Book obsession

In the previous post I hinted that a large part of the cargo consignment from Tehran consisted of books, some of which had already moved more than once, and formed the subject of heated conversations with the other half.

“Do you really need to take these?” he would start.

“No question about it,” I would answer. “But then, it depends how you define ‘need’, doesn’t it?”

Not prepared to carry on an inconclusive argument, the other half wandered off to spend his time on a more fruitful task, while I sat at the dining table, surrounded by piles of dusty books that I had not opened in years, but still considered important enough to be shipping back to London again. Is something wrong with me? Am I a compulsive book-hoarder? Is it serious?

The answer came in The Author a few weeks later:

Many members of the SoA [Society of Authors] are masters or mistresses of tsundoku. Thanks to a blog at www.treehugger.com, we now know that this is a Japanese term, nineteenth century in origin, deriving from doku, a verb that can be used for ‘reading’, and tsumu, which means ‘to pile up’. The word refers to the practice of acquiring books. Tom Gerker, writing on the BBC website, distinguishes tsundoku from the better known condition of bibliomania: ‘bibliomania describes the intention to create a book collection, tsundoku describes the intention to read books and their eventual, accidental collection.’ A. Edward Newton (1864-1940), described in Wikipedia as ‘an American author, publisher, and avid book collector’, put a metaphysical, even mystical, spin on the practice in his best-known book, Amenities of Book Collecting (1918): ‘Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity.’

(The Author, Journal of the Society of Authors, Winter 2018, “Grub Street” by Andrew Taylor, p 163)

How reassuring to realise that I am not the only one, and that this state of mind has got a name. “The soul reaching towards infinity” refers to the infinity of knowledge that one can strive towards but can never even hope to attain. On the other hand, a bookcase stuffed with unread books can also serve as a sobering reminder that time is running out.