The Perfect Library (3)

You take the damp book with you and move towards the building, tiptoeing around the selection of books strewn across the ground. Every now and again you stop to examine one. You do not put it back where you found it.

Much the same rules apply inside as they did outside. There are books aplenty, though not in their usual places. One or two sit on a shelf –  a nod to olden days  – but they are very much in a minority. No point throwing out tradition wholesale, nor is there much to be said for clinging onto it. The Perfect Library seeks to keep readers on their toes.

There are books hanging like winter coats from hooks on the wall, or like light-bulbs from the ceiling. There are books piled up on the floor: leaning towers of literature which readers are encouraged to topple and reform. No disrespect is intended. Visitors are not encouraged to mistreat book; simply to put aside preciousness. ‘Muck in’ reads a sign on one wall. ‘Get involved’ reads another.

You jump up high, to see if you can catch one of the hanging books. You get nowhere from a stationary position, but with a short run you succeed in pulling down a hefty novel. You feel as though you have just caught a large fish. Hunting for books: you like this.

The Perfect Library makes you work – but work has rarely been this fun. Up the stairs you find a series of rooms in which books are subjected to ‘experimental treatment’. In one room they have been lined up in troughs of dried lavender. In another they have been partially submerged in warm, dungy compost.

Coming out of one room you see a book nailed to the door-frame. You pull out the nail, releasing the text. You’ll take this one back with you too. When you bring it back, one or two weeks later, you’ll find for it a new place. Maybe it can go in the garden. Up a tree, perhaps. You save the nail. It can go through another book next time.

The Perfect Library (2)

They tell me the library can be located behind the bright green gates. I wouldn’t have guessed it otherwise. There is no sign that reads ‘library’. There is no indication at all. Nothing invites you beyond those gates except your own curiosity.

Then again, why wouldn’t you be curious? Beyond the gates is a large garden; in the centre of the garden an octagonal lake. The garden is populated by flowerbeds, bushes and trees. To the left of the lake a winding path leads you towards a significantly sizeable steel structure. It strikes you as something in-between a warehouse and a greenhouse. It is, in fact, the Perfect Library.

Before you get to the building, you take a wander around the gardens. Not everything is as it seems. There are books in unexpected places. Books laid out on the grass, like sunbathers. Some faced upwards, some downwards; others on their sides, pressed down into the turf. Books sheltering in the shade of a small shrubbery, or up on the branches of trees. Books sitting on park benches, like old men, or under them, like patient dogs. Books in boats, floating across the lake. Some books in the lake, enjoying a morning swim.

You kneel down by the water’s edge, dip your hand into the glassy depths, and lift a book dripping into the sunlight. The book is well-made and hasn’t suffered unduly from its underwater adventures. You can still peel the soaked pages apart. Sometimes it’s good to get your fingers wet. So what if there’s a ribbon of pond-weed trapped between pages thirteen and fourteen? You can always use it as a book-mark…

Variety is the Spice of Active Reading

I had cause to write, the other day, of the tradition of baking books. In doing so I was, of course, extending a conversation that I have been having on this blog for several years now.  The subject of that conversation is Active Reading; the means by which the adventurous reader breaks out of the standard ‘sitting in an armchair’ mode and embraces all manner of other reading methods, whether it be reading on a bike, reading up a tree, or reading whilst hand-gliding.

The expert on this matter was none other than Johannes Speyer, my late mentor (see here for more of him). For Speyer, reading was not an activity to be taken lightly. When you take up a book, you are engaged in a serious creative activity; one which requires a certain amount of mental, even physical, preparation. There was never anything off-hand about Speyer’s reading habits. This was a man who planned ahead.

Which leads me to a more general question. How do we (or, indeed, should we) prepare for reading? Under what conditions might we enter a book – and how do those conditions affect our reading of that book? Or, to put it another way: how does one approach reading foreplay?

What do we do to books, and to ourselves, before we slide into the first page? Speyer did all manner of things to get him, and his books, ready for reading. He sprinkled them in dirt, he soaked them in wine, he hung them upside-down in smokehouses. He tied them up in ribbons, which he removed, one by one, before opening the covers. He read whilst naked, or clothed in fourteen layers of silk. He meditated for eight hours before turning his mind to a text, or set his alarm to wake him in the night in order to read a single sentence before slipping back into sleep.

Variety was the spice of Speyer’s reading habits. He stuck to nothing; resolved to trying out new methods, regardless of success. Others have been less patient, developing a practise which they repeat over and over again. One man I know goes on a five mile run before starting any novel. Another showers several times before picking up a newspaper. Still others will only read at night, under the covers, by the light of a torch. I went through a period of only reading on an empty stomach. Whatever gets you in the mood.

The Full Weight

Forty hours of reading would have had a very different effect on Speyer, for which reason he could only ever read in short bursts. He could keep going for a couple of hours, at most, pausing at intervals for necessary rests. Reading was like a sport to him; best done in forty-five minute spurts. He approached the task like a wrestler. Time was not as important as the energy expended during that time. ‘An hour’s worth of true engagement,’ he said to me once, ‘is worth a thousand hours of light reading. Reading must have weight behind it. The full weight of your mind, your body and your soul.’

The sage continues. Chapter Six, Part One.

Baked Books

There was once a fine tradition (which, for all I know, may be ongoing) of putting library books in the oven before reading them, in order to kill off the germs. Whether or not it worked is beside the point. What I liked about this process was the fact that I, as a reader, got to experience the pleasure of a hot book in my hands.

I recall my mother taking such a book out of the oven and passing it along to me as if it were a slice of baked apple pie. Some readers would have waited for the book to cool down, but I was no such reader. I liked to get going whilst the book was still steaming. It seemed to me like a glorious way to start a book. Even now I miss that feeling; of cradling a baking book in my grubby paws, turning the first few scalding pages, and of sensing the temperature lower as I eased my way into the narrative. How I miss those baked books days.

Watch the Bath Water

Last night at the Crippled Bee, Jean-Pierre Sertin leant over a sleeping man to ask me this:

‘I’ve been thinking, Georgy, about your post on tears. And what I’ve been thinking is this: how do you tell a tear stain from a bath water stain in a second-hand book?’

‘Talent, mostly,’ I reply, ‘which is to say that one trains oneself to spot such things. Tear stains, bath water stains, mineral water stains, vodka stains, rain stains: they may all look very similar, but any reader worth their lacrimal salt can tell them apart. I like to think that a tear stain softens a page; that it imbues that page with the emotion of the weeping reader. A rain stain, on the other hand, has a melancholy effect on a page. One can almost hear the pitter patter of the raindrops in the margins’.

‘Another drink?’

‘Why not?’

Five minutes later Sertin turns to me again and says:

‘Incidentally, what are your views on reading in the bath?’

‘I’m up for it,’ I admit, ‘as I am for reading in any environment, although I don’t recommend dropping books in soapy water. It makes the pages stick together.  If you can get your hands on a laminated book, however, there’s no need to fear’

‘Or,’ added Sertin, ‘if you can get your hands on one of Tosca Calbirro’s shower curtains‘

‘Well, indeed’.

Tears and Tears

In my recent discussion of the common smears and stains that readers might expect to find on second-hand texts, I forgot to mentions tears. That’s ‘tears’,the salty liquid that emanates from your eyes, as opposed to ‘tears’ in the page – although this is, you might say, an equally important way of marking one’s territory as a reader.

Let’s deal with the first ‘tears’ to begin with. How often do you find yourself crying into, or upon, a book? In the case of some poor readers, this is a frequent occurence. Yet I pity them not, What a way to respond to words! Any book that has been baptised in tears is a worthy book indeed. Of course, recognising a tear stain is no mean feat. Tears lack the punch of blood or coffee. They can easily be mistaken for water. And yet I like to think that I know when a book has felt a tear or two. There is something in the crumple of the paper. There is a certain quality to the faintly ruffled pages. And what’s that I hear? The echo of distant weeping, reverberating in the margins?

The other ‘tears’ are easier to spot. A torn page is a torn page is a torn page. It does not espect detection. And yet it shares something in common with a page which has been touched with tears. Which is to say that it has also invoked in the reader a strong physical reaction. It has driven the reader to do something dramatic. It has driven the reader to inforce themselves upon the text; to leave their mark right there on the page.

The best page, of course (and a holy grail for second-hand book lovers) is the one that has been marked by both kinds of tear. The page that makes you laugh, cry, and start ripping.

The Presence of Other Readers

In my last post, I wrote of a book in which the names of fourteen previous owners were carefully inscribed, allowing the imagination of the present reader (i.e. yours truly) to engage in charming speculations as to their personality and experience. Since then, I have been thinking about other ways in which the previous owners and readers of second-hand books reveal their presence.

For a start, there is conscious marginalia. Some readers treat margins like dogs treat lamp posts. They see this blank space on both sides of the page and think ‘Aha: this is my space! This is where I come in!’ And so they scribble all sorts of things: comments on the text, improvements on the text, drawings illustrating the text and, most frequently, thoughts that have very little to do with the text, and plenty to do with the addled mind of its reader. This is not to knock marginalia: it is a time-worn tradition, and mustn’t be frowned upon. On the other hand, a cluttered margin can be distracting. One likes to feel the presence of other readers, but one doesn’t necessarily need to know every last thing about them.

Personally I prefer unconscious marginalia: marks that were put there by other readers by mistake. I refer here to the countless smudges, stains and smells that readers tend to leave on books. These range from the common (wine, coffee, blood and semen) to the relatively rare (most of which are difficult to trace to one particular source). I have, other the years, collected several of the latter, peculiarly damaged books. One was, I can only presume, owned by a painter, for it is covered in multi-coloured stains. The other contains a series of dull smudges, which nonetheless let off the most charming smells; a different one for each page. Page thirty-four, for example, smells of lavender. Page two-hundred-and-fifteen, on the other hand, smells like smoked cheese. A book owned by a chef, perhaps?

Finally, let us speak of creases; of pages folded back, ripped, scratched, crumpled and then smoothed. An unread book is as inviting as a well-made bed. What, then, can we say of those people who favour second-hand books? That they like to crawl into other people’s unmade beds? If it is so, so it is. Reading is an intimate business at the best of times; a relationship between author and reader. Reading second or twenty-second-hand books, however, takes you one step further. It is relationship between author and multiple readers. It is an intimate, mysterious orgy.

creases

Books on Bikes

As noted in the most recent excerpt from my glorious memoir ‘Conversations with Speyer’, Johannes Speyer was probably the first critic to fully explore the concept of ‘read-cycling’ – that is, reading books on bikes.

Certainly, there are easier – and less perilous – ways of consuming literature than this. Having tried it itself, I can confirm that even the most talented ‘read-cyclers’ are likely to suffer a few bumps and bruises along the way. I know at least one man who broke his ankle whilst reading Scott Fitzgerald on a mountain bike. Another unfortunate reader was so engrossed in the latest novel by Fjona Uu that she cycled straight into a lake.

Reading and cycling are not natural bedfellows, whichever way you look at it. But that is the point of the activity. ‘Read-cycling’ puts the risk back into reading. Your experience of a book changes drastically under certain circumstances. Reading a poem in an armchair is one thing; reading that same poem whilst pedalling furiously with both feet is quite another. I heartily recommend taking this risk. (I also recommend wearing a bicycle helmet. And shin-pads. And some sort of upper-body protection).

Eyebrow elevated

My eyebrow elevated in curiosity. ‘Surely that’s somewhat dangerous? Taking a book on a bike?’

‘Of course it’s dangerous! That’s the point. Not to fall off a bicycle, per se, but to be willing to take the risk. But they misunderstood me, of course they did. They thought I was cycling along main roads, my head in a book. What a load of nonsense! I cycled through empty fields, and I only fell off half a dozen times. Later I designed a contraption which I fastened onto the handlebars to hold the book.’

Chapter Three, Part Two has just been published. Contain your excitement, if you are capable.

Readers will have to wait a few weeks until the next excerpt, owing to on-going negotiations between me and my typist.

Shake, shake, shake

‘I have always maintained that a good book needs a good shaking’ (Johannes Speyer)

More on this later…

Handle with Carelessness

In his latest novel, The Land that Even the Land Forgot, Marshall Krinshek introduces a character called Lorna Effelwager, a part-time baker and full-time consumer of books. Effelwager’s approach to literature is, to say the least, a somewhat violent one. She doesn’t ever go so far as to ever eat books, granted, but only rarely does a book survive her readings without pages being stained, spines collapsing or whole sections falling out. ‘For her,’ writes Krinshek, ‘reading a book was a battle from beginning to end. A book was an opponent with whom she fought to the death. To say the books suffered was only half of it. Effelwager herself rarely came out of the ordeal without multiple wounds. At least four books had taken her to hospital. One book almost bled her to death’.

We can all learn from Effelwager, I think. A book is often a beautiful object, no doubt, but one can handle a book with too much care. The point, after all, is to read the damn thing – not to get to the end with the spine intact. What matter if a page rips, or if one spills wine on chapter four? So long as the words get through to the reader, what more do you need? The rest is preciousness: needless, pointless, preciousness.

Technology presents further difficulties. I have no great problem with the ‘kindle’, per se. But the name of it never ceases to worry me. It is redolent, I think, of comfort. It sounds like ‘kindness’ and ‘candle’. It is a warm, friendly word, which brings to mind a cosy armchair and a gentle, flickering fire. The perfect reading environment, some might say. Others, however, would disagree. Reading is not an act of kindness. It is not a gentle activity: something to while away the winter evenings. Reading is a matter of life and death. Reading, as Effelwager would have it, is a great battle. You versus the page. And may the best one win.

On the Melting of Magic

Somewhere in his Confessions of a Young Man, the late Irish novelist and turnip look-a-like George Moore warns us against re-reading books that have touched us during a certain period in our lives. We are receptive to particular books at particular moments: this can hardly be denied. If you catch a book in the wrong moment, its magic has a habit of melting. If you re-read a book hoping to recapture a good moment, it is far more likely that you will receive nothing more than a faint, flattened echo of that moment. A book that charmed us in our adolescence will only disappoint us in our middle-age. So why re-read? It is but a recipe for disillusionment, no?

Just so. I have re-read many a book that thrilled me as a young man only to find it drained of its vitality – or over-indulging in the same – the second time around. This would seem to be a shame. But does it follow that I should thus steer away from the business of re-reading, or is there not a richer experience lurking without the shadows of sadness? A book changes on re-reading: this is something to be cherished, surely, rather than regretted? Johannes Speyer would have never have shirked the task of re-reading on the basis that it might ruin an earlier experience; that a moment of magic might melt before his eyes. Let the magic melt, he’d have said! A book gives us different things at different moments. Not all of these things are pleasant, but that doesn’t mean that one should toss the book aside and dream of happier times. Read, re-read and re-read again. Keep giving yourself to a book and it will keep giving things back.

Along With the Fading Light

Yesterday evening I started reading a short story. I was seated on the floor by the window in the room where we usually eat. The light of a slowly dying sun fell lazily through the glass, illuminating the turning pages.

About half-way through the story, as the sun entered its final throes, my wife entered the room and enquired whether I wanted a light turning on. The increasingly dim light was putting a strain on my eyes, I could not deny it, and yet I said ‘no’. I was adamant, I was insistent, I was direct. I did not want a light turning on.

Why? The answer is simple. I had started the story by the sun, and I was determined to finish it by the sun. Just as there is a narrative inside every book, so is there one outside. The appearance of a harsh, unnatural light would destroy the atmosphere. It would intrude upon the reading experience in a most unpleasant way. No, I had to go on as I had started. I would continue reading by the moon, if need be (need didn’t be: I completed the story shortly after sunset).

Now, I would be lying if I said that this was the first time this had happened to me. As a young man I had a very similar experience, which I recounted to my late mentor Johannes Speyer – a well-known expert on reading and its processes. He was, of course, deeply interested in my case – and praised me for my resistance to the intrusion of light. He warned me, nonetheless, against making a habit of reading in this way. ‘You have learnt something from your experiences,’ he explained, ‘but the lesson will be lost if you repeat it over and over. Expand the experience. Learn a new lesson’.

What he meant was that, wonderful as it was to read with the fading light, this was only one way of getting something out of a story. The next step was obvious. I should re-read the story, but in different circumstances. This time, I should anticipate the death of the sun by turning on the light before I started. The following evening I might consider mixing the two experiences: start with no light, only to switch one on mid-way. The evening after that, I might try the opposite: start with light and finish in the gloom. After that, I should consider re-reading the story in the morning, then the afternoon, then the middle of the night, then…

Speyer’s system, needless to say, was an exhaustive one. ‘Read, re-read, and re-read again’, was his mantra, which is a remarkable idea in theory, but a tricky prospect in practice. Yesterday evening I started reading a short story. Will I be re-reading it this evening? We shall see…

Upturn the Nesting Swan!

A nesting swan reminds me/ of a woman reading quietly

Thus spake Alma Koks in her 1967 poem ‘Swoman’. I know many people who would not approve of these lines, for a variety of reasons. The one that most readily comes to mind, however, is Johannes Speyer, whose polemical essay from the same year (‘Upturn the Nesting Swan!’, collected two years later in Seven Essays) vehemently rejects the idea that readers, male or female, should conflate reading with nesting. ‘A book is not an egg that we nurse under warm wings’, Speyer writes. ‘No, a book is a living thing. It needs air. It needs to be taken out for walks. It needs to be treated like the active object it is’.

And so Active Reading was born…