to comprise novel lines of thinking into my nearly finished work. I likewise remind myself that sometime literature together with criticism tin give the sack live a refuge, an excuse non to engage alongside new, together with newly challenging, ideas. All of which is true.

I am fond of an sometime joke of Fred Allen’s: ‘I can’t sympathise why a soul volition accept a twelvemonth or ii to write a novel when he tin give the sack easily purchase 1 for a few dollars.’ The same could live said of novel books generally. Why produce nosotros yet bother? What produce they tell that hasn’t live said before? The answers volition probable live interesting, together with interestingly complicated. And piece it pays to retrieve that it’s a joke – of course of instruction at that topographic point is no retreating from culture, or pretending it is finished – the joke has some truth inwards it: at that topographic point are millions of books inwards the world, all of them non changing piece the footing around them changes. And maybe it’s equally elementary equally that, for me: I am non quite finished alongside the sometime books yet.

Speaking of things from magazines, my slice on the politics of mistaken word together with post-truth inwards Berlusconi’s era is upwards on the New Humanist’s website.