So... Come here often?

Today the famous (sometimes infamous) litblog Bookslut is celebrating their 100^th issue. Sure, the website says they’re onto the 101^st issue but they’re celebrating the century mark today. This of course got us thinking about that name of theirs.

Slut, of course, is an extremely derogatory term. In the case of the litblog in question it is softened somewhat and used with levity. It is meant to evoke the concept of an individual with an insatiable appetite for all things book. Albeit it’s a somewhat promiscuous appetite that slyly winks at a rapid succession of encounters with various books. It also informs us that a book slut knows all about books because he/she has been with so many of them. When a good one comes around they’ll know it from experience.

Bookslut is not alone in their sexual allusion. A quick search reveals many ravenous book bloggers out there. Book Strumpet, Book Vixen, Book Whore and less gender specific names like Bookgasm, Book Lust and last but not least a site pandering Book Shelf Porn. For the record there is a Book Gigolo out there too, offering his bookish services. No Book Pimp is operating currently, which is a positive I suppose.

Even this humble poster has succumbed to this tendency on occasion.

There are more too, no doubt, but I think you understand where I’m going. The bibliomane cum nymphomania is apparently just par for the book world’s course (that sentence right there is one of the finest double entendres ever and possibly an all-time low for MobyLives). Still, I think it goes deeper than that (get your mind out of the gutter, people).

Talk to booklovers about the future of print books versus the arrival of e-books and you end up hearing variations of one theme: “I don’t want to curl up in bed with an e-reader,” or “I like the smell of books more,” or “Books are so much nicer to hold.” Whether through its smell or its shape, the book exists as something extremely sensual for those appraising it thus.

One of the most famous comments on the sensuality of books was made by E. Annie Proulx in her May 1994 New York Times article, “Books on Top.“ In it we find the Pulitzer Prize winning author saddling-up to ride out and defend the book from those speaking too soon of its demise. The article is a fascinating read for a several reasons. For one, there are Proulx’s generalizations about the book market and naive pronouncements about technology in general. Secondly, from a book sales and publishing standpoint there are eerie correlations between the effects of the current recession and the one going on in 1994. Lastly, and perhaps most definitively, there is this:

Those who say the book is moribund often cite the computer as the asp on the mat. But the electronic highway is for bulletin boards on esoteric subjects, reference works, lists and news — timely, utilitarian information, efficiently pulled through the wires. Nobody is going to sit down and read a novel on a twitchy little screen. Ever.

Ever, ever? This paragraph is soon followed by:

Books give esthetic and tactile pleasure, from the dust jacket art to the binding, paper, typography and text design, from the moment of purchase until the last page is turned.

Well the screens don’t twitch anymore and the desire to brush away the internet along with bulletin boards on esoteric subjects wasn’t enough to keep Jeff Bezos from releasing the Kindle. The point here is the near fetishism of the book evident in Proulx’s language. Nothing will compare with the book because electronic devices don’t give us “tactile pleasure” and above all have small and uncoordinated methods of delivery.

Shame on you for reading it that way.

It is interesting how universal and longstanding this notion of the sexually objectified book is. Even Ralph Waldo Emerson once put his spin on this subject by pronouncing that, “A man’s library is a sort of harem.”

You wish, Ralph.

It does make you wonder whether the printed word’s best hope for survival isn’t found in archival or official capacities but rather in the sweaty palms of racy pedants the world over.

By the way, do I just have a dirty mind or is the Proulx article’s title a bit smutty in its own right?