How
to
Gut
a
Book


I



Nothing
was
more
characteristic
of
[Walter
Benjamin]
in
the

thirties
than
the
little
notebooks
with
black
covers
which
he

always
carried
with
him
in
which
he
tirelessly
entered
in
the
form

of
quotations
what
daily
living
and
reading
netted
him
in
the
way

of
“pearls”
and
“coral.”
On
occasion
he
read
them
aloud,
showed

them
around
like
items
from
a
choice
and
precious
collection.

Hannah
Arendt



For
my
notebooks,
I
use
a
set
of
beautifully
embroidered
Chinese
diaries

(purchase
in
Shanghai
when
I
taught
there
in
the
early
1980s)—not
little
black
books;

otherwise
Arendt’s
portrait
of
the
Quotation
Gatherer
is,
I
assure
you,
a
near‐perfect

likeness.

While
deeming
such
a
preoccupation
essentially
surrealistic,
Susan
Sontag
has

nonetheless
provided
the
best
possible
defense
of
such
a
sensibility
by
explaining
(in

On
Photography)
its
real
motivation
(the
following
quotation
about
quotation
was,
of

course,
quoted
in
my
commonplace
book):



Though
collecting
quotations
could
be
considered
as
merely
an
ironic

mimetism
.
.
.
it
was
[Walter]
Benjamin's
conviction
that
reality
itself

invited—and
vindicated—the
once
heedless,
inevitably
destructive

ministrations
of
the
collector.
In
a
world
that
is
well
on
its
way
to
becoming

one
vast
quarry,
the
collector
becomes
someone
engaged
in
a
pious
work
of

salvage.
The
course
of
modern
history
having
already
sapped
the
traditions

and
shattered
the
living
wholes
in
which
precious
objects
once
found
their

place,
the
collector
may
now
in
good
conscience
go
about
excavating
the

choice,
more
emblematic
fragments.



The
present
book,
its
compiler
hopes,
is
a
storehouse
of
just
such
fragments,

assembled
by
a
collector
who,
before
he
gathered
quotations,
hunted
in
libraries
and

gutted
books.

 The Collected Works of David Lavery 2

II



He
read
insanely,
by
the
hundreds,
the
thousands,
the
ten
thousands,

yet
he
had
no
desire
to
be
bookish;
no
one
could
describe
this
mad

assault
upon
print
as
scholarly;
a
ravening
appetite
in
him
demanded

that
he
read
everything
that
had
ever
been
written
about
human

experience.
He
read
no
more
from
pleasure:
the
thought
that
other

books
were
waiting
for
him
tore
at
his
heart
forever.
He
pictured

himself
as
tearing
the
entrails
from
a
book
as
from
a
fowl.


Thomas
Wolfe,
Of
Time
and
the
River



"Have
you
read
all
these?"
I'm
sure
you
recognize
the
question.
Bookish

people
hear
it
frequently.
We
hear
it
from
our
mothers.
(Mine
was
concerned
that

the
heavy
weight
of
a
then
small
collection
would
make
the
floor
of
my
second
story

bedroom
give
way;
nor
did
she
approve
entirely
of
the
money
I
was
investing
in
my

growing
library:
"You
can
only
read
one
at
a
time,"
she
admonished
with
a
common

sense
incomprehensible
to
any
aspiring
bibliophile.)
I
hear
it
from
a
student
who
has

come
to
the
office
for
a
conference
and
stares
slack‐jawed
at
the
shelves
of

examination
copies
housed
there
(books
not
only
unread
but
unopened).
Or
we
may

hear
it
from
those
few
we
occasionally
invite
to
our
home
and
into
our
usually

private
studies.
But,
as
I
have
come
to
recognize,
the
inquiry
is
made
in
two
very

different
spirits.

If
the
inquirer
is
anti‐intellectual
(and
the
university
at
which
I
teach—a

mirror
of
the
population
at
large—is
full
of
such),
then
the
question
means
(in
a

rough,
paranoid
translation):
what
kind
of
weirdo
are
you?
Are
you
so
strange,
so

abnormal,
so
much
a
bookworm
as
to
waste
your
life
reading?"
(For,
as
we
all
know,

we
can't
learn
about
life
from
books,
especially
if
we
have
never
read
any.)
In
the

presence
of
such
intruders,
in
the
face
of
the
enemy,
I
always
feel
very
pointedly
my

strangeness.

If
the
question
is
sincere,
however,
asked
by
an
aspiring
contributor
to
the

life
of
the
mind
already
in
love
with
books
and
anxious
to
emulate
the
learned,
then

it
has
an
entirely
different
meaning.
Framed
in
wonder,
and
more
than
a
little

anxiety,
it
implies:
"How
is
it
possible
to
read
this
much?
Might
I,
one
day,
be
as

well‐read
as
you?"
For
such
an
ephebe,
my
library
symbolizes,
in
a
way
an
impersonal

 The Collected Works of David Lavery 3

university
or
public
library
cannot,
the
territory
ahead:
the
landscape
which
must
be

explored,
then
mapped,
then
made
second
nature
in
the
apprenticeship
of

knowledge.
Overwhelmed
by
the
task
he
or
she
faces,
the
voice
sometimes
betrays
a

kind
of
intellectual
terror—one
I
recognize
very
clearly
because
I
experienced
it
once

myself.

I
customarily
respond
to
the
first
kind
of
inquiry—the
anti‐intellectual
one—
with
the
riposte
suggested
by
Walter
Benjamin
in
his
marvelous
"Unpacking
My

Library":
"Suffice
it
to
quote
the
answer,"
Benjamin
[left]
advises,

"which
Anatole
France
[right]
gave
to
a
philistine
who
admired
his

library
and
then
finished
with
the
standard
question,
'And

you
have
read
all
these
books,
Monsieur
France?'
'Not
one

tenth
of
them.
I
don't
suppose
you
use
your
fine
Sevres

every
day?'"
Such
a
reply
is
perhaps
too
glib
and
certainly

too
pedantic,
but
it
does
succeed
in
stifling
further
comment.

Or,
if
I
have
a
mind
to—and
if
the
questioner
has
a
mind,
too—I

could
cite
as
well
Elias
Canetti's
profound
explanation
(in
The
Human
Province)
of

why
certain
readers
build
up
storehouses
of
books
that
belong
only
to
the
future.

Long
dormancy,
Canetti
explains,
does
not
mean
a
book
will
never
be
read.



There
are
books,
that
one
has
for
twenty
years
without
reading
them,
that

one
always
keeps
at
hand,
that
one
takes
along
from
city
to
city,
from
country

to
country,
carefully
packed,
even
when
there
is
very
little
room,
and

perhaps
one
leafs
through
them
while
removing
them
from
a
trunk;
yet
one

carefully
refrains
from
reading
even
a
complete
sentence.
Then
after

twenty
years,
there
comes
a
moment
when
suddenly,
as
though
under
a

high
compulsion,
one
cannot
help
taking
in
such
a
book
from
beginning
to

end,
at
one
sitting:
it
is
like
a
revelation.
Now
one
knows
why
one
made

such
a
fuss
about
it.
It
had
to
be
with
one
for
a
long
time;
it
had
to
travel;

it
had
to
occupy
space;
it
had
to
be
a
burden;
and
now
it
has
reached
the
goal

of
its
voyage,
now
it
reveals
itself,
now
it
illuminates
the
twenty
bygone
years

it
mutely
lived
with
one.
It
could
not
say
so
much
if
it
had
not
been
there

mutely
the
whole
time,
and
what
idiot
would
dare
to
assert
that
the
same

things
had
always
been
in
it.



 The Collected Works of David Lavery 4

1
My
own
library
shelves
are
filled
with
such
mute,
dear
friends
as
he
describes. 

But
for
the
second
kind
of
inquiry—the
serious
one—I
have
no
ready,
no

simple
answer,
though
I
sometimes
quote
Benjamin
or
Canetti
to
them
as
well.
The

problem
is
just
too
complex
(involving
as
it
does
central
issues
about
the
nature
of

texts,
the
phenomenology
[Poulet]
and
metaethics
[Barthes]
of
reading,
and
the
very

nature
of
knowledge
and
its
dissemination)
to
deserve
anything
but
an
essay
reply.

As
I
have
already
indicated,
I
too
once
stood
in
awe
of
my
professor's

presumed
library
conquests.
Once
I
too
dreamt
of
following
in
their
footsteps

through
the
stacks,
and
yet
I
found
myself
nearly
paralyzed
before
what
seemed
at

the
time
a
Herculean
task.
(The
paralysis
occasionally
returns,
atavistically,
even

today.
If
I
venture
into
a
large
university
or
public
library
to
browse
through
the

stacks
or
to
glance
at
recent
scholarship,
I
feel
immediately
its
onset
and
could

without
difficulty
describe
the
symptoms—a
preliminary
nausea,
a
growing
numbness

in
my
limbs,
early
hints
of
migraine
.
.
.—with
some
precision.)

Now
I
have
become
one
of
those
professors
I
once
held
so
much
in
awe.
I
have

become
one
known
for
and
by
his
books,
one
about
whom
several
people
have
said

over
the
years,
"You
cannot
talk
to
him
for
five
minutes
without
coming
away
with
a

list
of
a
half
dozen
books
to
read."
And
yet—another
confession!—I
am
not,
by
most

measures,
an
avid
reader.
I
"gut"
more
books
than
I
actually
read
and
am
proud
of

the
fact.
Allow
me
to
explain.




III

A
few
years
ago
I
chanced
upon
a
depiction
in
Thomas

Wolfe's
Of
Time
and
the
River
of
its
hero
Eugene
Gant's
own

book
anxiety.
The
account
brought
me
a
reassuring
shock
of

recognition,
for
it
offered
a
mirror
in
which
I
could

retrospectively
observe,
perhaps
even
understand,
my

younger
self
on
the
way
to
becoming—heart‐set
upon

becoming—the
scholar/
teacher
I
presently
am.


1
There are, of course, other uses for books than reading. Perhaps I
should respond to the "Do you read all these?" question by citing Paul
Auster's novel Moon Palace, in which a young college student—-the narrator
inherits over two dozen large boxes of books from a cherished uncle and, not
yet inspired to read them (for they are for too precious), uses them instead
for furniture, arranging their rectilinear shapes into imitation tables, chairs,
and beds.
 The Collected Works of David Lavery 5

While
an
undergraduate
at
N.Y.U.,
Gant
(a
loosely
disguised
Wolfe)
finds

himself
intimidated
by
the
task
his
professors,
and
his
own
intellectual
ambitions,

have
set
for
him.
In
the
university
library
he
is
attacked
by
a
kind
of
intellectual

vertigo.



The
thought
of
these
vast
stacks
of
books
would
drive
him
mad;
the
more
he

read,
the
less
he
seemed
to
know—the
greater
the
number
of
books
he
read,

the
greater
the
immense
uncountable
number
of
those
which
he
could
never

read
would
seem
to
be.
Within
a
period
of
ten
years
he
read
at
least
20,000

volumes
.
.
.
and
opened
the
pages
and
looked
through
many
times
that

number.
.
.
.
Yet
this
terrific
orgy
of
the
books
brought
him
no
comfort,

peace,
or
wisdom
of
the
mind
and
heart,
Instead,
his
fury
and
despair

increased
from
what
they
fed
upon,
his
hunger
mounted
with

the
food
it
ate.



In
the
face
of
this
tantalizing
Library
Sickness,
however,
Gant

refuses
to
surrender.
He
responds
with
intensity.
He
develops
a

method.



He
read
insanely,
by
the
hundreds,
the
thousands,
the
ten

thousands,
yet
he
had
no
desire
to
be
bookish;
no
one
could
describe
this

mad
assault
upon
print
as
scholarly;
a
ravening
appetite
in
him
demanded

that
he
read
everything
that
had
ever
been
written
about
human
experience.

He
read
no
more
from
pleasure:
the
thought
that
other
books
were
waiting

for
him
tore
at
his
heart
forever.
He
pictured
himself
as
tearing
the
entrails

from
a
book
as
from
a
fowl.
At
first,
hovering
over
book
stalls
or
walking
at

night
among
the
vast
piled
shelves
of
the
library,
he
would
read,
watch
in

hand,
muttering
to
himself
in
triumph
or
anger
at
the
timing
of
each
page:

"Fifty
seconds
to
that
one.
Damn
you,
we'll
see!
You
will,
will
you!"—and
he

would
tear
through
the
next
page
in
twenty
seconds.



A
century
ago,
Nietzsche
suggested
in
The
Gay
Science
that
thinking—
mere
thinking—was
once
such
a
stupendous,
arresting
experience
that

an
individual
needed
to
sit
down
beside
the
road
when
a
thought
struck

him.
But
now,
Nietzsche
noted
presciently,
the
whole
world
is
learning

 The Collected Works of David Lavery 6

to
think
in
"the
American
fashion"
with
a
stop
watch
in
hand.
Eugene
Gant,
please

take
note,
times
his
reading.
So
too
did
I,
twenty
years
ago.

And
then
I
gave
up.
Sometime
in
my
mid‐twenties
I
began
to
recognize
the

impossibility
of
my
own
absurd
ambition
to
"read
everything
that
had
ever
been

written
about
human
experience."
Though
my
resignation
came
gradually,
an
amazing

short
story
by
Jorge
Luis
Borges,
"The
Library
of
Babel,"
itself
a
victim
in
my

predatory
quest
to
read
everything,
proved
to
be
a
watershed.
A
typically
Borgesian,

labyrinthine
account
of
a
man
trapped
in
an
Escher/
Piranesi‐like
infinite
library—for

2
every
book
there
is
another
identical
to
it
but
one
word
longer! —its
account
of
the

metaphysical‐nightmare
side
of
my
own
pursuits
sobered
me
greatly.
But
my
new

accommodation
was
not
merely
the
result
of
aversion
therapy.
I
have
come
to
make

my
peace
with
books
because
I
have
acquired
a
kind
of
discipline
in
my
encounter

with
them.

In
a
simpler
time,
before
the
coming
of
postmodernism
and

the
now
diagnosable,
thoroughly
Borgesian
"information
sickness"
of

the
1970s
and
'80s,
a
Mortimer
Adler
could
self‐assuredly
sermonize

on
"How
to
Read
a
Book."
But
it
is
the
method
of
Eugene
Gant—his


2
In Alexander Moszykowski's Conversations with Einstein, I also
learned of the great physicist's speculation that the universe as he conceived
of it cannot even contain a universal library less infinite than Borges'
imagined one. "We have a very spacious universe," Moszykowski writes,
paraphrasing Einstein,

Yet it is not spacious enough to satisfy all the demands that a

mathematician interested in permutations and combinations might
make. One such combinations is exemplified in the so-called Universal
Book, that originated in an imaginary experiment of Leibniz. If we
picture to ourselves the sum-total of all books that can be printed by
making all possible arrangements and successions of our letters . . .
then, together, they must contain all that can be expressed in sense
and nonsense, and everything that is ever realizable actually or in
dreams. Hence among other things, they would include all world-
history, all literature, and all science, even from the beginning of the
world to the end. If we agree to the convention of operating with 100
different printed signs (letters, figures, stops, spacings, etc.), and of
allowing each such book a million spaces for signs, so that each book
will still be of handy size, then the number of these books would
amount to exactly 10 to the two-millionth power, or, in figures, i.e.
102,000,000.

This fully exhaustive universal library containing all wisdom would consist of
so many volumes that it could not be contained in a case of the size of the
entire stellar universe. And, unhappily, it must be added that the closed
universe . . . described by Einstein and having a diameter of a hundred
million light-years would be much too small to contain this library.
 The Collected Works of David Lavery 7

way
of
"tearing
the
entrails
from
a
book
as
from
a
fowl"—that
has
greater

relevance—and
more
realism—for
our
own
day
than
the
University
of
Chicago

Aristotelian's
pontifications.
Any
self‐help
book
from
the
pen
of
Eugene
Gant,
it

seems,
would
be
more
appropriately
entitled
"How
to
Gut
a
Book,"
and,
following
his

lead,
I
have
tried
to
offer
here
a
brief
prolegomenon
to
(and
apologia
for)
such
a

self‐help
book,
a
text
we
now
badly
need.




IV

"Oh,
it
so
exhausts
me
to
teach
books
I've
never
read,"
laments
Professor

Butley
as
he
heads
off
to
wing
his
way
through
another
class
in
Simon
Grey's
satiric,

and
of
course
utterly
unrealistic,
portrait
of
the
tempestuous
life
of
a
lecturer
at
a

British
university.
Who
among
us
would
ever
teach
a
book
he
or
she
had
not
read?

Cliff
Notes
are
for
students,
not
professors.
Granted,
I
once

knew
a
graduate
student
who
bragged
that
she
had
never
read

Moby‐Dick,
though
required
to
do
so
in
five
different
courses

over
the
years,
and
then,
as
a
final
challenge
to
her
ability
to

fake
it,
actually
taught
the
book
in
one
of
her
own
classes,
but

surely
she
was
an
aberration!
And
yet
the
question
does
give

us
pause:
is
it
possible
that
professors
do
not
read?

In
David
Lodge's
Small
World,
a
group
of
university

English
faculty
under
the
influence
of
alcohol
at
a
conference
play
a

game
in
which
each
individual
must
confess
the
essential
books
he
or

she
has
never
read.
Each
bares
his
soul
and
admits
to
his
sins
of

omission.
(My
own
revelation—I
make
it
now,
before
God
and
reader—
would
include
The
Faerie
Queene,
Tom
Jones,
Das
Kapital,
The
Social

Contract,
and
War
and
Peace—not
to
mention
Kon‐Tiki,
about
which
I

fabricated
an
eleventh
grade
book
report
after
reading
only
the
dust

jacket.)
The
game
progresses
good‐naturedly
enough—confession
being
good
for
the

soul,
even
of
English
teachers—until
a
young,
untenured
professor
admits
that
he
has

never
read
Hamlet
and
the
game
takes
an
ugly
turn.
Lodge's
novel
traces
the
dire

3
ramifications
of
this
innocent
revelation. 

It
is
true,
of
course,
that
professors
sometimes
teach
texts
they
have
not
re‐
read,
despite
our
best
intentions—perhaps
not
even
in
years.
After
all,
under
the


3
I hope my account of this fictional incident is accurate, for it is, after
all, based on remembered versions of the novel by two colleagues. I have not
actually read the book myself.
 The Collected Works of David Lavery 8

pressures
of
department,
university,
community,
and
home
service,
who
can
even

keep
up
with
the
reading
we
assign
to
our
own
classes?
A
review
of
notes,
a
survey

of
our
marginalia,
after
all,
usually
proves
to
be
adequate
preparation
for
leading

discussion
of
a
novel
or
play
or
short
story
or
textbook
which
we
cannot
be
certain

our
students
have
read
even
once.
(If
we
had
used
our
time
like
this
in
graduate

school,
would
we
have
ever
finished
our
degrees?)

We
have
so
little
time
now
to
read,
let
alone
to
reread,
and
yet
the
number
of

books
to
be
read
increases
relentlessly.
Each
new
issue
of
the
New
York
Times
Book

Review
or
The
Chronicle
of
Higher
Education
or
The
New
York
Review
of
Books,
each

broadcast
of
"All
Things
Considered"
or
new
number
of
a
scholarly
journal
adds
an

inch
to
our
list
of
must‐reads
about
to
become
never‐reads.
"The
multitude
of

books,"
Voltaire
could
see
over
two
centuries
ago
(even
before
the
invention
of
the

Quality
Paperback
Club),
"is
making
us
ignorant.")

The
Learning
Assistance
Center
at
my
university
gives
out
book

marks
and
buttons
which
bear
the
words
"I'd
rather
be
reading,"
and
I
have

suggested
with
some
seriousness
that
faculty
wear
these
buttons
as
a

symbol
of
solidarity
and
a
radical
badge
of
protest
to
all
committee

meetings,
perhaps
even
to
class.
("School
keeps
getting
in
the
way
of
my

education,"
Mark
Twain
observed,
on
the
way
out
of
his
fifth
stultifying

4
meeting
of
the
day.) 

The
act
of
Not
Reading,
it
is
true,
does
help
in
a
way
to
normalize
us,
to

bridge
the
gap
between
the
Ivory
Tower
and
the
Real
World,
where,
according
to
one

recent
survey,
well
over
one
half
of
the
American
public
(including
recent
escapees

from
the
Tower)
never
read
a
single
book
during
the
course
of
a
year.
But
the


4
The tendency of school to make reading difficult if not impossible is
not unique to American culture. In her China Men, Maxine Hong Kingston
offers the following cynical lament of a young Chinese teacher (her uncle)
about the incompatibility of education and a love of books.

The students ruined his eating; they ruined his sleep. They spoiled the
songs of birds. And they were taking his books and calligraphy from
him too—no time for his own reading, no time to practice his own
writing. Teaching was destroying his literacy. He was spending his
brains picking out flaws and poring over them. School was the very
opposite of reading and writing. The books that he taught had lost
their subtlety and life, puns dead from slow explanations, philosophy
reduced to saws. He could not read without thinking up test questions
and paraphrases. He shrank poems to fit the brains of peasant
children, who were more bestial than animals.

Surely any American teacher can identify with this lament

 The Collected Works of David Lavery 9

increasingly
real
prospect
of
professors
who
no
longer
have
the
leisure
to
read
is
so

demoralizing,
so
demeaning,
that
it
calls
into
question
the
whole
enterprise
in
which

we
are
engaged.

And
now,
to
add
insult
to
injury,
modern
critical
methods—from
structuralism

to
deconstruction
and
reader
response
criticism—have
greatly
complicated
the
once

simple
act
of
reading,
teaching
us
that
we
have
taken
far
too
much
for
granted
in
our

encounters
with
texts.
We
may,
in
this
age
of
the
"death
of
the
author,"
be

witnessing
the
birth
of
the
reader,
as
Roland
Barthes
has
suggested;
but
this
New

Reader,
it
seems,
greatly
misunderstood
his
or
her
activity
and
would
have
continued

to
do
so
without
the
illumination
of
contemporary
criticism.
A
page,
we
are
now
told,

is
as
unstable
and
indeterminate,
as
devoid
of
objective
existence,
as
the
atom
of

modern
physics,
and
equally
in
need
of
the
participation
of
the
reader,
without

whom
we
could
never
know
if
a
text
is
a
wave
or
a
particle.

"Have
you
read
all
these?"
Without
doubt,
the
pressures
of
my
profession,

coupled
with
the
proliferation
of
knowledge
in
our
time,
and
our
new,
quantum

understanding
of
the
act
of
reading,
have
made
that
act
more
and
more
difficult,
and

more
ambiguous,
to
perform,
and
it
is
this
central
irony
which
has
inspired
the

present
reflections.
Clearly,
we
need
a
new
understanding
of
the
nature
and
meaning

of
reading.
We
must
forge
a
fresh
plan
of
attack.



How
does
one
gut
a
book?
I
do
not
intend
to
lay
out
any
conclusive
strategy
for

doing
so.
I
will
be
content
here
if
I
can
establish
a
foundation
for
further

exploration.

The
theoretical
difficulties
of
gutting
a
book
are,
of
course,

pronounced.
After
all,
no
author—as
Roland
Barthes
has
noted—can

"choose
to
write
what
will
not
be
read."
Nevertheless,
Barthes
adds,



it
is
the
very
rhythm
of
what
is
read
and
what
is
not
read
that
creates

the
pleasure
of
the
great
narratives;
has
anyone
ever
read
Proust,

Balzac,
War
and
Peace,
word
for
word?
(Proust's
good
fortune:
from
one

reading
to
the
next,
we
never
skip
the
same
passages.)



 T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 10

In
characteristic
fashion,
Barthes
even
blasphemously
suggests
that
it
is
possible
to

5
gain
access
to
authors
without
taking
the
trouble
of
actually
reading
them. 



And
if
I
hadn't
read
Hegel,
or
La
Princesse
de
Cleves,
or
Levi‐Strauss,
or
Les

Chats,
or
L'Anti
OEdipe?—The
book
which
I
haven't
read
and
which
is

frequently
told
to
me
even
before
I
have
time
to
read
it
(which
is
perhaps
the

reason
I
don't
read
it):
this
book
exists
to
the
same
degree
as
the
other:
it
has

its
intelligibility,
its
memorability,
its
mode
of
action.
Have
we
not
enough

freedom
to
receive
a
text
without
the
letter?



As
one
who
reveled
in
such
freedom
as
an
undergraduate,
who
went
about
telling

everyone
that
Walden
was
my
bible,
even
quoting
it
chapter
and
verse,
although
I

had
read
a
total
of
less
than
fifty
pages
of
it
(for
it
seemed
somehow
degrading
to

Thoreau's
genius
to
actually
read
such
a
magical
book
of
wisdom!),
I
understand
well

the
scandalous
implications
of
Barthes'
out‐of‐the‐closet
admission.
Although
I
took

great
pains
to
make
certain
that
my
teachers
did
not
see
through
my
charade,
I
was

nevertheless
convinced
that
my
motives
were
sincere.
After
all,
I
was
not
to
be

confused
(and
my
professors
did
not
confuse
me)
with
those
students
who
refuse
to

read,
who
call
books
"dumb"
when
in
fact
they
are.
Nor
did
I
ever
use
Cliff
Notes
as
a

substitute.
I
was
then,
and
still
am,
in
love
with
the
idea
of
reading,
in
love
with

books.

Even
today
I
often
receive
a
book
without
the

letter.
I
am,
for
example,
a
quotation
gatherer,
ever
on

the
look
for
passages
that
"take
the
top
of
my
head
off"

(to
borrow
Emily
Dickinson's
wonderful
definition
of
the

poetic),
and
I
often
skim
books
in
search
of
likely

candidates.
(Like
Dylan
Thomas,
"I
read
indiscriminately,

and
with
my
eyes
hanging
out.")
A
fanatic
user
of

epigraphs
in
all
my
writing,
I
hunt
for
aspirants,
not
only
for
works‐in‐progress
but

those
not
yet
even
conceived.
Or,
to
cite
another
example,
I
am
presently
at
work
on

three
books
(which,
God
willing,
I
may
one
day
finish),
on
the
behalf
of
which
I


5
With scholarly and academic books in mind, Andrei Codrescu has
wondered as well (in personal correspondence) about the proliferation of
"books written not be read, written to become lines in a resume." Or think of
the phenomenon of doctoral dissertations, which are sometimes not even
read by the committees assigned to do so. (See my "Dissertations as
Fictions," College English 31 [1980]: 765-69.)
 T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 11

constantly
skim,
read,
search,
and
gut
other
books
in
pursuit
of
material.
(The

American
photographer
Edward
Weston
drove
about
the
United
States
with
his
wife

at
the
wheel,
in
search
of
photo
opportunities.
He
instructed
his
wife
to
wake
him

whenever
she
spotted
a
"Weston
photograph."
I
journey
through
libraries
in
search

of
Lavery‐like
ideas,
and
such
quests
are
essential
to
the
enterprise
of
the
book

gutter.)

As
a
book
gutter,
I
take
heart,
however,
that
I
am
in
distinguished
company.

The
British
philologist
Owen
Barfield
stands,
in
my
estimation,
as
perhaps
the
most

well
read,
learned
mind
I
have
ever
encountered.
A
true
polymath,
he
has
authored

over
a
dozen
books
demonstrating
wide
and
careful
reading
in
literature
and
literary

criticism,
linguistics,
philosophy,
history,
history
of
science,
physics,
theology,

anthropology
.
.
.
And
yet,
until
his
retirement
in
the
1950s,
Barfield
was
a
practicing

London
solicitor
whose
intellectual
pursuits
necessarily
played
second
fiddle
to
a

busy
career
in
the
law.
Not
surprisingly,
Barfield
has
written

revealingly
about
book
gutting,
and
I
will
take
my
cue
from
him.

In
Unancestral
Voice
(1965)
Barfield
discloses,
through
his

alter
ego
Burgeon
(a
solicitor
and
student
of
the
"evolution
of

consciousness"),
something
of
his
own
trade
secrets.
It
is
clear
that

Barfield
speaks
from
experience.
"One
of
the
disadvantages
of
living

in
the
twentieth
century,"
Burgeon
explains,
is




that,
on
almost
any
subject,
there
is
too
much
reading
material

available.
He
had
long
ago
discovered
that
the
only
fruitful
way
of

ploughing
a
furrow
through
the
plethora
was
to
be
in
pursuit
of

some
particular
quarry.
It
was
like
dipping
a
thread
into
a
liquid

containing
crystals
in
solution.
The
crystals
gathered
round
the

thread.
You
selected
ruthlessly,
but
in
the
process
you
read
much,

you
read
swiftly,
and
your
mind
was
alert.
What
you
did
not
retain
you
were

nevertheless
more
alive
to
than
you
would
otherwise
have
been;
what
you
did

retain
you
digested.
.
.
.




"So
it
came
about,"
Barfield
goes
on
to
note
(speaking
this
time
unmistakably
about

himself)
"that
he
spent
the
first
year
of
his
retirement
in
studying—or
perhaps

"raiding"
would
be
a
less
presumptuous
term—the
history
of
Western
thought.
.
.
."

In
all
my
own
book
gutting,
I
have
discovered
no
more
accurate
description,
nor
a

 T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 12

better
justification,
of
our
discerning
vocation
than
this.
Barfield
makes
our
motives

crystal
clear
and
honorable
as
well.

We
must
be
quite
careful,
however,
not
to
confuse
such
book
gutting
with

either
of
two
poor
relations.

Book
gutting
is
not
speed
reading.
A
slave
to
the
performance
principle,
speed

reading,
is
founded,
as
Evelyn
Wood
pamphlets
make
apparent,
on
a
reductionistic

epistemology,
and
it
remains
at
base
an
anti‐intellectual
pursuit,
dedicated
to
a

simplistic
obsession
with
message
rather
than
medium.
True
book
gutters
abhor

speed
reading;
they
recognize
Eugene
Gant's
use
of
a
stopwatch
as
an
adolescent

obsession
and
know
very
well
when
gutting
alone
will
not
suffice,
when
any
attempt

at
getting
at
a
book's
meat
cannot
be
accomplished
except
by
way
of
the
pleasure
of

the
text:
through
the
sensuous
act
of
reading
itself.
(Such
unguttable
books,
their

text
and
texture
inextricably
interwoven,
are,
of
course,
what
we
customarily
mean

by
"literature.")

And
book
gutting
is
not
"Bullcrit."
"Nobody
who
can
help
it
reads
books

anymore,"
Richard
Rosen
laments
in
a
sardonic
dissection
of
American
reading
habits

in
New
York
magazine.
Instead,
those
who
aspire
to
travel
in
"the
literary
fast
lane"

succumb
willingly
to
the
"reading
disorder"
he
calls
"Bullcrit."

Simply
put,
Bullcrit
is
talk
about
books
one
has
never
read.
It
is
"the

increasingly
popular
mode
of
discourse
that
combines
all
the
virtues
of
literary

expertise
with
none
of
the
inconveniences
of
reading
book‐length
material."

Bullcrit's
now
common
symptoms
are
readily
identifiable:
"judgmentalism
without

judgment,
familiarity
without
knowledge,
received
wisdom
without
emotional

response,
informedness
without
information."
Indeed,
as
"book
sightings"
become

more
important
than
book
readings,
as
book
reviews
come
to
seem
as
significant

6
(because
more
accessible
and
more
easily
convertible
into
Bullcrit )
as
the
book

itself,
when
a
book
few
have
read
(Rushdie's
Satanic
Verses)—even
those
Mullahs


6
Saying that you have read the book review, or even just "saw" it,
Rosen notes, has now become in some circles virtually equivalent to having
read the book. ("To paraphrase Emily Dickinson," Rosen writes, "there is no
frigate like a book review, to take us lands away.") And he cites editor
Michael Kinsley's (New Republic) half-facetious recommendation to aspiring
book authors that they spare themselves the trouble by simply writing a
review instead. Rosen does not mention that the great Polish science fiction
writer Stanislaw Lem has, of course, already turned such reviews into a new
genre in books like A Perfect Vacuum (1971), reviews of books which Lem
himself had at one time envisioned but does not expect to complete, and
Imaginary Magnitude (1981), a collection of reviews of books to be written in
the next century.
 T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 13

who
would
have
its
author
executed
for
writing
it—becomes
the
lead
story
on
the

nightly
news,
it
becomes
unfashionable,
even
quaint,
to
actually
read
books
cover
to

cover.

Rosen
detects
several
primary
causes
for
the
rise
of
Bullcrit.
First,
the
nature

of
intellectual
exchange
in
a
media‐saturated
world
necessitates
it.
"In
the

mediacracy,
which
thrives
on
the
bull
consumption
and
recitation
of
premium
tidbits,

an
investment
on
the
scale
of
reading
an
entire
book
.
.
.
could
not
possibly
pay
a

conversational
and
informational
dividend
high
enough
to
make
it
worthwhile."

Second,
books
have
taken
on
a
new
symbolic
value
in
the
culture:
no
longer
merely

signs
of
knowledge,
books
have
instead
become
"more
than
ever
.
.
.
status
symbols,

fashion
accessories,
interior‐decorative
touches,
matching
gew‐gaws;
they
accent
the

coffee
tables
of
our
consciousness."
Third,
books
are
out
of
sync
with
our

postmodern
sense
of
time
and
with
the
flow
of
information
as
a
whole:
"the
act
of

reading
a
book
today,"
Rosen
writes,
"requires
an
almost
archaic
gentility,
a

nineteenth‐century
obliviousness
to
the
lava
of
product
belching
out
of
the
nation's

publishers,
film
studios,
and
television
networks."

But
Rosen's
condemnation
is
too
sweeping.
He
makes
no
distinction
between

Bullcrit
and
book
gutting.
Unlike
speed
readers
and
Bullcritters,
book
gutters
love

books,
not
as
proof
of
accelerated
access‐time
to
bookish
information
systems,
not

as
coffee
table
objets
d'art,
not
primarily
for
the
pleasure
of
the
text
(though
they

are
likely
to
appreciate
and
even
to
indulge
in
such
literary
hedonism).


Book
gutters,
I
would
suggest,
understand
the
book
as
an
evolutionary

phenomenon;
we
see
them
as
repositories
of
memes.
We
crack
them
open
in
search

of
the
memes
encapsulated
within.



When
asked
how
it
was
that
Native
Americans
were
able
to
discover—without
the

aid
of
modern
science—the
medicinal
properties
of
hundreds
of
indigenous
herbs
and

plants,
the
Shoshone
healer
Rolling
Thunder
explained
that
the
secret
was
quite

simple:
a
medicine
man
addressed
the
plant
and
asked
it,
in
the
"I
and
thou"

dialogue
of
his
"concrete
science,"
what
it
was
good
for,
what

power
it
contained.
We
must
learn,
without
embarrassment,
to
do

the
same
with
books.
Andrei
Codrescu
has
suggested
that
we
need

to
learn
to
"use
books
as
oracles.
Ask
them
a
question:
open
them

up."


"Properly,
we
shd.
read
for
power,"
Ezra
Pound
insisted.

 T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 14

"Man
reading
shd.
be
man
intensely
alive.
The
book
shd.
be
a
ball
of
light
in
one's

hands."