Are Books Like Lettuce?
One of the many aspects of reality that irritate me is that books seem to have sell-by dates, as if they rot after a couple months in the open air. Books have seasons too—fall releases and spring releases, just like clothing. How stupid is that? How can ideas and stories and characters and experiences be sorted in and out of existence that way? Well, obviously they can, because they are, but it's Not Right.
It's all about the money, of course. The industry (the term "publishing industry" makes my skin crawl the same way "health care industry" does) rewards new books; too many people depend on new releases for their livelihood—the marketers, publicists and reviewers primarily. Authors are on contracts to deliver a new book every year, as if they were farmers producing annual crops. If memoirs from single mothers recovering from drug abuse and going on to become FBI directors are in fashion, publishers and editors encourage more of the same. A book sells because it is "like" another best-selling book already in print. God forbid that a reader be faced with a new idea or an innovative plot.
The classics, on the other hand, are books which have not rotted in the open air, and which are not copycats of existing merchandise (the word "merchandise" in the context of a book also gives me cold shivers). Virginia Woolf, an innovative novelist in the early twentieth century who coughed up more than a few classics, was asked in 1927 if too many books were being written and published. Surprisingly, she said no. She said reading should be ubiquitous and fun.
She did have a suggestion, though. Perhaps, she said, first editions of books should be printed "on some perishable material which would crumble to a little heap of perfectly clean dust in about six months' time." Then, "if a second edition were needed, this could be printed on good paper and well bound…No space would be wasted and no dirt would be collected."
Well, gosh…there you have it: lettuce. And recycling. Substitute electrons and pixels for "perfectly clean dust" and she's close to describing today. And maybe, after all, it's not all bad.
