Bound Treasures
September 4, 2007

I've been a collector of books for as long as I can remember. Every place I have ever lived in, from the first basement apartment to the two large houses I own today, has been filled with books. Books to me are little treasures: ink and paper treasure chests that can give what life never gives enough of: pleasure and power. Pleasure from the beauty. Power from the knowledge.

It is not unusual for someone coming into my house or office for the first time to look at all the books and say, "You've read all of these?"

Why would they think that? Why surround yourself with books you've already read? Having a library of read books is like having a bank vault filled with empty money bags.

My library is 90% unread books or read books I intend to read again. Books I'm done with are given away or tossed in the garbage. I don't have space enough for them. New books are always coming in. Space is limited.

A library is meant to be a bank, not a mauseleum. Its contents represent what is possible in the future, not what has happened in the past. Every library should have some great books, some Shakespeare and Austen and Bukowski. And every book lover should make an effort to read a great book now and then. Life is too short for too many bad ones.

There are two ways that a book will find its way into my library:
1. A laudatory book review by a smart reader or
2. A good binding and cover and title.

When I read a book that has been intelligently recommended I read it with good intention. I want to get from it what the critic did and maybe something more. Oftentimes I feel like I do. But just as often I am disappointed.

If my batting average is 500 with recommended books, it is much worse with books I've selected because of the cover. There is clearly no connection between the skill it takes to name and decorate a book (which is the publisher's skill) and the skill it takes to write one. Still, I persist in bringing home these little volumes of found art. Because when I am right, the pleasure is especially sweet.

I had that pleasure this week. Looking for a reference in the bookshelf behind my office credenza I came across a medium-sized book titled Conversation: A History of a Declining Art. I pulled it out and studied it for a while. I had no idea where it came from but judging from how much I liked the look of it: its size and thickness, the quality of the cover stock, the font used for the title and the image (a hand colored print of parakeets), I figured I must have judged this book by its cover.

What did I expect from it? It's hard to know. Some pleasure in the writing, in the practiced prose of an intelligent author. Some memorable details about conversation's history, some facts or figures I could use later on in my own conversations. I probably hoped too to understand what was meant by conversation. How is it different from talking, for example?

I was on my way to Las Vegas to root for one of my Jiu Jitsu trainers, who was fighting the undercard in the UFC. I threw the book in my briefcase, thinking there would be little chance I could get to it, since I had plenty of writing to do on the plane. But I picked the book up during takeoff and didn't put it down until the plane landed. I had finished the 330-page book in the time it took to fly from Fort Lauderdale to Las Vegas. And it was a very good book! I walked off the plane with a very good feeling.

To be completely honest, my hope for great prose styling was not realized. The author, Stephan Miller, was not as skillful a wordsmith as I had hoped, but he knew his subject and he filled his book with interesting facts and figures. And his big idea - that cultured conversation was necessary for a democratic government - surprised me.

Like the writers Miller criticized in his book, I'd always thought of cultured conversation as frivolous, something effete intellectuals did while sipping Port smoking tiparillos. In fact, Miller argued, conversation is the highest and most useful sort of communication. When done well and properly it makes otherwise mediocre people better.

I'm eager to think about this some more and to find some way to work it into my writing. The entire history of the thinking world, Miller has convinced me, can be looked at as a debate between those who loved in conversation and those who feared it.

You wouldn't think that reading a pretty book on the history of conversation would have much relevance today, but it does. Spend a moment and think about how the current political world is broken in two this way: with George Bush and Islamic terrorists and Christian fundamentalists on one side and Ron Paul and the ACLU and half of Hollywood on the other.

But that's the essay yet to be written. This one is about collecting books and reading books and letting them make your life richer and stronger. What books linger in your house or office, waiting to be read? What pleasures have you deferred? What power?

Don't tell me you "don't have time to read." Don't say, "I do all the reading I want to at the office." Don't argue that you are an "action person" or dyslexic or depressed. There are no good reasons not to read. And no future wealth for you if you don't have a personal library.

posted by M. Masterson @ 3:47 PM,

2 Comments:

At 3:22 PM, Blogger T.C. said...

First, let me say I admire how our Congress partakes in cultured conversation necessary for a democratic government. What seeming divisiveness exists between political parties and philosophical currents appears more a product of media manipulation for the sake of creating such sensations as are necessary for building a captive audience that can be marketed to, pure and simple.

Americans have FAR MORE in common than one might think judging from the media overkill playing up political differences. Likewise, a fair number of Americans are, indeed, wise to the "divide and conquer" game.

I quite agree that every library should have a fair number of great books. Life IS too short for too many bad ones!

Rather than list the number of mediocre books I recently have read, I wish to share something with all the copywriters out there in Michael Masterson Land...

This, from Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."

Upon having convinced many a friend and passer-by of the pure joy of whitewashing a fence...

"Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain."

Might this be why so many people are in tune with the promise of internet marketing?

Might this also be why so few people recognize how some of the best things in life are free?

 
At 5:59 PM, Blogger Nettie said...

Two of the best books I've ever read:

"Boy's Life" by Robert McCammon
"Body and Soul" by Frank Conroy

 

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