Roberto Bolano, 2666 – hardcover

Roberto Bolano, Nazi Literature in the Americas

Roberto Bolano, The Skating Rink

Elias Canetti, The Play of the Eyes – hardcover

Colette, Flowers and Fruit – hardcover

Colette, The Ripening Seed – clothbound

Gilles Deleuz, Nietzsche and Philosophy

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for The Brothers Karamazov – clothbound

Ralph Ellison, Flying Home and Other Stories – hardcover

Carlos Fuentes, The Years with Laura Diaz – hardcover

John Gardner, Michelson’s Ghosts – clothbound, first edition

William Godwin, Fleetwood

Graham Greene, Doctor Fischer of Geneva – clothbound

Graham Greene, The Human Factor – hardcover

Martin Heidegger, Off the Beaten Path

Ernest Hemingway, Under Kilimanjaro – clothbound, first edition

Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls – hardcover

Milan Kundera, Ignorance – hardcover

Milan Kundera, Immortality – hardcover

Doris Lessing – The Marriage Between Zones Three, Four, and Five – clothbound, first edition

Mario Vargas Llossa, The Bad Girl – hardcover

Mario Vargas Llossa, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service

Mario Vargas Llossa, The Cubs and Other Stories – hardcover

Mario Vargas Llossa, Death in the Andes

Mario Vargas Llossa, The Green House

Mario Vargas Llossa, The Language of Passion

Mario Vargas Llossa, Making Waves

Mario Vargas Llossa, The War of the End of the World

Mario Vargas Llossa, The Way to Paradise

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera – hardcover

Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing – hardcover

V. S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival – hardcover

Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural

Ben Okri, Infinite Riches – hardcover

Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel – a gorgeous, clothbound, illustrated edition

Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands – hardcover

Salman Rushdie, Luka and the Fire of Life – hardcover

Jose Saramago, All the Names

Jose Saramago, The Elephant’s Journey – hardcover

Mark C. Taylor, Nots

Paul Theroux, Patagonia Revisited – clothbound

Ivan Turgenev, The Torrents of Spring – clothbound, illustrated

Some of these may seem like odd choices for me, but I was often choosing on the basis of price and edition, and I am well pleased with the additions to my library.

The decision to make this purge came on me very suddenly as I was looking over my shelves the other day, an epiphany of sorts, on an admittedly minor scale.  I realized that my criteria for reading has changed so much over the decade since I completed by formal education that I no longer have any interest in the kinds of books that I once valued highly enough to collect.  However long a life I might live, I reflected, I would never read these anthologies of critical writing on Shakespearean tragedy or these collections of essays on the discontents of postmodernism, so I started to pull from the shelves all those books that no longer had a place in my reading practice, the books that are mere parasites on better books, the endless production of literary academia.

I no longer have time for these books in my reading practice, and I have long believed that a bookshelf should be an index to the one who has filled it.  So I purged, and I weeded, and  I pruned, and in the process I think perhaps I also pruned some dead branches from myself.

Saul Bellow’s Herzog – I disliked this book very much for the first hundred pages or so.  I could recognize in it a certain virtuosity, but I identified with the position of the protagonist so little that his problems, his petty money troubles, his failed romances, his mediocre academic career, all seemed like mere whining to me.  As the book progressed, however, particularly as the narrative began to incorporate the Ludeyville house as a kind of metaphor for the protagonist’s condition, I began to find some real pleasure in it.  I will never rank it very highly in my personal canon, but I can see how it might rank very highly for other people, and I would certainly not warn people away from it.

Italo Calvino’s The Road to San Giovanni – Calvino writes in the ways I want to read.  I can name more than a few authors who have written better novels but none who writes in such constantly beautiful, elegant, marvelous prose.  I can read him endlessly, whatever his subject.  I suspect that his grocery lists have more aesthetic value than anything I will ever write.

Colette’s The Pure and the Impure – This was my first exposure to the quasi-biographical and famously controversial writing of Colette.  The book was originally published in 1932, and it produced public outcry for its unambiguous and sympathetic portrayal of same -sex relationships and sexuality, particularly between women.  The appeal of the book, however, is not primarily in its more salacious elements.  Though Colette never shies from frank descriptions of sexuality, she never drifts into mere pornography either, and the strength of her writing comes from her ability to portray a depth of emotion and humanity and experience in her characters as they struggle to live their lives in a world that has little or no place for them.  The book is sometimes amusing, often poignant, always thoughtful, and it is characterized by a kind of gentleness and languor that make its reading a real pleasure.

Georges Perec’s A Void – Though I would not count A Void as a great novel in purely literary terms,  it is still nothing short of a technical masterpiece.  It is a full-length novel that is written entirely without the letter ‘e’, a punning, teasing, taunting novel that plays with ideas of absence and that amounts to a truly remarkable piece of writing.  Just as remarkable, perhaps even more so, is that the book has been translated into English, also without the latter ‘e’, by Gilbert Adair, which is a serious achievement in translation considering the rigid constraints  of the source text.  Whatever its literary shortcomings, therefore, and they are several, it is truly a wonder to read.

Slow and Careful Reading – It is better to read one book very well than to read many poorly.  Being well-read should never be confused with being much-read.  Many people read much without ever reading at all.  There are fewer people who truly read well.  Though they may perhaps read less, they are the readers who gain from their practice.

Good reading approaches the text slowly, attentively, with an openness to what might be thought through it, with an openness to being interrupted by reflection and by conversation.  There is no substitute for this time and for this attention.  It permits what is not us, what is other than us, to approach us through the text.  The text is not itself of the greatest importance.  It is the site through which we are encountered by what is of the greatest importance, and its value is in how well it provokes us to be so encountered.

Good reading leaves its mark on the text.  It writes in the margins, and it turns the corners of pages, and it notes its favourite passages with bookmarks, even if it does these things only figuratively.  A book that is well read is stained with fingerprints and coffee stains, even if only in metaphor.  It is well used.  It is a tool that has become worn to fit the mind that is reading it.

Thoughtful and Patient Reflection – It is necessary to reflect on reading whenever something calls through the text, whenever the text provokes, but also regularly, as a discipline.  To reflect is to engage in the exercise of thinking as if it were a religious act, as if it was the rule of a monastic order, in order that it might sometimes become a spiritual act, beyond the rule of any order.  It is to order one’s mind so that it might be prepared more fully for what will come to disorder it entirely.

Reflection is always accompanied by a writing that is not a writing, a secret and secretive writing, notes and jottings, incoherences and incomprehensibles, a writing that will never appear as a writing to be read, a writing that remains hidden and unread.  It is a writing that is also a rereading,  a returning to the places in the text that need mastication, rumination, regurgitation.  This writing chews the text like a cow chews its cud, again and again.  It digests the text, gains sustenance from the text, takes the text into itself, makes the text a part of itself.

Reflection is a wondering and a wandering.  It follows the text to other texts and returns them to where they began. It takes its time as it wanders.  It does not run or even walk.  It strolls.  It ambles.  It perambulates.  It wallows in its journey through the text, follows it wherever it leads.  It is not concerned with a destination, at least not now, not yet.  It leaves destinations to the future and reserves for the present a certain forgetfulness of what the future might demand.   Its purpose is to see what might be encountered now on its path through the text, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, not to create a coherent text of its own.

This activity, this reflection, this meditation, is essential.   It must not be hurried.  It is not brainstorming or some other such technique.  It is an openness to the text, a willingness to give the text time and space, a discipline of doing the text justice.

Learned and Leisurely Conversation – Conversation is not mere group discussion.  It is not mere argument.  It is not mere chatter.  It is a coming together through the text, where the text becomes a site where we catch sight of one another.  There are always too few of these opportunities to converse, always.  They must be treasured when they arise, guarded jealously, so that they are not overwhelmed by the many things that are less important but more pressing.

Conversation involves a careful listening of one another.  It considers what the other has to say.  It considers what it will reply before it replies.  It takes its time, so it is not afraid to pause.  It is willing to say less and have it be meaningful than to say much and to have it be mere chatter. It knows that it is better to give things their proper time.

Conversation is being on the way together, is helping one another along the way.  It turns us in the same direction, puts us shoulder to shoulder.  Though we may turn our eyes to one another, our feet are always on the path together, following the same path together, so that we might draw nearer to what it is we are seeking.  Whatever disagreements we may have between us, conversation always agrees, before all else, to walk the path together.

Conversation is also sitting at the table together, breaking bread together, recognizing what is other to us through the breaking of bread.  It is the invitation to the table and the acceptance of the table.  It is sitting face to face.  It is having more between us than words.  It is also having between us a giving, and a hospitality, and an invitation, and an acceptance.  It allows us to digest each other’s words like bread and wine, to make each other’s words a part of us.

Conversation never ends.  It is always being suspended for a time, but it is never ended, except by death.

Writing -  Only in the context of these disciplines of reading and reflection and conversation, only in the context of these practices, that writing can begin.  Indeed, these disciplines will produce writing, inevitably.  Though this writing may take many forms, it will become a necessity in the one who reads and reflects and converses.  It will become, not a task to be undertaken, not an ideal to be fulfilled, but a hunger to be satisfied, a thirst to be quenched, a lust to be satiated.

This is what there is to be learned.  This is the learning that teaching must let be.  This is the learning that teaching must let be learned.

I found several books:
Michael Polanyi’s The Tacit Dimension;
Elias Canetti’s Auto-da-Fe;
Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Muses;
Emmanuel Levinas’ Alterity and Transcendence;
Emmanuel Levinas’ Humanism of the Other;
Emmanuel Levinas’ Entre Nous: Thing-of-the-Other; and
Martin Heidegger’s What is Called Thinking?

I also found a few documentaries:
Alex Gibney’s Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson;
Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers’ Lioness;
Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson’s A Man Named Pearl;
Katy Chevigny’s Election Day; and
Gary Weimberg and Catherine Ryan’s Soldiers of Conscience.

Interestingly, the conversation at dinner that night, between Dave and David and Mike and I, turned largely around the function of the printed book and of the digital text as forms for creating, publishing, reading, and archiving text, and it is strange for me to think that my experience yesterday is one that my children may never share.  It is entirely possible that they will never need or want or even be able to have books in the way that I do, replacing the blocks that I walked and the shops that I browsed and the books that I purchased with a few moments of search and download on whatever digital interface has become standard for them.  I admit this possibility, and I even admit the further possibility that this shift might reflect an advance according to some measure of efficiency, but I cannot help but feel that they will have lost something beautiful.

Today, however, I am making an exception, because today Dave Humphrey introduced me to Readability, a bookmarklet that allows users to remove the clutter, the adds, the sidebars, the themes, from any webpage, rendering the page’s text according to preferences that the reader selects.  It is one of those almost too simple ideas, and yet, for anyone who reads as much online as I do, it makes life so much easier. With a single click on any page, I can have just the text I want in a reasonable font size that runs the entire width of the screen. With a second click I can print or email it.

I have wanted this for years without even knowing what it was that I wanted, and so I am sharing it with those of you who have not yet discovered it yourselves.  I may not be qualified to write on technology, but I know what I like, and I like Readability a lot.

As I expected from what I knew of my friend’s father, much of the collection was not really to my taste.  There were boxes and boxes and shelves and shelves of trash war novels, cheap thrillers, biographies, science textbooks, old field guides, histories of the English royal family, and so on.  I did make a few worthwhile discoveries however.  There was a whole section of illustrators in which I found a book dedicated to the work of Howard Pyle, the artist and author that I recently discovered and enjoyed so much.  I also took from this section a number of books illustrated by Gustave Dore, who is one of my favourite artists: Perrault’s Fairy Tales; London: A Pilgrimage; Illustrations for Don Quixote; Illustrations for Rabelais; Illustrations for the Bible; Fables of La Fontaine; and The Divine Comedy.

I also found a section of books for children, all in hardcover and beautifully illustrated, from which I took Howard Pyle’s Pepper and Salt, Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Hugh Lofting’s The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle and Doctor Dolittle’s Caravan, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Father Christmas Letters.

The rest of my finds included books by Desmond Morris, Robert A. Heinlein, Rudyard Kipling, Farley Mowat, Simone de Beauvoir, Goethe, Mark Twain, Pearl S. Buck, Norman Mailer, Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler, and E.J. Pratt, among others, an incongruous group of authors that the other book-hunters were usually more than willing to let me claim.

Of course, in any sizable collection of used books there will be at least a few of those impromptu bookmarks that so inexplicably amuse me, and this one was no exception.  I discovered two sets of drying wildflowers, left to press who knows how long ago and then forgotten, a flattened bit of cigarette foil, some torn tissue paper, a slip of notepaper with math sums on one side and a doodle on the other, a newspaper clipping about Richard Adams, “Watership Makes a Memorable Saga” by Sandra Hunter, and three newspaper clippings about Farley Mowat:  “The Perfect Writer to Plead for Great Whales” by Kildare Dobbs; “Peace on Earth, Good Will” by Gale Garnett; and “The Tragic Parable of Mowat’s Whale” by William French.

The bourbon was also good.

I have written about this book in the past.  I mentioned it first in a post on database as narrative limit and then again more recently in a post on the nature of the digital object, and I have been forcing myself to read it, in fits and starts between other things, for something like a year now.  It was given to me by my friend Don Moore almost two years ago, and I made two or three ineffectual attempts to begin it before I really got started in the first place, so I feel that I have given it every opportunity to engage me.  If it has failed to do so, I can now put it aside without any damage to my conscience.

My difficulty with the book has nothing to do with its argument.  Though I do often find myself disagreeing with Manovich, I generally enjoy reading a position that challenges my own, so long as it is thoughtful and well articulated, which Manovich’s generally is.  The trouble is that his writing is utterly lacking in style and rhetorical interest.  Manovich may be intelligent, and he may be insightful, and he may offer an interestingly aesthetic approach to the question of how to understand new media, but he is an awful writer, period.  His diction is painfully deliberate.  His sentence structure is monotonous.  His tone reminds me of nothing so much as the textual equivalent of any adult who happens to talk in a Peanuts cartoon.  Every time I begin to read him I am seized by the insurmountable urge to read something, anything, else.

Perhaps the real problem, however, and I am willing to concede this in Manovich’s defense, is that I have been spoiled by the thinkers that I usually read.  To read Jacques Derrida, for example, or Emmanuel Levinas, or Jean-Luc Marion, or Roland Barthes, or Ivan Illich, to name only a few of my favourites, is to be immersed in a aesthetic experience as well as an intellectual one.  These writers attend as much to their language and to their style as they do  their content, the one reinforcing the other.  Perhaps it is only their virtuosity that has made Manovich so unendurable to me.  I will admit the possibility.  Even so, I am finished with Manovich.