On the Beauty of Objects

I was delighted, as I'm sure many were, to see Austen put these words into the mouth of the closest thing Pride and Prejudice has to a villain – having thrown aside a book with which she has grown bored, Caroline Bingley exclaims this line to the man she is trying to impress, leading the audience to suspect that what she values is not reading, but being thought of as someone who loves to read.

There's a cachet to the object of a book, that makes us play up our status as "reader" in order to be seen as thoughtful or clever by those we esteem. The mystique of the stories contained within spill over into the object itself – even those of us who don't like to read often buy books. We take pictures of them in stacks to post on Instagram, and talk about the "feel" of the pages, the "magic" of a good book.

I want to say that this fetishization is idiotic, that the object of a book has no value in itself, possesses no magic other than we imbue, and that there are other pleasant ways to spend an evening. I want to identify with the heroine's famous response to Miss Bingley's teasing suggestion that she "is a great reader and has no pleasure in anything else.”

"I deserve neither such praise nor such censure; I am not a great reader and take pleasure in many things."

But, as admirably even-keeled as I would like to think I am, I suspect I contain more Caroline Bingley than I do Elizabeth Bennett. 

There is book – a mystery thriller by Rachel Hawkins – about a woman who leaves her large family estate to an adopted heir. The story is cleanly but beautifully told, the characters just complex enough to be interesting, and the reveals and twists never fail to give me chills, even as I draw to the end that I know is coming. It is, above all, an extremely fun book to read.

When I want to re-experience this fun, I borrow a copy of this book from the library. The third time I did this, I considered purchasing this book for myself. I pictured opening the crisp green flowered cover, its pages new and white, its spine uncracked. I imagined placing it on my shelf, making that joy ever-available, ever present.

I hated the idea. I hated the thought of reading that story in that book. 

I knew that, when I saw that pristine book sitting on my shelf, once I felt safe that I could revisit the story as many times as I wanted to, I wouldn't. 

This hypothetical new book would sit untouched on my shelf, a baby that would never grow up, never be damaged or humiliated or cast aside. No one would ever scribble in its margins, fold its corners, drop it in a bathtub, or shove it roughly in a too-full backpack over and over until the corners peeled and frayed. Possessing the book, I would neuter the story, render it toothless and unforgivably clean – embalm it, at the very least.

But if the object of the book has no value in itself, what does the condition matter? Surely I could read the same story in a new book; better, even, when I wouldn't have to contend with what the previous readers have left behind?

The books I borrow from the library often come with sand in their plastic covers from illicit trips to the beach, and not a few are intermittently dotted with drops of old food, blood, and the contents of the previous reader's nose, stuck and dried between the yellowed, dog-eared, thumb-ridden pages. But when I see them, stacked on my desk or nightstand, they give off a springiness, a flexibility, a shimmer of vitality. Or plastic.

They seem alive.

A library book possesses no value other than that which we imbue. But we did imbue it. All of us who took that book off the shelf, all the people through whose hands it passed, everyone who had this adventure before me and would have it after me. We are communicating through its pages, saying, with each library visit, "now, it's your turn," having no choice but to trust that we have not had the adventure for the last time.

I feel in these over-touched pages the value of a good, truly magical story, that it joins all of us into one consciousness, if only for the time it holds us in its thrall. 

And yeah, the pages feel nice. Sue me.