Ink Tea Stone Leaf

A couple of weeks ago, I talked to Ariele about making a fairly significant alteration in our home decor. For too long, I said, we have kept the majority of our books locked away in our bedroom, where hardly anybody sees them. The public areas of our house, where our guests are entertained and our daytime lives are largely lived, contained some books, but not nearly enough to communicate what I most wanted to communicate: that this is a household that treasures literature.

I was persuasive, and a change was made. Space was cleared in the living room by relocating our DVD collection into the bedroom, furthering the goal of raising our literary profile in the semi-public eye. The bedroom books were sorted by whether or not I had read them, and the unread volumes were mostly permitted to stay where they were. The rest have now taken their place in the light, where people can see them and ask me, “have you actually read that?” In response, I can nod sagely and say “yeah, most of them.”

Why were nearly all of our books in the bedroom? We had been keeping them out of sight for many years, even before we moved to this house, for one very compelling reason: we had a pair of adorable peach-faced lovebirds, and throughout their lives they were compelled and determined to shred the absolute hell out of any paper objects they could lay their beaks on. There are many reasons we could never forget Bonnie and Sherbert, but one very big reason is that they are responsible for highly visible acts of senseless violence against a great many of our pages, covers, and dust jackets.

But the lovebirds have since passed on, and while we still have our green-cheeked conure, Yoshi has shown almost no interest in the destruction of literature. He will gnaw on our furniture or pick at our clothing, but he seems mostly indifferent to any books that we are not actively handling when he is looking for attention. It dawned on me that our books were as safe as they had been in years, and that if they were safe, they ought to be seen.

And who ought to be seeing them? Besides the houseguests who I hope to impress and impel to remember their own reading, I have other concerns. In the near future, Ariele and I hope to become parents via adoption. As this change in our situation has grown less potential and more concrete, I have become more conscious of the necessity of creating a home environment that nurtures a child’s intellectual curiosity. The room we have designated as a future child’s bedroom already contains two shelves that house our collection of books for younger readers, but children don’t stay “younger” forever. In contemplating the future, I have reawakened to the conviction that interesting and challenging literature should be right where young and inquiring minds can find it.

But beyond simply making my books visible or available, my goal is also to address a long-neglected need within myself. I need these books, and I need them to do more than loom over me in the darkness while I sleep. They contain the knowledge and wisdom that ought to be filling my mind, and I have spent too many years filling it with empty and counterproductive nonsense.

I don’t want to misrepresent the situation: In these last few years I have read books, and they have been many, and they have been good. Given the state of reading for pleasure in this country, I am miles ahead of the average person. But this is of limited comfort so long as the average person is simply not reading. And much like the average person, I have spent more hours than I would care to admit scrolling past low-effort memes authored by fools, hucksters, and low-quality thinkers dwelling on inanities and confusion. I know far too much about things that nobody should give a damn about, and I am still mired in ignorance about them. That is no way to live.

In other words, I am rediscovering the liberation of being cranky and particular about how I spend my time. At this very moment I have on the table in front of me my cellphone (which I am currently using to type this post) and a copy of the complete works of William Shakespeare. When I have finished typing, I can either scroll mindlessly through Instagram, or I can resume reading Troilus and Cressida. My friends, I am going to choose Troilus and Cressida, and it is going to make me feel amazing.

I am being a little unfair. My phone does in fact offer more than just Instagram. I could use it to do the puzzles I love (which I certainly will do, later), or read the legitimate news. I could even, conceivably, use my phone to read Troilus and Cressida. But what I have found as a matter of perception is that even the most edifying material of the world can feel like Instagram when filtered through this little screen: flashy, temporary, and insubstantial; recycled mediocrity masquerading as novelty. None of it is as satisfying as opening a book and finding, by chance on the page I last left off on, words that speak to my feelings:

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
That all with one consent praise newborn gawds,
Though they are made and molded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o'erdusted.

In Shakespeare’s text, Ulysses offers this observation cynically, in order to manipulate Achilles. If I were to adopt a superior attitude and imagine that “the whole world” did not include myself, I might wield it as a cudgel to shame the uncultured masses. But I did not reach for this book out of a sense of my own superiority. I reached for it because I felt that something in my humanity badly needed a lift, before it lost the ability to ascend on its own.

The Information Age (or what is left of it) offers the illusion of unlimited intellectual abundance, but to experience the rich depths of a book requires no digital intervention or augmentation for a true reader. I shall be content to appreciate what I have gathered at hand, instead of fishing for empty content in shallow waters. If it is old-fashioned, so much the better.