Page 75 - Critical and Cultural Theory

LANGUAGE AND INTERPRETATION
and gain their individual identities from the ways in which they
are handled. Surely, the body of a book going through the hands
of a reader inclined to break its spine, write into its margins, pig-
ear its pages, is substantially different from the anatomy of a book
whose reader would regard these habits as unforgivable violations.
Ultimately, reading is about communing with an object. As
Manguel points out: 'books declare themselves through their titles,
their authors, their places in a catalogue or on a bookshelf, the
illustrations on their jackets; books also declare themselves
.
through their size. .. I judge a book by its cover; I judge a book
by its shape' (Manguel 1997: 125). An intriguing dramatization of
the idea of the book-as-object is supplied by the experimental art
form devised by Calvino's character Irnerio. For him, a book is
'not for reading. It's for making. I make things with books. I
make objects. Yes, artworks: statues, pictures, whatever you want
to call them. I even had a show. I fix the books with mastic, and
they stay as they were. Shut, or open, or else I give them forms, I
carve them, I make holes in them. A book is a good material to
work with; you can make all sorts of things with if (Calvino 1993:
144; emphasis in original). Calvino's novel also stresses the text's
materiality by suggesting that books form a 'thick barricade',
made daunting by the fact that the books you have read are inevi-
tably outnumbered by the 'Books You Haven't Read' - ranging
.
from 'Books You Needn't Read .. Books Read Even Before You
Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read
Before Being Written .. Books That If You Had More Than One
.
Life You Would Certainly Read Also But Unfortunately Your
Days Are Numbered .. Books That Everybody's Read So It's As
.
If You Had Read Them, Too'. These 'troops' of unread or
unwanted volumes, moreover, are not inanimate objects but
sentient entities, capable of looking at their potential readers 'with
the bewildered gaze of dogs who, from their cages in the city
pound, see a former companion go off on the leash of his master,
come to rescue him' (Calvino 1993: 5-6). Arguably, the shelves of
the unread (like of those of the unwritten) will always constitute
the world's largest library.

58