For the true bibliophile the book is sacrosanct and destroying books is as monstrously unthinkable as a pet lover dropping their pussy cat into a wheelie-bin. Or is it? This snap is from the Honesty Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye ("the town of books") a kind of sump where books that have nowhere else to go end up. Stacked in the open air and exposed to the weather, they are battered and warped and abandoned and, if you care to have one, you drop a small sum in the honesty box. Why not just pulp the lot and start again with freshly recycled paper, blank pages, awaiting the arrival of new text?
Well, I guess that if you did that you would risk the loss of many good books which would otherwise be available for rediscovery. I review a lot of forgotten literature on my blog (in fact have just finished a book called "Forlorn Sunset" by Michael Sadler which is a case in point). One of the major themes that emerges clearly is that it is remarkably easy for excellent works of literature to fall out of the canon entirely - for all of the "lost literature" republished by presses such as Persephone and Capuchin - there are many many others which are interesting and beautifully constructed reads. The most likely places to happen upon such books is the kind of place that you describe and I think that it is less a hell than an opportunity to stray off the path of conventional reading. I can't help but feel that it also protects diversity on one level. If we started pulping books that had not sold in a certain time frame, the recycled paper would only be used for print run 100 of one of the many second rate novels or ghastly celeb biographies that the publishing industry seem to churn out. So, I say hurrah for odd books that nobody's heard of and that may take a little while to sell...
ReplyDeleteHannah, I didn't mean to say that books should be struck from the record and I am an addict of obscure out of print titles which is why I was in Hay in the first place. I suppose I just meant that books that have reached the end of their life and started to disintegrate (some in the Honesty Bookshop are actually rotting) might be put out of their misery. Most of these are in such a state that it would be difficult to enjoy reading them. But, as the mad pastor in the US has just proved, books are very potent symbols as well as actual objects.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if I was thinking of those marvellous opening words of Thomas Traherne's "The Centuries": 'An Empty Book is like an Infant's Soul, in which any Thing may be Written. It is Capable of all Things, but containeth Nothing. I hav a Mind to fill this with Profitable Wonders...'
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess if they are beyond reading then maybe... but I am just a little worried about the idea of euthenasia for books - wherever would it lead?!
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