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Go Home Voluminous

FEBRUARY 22, 2012

Voluminous

BY LEON WIESELTIER

The oldest book in my library was published in 1538. It is Sefer Hasidim, or The Book of the Pious, the first edition, from Bologna, of the vast trove of precepts and stories, at once severe and wild, of the Jewish pietists of Germany in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Next to it, and towering over it, which is as it should be, stands Moreh Nevuchim, or The Guide of the Perplexed, the handsome Bragadin edition from Venice in 1551. And next to Maimonides’s masterpiece stands the great 1669 edition of Thomas Browne, the Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into very Many Received Tenents, and Commonly Presumed Truths, another sort of guide to perplexities, along with Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus and their fine engravings of the urns and the quincunx. Nothing elevates a room more than the presence within it of objects whose significance is in no way derived from oneself. These things are not mine; I am theirs. (This can be true also of younger objects: further along the row of treasures is the exquisite first printing, in Boston in 1895, of The Black Riders and Other Lines by Stephen Crane, a small book with a black flower swirling like a vice on its front and its back, and an undistinguished copy of the Book of Job, published in Zhitomir in 1872, that I rescued from the trash in a ruined synagogue in Lvov, or more correctly Lemberg, which is the volume in the room that burns my fingers.) But really the oldest book in my library is a beat-up copy of The Portable Nietzsche—the edition with Seymour Chwast’s woodcut-like image of the master and his unfortunate moustache, not the later one that Oliver Stone anachronistically placed in the hands of Val Kilmer in one of the most risible scenes in The Doors—because it is the book that has been with me the longest. I bought it in 1969 for $1.95 at the Eighth Street Bookshop. I was taking an evening course on the pre-Socratics—I was a monster of voracity, even at seventeen and under a yarmulke—a few blocks away at the New School, and my masterful instructor, a certain Professor Jonas, urged me to read more philosophy, including Nietzsche. The dog-eared passages from Thus Spoke Zarathustra are embarrassing now (“Light am I; ah, that I were night!”), but then this was Nietzsche’s only book for adolescents. After some years I learned who Professor Jonas really was, and after some more years he and I enjoyed a warm laugh when I told him the story of his impact upon me in those Village evenings. But all the miles of shelves on all the walls of all the apartments and houses and offices in which I have lived and worked were erected on the foundation of that paperback, Viking Portable Library P62. This is the other variety of significance that attaches to books, the subjective sort, which transforms them into talismans. Many books are read but some books are lived, so that words and ideas lose their ethereality and become experiences, turning points in an insufficiently clarified existence, and thereby acquire the almost mystical (but also fallible) intimacy of memory. In this sense one’s books are one’s biography. This subjective urgency bears no relation to the quality of the book: lives have been changed by kitsch, too. What matters is that one’s pores be opened, and that the opening be true. “What is the Ninth Symphony,” Karl Kraus declared, “compared to a pop tune played by a hurdy-gurdy and a memory!”

 

THE LIBRARY, like the book, is under assault by the new technologies, which propose to collect and to deliver texts differently, more efficiently, outside of space and in a rush of time. If ever I might find a kind word for the coming post-bibliographical world it would be this week, when I have to pack up the thousands of volumes in my office and reassemble them a short distance away—they are so heavy, they take up so much room, and so on; but even now, with the crates piled high in the hall, what I see most plainly about the books is that they are beautiful. They take up room? Of course they do: they are an environment; atoms, not bits. My books are not dead weight, they are live weight—matter infused by spirit, every one of them, even the silliest. They do not block the horizon; they draw it. They free me from the prison of contemporaneity: one should not live only in one’s own time. A wall of books is a wall of windows. And a book is more than a text: even if every book in my library is on Google Books, my library is not on Google Books. A library has a personality, a temperament. (Sometimes a dull one.) Its books show the scars of use and the wear of need. They are defaced—no, ornamented—by markings and notes and private symbols of assent and dissent, and these vandalisms are traces of the excitations of thought and feeling, which is why they are delightful to discover in old books: they introduce a person. There is something inhuman about the pristinity of digital publication. It lacks fingerprints. But the copy of a book that is on my shelf is my copy. It is unlike any other copy, it has been individuated; and even those books that I have not yet opened—unread books are an essential element of a library—were acquired for the further cultivation of a particular admixture of interests and beliefs, and every one of them will have its hour. The knowledge that qualifies one to be one’s own librarian is partly self-knowledge. The richness, or the incoherence, of a library is the richness, or the incoherence, of the self.

 

“I HAVE ALWAYS IMAGINED that paradise will be a kind of library,” wrote Borges. I would not go so far: paradise had better be more than a tweaked version of what I already know, even if the price I pay for such a conception of it is that I never see it. And if paradise lies in the future, it will certainly not be a library. A different arrangement awaits our minds. But there is no disgrace in historical obsolescence. There is only solitude, and fewer interruptions. (Paradise is fewer interruptions!) We are regularly sustained by what is gone. So into the movers’ boxes again the books go—this morning, for example, an abraded copy of the 1946 printing by Schocken of The Great Wall of China: Stories and Reflections, which I cherish for the Hebrew stamp on the title page, which reads “Cultural Service/Central Library/34-516/Israel Defense Forces,” and for the English stamp below it, which reads, “Presented by the Women’s International Zionist Organization ‘WIZO’ to men and women serving in the Israel Defense Army.” They gave Kafka to the troops.

Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor of The New Republic. This article appeared in the March 15, 2012 issue of the magazine.

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47 comments

“This is the other variety of significance that attaches to books, the subjective sort, which transforms them into talismans. Many books are read but some books are lived, so that words and ideas lose their ethereality and become experiences, turning points in an insufficiently clarified existence, and thereby acquire the almost mystical (but also fallible) intimacy of memory. In this sense one’s books are one’s biography. This subjective urgency bears no relation to the quality of the book: lives have been changed by kitsch, too. What matters is that one’s pores be opened, and that the opening be true. “What is the Ninth Symphony,” Karl Kraus declared, “compared to a pop tune played by a hurdy-gurdy and a memory!”” Wieseltier’s essay reminds me of Walter Benjamin’s essay “Unpacking my Library.” Both essays stress the subjective quality of book ownership. They differ in as much as for Benjamin the physical book itself, read or unread, has meaning; for Wieseltier its imprint the book’s content left on the reader that is valued. I agree that the physical book leaves an imprint on the reader as much as the writing itself. But it’s not just the book itself, it’s also the place and time when the book was read that leaves an imprint. (I have read many a book while walking in the woods or standing under a tree and each time I open, for example, my copy of “Our Mutual Friend” I can still see bits of pollen stains on its pages.) Still, since I got a kindle and started reading books I downloaded I take it with me on walks and I noticed that when I mark a passage that I then copy out I also remember the place I was when I marked the passage. My relation to kindle books is different from that of my relation to printed books, but I have no doubt that I have one. Subjective life doesn’t end when you access information on digital gadgets. There are days though when I have no desire to turn on a gadget but am content merely to finger my way through books I already read.

- arnon

February 23, 2012 at 9:08pm

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...Many books are read but some books are lived, so that words and ideas lose their ethereality and become experiences, turning points in an insufficiently clarified existence, and thereby acquire the almost mystical (but also fallible) intimacy of memory. In this sense one’s books are one’s biography. This subjective urgency bears no relation to the quality of the book: lives have been changed by kitsch, too. What matters is that one’s pores be opened, and that the opening be true. “What is the Ninth Symphony,” Karl Kraus declared, “compared to a pop tune played by a hurdy-gurdy and a memory!”... This has just been cited. At the risk of being rhapsodic, I don't care because it's wonderful, and is of a piece with this wonderful diarist piece, maybe the best words I've ever read on the experience of a life made by books in their way, as much as by anything else. The movement in the essay from the sheer physical at hand task of boxing up and moving the beloved volumes as the springboard to a series of lovely memories and descriptions of the books owned and lived with to the human experiences connected to some of them to the meditation on the varieties of his books's subjective meanings to Wieseltier is incredibly artful and without a false or preening note.  Too, one can't help being moved by Wieseltier's words to day dreaming about one's own experience with particular books as his cited words capture better than I could imagine being expressed those certain times in ones's life, typically when one is young, when exchanges with a book take on a separate meaning as a momentous part of one's life. I think back to first reading Romeo and Juliet, The Adventures of Huckleberry  Finn,  A Tale of Two Cities, Out of the Burning, You Know Me Al, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz  and too, too, too many others to list that each in their own way set my young mind on fire. (I always have been, more often than is good for me, a pop tune and hurry-gurdy type.) I do believe I will treasure and come back to this piece time and time again. I'd have to cast my mind back furher and think harder than I now can to think of anything more lovely and exhilarating written by Wieseltier in these cyber pages, which is slightly paradoxical, given his theme so greatly pronounced upon by him here.

- basman

February 24, 2012 at 12:19am

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Oh this is beautiful. Thank you.

- Sophia

February 25, 2012 at 7:05pm

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Sophia, you said it all in six heart felt words.

- basman

February 25, 2012 at 10:30pm

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Some lovely lines in this piece. One's books are one's biography. A wall of books is a wall of windows. Nothing has sustained my faith in the human race like books. Thankfully, there will always be paper ones--the ones that are kept in existence for centuries like some of Mr. Wieseltier's, and in the future people can request to have a hard copy of a digital book printed. In fact, that's how self-publishing works today! And those books are on acid-free paper! There's hope.

- magboy47.

March 2, 2012 at 12:48am

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As an avid reader and selective 1st Ed book collector of authors that have meant the most to me, this is a great piece on the meditation of why the physical and tangible aspect of the book is as important as our personal reaction to the prose and poetry on the page. When my wife and I moved to New Orleans from DC, of the 30 of the boxes of "belongings" like kitchen items and bric-a-brac that I packed a full 2/3rds of those were books. I've spent a short time on this earth and every book I've read and re-read inhabits space on my books shelves, spills over into other nooks and crannies, strains the coffee table to the point of collapse, and adds a layer of "life" to our abode. When guests come over they ask if I've read all of these books and I can honestly say that at 90% of them I have read, 5% are recent purchases and at least 5% are ones that, having been read so long ago I forgot that I've read them until I start the first chapter and the flood of the familiar comes back. My reading tastes run the gamut from high-brow 'phenomenology' of Juhani Pallasmaa to middle-brow Umberto Eco to the low-brow childhood pleasures of Phillip K. Dick to the unspoken pleasure of flipping through my middle-school collection of comic books and graphic novels. As a late adopter to the kindle, I've used that to start reading the classics that I never got around to reading or acquiring. Much to my wife's chagrin, it had only made my reading appetite grow more so but in an odd way. I treat the kindle not as a digital trove of special books, but as a deposit of dare I say, books I'd like to read but don't feel the urge to forge the physical relationship that Leon opines about. As my response illustrates, I love books, talking about books and do my best to pass that passion on. Even encouraging others to read the classics they so thoroughly dismissed as boring or awful because it was required reading. Imagine hating Don Quixote? It's like hating sunshine, fresh air, a breeze in the leaves of trees. Perhaps the greatest invention of humanity's culture was our writing our stories down. Without it, much is lost, including our personal connections to our past and presentness.

- singlspeed

March 2, 2012 at 10:26am

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Ah, the joys of library ownership! The three formative experiences for me as a child were seeing Truffaut's "Fahrenheit 451", hearing a radio dramatisation of "A Canticle for Leibowitz", and seeing Carl Sagan describe the burning of the Library of Alexandria. These left me with an acute recognition of the transience of knowledge, and the importance of preserving it at all costs. Therefore, I vowed that I would have a library of my own that I would zealously guard. Now, in middle age, I have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I have a house filled with books, perhaps even overfilled. I wouldn't have it any other way.

- zardoz67

March 2, 2012 at 12:58pm

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zardoz67 "Ah, the joys of library ownership!" Yes, it's about ownership and leaving your fingerprints on books. I'll have more to say about this later on.

- arnon1

March 2, 2012 at 4:48pm

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Nope. It's more dalectical than that. It's about a kind of reciprocal "ownership" and a kind of reciprocal leaving of "fingerprints," which is to say, the book's, and the books', significant impact being a necessary condition precedent for the corollary joy and personal fulfilment in the "ownership" one's library may provide.

- basman

March 2, 2012 at 6:22pm

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Le Chat Guillaume Apollinaire Je souhaite dans ma maison: Une femme ayant sa raison, Un chat passant parmi les livres, Des amis en toute saison Sans lesquels je ne peux pas vivre. Cats In my home I wish to have A woman sensible and suave A cat traipsing among the books Friends in foul weather or fair If not for them how could I fare http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kosgsbuwfQ1qzb5wzo1_500.jpg

- noga1

March 2, 2012 at 6:59pm

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Part I Le Chat Baudelaire Dans ma cervelle se promène, Ainsi qu'en son appartement, Un beau chat, fort, doux et charmant. Quand il miaule, on l'entend à peine, Tant son timbre est tendre et discret; Mais que sa voix s'apaise ou gronde, Elle est toujours riche et profonde. C'est là son charme et son secret. Cette voix, qui perle et qui filtre Dans mon fonds le plus ténébreux, Me remplit comme un vers nombreux Et me réjouit comme un philtre. Elle endort les plus cruels maux Et contient toutes les extases; Pour dire les plus longues phrases, Elle n'a pas besoin de mots. Non, il n'est pas d'archet qui morde Sur mon coeur, parfait instrument, Et fasse plus royalement Chanter sa plus vibrante corde, Que ta voix, chat mystérieux, Chat séraphique, chat étrange, En qui tout est, comme en un ange, Aussi subtil qu'harmonieux!

- arnon1

March 2, 2012 at 7:32pm

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Translation: The Cat In my brain there walks about, As though he were in his own home, A lovely cat, strong, sweet, charming. When he mews, one scarcely hears him, His tone is so discreet and soft; But purring or growling, his voice Is always deep and rich; That is his charm and secret. That voice forms into drops, trickles Into the depths of my being, Fills me like harmonious verse And gladdens me like a philtre. It lulls to sleep the sharpest pains, Contains all ecstasies; To say the longest sentences, It has no need of words, No, there's no bow that plays upon My heart, that perfect instrument, And makes its most vibrant chord Sing more gloriously Than your voice, mysterious cat, Seraphic cat, singular cat, In whom, as in angels, all is As subtle as harmonious! II

- arnon1

March 2, 2012 at 7:33pm

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I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! Dr. Seuss I can read in red. I can read in blue. I can read in pickle color too. I can read in bed, and in purple. and in brown. I can read in a circle and upside down! I can read with my left eye. I can read with my right. I can read Mississippi with my eyes shut tight! There are so many things you can learn about. But…you'll miss the best things If you keep your eyes shut. The more that you read, the more things you will know The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. If you read with your eyes shut you're likely to find That the place where you're going is far, far behind SO…that's why I tell you to keep your eyes wide. Keep them wide open…at least on one side.

- noga1

March 2, 2012 at 9:31pm

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Noga what is the point of posting a Dr. Seuss poem here?

- nr106646

March 2, 2012 at 10:16pm

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This is a shortened version of what I wanted to write: “The oldest book in my library was published in 1538. It is Sefer Hasidim, or The Book of the Pious, the first edition,…Next to it… stands Moreh Nevuchim, or The Guide of the Perplexed, the handsome Bragadin edition from Venice in 1551. And next to Maimonides’s masterpiece stands the great 1669 edition of Thomas Browne, the Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into very Many Received Tenents,….” Leon W. moves from speaking (very eloquently) about the book (singular) as object, as thing to speaking about them (plural) as something spiritual. The movement from the singular to the plural is essential in LW assertion of spiritual uniqueness to them and to his project of presenting digital books as “inhuman.” “Many books are read but some books are lived, so that words and ideas lose their ethereality and become experiences, in this sense one’s books are one’s biography….” He then presents the universal experience of reading as something uniquely available only through the book as physical object. In this way books become imbued with their owner’s life. Yet, at this point, the author leaves out something essential: the physical book has only a temporary owner. Wieseltier himself tells us that “the oldest books” in his library 1538, 1551, 1669…have had previous owners. If we want to see these books as uniquely and spiritually impregnated with the life of its owner, then we should take account of the many lives (plural) invested there. “Its books show the scars of use and the wear of need. They are defaced—no, ornamented—by markings and notes and private symbols of assent and dissent, and these vandalisms are traces of the excitations of thought and feeling, which is why they are delightful to discover in old books: they introduce a person.” The person is of course the book’s latest owner. Then, going back to the physical book the author again proclaims the uniqueness of his books: “But the copy of a book that is on my shelf is my copy. It is unlike any other copy, it has been individuated and even those books that I have not yet opened—unread books are an essential element of a library—were acquired for the further cultivation of a particular admixture of interests and beliefs, and every one of them will have its hour. The knowledge that qualifies one to be one’s own librarian is partly self-knowledge….” With a nod to Walter Benjamin’s essay “Unpacking my library” Wieseltier wants to stamp his life on the books. “The richness, or the incoherence, of a library is the richness, or the incoherence, of the self.” Now, in making something unique and spiritual out of his books Leon Wieseltier was putting them in opposition to “digital publications.” These are uniquely inhuman: “There is something inhuman about the pristinity of digital publication. It lacks fingerprints.” For Wieseltier there is no middle ground, it’s either a printed and bound book or an inhuman digital monster. But one can write an essay about one’s “mystical” relation to digital publications. If with physical books it’s the ownership of books which makes them mine (at least temporarily since many of these books have had other owners in the past and will have many more in the future) what makes digital books mine is the way I play with them. (Arrangement of library and note taking which coexist with the book, etc also leave fingerprints. Because digital books are a new phenomenon we don’t know yet to what uses future owners of digital devices will put them. One thing is clear digital libraries, no less than physical books, will also leave fingerprints and other signs of pre-ownership on them. Besides do I need to point out that the web where his article appeared is the heart of digitization. And LW own books can be bought on Amazon kindle. http://www.amazon.com/Kaddish-ebook/dp/B002X4BBKE/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330752555&sr=1-1

- arnon1

March 3, 2012 at 12:30am

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"Noga what is the point of posting a Dr. Seuss poem here?" What is the point of posting a poem about cats here?

- noga1

March 3, 2012 at 9:30am

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Yes, what is the point of posting poems about cats here, Noga , and arnon?

- nr106646

March 3, 2012 at 10:21am

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"Yes, what is the point of posting poems about cats here, Noga , and arnon?" This is a good question, for a change. My "CAT" poem, if you bothered to read it, would have told you that it is actually a poem not about cats but about the value of books in a man's life. Which is what this thread is about: books and reading. Dr. Seuss's poem is about what reading does to your mind. So my two poems are right on the subject. I cannot speak for arnon1's thinking. I read his Cat poem but couldn't find anything bookish in it.

- noga1

March 3, 2012 at 10:48am

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Oy, the Baudelaire poem was about voice and verse. "When he mews, one scarcely hears him, His tone is so discreet and soft; But purring or growling, his voice Is always deep and rich; That is his charm and secret. That voice forms into drops, trickles Into the depths of my being, Fills me like harmonious verse..." These aren't dependent on bound volumes. The bound book often too often deforms voice and verse.

- arnon1

March 3, 2012 at 11:30am

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"The bound book often too often deforms voice and verse." I'm intrigued. Can you explain? Is there another form of delivery that can represent voice and verse in their pristine condition?

- noga1

March 3, 2012 at 11:50am

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"Is there another form of delivery that can represent voice and verse in their pristine condition?" I know nothing about "pristine condition" (loaded phrase). However the poet himself/herself declaiming their poem, other readers performing these poems and captured by the many systems of reproduction that we have. American Indians used to call books "talking leaves" and it's well known that in the ancient world writing was seen as "frozen speech." To me as I love the written word, digital media is best able to reproduce the /the word/voice especially those devises that record the written text and also offer auditory versions of same. Digital media is one more addition to the means we have of reproducing the voice. Used to be that that could only be done through writing and the technologies which preserved it. I say this as a lover of books. Sometime I will download a book to a kindle device but also keep a hard copy handy. To me it's not an either or. The digital need not replace the physical book. It can compliment it. It's the either/or thinking in LW's essay to which I responded.

- arnon1

March 3, 2012 at 12:42pm

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I don't read this piece as denying the complemetarity of books and digital books. And I don't read it as positing a necessary opposition between the two, as being rooted in too much either/or. Rather, it simply focuses and meditates on owning bound print books as such. In the form of one's library. Critiquing it as too much either/or is to my mind to criticize it for what it is not, even as there are some necessary comments by Wieseltier on digital books. They are but incidental to his theme, I would argue. After all, he knows what he is about here.

- basman

March 3, 2012 at 1:20pm

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I am a fellow book lover and enjoyed this essay. But I would agree with bassman. I don't see a conflict of having a library at home versus having one on your android cell phone or iPad. I love both options and just see them as complimentary.

- rewiredhogdog

March 3, 2012 at 1:46pm

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rewiredhog "I am a fellow book lover and enjoyed this essay. But I would agree with bassman. I don't see a conflict of having a library at home versus having one on your android cell phone or iPad. I love both options and just see them as complimentary." You don't see a conflict and I don't see a conflict, but Leon Wieseltier sees a conflict. That's what his essay is about. "THE LIBRARY, like the book, is under assault by the new technologies, which propose to collect and to deliver texts differently, more efficiently, outside of space and in a rush of time." and earlier: " There is something inhuman about the pristinity of digital publication. It lacks fingerprints. But the copy of a book that is on my shelf is my copy. It is unlike any other copy, it has been individuated; and even those books that I have not yet opened—unread books are an essential element of a library—were acquired for the further cultivation of a particular admixture of interests and beliefs, and every one of them will have its hour. The knowledge that qualifies one to be one’s own librarian is partly self-knowledge. The richness, or the incoherence, of a library is the richness, or the incoherence, of the self." Why do people have trouble accepting what a writer says without falling into wishful thinking?

- arnon1

March 3, 2012 at 2:56pm

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I repeat these above quoted parts of the piece aren't a binary argument for print books over digitation but rather a loving lament over print and bound books and a meditation on them and incidentally to that what losses digitation may augur. But I don't read Wieseltier as saying he shuns the ereaders and wouldn't be caught dead using one, but rather that something gets lost. And again his piece is not about that loss; it's about loving and owning print bound books for all the lovely reasons he describes. If there is text which supports the other reading, which is certainly arguable, I'd like to see it.

- basman

March 3, 2012 at 4:36pm

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...other text... which supports it, I mean.

- basman

March 3, 2012 at 4:41pm

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I don't know basman, the quotes present digital media as the devil. This is enough to convince me that Leon hates digital media and is threatened by it. Can you find any comment here or elsewhere that Leon made which praises digital media?

- nr106646

March 3, 2012 at 5:16pm

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I can see your point. My best argument is in trying to characterize his piece as a whole even given his less than being delighted comments on digitation. I offer the following for your consideration: First, his first long paragraph is only about his books and has nothing in it about digitation. Second, his second paragraph is centered on, clearly, the contrast between the physicality of owning books that he has interacted with, seeing digital books as kind of soulless in that comparison. But my reading of that paragraph is not to say that Wieseltier rejects ebooks--their convenience, their inexpensiveness and so on--just rather that in meditating on his bound books he emphasizes what they mean to him by contrasting their beloved qualities with pristine coldness of ebooks. And third, from his third paragraph let me offer you this quote to consider: ...And if paradise lies in the future, it will certainly not be a library. A different arrangement awaits our minds. But there is no disgrace in historical obsolescence. There is only solitude, and fewer interruptions... I'd suggest that in these words Wieseltier sees the inevitability of digitation even to the point of thinking of the kind of library he describes as a thing that will become an anachronism, not that it need disappear completely, but that people's libraries will become much less of a thing than they now are. So in contemplating that inevitability Wieseltier does not pose a binary opposition so much noting what the future is likely to hold and that, as I read him, will include him ensconced in his library but also using an ereader too. Having said all that, NR 106646, let me ask you whether you think there is something in what I say as to a reading this piece? For, as I say I can see, more clearly now than before, the other reading of it.

- basman

March 3, 2012 at 5:55pm

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"The oldest book in my library was published in 1538." This is the first sentence. It's meant to show how old books are and how new and threatening technology which is shown in the first sentence of the second paragraph. "THE LIBRARY, like the book, is under assault by the new technologies, which propose to collect and to deliver texts differently, more efficiently, outside of space and in a rush of time." His beloved library is under assault and it needs defending.

- nr106646

March 3, 2012 at 6:44pm

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It's too bad, Wieseltier didn't see fit to investigate the positive side of digital books. Everywhere I go I meet people who are reading something on a kindle or some other e-reader. Often times we compare notes and what I found is that they like me love to download free books. These are books published a hundred years ago or more. Most of the people I talk to tell me that they go for British and American fiction of the 1880's to the 1920's. Some of the books I have gotten are out of print. For example books by Israel Zangwill, or Samuel Butler (Butler isn't entirely out of print) Stevenson and Anthony Hope. The e-reader has brought about a renaissance in reading which isn't a bad thing.

- arnon1

March 3, 2012 at 7:56pm

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Ok NR 1066466, I'm happy to leave it there. Fwiiw, I love my Kindle which I've had forma few years now. And I love my IPad which I got a about four months ago. It all makes for one great complemetary continuum of reading.

- basman

March 3, 2012 at 8:19pm

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P.S. one of things I've just started downloading from Kindle and that I only found out about a few weeks ago is "Kindle Singles" which cost a buck or two. I first downloaded and read Lee Siegel's Harvard Is Burning and then Lawrence Lessig's One Way Forward, which I'm just reading now.

- basman

March 3, 2012 at 8:26pm

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There must be found a way to combine the ebook with the regular book. In my household this is an ongoing debate which can get quite heated. My partner is all for digital books and thinks the end of books as we know them is near. I get almost chocked with indignation at such a thought and provide as proof the fact that Chapters is always teeming with people who come in to browse the books and often come out carrying bags with real books in them. There is a physical need for books in my opinion. To be able to turn the pages, hold two places together, go back and forth easily. When you browse a book you can discover things in ways that are not always possible with ebooks. Books are individuals. ebooks all look the same. They are just units with some type of information. Before you read a book, you get a sense of its personality, its appearance, its typeset, its cover. ebooks are uniform. Why can't they both co-exist, each with its own virtues? Like TV and cinema. Both media are flourishing these days. Why not books?

- noga1

March 3, 2012 at 8:28pm

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"Why can't they both co-exist, each with its own virtues? Like TV and cinema. Both media are flourishing these days. Why not books?" They can. btw: very smart post, Noga.

- arnon1

March 3, 2012 at 9:16pm

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I didn't know about "Kindle singles." I want to thank the poster who brought them to my attention. I am currently reading "Lee Siegel's Harvard Is Burning" and enjoying it.

- arnon1

March 3, 2012 at 9:39pm

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Excellent post and excellent comments. Probably similar lamenting comments were made when we moved from beautiful hand-illustrated manuscripts produced by monks to Gutenberg's printing press. The following is a story about art and not books, but what the hell. It's also very corny, so if anyone wants to flame me for beings sentimental and treacly, feel free; you are correct. One of my aunts told me told me that in Chicago, during World War II, her first husband (a connoisseur of art) was proudly showing a friend some beautiful prints he had just acquired. The friend indignantly declaimed, "Why are you concerning yourself with art in a time of war?!" To which her husband declaimed, "My friend, what are you talking about war in a time of art?"

- skahn

March 3, 2012 at 10:56pm

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...I didn't know about "Kindle singles." I want to thank the poster who brought them to my attention. I am currently reading "Lee Siegel's Harvard Is Burning" and enjoying it... You're welcome.

- basman

March 3, 2012 at 11:11pm

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Thanks, Basman. Finished the article by Lee Siegel wish he were still writing for this magazine.

- arnon1

March 3, 2012 at 11:37pm

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Nice comment from a a non TNR friend who I sent W.'s piece to: ... Even though the author’s disdain of ebooks is obvious, the purpose of his article is to praise paper books more than to bury ebooks. He clearly loves the damn dusty, musty, space-consuming blocks of paper and cardboard, and who can blame him. There is something about a love of books that defies rationality. In my library I have more than two dozen books about books, usually memoirs by book publishers, bookstore owners, book editors, book collectors, all of whom talk about the irrationality and inexplicability of their obsession. I have yet to come across any encomiums to how the Kindle or the Kobo touches people’s hearts, as useful as these devices may be from time to time (and as truly remarkable as they are). The contents of books have the ability to enchant and, for many people, the enchantment extends beyond the contents to the physical object as well, whereas ebooks are content only. There is no rational reason for Wieseltier to care if he has a book in his library that was published in 1538, but he cares anyway, just as he no reason to care or even recall that he bought a book in 1969 for $1.95 I am looking now at my copy of Sarris’s Confessions of a Cultist. On the flyleaf is written, “12 Sept. 1970 / Toronto”. These brief words bring back a flood of memories – why I was in Toronto, who I was with, where the book store was (Yonge Street, near Wellesley) – and associations (that, for example, Toronto was then thickly populated with bookstores, both new and used; now it has few of either, except Chapters/Indigo). This note on the flyleaf, found anywhere but on a book, would likely have little power or significance...

- basman

March 4, 2012 at 1:49pm

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Arnon1 I agree about Siegel and still remember this piece by him here as awfully fine literary criticism: http://www.tnr.com/print/article/the-niceness-racket

- basman

March 4, 2012 at 1:56pm

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"The friend indignantly declaimed, "Why are you concerning yourself with art in a time of war?!" To which her husband declaimed, "My friend, what are you talking about war in a time of art?" This seems to be a clever kind of retort but how instructive is it? Try to fit it into the reality of pre-war Europe and explain to me what is the efficacy of doing Art and ignoring the world as it lurches into total devastation? How does it help people to stay alive or help themselves survive?

- noga1

March 4, 2012 at 6:17pm

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Why would he have to praise books if he didn't feel they were being threatened? Wieseltier's defense of printed books is cute and quaint. There is a tradition of lovers praising the bygone. Nature in the industrial revolution The horse in the time of railroads. The duelist in the time of machine guns. The silent film in the time of talkies. There is room for nostalgia and it sometimes plays the muse to great poetry: "To a questionaire that asked: waht purpose does it serve to write lyric poems in our time?" Leah Goldberg answered: "And what are we to do with the horses In this twentieth century? And what with the gazelles? and the huge stones of our Jerusalem hills?"

- arnon1

March 4, 2012 at 9:56pm

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Thanks for your comments arnon1. I have a better and more comprehensive appreciation Wieseltier's diarist entry from the comments here. I'm not sure who Leah Goldberg is--and I haven't yet checked her yet out on the web--but I love her answer.

- basman

March 5, 2012 at 5:00pm

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Leah Goldberg is a great modern Hebrew poet. She wrote and taught in Israel from the 40's on. She is considered the "mother" of modern Israeli poetry by some and Poets like Yehuda Amichai owe a debt to her.

- arnon1

March 5, 2012 at 7:16pm

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In general I don't post to convince others that my views are the correct way of reading something. But I also don't wan't to have to justify the rightness of my views. An exchange of ideas in a forum is a way of enlarging or sometimes changing one 's views indirectly. Explication is not a contest and unlike law courts (where someone's opinion is always judged to be right or wrong by a jury or judge) intellectual discourse recognizes the possibility of people being partly right or and partly wrong. Of course the more background knowledge one has the more one is able to expatiate upon a subject.

- arnon1

March 5, 2012 at 7:23pm

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from 'PRAYERS OF ATONEMENT' / Lea Goldberg You came to me to open my eyes, your body a glance a window a mirror, you arrived as night comes to the owl to show him in darkness all necessary things. And I learned: a name for every eyelash and nail for every hair on flesh uncovered, made light, and the fragrance of childhood, of resin and pine, was the sweet fragrance of our bodies' night. If there were torments – then they voyaged toward you my white sail on course toward your dark night. Now, allow me to leave, let me go, let me go to bow on the shores of forgiveness. Here is the poem as sung by Yehudit Ravitz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sc3RvAW-a4&feature=related

- noga1

March 6, 2012 at 12:06pm

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יהודית רביץ - סליחות http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sc3RvAW-a4&feature=related

- noga1

March 6, 2012 at 12:08pm

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