Book
forts, book counters, book tables, book pyramids, and other book furniture are
being bricked into place all over the globe. These solid constructions made
from hundreds of copies contradict the prophecies of academics and marketeers
about the death of the book, even if some resemble a mausoleum. The tower of
babel never looked so much with us as when we encounter it firsthand in the
foyer of a public library, each paperback neatly lodged on top of another.
Celebrated
amongst these constructions is the wall of ’50 Shades of Grey’ (a soft porn
bestseller by E.L. James) devised by the staff of the second-hand seller
Goldstone Books of Ammanford, Carmarthenshire in Wales. Plainly this is not a
novel that readers care to keep on their shelf for the long term, as dozens of
copies kept arriving at Goldstone on a regular basis. Faithfulness to the
author is not in their make-up. Repetitiveness, I am told, is a weakness of this
book, hence seemingly the repetitive arrival of second-hand copies, none of
which are likely to be going anywhere else in a hurry. The book was picked up,
perved through, then indiscriminately chucked away. Confronted by this
avalanche of grey, Goldstone staff made a feature of what they could not hide.
Over
five hundred years of the printed word have contributed universally to the
black-and-white views of generations of readers, as well as every shade of
opinion in between. The earth gives and the forests turn into books, explaining
the fairy tale that is supposed to have a happy ending. Earth wakes again and
birds lend their quills to the unending retelling of migration and nesting and
song. The earth provides the taproot of ink to impress, as birds’ feet in wet
sand, the picturesque alphabets of generations. That which was born incunabula grew
into a hydra.
Unquestionably
the outcome of immersing this heady and colossal, indeed unquantifiable,
heritage of print in water would result in fifty shades of grey pulp. This
soggy misfortune would never be rectified by a pre-planned digitisation
program, which would be like watching fine sand drizzle through an hourglass
forever. When Prospero determines to drown his books does he rid himself of
Hamlet’s pretty text? Even then, words would bubble to the surface somewhere,
oxygen for the listener keen for a sign, or just a bit of haiku in a grey
world.
Libraries
know that, along with insects, mould, and fire, water is one of the enemies of
books. Their practice is not to celebrate profligacy or prolific excess. Even
the very largest of libraries came that way through precise selection, the
preference for one book and not the other, the compilation of the best that is
thought and said (they think), requiring further storeys or extensions across
the whole precinct, across the river and into the trees. How many poems are
made in praise of the airiness of libraries? They whisper the whispers in the
stacks, the convoluted conundrums of the carrels, the revolutionary repartee at
the front desk, with its five hundred shades of novel. They catch fire, and in
unexpected displays.
Fire
of my loins, fire of my being, fire of nights and days, pants ’50 Shades of
Grey’, hot pants being the disposable poetry readers want more of. The shades
of ash resulting in this two day incendiary romance lack the colour we hoped
for in the reading relationship. Disillusion leads to acceptance that this relationship
was destined for the church book fair, thence to wash up as a brick in a Welsh
bookfort. Or worse, the flames of the home fire, deep in the snowy depths of
winter, where the printed pages are kindling for an evening of unsurpassed
pleasurable warmth. Some people call this wisdom.
The
night is a black beauty and day a white wonder, yet nothing is quite so
black-and-white. Staff at Carmarthenshire return to work, their counter
starting to curl at the corners, sagging here and there from neglect. The stock
that moves has more bite, more oomph, more colour, and something else to say.
It has broken out of prism. The something else, it seems to be saying, is get
out into you element, figure out how it works, learn from others, turn your
alphabet to effect. Don’t add to the waste of affairs that end up on the shelf,
or end up a shelf.
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