Tag Archives: week 13

Bookishness and the Loss of Books

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As I opened this weeks reading, the introduction to Bookishness, the first thing that came to mind was the TV show Blackish. It was about an upper middle class Black family, that felt distanced from the Black culture that the parents had grown up in due to living in a higher income neighborhood. Similarly, the term “bookish” made me think about the distance that’s grown between reading and books. The -ish ending means ‘somewhat’, as if an e-reader is somewhat a book. And it is, I suppose. Dr. Pressman begins the introduction by talking about her “Mac BookBook”, which was a laptop case designed to look like a book. This case is more than just a fun, quirky design, but an ironic expression of how we’ve changed our approach to reading. Pressman writes, “My Mac BookBook displays the book to be a powerful form of residual media actively shaping digital culture.” Residual media– the leftovers from the media of the past– is still effecting the culture that started to leave it behind. But why? We’ve already established how many aspects of the internet were named after physical objects for familiarity, such as the window, desktop, and page. But this is about artistry and expression, not association or functionality.

Pressman puts is plainly: “Bookishness is about maintaining a nearness to books.” Despite using harsh words like “residual media” earlier, there would be no book themed art without people wanting book themed objects. It’s not like people completely stopped reading, although I’m sure there was a dip in overall interest in books with the rise of internet accessibility throughout the 2000s. E-books and audiobooks were not only cheaper than books, they didn’t need to be carried and they didn’t take up space. But e-books are not books. They are electronic books, and they are their own thing. The only similarity between the two is that they feature words to be read. They share the same primary function, yes, but they aren’t the same. So if bookishness is about maintaining a nearness to books, it’s also about mourning the loss of books. Bookishness emerged as a desire for a way to relieve the nostalgia for the book. The book may be obsolete, but that doesn’t not mean it has no value.

We don’t yet live in a world without physical books. I don’t think we ever will, if bookishness is any consolation. There will always be a desire for the physical object. When I see book art, such as sculptures or papercraft, I think of the second life that the object has been blessed with. I think of how much more you can do with the book, what unintended things you could create with it. People don’t want to lose that.

Self-Representation Through Book Acquisition

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In the chapter “Unpacking My Library, Walter Benjamin indirectly displays books as a commodity, and as it has been discussed in this class plenty, an object to fetishize. As Benjamin unpacks his library, he gives the reader “insight into the relationship of a book collector and his possessions, into collecting rather than a collection” (pg. 59) by recalling the various methods of collecting books and the mental or emotional loops one experiences during these acquisitions. Some of these methods of acquisition mentioned are writing books yourself, going to auctions, and buying from bookshops. 

In this excerpt, Benjamin spends a considerable amount of time talking about the method of getting a book through an auction, and how this method not only requires recognizing the quality or provenance of the book, but also being aware of one’s competitors who will keep “raising his bid – more to assert himself than to acquire the book” (pg. 64). In Benjamin’s lamentation of the auction’s fierce and prideful atmosphere, it is obvious how books have been marked as objects of fetishization and serve as an outward projection of a persona which is explored in Dr. Pressman’s Bookishness. As Dr. Pressman discusses how “bookshelves as a means of self- fashioning and self- representation” through “judging people by the covers of their books” (pg 34) in the context of physical codices and the rise of the digital page, it’s not thoroughly explored how the cost books also contributes to self-representation, as much as it is explored in “Unpacking My Library.” In Benjamin’s excerpt, the cost of the book and how it’s acquired is practically the focus. This act of finding a book, whether that be through auctions, going to bookshops, or travelling around the world as Benjamin has done, becomes less about the book and more about the wealth needed to acquire the book and the stories about retrieving the book. Though Benjamin ends up buying Fragmente aus dem Nachlass eines jungen Physikers at a secondhand shop, what makes the story riveting is that he was at an auction where he had been outbid, and then learned how to wield a lack of interest in these spaces to get what he wanted. The interesting part is less the book and more the story of getting the book.

The conversation of bookishness is constantly being furthered as the semester progresses, showing me how every aspect of a book and outside of a book can be part of fetishization. It also reminds me that plenty of objects have not gone unfetishized, as “every passion borders on the chaotic” (Benjamin, 60) and is a part of an obsession, whether we acknowledge it or not. 

Bookishness

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When reading Bookishness, I was shocked with how I started to remember this fetishization of the book as a physical object. I remember when I was younger I had an obsession with the physical object of a book. I had to hold/read it a certain way so it wasn’t damaged, I wouldn’t let people borrow my beloved books, I had a book stamp that printed my name into every book I owned, and I would even pack my books a certain way on a road trip to ensure they were not damaged. I can think of so many other absurd examples of my own relationship to bookishness back then, but none of these things apply to my today as I write and fold all the pages in my books- coffee stains and all. I wonder what changed in my bookishness, could be a lot of things, but it’s interesting to read this book in context of thinking of my own bookishness actions. Although I was aware about these aspects of bookishness and the obsession with the object, I had never thought about it in the context of increasing digitization.”So what happens when the book get digitized and bookish culture goes digital- when the word ‘book’ may or may not refer to a material object?” (Pressman, 3). This question highlights the transition from bookishness being physical and now digital- something 12 year old me would not understand. Bookishness is in the physicality of the book, but what happens when we no longer have that? These ideas are being reimagined, and I can see how my own relationship with it has changed over time as books have become digitized. I read on a kindle almost every night before bed, but 6 years ago I refused to read on a kindle as I felt I was betraying my physical books- Bookishness.

When I continued with this reading I also found it fascinating when reading about the Mac BookBook. “My Mac BookBook displays the book to be a powerful form of residual media actively shaping digital culture” (Pressman 7). I found this idea of a Mac BookBook the epitome of Bookishness itself: a digital device pretending to be a physical book. Not only does this device make a book appear to be something its not, but it shows something that is no longer there. I found this very fascinating and also shocking. The aesthetic of the book went so far, you wonder why it was changed in the first place. It makes me think that people need change but are also afraid of it- as they hold on to the physicality of the book even when the Macbook was present. Bookishness is more than an aesthetic, its also a lifestyle, as I discussed before I was a part of this before I even knew it. The amount of bookishness themed things I owned: book stamps, book earrings, book t-shirts, etc. I was matching this bookishness of wanting to be near the physicality of the book but I did not even realize or know why- I am not sure I know now. The materiality doesn’t change the content: the words in the book are still the same. But at the same time the materiality of the book feels like its a part of its content.