… a Room.
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… A TV news program wanted linen-wrapped books chopped in half to fit the shallow, faux-shelves of a political interview program.
… [T]he-book-as-relic was forecasted by marketers. Ann Mack, director of trend-spotting for JWT New York, the marketing and advertising agency, noted in her trend report for the coming year that “objectifying objects,” she said, “would be a trend to watch.”
Quoting from her report, she added: “Here’s what we said: ‘The more that objects become replaced by digital virtual counterparts — from records and books to photo albums and even cash — watch for people to fetishize the physical object. Books are being turned into decorative accessories…
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Originally, the client asked for German philosophers, said Mr. Wine, but switched to the classics to fit her budget.
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A stout, middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.
“What do you think?” he demanded impetuously.
“About what?” He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.
“About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They’re real.”
“The books?”
He nodded.
“Absolutely real–have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and–Here! Lemme show you.”
Taking our scepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the “Stoddard Lectures.”
“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too–didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”
January 6th, 2011 at 12:07PM
“But who has 4,000 books?” he said.
Um…we do, and they got pages, too, with real words on ’em.
Not easy to find a house with wall space these days.
One has a sense of how St Augustine must have felt.
January 7th, 2011 at 7:51AM
Are german philosophers really that much more expensive than classics?
Also, who doesn’t have 4,000 books?
January 7th, 2011 at 2:07PM
This could be a very therapeutic thread. I have about 1,500 books in my office and another 2,000 or so at home. More or less–I haven’t catalogued them.
I do occasionally feel guilty about having so many books…but besides being so mesmerizing in their own right (ok, not all of them), they are the tools of our trade, no?