Friday Column: Deep Stacks

I've more or less accepted that the days when I read whatever I wanted will probably never return. It wasn't always like this. I remember a time when if I bought a book I could be pretty sure I'd read it soon. That was maybe 3 years ago. But now I have so much less control over which books make it from the bookstore to my stack to my eyes.

I used to be leisurely about my choices. I would go to the book store infrequently, buy books one at a time. At most I'd be reading two at once. My stack, in so much as there was one, was small, small enough that I didn't feel any anticipation at getting to the next book in it.

That was maybe three years ago, but then things began to change. I hadn't yet discovered litblogs, but I was getting an inkling of just how many authors there were out there to read. I was discovering the DeLillos, the Foster Wallances, the Franzens, the Pynchons, the Austers. Big names, but not as big as Tolstoy, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Hemingway. It was like I was at the outermost layer of the Great Literary Onion--I knew the authors that had the most cultural capital, those that had seeped most thoroughly throughout society. I knew them, but I began to discover how much more there was.

So I penetrated the outer layer, and the number of names I wanted to find out about multiplied. A little later I discovered litblogs, which of course greatly accelerated this trend. I began to visit the bookstore more frequently, and often I'd buy the books in twos, sometimes even threes. It wasn't that I meant to buy so many, just that I bought them second-hand, and when I saw, say, that Vollmann sitting there, I knew that I'd be stupid to pass it up because you never knew if it would be there the next time.

It was about this time that my reading began to get away from me. More and more I felt impinged upon by the weight of What Must Be Read. I started doing book reviews, which added even more. The Litblog Co-op was created. Five more books every three months. Increasingly, I read with an eye on what I would read next. As I neared the end of one book, I anticipated the next one. Picking that next one became a fraught task, a matter of the higest importance. Yet even as it became clear that simply reading what I had in my stack would take at least a year, my rate of buying increased."Reading a book," an activity that had always seemed like a task of some substance, became diminished, as though it was a no more weighty endeavor than tossing a few peanuts into my mouth.

Yet if each individual book became lighter, they were so overwhelming in number that I felt quite pressed by them.

As happens with any good bibliophile, acquiring books became second-nature. In a good week there'd be ten new books, the majority of them tantalizing. I'd only be able to get to a couple before ten more came. Somehow they just arrived, and just kept arriving. I'd never keep up, and they made me forget about the ones I'd gotten months and years ago.

Books that I had bought mere weeks ago, to say nothing of those picked up months ago, were forgotten on some shelf. Authors that I had heard so much about and was so eager to read languished. It was all about the new--books newly arrived in the mail from publicists, new books for review, the five or so books I had just picked up second-hand, the latest authors I read about in blogs and journals. And, of course, there was always the five or so books I was reading at the time. Each time I neared the end of one I began tehe pre-selection speculation over what I'd next pick from my stack.

This is the way things are now.

In a sense it's great. I'm reading more, and more widely, than ever before. Yet, I've sometimes stopped to wonder if the books I read are the books I want to be reading. After all, I have book that I acquired as far back as two years ago; they're just as highly recommended as the ones bought last month. What might I be missing?

It was a question I wanted to answer, but one I never could. No matter how much I thought about dipping more deeply into my stack, I always fixated on the newest arrivals. There was always a new book, and it always kept me from reading the old ones.

What was I missing out on? Recently, I got a chance to find out. In an attempt to reassert some control over my stack, I made myself dip into books that had been sitting around for at least a year and a half. As I delved into these books, I discovered something: I should have read them earlier.

Take, for instance, Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew. A book I bought almost two years ago, knowing full well that many call it Sorrentino's masterpiece, a book I should have read right away. While Mulligan Stew sat ignored, I read scores of authors not even close to the same class as Sorrentino on a bad day. Now that I'm reading it, I've discovered that it's incredible. I should have read it much, much sooner. I'm amazed at all the second-rate books I read when I could have been reading this book.

Yet I probably wouldn't have read it if I hadn't forced myself to ignore the new arrivals. I've managed to hold off the new arrivals and read a few old ones, but I know that eventually I'm going to get excited over something. I know I won't stop acquiring books, and so long as I do that there will always be something new blocking out a book I should have read a long time ago. So for now I'm dipping deep into my stack, but for how long?

Comments

[Jeremy Hatch]

I don't think it's such a bad thing to let books pile up unless you're breaking the budget or have a hard time identifying (and then giving away!) the ones you just aren't interested in any more. Of course my pile is really big (eighteen feet), but that doesn't bother me too much. I figure that I will eventually read the ones that are worth reading. They will call to me in time.

The longest period of time for me that has gone between acquisition of a book-for-reading and its actual reading is eleven years -- I bought a copy of Richard Wright's "Pagan Spain" in 1995 (according to the receipt inside) and only got around to reading it a few months ago.

I specify "book for reading" because I actually buy a fair number of books more to fill out a collection of a favorite author rather than out of any specific plan to read them. Call me a book geek, but I just enjoy having the LOA edition of Mark Twain's works, for instance, or every Haruki Murakami book that has been released thus far. Those books do tend to get read eventually, though, because favorite authors are such a pleasure to read.