Gabriel Zaid - So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance

So many books, a phrase usually muttered with despair, is transformed into an expression of awe and joy by Gabriel Zaid. Arguing that books are the essential part of the great conversation we call culture and civilization, So Many Books reminds us that reading (and, by extension, writing and publishing) is a business, a vanity, a vocation, an avocation, a moral and political act, a hedonistic pursuit, all of the aforementioned, none of the aforementioned, and is often a miracle.

Doug Dutton, Owner of Duttons Brentwood Books

Gabriel Zaid is a marvelously elegant and playful writera cosmopolitan critic with sound judgment and a light touch. He is a jewel of Latin American letters, which is no small thing to be. Read himyoull see.

Paul Berman, Author of Terror and Liberalism

Gabriel Zaids defense of books is genuinely exhilarating. It is not pious, it is wise; and its wisdom is delivered with extraordinary lucidity and charm. This is how Montaigne would have written about the dizzy and increasingly dolorous age of the Internet. May So Many Books fall into so many hands.

Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor of the New Republic

Gabriel Zaids small gem of a book manages to be both delectable and useful, like chocolate fortified with vitamins. His rare blend of wisdom and savvy practical sense should make essential and heartening reading for anyone who cares about the future of books and the life of the mind.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Author of Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books

A truly original book about books. Destined to be a classic.

Enrique Krauze, Author of Mexico: Biography of Power,
Editor of Letras Libres

With cascades of books pouring down on him from every direction, how can the twenty-first-century reader keep his head above water? Gabriel Zaid answers that question in a variety of surprising ways, many of them witty, all of them provocative.

Anne Fadiman, Editor of the American Scholar, Author of Ex Libris

PAUL DRY BOOKS

Philadelphia 2003

SO MANY BOOKS

Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance

by GABRIEL ZAID

Translated by Natasha Wimmer

First Paul Dry Books Edition, 2003

Paul Dry Books, Inc.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
www.pauldrybooks.com

Copyright 2003 Gabriel Zaid
Translation copyright 2003 Paul Dry Books, Inc.

All rights reserved

Text type: Cochin
Display type: Zapf Renaissance Book
Composed by P. M. Gordon Associates, Inc.

Designed by Adrianne Onderdonk Dudden

3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zaid, Gabriel.

[Los demasiados libros. English]

So many books : reading and publishing in an age of abundance / by Gabriel Zaid ; translated by Natasha Wimmer.1st Paul Dry Books ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-58988-003-X (alk. paper)

1. Books and reading. 2. Book industries and trade. 3. Publishers and publishing. I. Title.

Z1003.Z1513 2003
' .9dc21

2003007643

On the cover: Argument #5, 8,000 books (1999)
By Tom Bendtsen. Photograph by the artist.

Contents

SO MANY BOOKS

THE READING OF BOOKS is growing arithmetically; the writing of books is growing exponentially. If our passion for writing goes unchecked, in the near future there will be more people writing books than reading them.

Midway through the fifteenth century, when books were first printed, a few hundred titles were published each year, in editions of hundreds of copies. Most were ancient texts (Biblical, Greek, Roman, or the works of the church fathers) or explications and commentaries on those same texts, although some contemporary works were allowed to mingle with the classics. Perhaps this is why we have felt ever since that to see our words in type is to be consecrated, to be immortalized.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, our universal graphomania produces a million titles a year, in printings of thousands of copies. Very few books are reprinted; even fewer are translated. Many authors dont write for their readers, but to pad their resums. At the other extreme are those who write for the market, and make money by educating, informing, or entertaining. The books we cherish are the exceptions: old books worthy of rereading (the classics) and contemporary books written in the same tradition.

This tradition is a robust one, which has been enriched by the innovations that seemed to threaten it. When the book first appeared, Socrates rejected it as inferior to conversation. When the printing press first appeared, some stubborn readers refused to permit industrial products in their libraries and hired scribes to copy printed books. When the television first appeared, the end of the book was proclaimed. The same happened with the arrival of the CD-ROM and the e-book. When the market began to consolidate around a few bestsellers, chain stores, online booksellers, and publishing conglomerates, it was feared that diversity would suffer. But huge sales for a few titles dont mean that all other books will disappearrather, that those other books are relatively obscure. Our new technologies (the Internet, print-on-demand) are increasing the millions of titles available. And the conversation continues, unheeded by television, which will never report: Yesterday, a student read Socrates Apology and felt free.

The freedom and happiness experienced in reading are addictive, and the strength of the tradition lies in that experience, which ultimately turns all innovations to its own ends. Reading liberates the reader and transports him from his book to a reading of himself and all of life. It leads him to participate in conversations, and in some cases to arrange them, as so many active readers do: parents, teachers, friends, writers, translators, critics, publishers, booksellers, librarians, promoters.

The uniqueness of each reader, reflected in the particular nature of his personal library (his intellectual genome), flourishes in diversity. And the conversation continues, between the excesses of graphomania and the excesses of commerce, between the sprawl of chaos and the concentration of the market.

THOSE WHO ASPIRE to the status of cultured individuals visit bookstores with trepidation, overwhelmed by the immensity of all they have not read. They buy something that theyve been told is good, make an unsuccessful attempt to read it, and when they have accumulated half a dozen unread books, feel so bad that they are afraid to buy more.

In contrast, the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.

Every private library is a reading plan, Spanish philosopher Jos Gaos once wrote. So accurate is this observation that in order for it also to be ironic the reader must acknowledge a kind of general unspoken assumption: a book not read is a project uncompleted. Having unread books on display is like writing checks when you have no money in the banka way of deceiving your guests.

Ernest Dichter, in his Handbook of Consumer Motivations, speaks of this guilty conscience as it affects mail-order book club members. There are those who sign up with the idea that they are gaining entrance to a cultural extravaganza. But as the books arrive and the time required to read them adds up, each new shipment becomes a less-than-festive reproach, an accusation of failure. Finally the discouraged members withdraw, resentful that books are still being sent, even though they have paid for them.