Dear bibliopathologist,
I am a bookseller, I have been doing this job for years but I have been actively involved in the management of the library for just over a year. I have always read a lot, but since I have personally chosen the news I am no longer able to complete a book, I am suffering from a kind of literary bulimia: in the mare magnum of editorial news I would like to read everything and in the end I do not read anything, if not the first fifty pages. How to get out of this cruel retaliation? Thanks.
–N.B.
NB way,
the bibliopathologist is back! I had holed up to write a book, The reader on the couch, that first Kinsey report on cultural perversions that I promised you five years ago now (end of promotional message). What happened out there while I was doing my lockdown inside the lockdown? Have you cultivated your microneuroses in the laboratory and are you ready for the spillover in society? Or has forced confinement made you regain that ability to sink into novels with childlike wonder that you would have sworn you have lost forever, and you no longer need the doctor? I beg to doubt it.
But let’s get to the case of NB, an acronym that I would have liked to change to Enby so as not to confuse it with Nota Bene, except to realize that Enby would have created even more serious misunderstandings. First of all, dear NB, let us warn you about the dangers of the trader who has a too visceral passion for the goods he sells. This is especially true for the managers of wine shops, but as Somerset Maugham said there is no great difference between the “half-liter slaves” and the slaves of the printed page, except that the latter are proud of their vice. If you give in too much to your inclination, you will end up selling only the books you like, or at least not selling the ones you don’t like, as did Barry, the gruff employee of the record store in High fedelity by Nick Hornby who refused to indulge the bad taste of customers: “Maybe we look like the kind of shop that sells I just called to say I love you, huh? Come on, go away, don’t waste our time ”.
The cruel retaliation you speak of has a legendary precedent, the torture of Tantalus. Memories? Perpetually hungry and thirsty, Tantalus spends eternity in a pond near fruit-laden trees, but as soon as he tries to reach out to pick one, the wind blows away the branch and he remains speechless. Here, you are the mythological bookseller who spends her days in a bookcase full of all kinds of goodies, but when she reaches out to a shelf she finds food only for her frustration. You will never be able to read all the editorial news, this is a fact, and the facts cannot be changed. On the other hand, our views on the facts, which are the main cause of our sufferings, can be changed, as we know from the Stoic philosophers. So try to rotate the telescope.
In his latest Netflix special, 23 hours to kill, Jerry Seinfeld talks about one of the great advantages of being over sixty: when on the street they tell him to turn around and look at something, he has no desire to do so. “I don’t feel old, I don’t feel tired, it’s just that I’ve already seen a lot of things, and I take it for granted that this new thing looks a lot like something else I’ve seen before.” It’s the same with books: you’ve read a lot, and it’s almost certain that the new releases are variations on the old ones. In any case, the fifty pages of your “tasting reading” are enough and advance to find the exceptions to the rule.
.