In Defense of Books

I fear for books. In our modern times where entire educations are going to be based on tablet computers and there may never again be such a thing as an “outdated textbook” I fear for the days of the page. I have a shelf devoted to 6X9 inch wads of paper whose only function in this world is to tell a story. They sit from this shelf, caddy cornered from the desk where I do most of my work, and they rain down stories.

By design, books do so much more than just tell a story. At the base of it they are loaded with the imaginative cues printed upon the page by the publisher. Books are slim enough to carry in a bag, stuff in a back pocket, read at home or abroad. Yes, the book tells you a story, but does it not also acquire the story of YOU in the process?

Most libraries are now managed through the use of servers and barcode scanners. Every book carries a unique bar code assigned by the library district which can be scanned, a magnetic strip to prevent theft, and absolutely no cues of where that book as been.

Through most of my primary education the school libraries were managed through the “old method”: a card lived in the front pocket which was stamped with the date and the reader’s name was written down. This record was permanent and public. You could imagine the journey of that particular book having been to the house of another student where sat on their desk or nightstand. It acquired flecks of Thursday night’s dinner to forever be embossed into the pages or suffered at the anxious jaws of the family dog.

A few years ago the Denver Public Library had a problem with bed bugs. One of their patrons had a bad infestation at their home, which led to an equally epic infestation at the library and, in turn, the homes of whoever checked out the same books after “Reader/Patient Zero.” Ancient books and portions of literary series had to be burned, chemicals had to be sprayed for weeks on end to manage the problem. Nothing ties a community better together than a group of people who have had to suffer the wrath of bed bugs – assuring me that there was still a community to be experienced through books. I’m reminded of the poster hanging in my 8th grade health classroom – “Every time you have sex, you are having sex with every person your partner has slept with.”

Books, however, can develop something far more interesting than a sexual history.

A few weeks ago I checked out Richard Russo’s Straight Man from the Denver Public library. Through its decade of existence the book had deteriorated into a less than flattering condition. The pages were barely held together by the creased and pinched book jacket. Every third page was dog eared, fingerprints of chocolate and peanut butter were on the corners that survived folding. Forgotten bookmarks from previous readers fell out of the pages that had been spared dog-ears and peanut butter. One bookmark was a clothing tag from Eddie Bauer for a men’s half zip pullover, brown in color, with the words “Plays well with others” written on one side (of the tag, not the pullover). Another marker a full blown thank you card, written to Carla, from Lindsay Swanson about a favor that I have yet to decipher. On the last page of the book, on the flyleaf, someone had constructed a brief, yet oddly brilliant index of a what had to be the most misogynistic book in the world. However, this index had nothing to do with Straight Man, but I would love to read the book that does.

These markings, these folds, these bookmarks; They all served as subtle reminders that this particular book had been places and had been experienced by people I’ve never met before. When I read a book, I am reading that book with every reader that book had before me – a checkout list of hookups, a sexual history.

On the topic of bizarre sexual histories – I recently took the Rob Gordon approach to autobiographically reorganizing my books. I viewed each read as if it only stood as a symbol of a ex lover or a jilted past. Why did I acquire certain books? Were they suggested to me by a person I thought had important stock in my life? Maybe they first appeared on a required reading list for a literature class, only to realize I couldn’t part with them after the end of the semester?

As much as I talk about books, I don’t actually own as many of them as people expect – maybe 50, 60 tops.  I spent years living a nomadic lifestyle. Every time I trade apartments I end up giving away about half of my collections just so I wouldn’t have to haul them down flights of stairs. Having to physically carry something as valuable as a book forces one to evaluate the importance of that volume in their collection, and whether or not you can justify passing it along to the next reader. A book should mean just as much to the next reader as it did to me.

As I gave the Gordon-gauge to the collection that had survived the years with me I was left with a majority of books that I bought on a whim and a select few that I will never be able to get rid of.

One used book store find was a well-weathered copy of Richard Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces – a book about physics concepts from one of the worlds greatest physics professors. The pages are flat out brown, water damaged, and most of the spine is holding together by the grace of scotch tape. This book reminds me of everything I should remember about my grandfather. He was a scientific mind: making me ask questions about my methods, the world around me. While most of our modern world prints their twitter handles on their business cards, he printed his HAM radio operator handle on his.

He died when I was 14, maybe 15. Rightfully so, I feel as if I barely knew the guy. If he was around, he’d be the man I talk to about growing up in a time when the entire world is at war. IF he were still around, I probably wouldn’t have such a hatred of mathematics. Yet, this slim, heavily written volume of Feynman reminds me everything about him.

As a freshman in college, I became infatuated with the cinematic stylings of the 80s. In particular: Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I loved the early acting styles of Sean Penn, the iconic scene featuring Pheobe Cates slow-motion swimsuit removal, and the fact that I knew of about 7 different cuts of this movie existed. Sure, there was the sex-drug-and-profanity free story told on basic cable during prime time, but there are also several different DVD/Laserdisc versions that feature extended scenes, entire new scenes loaded with fictional gossip, and a full frontal sex scene that is not for the faint of heart.

The movie was graphic, rude, and an inappropriately accurate portrayal of high school – so the source had to be even gnarlier. Crowe’s epic journey into renegade journalism was optioned and produced before the book had a chance to gain any market value. The book had only experienced, to my knowledge, one printing. A the time ancient, slightly used copies of these books were for sale on eBay for upwards of $400.

This was all in the same semester I was experiencing all of the stupid maneuvers that a freshman living on campus, in the dorms, usually experiences. Deviantly drinking stolen cases of light beer, traveling across campus to the one dorm room we knew had decent weed, and doing everything in my power to fuck something – anything, really – that had a pulse.

This power came to fruition the evening before winter break when I accidentally, or maybe on purpose, slept with my best friend’s girlfriend. We had all met only a few months before when the semester started, enjoyed each others company, but I felt we hadn’t really developed the kind of life-long bond which could easily be ruined by something as petty as sex.

A few hours after my promoted infidelity my friend came to my door with his Christmas gift to me – a copy of Fast Times in mint condition. The cover featuring Stacey in a skirt and lacy socks and a sticker pasted on the cover which read “Soon to Be a Major Feature from Universal Studios.” A day later he found out that I had shamelessly violated his trust and everything went to hell. It was my first experience of when a girl comes between to guys. Sadly, it wouldn’t be the last for a long time. That night I read the book – the book that had never been read in it’s 20 plus years of existence – until I fell asleep on it, breaking the spine and forever ruining it’s value.

Years later I’m continuing to develop new, worthless relationships which result in the girl I had been crushing over for month’s on end is now drunk, lit, wearing little more than her socks; sat lewdly on my bed while fingering the spines of the books I kept on the windowsill of my downtown apartment.

She’s still a college girl, working on yet another thesis around the poetry of the Beats and she openly decides to run off with my copy of John Clellon Holme’s Go. I didn’t think much of it at the time: I had seen her, ALL of her, and could only imagine that she would want to continue the late night ramblings that usually occur when my lips are deep red with wine.

We were young, stupid, and it was 8 months before I saw her again. By then we were both in and out of love with a handful of people – none of them being each other. I shouldn’t have expected anything steadfast from a woman who kept eccentric haircuts, dabbled in various sexualities, and found anything profound in the poetry of what were essentially the American Apparel consumers of the 50s.

I’ve known good people, I’ve known bad people. Then I’ve come to know people who promise to return books in a timely fashion without doing so. Now Go sits securely on my shelf where it is never to be lent again. I pick it up from time to time, read a passage or two, smell the pages and remember the days when I was younger and could stand to be active and happy in the wee hours.

***

Barnes & Noble will never smell like anything worth loving. While it may be where books to go to begin their long lives, it will never smell like a collection of works that have existed and been loved. There are collections of overstuffed chairs that hide between volumes of Finance and self-help and spiral bound books on guitar tablature.   The scent of history, however strong it may be, will most certainly be overpowered by the odors of mass-market coffees.  B&N’s are too brightly lit, overpriced, and there is an odd more where no one seems to be allowed to talk to anyone else no matter what level of familiarity.

In my youth, many of my paychecks and allowances were spent in a bookstore down the block from my house called Black and Read. They sold everything from new and used vinyl, used DVDs, video games, and every kind of book from manuals on the occult to the seventh installment of the Janet Evonovich series. The store always smelled of mildewed pages and incense that had been burned to cover up the mildew, weed and general body odor of the staff and fanatical antiquarians that were hidden in the haphazard organization of shelves. The store always smelled alive, it had history, you could literally live there.

Chain bookstores are trying to grab bigger and bigger pieces of the market by launching devices that, at its root, not only allow you to read books – but also surf the net, look up restaurant menus, chat with your friends, and more. I was treated to a Kindle this last Christmas, which I am thankful for. I read avidly, in bed, where my body is bent and contorted into ways not meant to sanction reading over comfort. A single, flat panel that I could read in just about any light was all but a god-send. I dug around the internet and found hundreds of volumes of classic books and self published epics on sale for a mere penny.

As great as the technology is I find it nearly impossible to buy a book off the online stores. It’s the same issue I have with buying music digitally. I had over my money and I am given mere data. Data that will look and sound just as good on day 546 as it did on day one.  However, I still accept digital gifts - wishlist here.

While Kindle allows me to highlight and type in notes on things I find interesting, it doesn’t allow me to mark things up with pens and pencils and leave mysteries for future readers like Carla and Linda did for me through Straight Man.

The arguments on the technology of reading are weighted heavily on the pro and the con. My phone can scan book covers and bar codes I come across in marked up, retail stores. The titles are saved to my Amazon account and I can either find them for cheaper on the website, or for free through the libraries. It’s not that I hate the book retailing business – I love books and I want to support authors I like in whatever way I can. But facts facing facts – I’m a fucking writer: money is usually a myth to me.

I sit and I wonder, as my collection of book stares vibrantly back at me, what is happening with the dozens of manuscripts I’ve sent into the world that never attracted a response. I wonder what happened with the hand-cut, hand-assembled, hand-distributed chap books of novellas I’ve written in the past. How many corners have been forever scarred with a dog ear bookmark? How many cups of coffee have made the pages swell and the words bleed? Maybe they’ve inspired someone to go on and do something brilliant (or, more likely, stupid). Maybe they were only accepted out of kindness, tossed into a drawer, only to be disposed of properly at a later date.

I think about all of these things as I compile yet another book. A book that will only serve to answer the question: “Oh, you’re a writer? What have you written?” and I can finally direct them to something. A book that will exist, by whatever means necessary, in the physical world to sit forever, slowly aging in the stacks of an underfunded library or in the trunk of my car.

In the end, I’d like to think the story starts with the writer, but ends with the reader.