But there are millions of books for sale, dozens of millions in libraries, and uncounted millions of unpublished manuscripts. There are more books to contemplate than stars in a night on the high seas. In this immensity, how is a reader to find his personal constellation, those books that will put his life in communication with the universe? And how is a single book among the millions to find its readers? (p.97)
Gabriel Zaid’s So Many Books
SMB has the feel of one of those books that I will return to later on, with different sections resonating for me differently with different experiences. I fear, however, that the book is already dated. Published in 2003, you can imagine that the book misses out on most of the current book-blogging phenomenon, though a few of Zaid’s comments presage what we see on the net today.
Representative passages:
After reading one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand books in a lifetime, what have we read? Nothing. To say “I only know that I have read nothing,” after reading thousands of books, is not false modesty. It is strictly accurate, to the first decimal place of zero percent. But is that not perhaps exactly, Socratically, what our embarrassment of books should teach us? To be aware of our ignorance, to fully accept it; to go from being simply ignorant to being consciously ignorant? (p.23)
…
Let’s say that … the best critics in the world were hired so that every single book published got exactly one review — one brilliant review. … This system would produce enough material for the publication of ten thousand books a year, somposed solely of reviews. (p.96)
…
Just like writers, who make things out of words that are not theirs, inventive publishers, booksellers, librarians, teachers, anthologizers, and critics gather texts that are not theirs into meaningful and appealing assemblages. (p.109)
That’s as good an explanation of what happens every day with blogs as I can imagine.
