Inspiring Older Readers

posted on 31 Jul 2018

A Passion For Books edited by Dale Salwak

Published in 1999, this lively collection of relatively short and mercifully non-academic essays about the impact of books on the lives of critics and writers was clearly commissioned to respond to the then growing belief that electronic media would inevitably replace the printed book. That’s no longer the orthodoxy most people work with as e-readers decline in popularity and the printed book is looking healthier than ever. Some of the praise for the physical book’s renaissance must be down to the way publishers responded to the digital threat – the recent years have been a golden age of book design – but what this collection of essays shows us is that there is something inherently special about the physical book that can never be replicated electronically.

Dale Salwak, Professor of English at Southern California’s Citrus College (sic), has edited the collection which he’s split into three sections: essays that take a broad overview of books and book collecting; reflections on a book or books that have been significant for specific readers or writers; finally, ruminations on the future of the book. Perhaps understandably given that the collection is almost 20 years old, the latter section is now, for me at least, the least significant or engaging.

The collection kicks off with one of the best essays in the whole book, The Pleasures of Reading by Joseph Epstein, in which he thinks about what makes a book special.

“What wide reading teaches is the richness, the complexity, the mystery of life.”

 I like the way in which he explores what he thinks of as the transformative experience of books – teaching us to trust emotion and instinct rather than training us to be remorselessly logical and structured:

“ People who have read with love and respect understand that the larger message behind all books, great and good and even some not so good as they might be, is, finally, cultivate your sensibility so that you may trust your heart.”

One of the really lovely things about this book is that the editor has not fallen into the trap of just extolling the virtues of reading but he’s also focussed on the issue of the physical book both as a conveyor of ideas but also as an object of desire in its own right. Books In My Life by G. Thomas Tanselle exemplifies this perfectly by mounting a robust defence of book collecting and arguing that book collectors who buy books for their beauty or rarity rather than their content have nothing to apologise for.

“ …it is well understood that objects play a crucial role in helping individuals to create stability in their lives. For me, books are the objects, more than any other, that have a unifying force, joining inner and outer worlds and remaining as present reminders of past events.”

Collecting books that you don’t necessarily read but which you archive, he argues, can be an essential contribution to future academic understanding of the publishing world but beyond the external value there are overwhelming personal reasons to build your own collections:

“ As I look around me at the books I have lived with, understanding their contents, their place in intellectual history and in manufacturing history, their relationships to each other and to me, I know that I have mastered a small portion of the physical world and have given myself a framework for exploring other parts of it.”

The essays in section two of the book which give individual authors a chance to write about the book or books that have helped shape their lives are, as you might guess, variable in their quality but you’ll find interesting contributions for  Jeffrey Meyers writing about Thomas Mann, Mary Gordon on her father’s books and the book editor’s own contribution about his fascination for Philip Larkin.

As a book obsessive I didn’t mind reading through the collection from beginning to end but most normal people won’t want to do that – so pick it up and put it down as you see fit. You’ll find copies of this on the second hand market for very little and I can’t believe that if you’re reading this you will struggle to find plenty here to keep you riveted.

 

Terry Potter

July 2018