Comparative Critical Studies 5, 2–3, pp. 249–269 © BCLA 2008DOI: 10.3366/E174418540800044X

Bibliomania and the Folly of Reading

BERNHARD METZ

Libri quosdam ad scientiam, quosdam ad insaniam deduxere.(Books have led some to knowledge and some to madness.)

Francesco Petrarca, De remediis utriusque fortunae, ‘De librorum copia’

Antiquity was a relaxed period in terms of reading. With only a few textsaround, there was a small number of well-known authors, and one knewthem well or even by heart. It was paradise compared to our modernworld of millions of new releases each year and the burden of all thehistoric books, with never enough time to take notice, let alone to readthem all. But as every reader of Alberto Manguel’s A History of Readingor other works on this topic will know, the complaint over too many booksand too little time is as old as the history of the written book or eventhe book-scroll.1 Literacy once promised to save time, but the oppositehappened.

In his Epistulae ad Lucilium Seneca gives the dietetic advice to read lessinstead of reading everything and to choose carefully: ‘Illud autem vide,ne ista lectio auctorum multorum et omnis generis voluminum habeataliquid vagum et instabile. [. . .] Distringit librorum multitudo. Itaquecum legere non possis, quantum habueris, satis est habere, quantumlegas.’2 This is the problem which is at stake here – but there aresolutions to it. The bibliomaniac or book fool, as he is named sinceSebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools (1492), breaks Seneca’s rule of Satisest habere, quantum legas. He possesses more books than he is able toread – as all of us do – and often he doesn’t read them at all, sinceshopping, collecting and possessing are already too demanding andtime-consuming; hopefully this is not true for any of us. The bookfool unifies many key aspects related to reading, print culture, andscholarship. He stands for the distinction between using vs. collectingbooks or reading vs. not reading at all. All bibliomaniacs have tremendouslibraries, yet they don’t use them. At least not in a philologically acceptedway: by exact, intense, and attentive reading and writing about thereading. The bibliomaniac is the counterpart of the scholar; he is the

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oppressed and excluded other of scholarship. He embodies our badconscience – so many books, so little time. He is perfectly trained in alltypes of speed and fast reading, which results in not reading at all. Heembodies an unacknowledged desire and a bad habit we normally tryto avoid but often simply cannot control. The book fool doesn’t caretoo much about correctness and gets excluded, as Jackson Holbrook’sAnatomy of Bibliomania shows: ‘They [the bibliomaniacs] amass booksnot for use but for the lust of possession. Or, in the other extreme,for inordinate consumption [. . .]. Bibliomania is perverted bibliophily.[. . .] Bibliomania is [. . .] inordinate or corrupt book-love’.3 Why such aharsh judgement? Consider Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften(1930), this well-known but rarely completely read novel. GeneralStumm von Bordwehr tells Ulrich about his talk with a librarian andunveils the arcana imperii of the Wiener Hofbibliothek:

‘Sie wollen wissen, wieso ich jedes Buch kenne? Das kann ich Ihnen nun allerdingssagen: Weil ich keines lese!’ [. . .] Es ist das Geheimnis aller guten Bibliothekare,daß sie von der ihnen anvertrauten Literatur niemals mehr als die Büchertitel unddas Inhaltsverzeichnis lesen. ‘Wer sich auf den Inhalt einläßt, ist als Bibliothekarverloren!’ hat er mich belehrt. ‘Er wird niemals einen Überblick gewinnen!’

Ich frage ihn atemlos: ‘Sie lesen also niemals eines von den Büchern?’‘Nie; mit Ausnahme der Kataloge.’‘Aber Sie sind doch Doktor?’‘Gewiß. Sogar Universitätsdozent; Privatdozent für Bibliothekswesen. Die

Bibliothekswissenschaft ist eine Wissenschaft auch allein und für sich’, erklärte er.4

Bibliomaniacs (and sometimes librarians, book-sellers, and biblio-graphers) don’t read any longer. And when they do, they only readtitles, names and places of printer’s shops and other bibliographicallyrelevant information. They are interested in the core data instead ofthe actual content of the book. Otherwise they ‘lose perspective’ andcan’t keep an overview. Unlike Musil’s librarian we normally can’t admitthis and have to simulate reading or at least dissimulate our not havingread this or that book. Non-reading seems to be the worst thing thatcan happen to philology and literary studies, but also to the ordinaryreader. Pierre Bayard has recently said that admitting to not having readcertain great books is one of the last great taboos of private life in ourWestern societies – along with the equally impossible topics of money andsexuality.5

The book fool holds the mirror to the scholar and is also crucial to thehistory of media. By collecting books as if they were handwritten uniqueoriginals he behaves anachronistically. In manuscript culture scrolls orcodices still possess an aura of the autographic original, which gets lost

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through high print runs. The bibliomaniac is interested in everythingthat increases rarity and originality: misprints, special editions, veryold or very rare prints, bindings, covers, paper qualities, etc. But inprint culture there’s hardly a book printed only once, and their quantityincreases tremendously. Treating printed books as unique and singularoriginals won’t solve the problem of too many books and too little time.Giacomo in Gustave Flaubert’s ‘Bibliomanie’ (1836) makes this mistakeand is struck by the fact that there could be another copy of the oldestbook printed in Spain, which he even killed to get hold of. Giacomo isalmost unable to read (‘Il savait à peine lire’), but he loves books andappreciates everything connected with them: ‘Il aimait un livre, parceque c’était un livre; il aimait son odeur, sa forme, son titre.’6 Théodorein Charles Nodier’s ‘Le Bibliomane’ (1831) collects uncut books inGreek, which he speaks only rarely. Nevertheless he shows them off withgreat expertness and bibliographical knowledge. This bibliomaniac getslethally shocked by finding out that one Elzevir edition of Virgil he ownsand thought to be the one with the largest paper margins, simply is not.7

But the book fool also reflects the new conditions of reading afterGutenberg. He reads books in a reductive way by skimming and browsingthem, picking out the most interesting elements. He creates ways of non-reading, which became important and more or less accepted during thetwentieth century. He has developed an informational competence – it’snot his fault when this leads to skipping most of the text. Thebibliomaniac is specialized in all types of paratextual information likeformat, type, title, publication history, etc., and he considers these tobe more essential than the texts themselves. His answer to the problemof too many books and too little time consists in the radical cure of non-reading or avoiding to read, which Ephraim Kishon’s ‘How to ReviewBooks without Really Trying’ (1962), Peter Bichsel’s Lob des Nichtlesers(1993), Gion Cavelty’s Endlich Nichtleser (2000), Renaud Camus’ Nelisez pas ce livre! (2000), or Pierre Bayard’s Comment parler des livresque l’on n’a pas lus? (2007) tried to defend, at least ironically.8 DanielPennac’s great praise of reading in Comme un roman (1992), which hasbeen recently re-published under the appropriate title The Rights ofthe Reader, contains a ‘Reader’s Bill of Rights’; the first of these tencommandments is ‘the right not to read’, the second ‘the right to skippages’, the third ‘the right not to finish’, and the eighth ‘the right tobrowse’.9 In Hermann Burger’s ‘Die Leser auf der Stör’ (1970) readingis finally outsourced to reading societies, as people order professionalreaders to get their libraries refurbished and equipped with the latest

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releases. These professional readers also bookmark and dog-ear books,write marginal notes, underscore pages or simply order books pre-readfrom the sellers for a higher price.10

In a still procreative typology Harald Weinrich distinguished betweenthree reading types in history: first we had few books and few readers,i.e. few readers read few books (‘wenige Personen lesen wenige Bücher’),which was the standard situation for most of the history of readingand was connected to reading aloud. During the eighteenth centurythis changed to the new status quo of intensive reading, when manyreaders read few books (‘viele Personen lesen wenige Bücher’), andextensive reading, when many readers read many books (‘viele Personenlesen viele Bücher’), combined with the breakthrough of silent reading.The most recent development could be found in the twentieth century,which Weinrich describes as the era of abundant or defensive reading.All readers have to defend themselves against too many books and avoidreading as often as possible: ‘wir befinden uns in der historischen Phaseder abundanten Lektüre, die vielleicht sogar schon in vielen Fällen einesuperabundante und bei den klügsten Köpfen eine defensive Lektüreist.’11

Walter Scott called Don Quijote ‘[t]he most determined as well asearliest bibliomaniac upon record’,12 but I’m not concerned with thephantasmatic loss of the world that we find in Don Quijote, youngWerther or Emma Bovary. Here bibliomania is connected to ‘readingmania’, ‘reading craze’ or ‘Lesesucht’, ‘Lesewut’, ‘Lesefieber’, ‘maniede lire’, or ‘fringale de lectures’, as this eighteenth-century madness wascalled in its time. But bibliomania is different from reading; rather, thebook fool is not reading at all, even when he’s exercising all types of wild,inordinate, improper, and forbidden reading. While it’s often womenwho suffer from the reading craze, bibliomania seems more frequentlyto affect men. And I will also leave out historic bibliomaniacs, the greatcollectors and sometimes infamous biblioklepts like King Ptolemaios,Johann Georg Tinius, John Kerr, Duke of Roxburghe, Richard Heber,Conte Guglielmo ‘Libri’ Carrucci, or nowadays Stephen Blumberg orWilliam Simon Jacques.13

The 1989 second edition of the OED provides the followingdescription of ‘bibliomania’: ‘A rage for collecting and possessingbooks.’ However, it also mentions related phenomena like biblio-clasm, biblioklepticism, bibliolatry, bibliophilia, and bibliotaphism.The English notion is at least as old as 1734, but even if bibliophilia andbibliomania have always had a very prominent place in England (let us

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remember Richard de Bury and his Philobiblon (1343–1345), where inthe third chapter the advice is given to buy and possess books by allmeans), the French ‘bibliomanie’ is older. The earliest occurrence datesback to Guy Patin in 1654, where he speaks of a malady and his wishto prohibit the access to books to bibliomanes: ‘j’appelle cette maladiebibliomanie; et je voudrais qu’il ne fût permis d’avoir des livres qu’à ceuxqui sont en état de les lire et d’en profiter’.14 No book-possession withoutreading – bibliomaniacs provoke reactions of refusal. Nevertheless, thisrejection is no invention of the post-Gutenberg period of incunables andearly printing; the book fool in literature is as old as the satiric writingsof Lucian of Samosata.

Lucian’s unnamed Syrian book collector is the prototype of the bookfool as collector of unread books, a ridiculous shopper of books, ‘ineptuslibrorum emtor’, as Jacob and Heinrich Grimm centuries later definethe German ‘Büchernarr’ in their Deutsches Wörterbuch in 1860.15 Hebelieves in magic, as if being close to books would make him wiser andmore erudite simply by contact:

.16 This belief isridiculous, but it’s more common than we would admit. Thinkhonestly of your recent book acquisitions and what you really readof them. Lucian’s book fool is attracted by the shape and layout ofbooks – like all bibliophiles:

.17 He reads only thetitles, but never the content of the books he owns (Ind. 18). But healso takes them away. Bibliomaniacs tend not only to collect booksthey don’t read, but also to dislike the fact that others could readthem. That’s the meaning of ‘bibliotaph’ and the main accusationin Lucian’s diatribe. An open-access library is not what this bookcollector has in mind:

.18

There are similar attacks in the works of other ancient writers, suchas Petronius’s Satyrica (Sat. 48), which describes Trimalchio’s librariesand his grotesque lack of erudition. Collecting books as a shortcut togreat education and knowledge is not simply a contemporary bad habit.

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Consider one last ancient example, Seneca’s De tranquillitate animi,where even the library of Alexandria is ridiculed as a showpiece:

Quo innumerabiles libros et bybliothecas, quarum dominus vix tota vita indicesperlegit? Onerat discentem turba, non instruit, multoque satius est paucis teauctoribus tradere, quam errare per multos. Quadraginta milia librorum Alexandriaearserunt; pulcherrimum regiae opulentiae monimentum alius laudaverit, sicut TitusLivius, qui elegantiae regum curaeque egregium id opus ait fuisse. Non fuitelegantia illud aut cura, sed studiosa luxuria, immo ne studiosa quidem, quoniamnon in studium, sed in spectaculum comparaverant, sicut plerisque ignaris etiampuerilium litterarum libri non studiorum instrumenta, sed cenationum ornamentasunt. Paretur itaque librorum quantum satis sit, nihil in apparatum.19

After this philosophical claim for the right measure and against thecollecting of books for mere show – which can also be found in Petrarch’sDe librorum copia (approx. 1360), another famous plea for bibliomanictemperance20 – Seneca gives this fine description of bibliomania:

Quid habes, cur ignoscas homini armaria e citro atque ebore captanti, corporaconquirenti aut ignotorum auctorum aut improbatorum et inter tot milialibrorum oscitanti, cui voluminum suorum frontes maxime placent titulique? Apuddesidiosissimos ergo videbis quicquid orationum historiarumque est, tecto tenusexstructa loculamenta; iam enim inter balnearia et thermas bybliotheca quoque utnecessarium domus ornamentum expolitur. Ignoscerem plane, si studiorum nimiacupidine erraretur. Nunc ista conquisita, cum imaginibus suis discripta sacrorumopera ingeniorum in speciem et cultum parietum comparantur.21

To use or misuse books as wallpaper is no modern invention; the ‘cultumparietum’ is quite old. As Jean le Pautre claims in the late seventeenthcentury, the book fool is somebody who

se plaist aux Livres bien dorezBien couvers, bien reliez, bien nets, bien EpoudrezEt ne les voit Jamais que par la Couverture.(‘who likes his books all gilt,well covered, well bound, nice and clean and dustfree,and who never looks at anything but the cover’.)

In La Folie du siècle, his cycle of six engraved plates, bibliomania isdefined as the greatest folly in the world, worse than vanity, arrogance,pride and carelessness for the right goals. The inscription begins: ‘C’estbien le plus grand fou qui soit dans la nature’ (‘The greatest of all nature’sfools is he’).22

The distinction between an acceptable bibliophilia and a pathologizedbibliomania is nevertheless difficult. Book love and book madness belongtogether, and often it is impossible to distinguish between them. It

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Figure 1. Jean le Pautre, La Folie du siècle (Paris: François Iollain, before 1683);Bibliothèque Nationale de France, cl 61 B 27309.

depends on the perspective and sometimes only the level of madnessthat the author himself is suffering from. This is part of the ambivalencein how we deal with bibliomania as a scholarly attitude. AlexanderKošenina rightly claimed that there is no scholarship without a touchof bibliomania:

Keine Krankheit des Gelehrten ist so unheilbar wie die Bibliomanie. Ist sie abernicht einmal im Keime vorhanden, kann mit Fug die Gelehrsamkeit in Zweifelgezogen werden. Der Gelehrte lebt von Büchern für Bücher. [. . .] Wer sie nichtliebt und besitzen will, gilt in der Respublica litteraria als Außenseiter, unter allden Sonderlingen also als ein wunderlicher Fremdling im Haus der Erudition, derBibliothek. [. . .] Die meisten Gelehrten sind Bibliomanen, unter den eigentlichenBibliomanen aber nur wenige Gelehrte.23

It’s striking that there is rarely ever a warm and sympathetic treatment ofbibliomaniacs to be found, at least not before the nineteenth century;24

on the contrary, they are excluded in every possible way. Manybibliomaniacs die, often burning with their unread books. Even thoughPeter Kien in Elias Canetti’s Die Blendung (1936) and Jorge of Burgosin Umberto Eco’s Il nome della rosa (1980) both read, these examplesare as good as the aforementioned Giacomo or Théodore. In Charles

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Asselineau’s L’Enfer du bibliophile (1860) the narrator doesn’t get burned,but he dreams one of his worst nightmares: a bibliomaniac hellfire. At thevery least, bibliomaniacs are depicted as ridiculous and bizarre figures.Alberto Nota’s Il Bibliomane (1822–1827), which features the characterDon Geronzio, who spends all his money on books and tries to marryhis niece Faustina to a Dutch book trader for obvious reasons, is anexample of the scholar as antihero and of the tradition of the learned fool.Geronzio pays high sums for books in languages he is not able to read,but he appreciates the beautiful typography and paper of a 1470 editionof Petrarch: ‘Vedete il contorno e l’armonia di questi caratteri: sentitequesta carta; osservate il margine [. . .]’ (I, iii). But even Faustina talks tohim about the book burning she desires: ‘Vorrei vederla in fiamme quellalibreria.’ (II, v; ‘I want to see this library on fire.’)25 In the end it is notthe library that burns down, but only the kitchen, out of carelessness – IlBibliomane is a comedy. Why can’t all these book fools live their harmlesslives? What’s the reason for this ardent rejection? In Don Quijote’scase the books get burned to liberate their owner; with the book foolsit’s the other way round, as Kirsten Dickhaut writes: ‘Gerade der Todder Bibliomane soll am Ende der Texte die Ordnung wiederherstellen,welche die Büchersammler durch ihre grenzüberschreitenden Exzessezerstört haben.’26

‘Von unnutzen büchern’, ‘Of useless books’, is the first chapter inBrant’s vast description of the varieties of foolish behaviour in hisNarrenschiff, which was one of the greatest successes of the book tradein the late fifteenth century, especially in its Latin translation. The bookfool got his prominent position for possessing a huge number of bookswhich he doesn’t understand, since he doesn’t read them:

Den vordantz hat man mir gelanDann ich on nutz vil bücher hanDie ich nit lyß/und nyt verstan’.27

He is also a bibliotaph, and his library becomes a shrine to enclose andbury its contents instead of enabling open access and public discussion:

Uff myn libry ich mych verlanVon büchern hab ich grossen hortVerstand doch drynn gar wenig wortUnd halt sie dennacht in den erenDas ich jnn wil der fliegen werenWo man von künsten reden dutSprich ich / do heym hab ichs fast gutDo mit loß ich begnügen michDas ich vil bücher vor mir sych/28

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Figure 2. Sebastian Brant, Stultifera nauis. Narragonice p[er]fectionis nunq[uam] satislaudata Nauis, translated by Jakob Locher (Basel: Johann Bergmann von Olpe, 1497),p. XI; University Library of Munich, 4◦ Inc. lat. 867.

Comparing himself to King Ptolemeus he claims:Ich hab vil bücher ouch des glichUnd lys doch gantz wenig dar jnnWorumb wolt ich brechen myn synnUnd mit der ler mich bkümbren fastWer vil studiert / würt ein fantast29

Brant, who owned a vast library himself, had a completely differentopinion. Here speaks folly. The book fool is a jackass for not wantingto get the right message. He is not a good reader, but rather no reader atall, and certainly not a scholarly reader. His Latin is so poor that he onlyunderstands ‘vinum’ for wine and ‘stultus’ for jerk.

But you have to read this in the original German, not in JakobLocher’s Latin translation, which made the richly illustrated StultiferaNavis (1497) famous all over Europe and enjoyable even for lazy readers.The book fool in the Latin version claims not to read, but he does it inperfect Latin:

En ego possideo multos, quos raro libellosPerlego, tum lectos negligo, nec sapio.

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Figure 3. Johann Christoph Weigel, ‘Bücher-Narr’, Centi-Folium Stultorum (Vienna:Johann Carl Megerle; Nuremberg: Johann Christoph Weigel 1709); DombibliothekFreising M/012 00144/M.

In the handwritten marginal note, printed in later editions, we read:‘Distrahit enim librorum multitudo. Et faciendi libros plures non estfinis’, which intertextually echoes the already mentioned passage fromSeneca (ep. mor. II, 3) and the Book of Ecclesiastes (12:12).30

The book fool has since become a well-known figure in moralisticreflections and mirrors of good manners. In a famous rejection LaRochefoucauld attacked him,31 as did La Bruyère in Book XIII (‘De lamode’) of the sixth edition of his Caractères (1691), where he comparedthe library of a bibliomaniac to a tannery because of the odd smell ofmorocco leather which covered all his beautifully gilded unread books(‘il ne lit jamais’): ‘une odeur de maroquin noir dont les livres sont touscouverts; [. . .] ils sont dorés sur tranche, ornés de filets d’or, et de labonne edition, [. . .] sa tannerie, qu’il appelle bibliothèque’.32

In the Centi-Folium Stultorum (1709), an alphabetically arranged andrichly illustrated typology of a hundred fools that is sometimes wronglyascribed to Abraham a Sancta Clara, Brant and Seneca’s topics are

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re-combined once more. The book fool is defined in the traditionalmanner as an unlearned collector, but a new twist is added by claimingthat the readers of dangerous and immoral literature are also foolish(‘welche ohne Unterschied alle Bücher, so ihnen vor die Hand kommen,lesen, und theils hierdurch verkehrt, aber nicht gelehrt werden, indeme,wo sie nur ein närrisch-unzüchtig-oder verbottenes Buch könnenaufftreiben, sie es’), including those who read without thinking andthose who skim with superficial interest out of pure curiosity (‘welchedie Bücher nur obenhin auß eylen, und vermeinen, es seye schon gut,wann sie nur das Buch bald außgelesen haben, und dannoch, wannsie fertig, weder vom End oder Mittel, vielweniger aber vom Anfangdesselben Buchs das Geringste nichts zu sagen wissen’). The Centi-Folium Stultorum has a clear concept of good reading and is contemptuousof all other types: ‘wer anderst liset, der dröschet lähres Stroh’ (‘whoeverreads differently is a phrasemonger’).33

At this time medical literature began to define bibliomania as madness.One notorious attack was Louis Bollioud-Mermet’s anonymouslypublished De la Bibliomanie (1761). Bibliomania is rejected here for thefollowing reasons: it is an excess, a luxury beyond measure, and it isuseless, since the outcome of these readings is not new books, but noreading at all. However, Bollioud-Mermet gives another reason relatedto medical discourse: Bibliomania is pathological, and it is very oftenconnected to criminal acts like book theft, stealing or murdering to getmoney for new books. Instead of looking only at the moral aspects, herecommends treating bibliomaniacs as monomaniacal madmen who aredifficult to cure. It’s necessary ‘les regarder comme des malades difficilesà guérir’ (‘to see them as patients who are hard to cure’).34

It was d’Alembert himself who wrote the articles in the secondvolume of the Encyclopédie (1752) on ‘Bibliomane’ and ‘Bibliomanie’,which he defined as ‘fureur d’avoir des livres, et d’en ramasser’ andwhich he classified as ‘une des passions les plus ridicules’, one of themost ridiculous passions.35 Again, the worst type of bibliomania remainsbibliotaphism, and d’Alembert gives many examples. For good reasonsthere is a supplement article on the ‘Bibliotaphe’ in Volume 17 ofthe Encyclopédie (1767) which defines this type of bibliomaniac as theworst and most ancient: ‘les bibliotaphes n’amassent des livres que pourempêcher les autres d’en acquérir et d’en faire usage’ (‘bibliotaphs onlycollect books in order to prevent others from acquiring and making gooduse of them’). The article proceeds, giving one of the harshest and mostdisgusted definitions of bibliomania: ‘La bibliotaphie est la bibliomanie

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de l’avare ou du jaloux, et par conséquent les bibliotaphes sont de plusd’une façon la peste des lettres; car il ne faut pas croire que ces sortesde personnes soient en petit nombre: l’Europe en a toujours été infectée,et même aujourd’hui il est peu de curieux qui n’en rencontrent de tems-en-tems en leur chemin.’36

Thomas Frognall Dibdin published his Bibliomania; or, Book-Madness; Containing Some Account of the History, Symptoms, and Cureof this Fatal Disease in England in 1809, and bibliomania was known fora long time as ‘Dibdin’s syndrome’. Contrary to the French tradition, hedefined the love of books as one of the most reasonable and praiseworthyof all follies and mentioned the following: ‘Symptoms of this disease[. . .] by a passion for I. Large Paper Copies: II. Uncut Copies: III.Illustrated Copies: IV. Unique Copies: V. Copies printed upon Vellum:VI. First Editions: VII. True Editions: VIII. A general desire for theBlack Letter.’37 Dibdin’s ironic cure, as opposed to book burnings ornormative reading, consisted in a plea for good and affordable reprintsof rare books, open-access libraries, and good bibliographies; Bibliomaniaitself consists mainly of bibliographic information. Nevertheless evenDibdin, the initiator of the famous bibliophile Roxburghe Club,distinguishes in ‘the first place’ between the book and its content andbetween

useful and profitable works – whether these be printed upon small or large paper, inthe gothic, roman or Italian type! To consider purely the intrinsic excellence, and notthe exterior splendor or adventitious value, of any production, will keep us perhapswholly free from this disease.38

The reservation against all forms of reading that are aberrant andunacceptable for scholars thus still remains intact. Take for exampleHarold Bloom’s How to Read and Why? Its preface begins with thedistinction between good and bad reading habits: ‘There is no singleway to read well, though there is a prime reason why we shouldread.’ Bloom’s is a nineteenth-century model of education and self-improvement through the reading of the great books: ‘Reading well isbest pursued as an implicit discipline; finally there is no method butyourself, when your self has been fully molded.’39 Bibliomania as amethod of non-reading as opposed to reading well or badly simply breaksout of this frame. Concerning Weinrich’s notion of defensive reading, itcould be defined as ‘self-modelling through non-reading’. We will findmany aspects of it over time, reaching into the twentieth century.

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In conclusion I will present some amiable and sympathetic literarytreatments: the book fool in Hermann Burger’s ‘Der Büchernarr’(1970), Irnerio in Italo Calvino’s Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore(1979), Reger in Thomas Bernhard’s Alte Meister (1985), and Howiein Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine (1988). Burger’s book fool realizesexactly Weinrich’s defensive type of reading. Instead of using the libraryas a workplace, he goes there regularly for sleeping. He’s there every daywithout even leafing through books to get rid of all he had read duringhis lifetime: ‘Der Mann konnte einen Vormittag reglos auf seinem Stuhlsitzen und in sein Buch starren, ohne eine Seite umzuwenden.’40 Histherapy and defensive reading consists in sleeping: ‘Das ist nämlich daseinzige, was die Bücher nicht ertragen, daß man über ihnen einschläft.Sie sind beleidigt und nehmen freiwillig alles zurück, was sie vermittelthaben. Ich lese mich leer, ich lese mich frei. Ich entziehe mich ihnenim Schlaf.’41 Once a veracious reader, this bibliomaniac frees himselfcompletely from reading.

Calvino’s Irnerio is also a highly specialized non-reader and had totrain himself hard to become one. In the typology of Lettore and Lettrice,Irnerio stands for a third option, being the non-reader, il Non Lettore:

– Io non leggo libri! – dice Irnerio.– Cosa leggi, allora?– Niente. Mi sono abituato così bene a non leggere che non leggo neanche quello chemi capita sotto gli occhi per caso. Non è facile: ci insegnano a leggere da bambini eper tutta la vita si resta schiavi di tutta la roba scritta che ci buttano sotto gli occhi.Forse ho fatto un certo sforzo anch’io, i primi tempi, per imparare a non leggere, maadesso mi viene proprio naturale.42

Instead of reading them, Irnerio destroys books and uses them forsculptures, book works and art objects. He reduces books solely to theirmateriality and pure outside; this bibliomaniac is a true biblioclast:

– Cercavo un libro, – dice Irnerio.– Credevo che non leggessi mai, – obietti.– Non è per leggere. È per fare. Faccio delle cose coi libri. Degli oggetti. Sì, delleopere: statue, quadri, come li vuoi chiamare. Ho fatto anche un’esposizione. Fisso ilibri con delle resine, e restano lì. Chiusi, o aperti, oppure anche gli do delle forme,li scolpisco, li apro dentro dei buchi. È una bella materia il libro, per lavorarci, ci sipuò fare tante cose.43

Reger, in Bernhard’s novel Alte Meister, claims to have never read anentire book in his whole life – and he’s already eighty-two. He combines

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leafing and skipping with the older practice of intensive reading:

[I]ch habe niemals in meinem Leben ein einziges Buch ausgelesen, meine Art zulesen ist die eines hochgradig talentierten Umblätterers, also eines Mannes, derlieber umblättert, als liest, der also Dutzende, unter Umständen Hunderte vonSeiten umblättert, bevor er eine einzige liest; [. . .] Es ist doch besser, wir lesenalles in allem nur drei Seiten eines Vierhundertseitenbuches tausendmal gründlicherals der normale Leser, der alles, aber nicht eine einzige Seite gründlich liest, sagteer. Es ist besser, zwölf Zeilen eines Buches mit höchster Intensität zu lesen undalso zur Gänze zu durchdringen, [. . .] als wir lesen das ganze Buch wie der normaleLeser [. . .].44

Non-reading and intensive reading find a balance in Reger; it’s the readerwho has to choose what to read. Seneca’s reading diet and the hardtraining to become a non-reader are mentioned once again:

Wer alles liest, hat nichts begriffen, sagte er. Es ist nicht notwendig, denganzen Goethe zu lesen, den ganzen Kant, auch nicht notwendig, den ganzenSchopenhauer; ein paar Seiten Werther, ein paar Seiten Wahlverwandschaftenund wir wissen am Ende mehr über die beiden Bücher, als wenn wir sie vonAnfang zum Ende gelesen hätten, was uns in jedem Fall um das reinste Vergnügenbringt. Aber zu dieser drastischen Selbstbeschränkung gehört so viel Mut und soviel Geisteskraft, daß sie nur sehr selten aufgebracht werden kann und daß wirselbst sie nur selten aufbringen; der lesende Mensch [. . .] verdirbt sich wie derfleischfressende den Magen und die gesamte Gesundheit, den Kopf und die ganzegeistige Existenz.45

Baker’s Howie is also not interested in learned reading; he picks out whathe likes, and leaves behind what he doesn’t. He studies Wittgenstein,Spinoza or Hobbes only via their biographies instead of their theoreticalwritings: ‘Yet while these tiny truths about three philosophers (of whom,to be honest, I have read very little) have at least temporarily disabledany interest I might have had in reading them further, I crave knowledgeof this kind of detail.’46 Howie has read only a few pages of Arrianus,Tacitus, Tully or Proskopios, but he likes to see them standing on hisbook shelf – because of the colours of the books’ covers. He looks at hisbooks and takes them in his hands, but he doesn’t read them. And if hereads, it’s only a randomly chosen passage, which often decides whetherHowie buys a book or not, as with Marcus Aurelius:

And sure enough, the first thing I read when I opened the Meditations at random inthe bookstore stunned me with its fineness. [. . .] As often happens, I liked that firstdeciding sentence better than anything I came across in later consecutive reading.I had been carrying the book around for two weeks of lunch hours; its spine was

Bibliomania and the Folly of Reading 263

worn from being held more than from being read [. . .]; and by now, disenchanted,flipping around a lot, I was nearly ready to abandon it entirely [. . .]. I closed thebook.47

The book fool personifies the freedom of the reader. Instead of clinging tothe notion that only a linear and complete reading of a book is acceptable,he claims his right to decide what to read and what to leave out. Thereare relatively few novels which obviously play with the opportunitiesof reader freedom, including Julio Cortázar’s Rayuela (1963), GiorgioManganelli’s Nuovo commento (1969), Andreas Okopenko’s Lexikon-Roman (1970), Raymond Federman’s Take it or leave it (1976), DubravkaUgrešic’s ‘Patchwork Story’ Štefica (1981) or Renaud Camus’s P. A.(1997).48 Often the bibliomaniac only reads the author’s name, the title,and the table of contents. He represents all types of wild, inordinate,improper and forbidden reading practices, yet he nevertheless reaches anew level of knowledge about books. He – and maybe he alone – is able toget the complete overview Musil’s librarian mentions. The book fool isthe highly specialized figure, who is able to judge a book by its cover.His inability to ‘let go’ is problematic and might stand for a magicalrelationship towards books – but it could be his ease in taking possessionof whole ranges of knowledge just by regarding the paratextual aspectsof books that is the real scandal for the scholar. He might wish to dealwith the problem of too many books and too little time in a similar way.Pierre Bayard’s intelligent defence of productive ways of dealing withbooks we’ve never heard of, books we only skimmed through, bookswe’ve heard of but didn’t read, or books we’ve read but forgotten and hiscongenial classification system (‘LI’ for ‘livres inconnus’, ‘LP’ for ‘livresparcourus’, ‘LE’ for ‘livres évoqués’, and ‘LO’ for ‘livres oubliés’) showsthat the difference between reading and non-reading is often smallerthan normally perceived.49 Literary studies can’t do without books,without libraries and without good research librarians, book-sellers, andbibliographers, who are quintessential for good libraries and book stores.They develop strategies to recognize the quality of books even withoutopening and reading them. We don’t have to know every book, we onlyhave to know where to look up something, how to consult a librarian,and who to ask. In the end the reader needs the non-reader – so manybooks, so little time. The librarian or bibliographer who reads too muchloses perspective, and so does the scholar without a good librarian. Butsometimes he has to be both in one and the same person. In a way we’reall book fools.

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NOTES

1 Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (New York: Viking Press, 1996). See alsoA History of Reading in the West, edited by Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier,translated by Lydia G. Cochrane (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999).

2 ‘Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort maytend to make you discursive and unsteady. [. . .] And in reading of many books isdistraction. Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess,it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.’ Lucius Annaeus Seneca,Ad Lucilium epistulae morales, edited and translated by Richard M. Gummere, 3 vols(London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1917, reprinted1953), ep. mor. II, 2–3, vol. 2, p. 7.

3 Holbrook Jackson, The Anatomy of Bibliomania (New York: Farrar, Straus & Co.,1950), pp. 523 and 568.

4 Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1981), p. 462. ‘ “[I]fyou want to know how I know about every book here, I can tell you: because I neverread any of them.” [. . .] The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anythingmore of the literature in his charge than the titles and the tables of contents. “Anyonewho lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian,” he explained.“He’s bound to lose perspective.” / “So,” I said, trying to catch my breath, “younever read a single book?” / “Never. Only the catalogs.” / “But aren’t you a Ph.D.?”/ “Certainly I am. I teach at the university, as a special lecturer in Library Science.Library Science is a special field leading to a degree, you know,” he explained.’ TheMan Without Qualities, translated by Sophie Wilkins (Burton Pike & New York:Knopf, 1995), p. 503.

5 Pierre Bayard, Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus? (Paris: Minuit, 2007),p. 15.

6 Gustave Flaubert, ‘Bibliomanie’, in Œuvres complètes, edited by Claudine Gothot-Mersch and Guy Sagnes (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), Vol. 1, 159–172, this quotationpp. 162–163. (‘He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its smell, its shape, itstitle.’)

7 Charles Nodier, ‘Le Bibliomane’, in L’Amateur de livres, edited by Jean-LucSteinmetz ([Bordeaux]: Le Castor Astral, 1993), pp. 27–46.

8 Ephraim Kishon, ‘How to Review Books without Really Trying’, in Noah’s Ark,Tourist Class, translated by Yohanan Goldman (New York: Atheneum, 1962),pp. 209–217; Peter Bichsel, ‘Lob des Nichtlesers. Rede zum zehnten Jubiläum derHuss’schen Universitätsbuchhandlung in Frankfurt am Main’, in Das süße Gift derBuchstaben. Reden zur Literatur (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), pp. 74–80;Gion Mathias Cavelty, Endlich Nichtleser. Die beste Methode, mit dem Lesen für immeraufzuhören (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000); Renaud Camus, Ne lisez pas celivre! (Vaisseaux brûlés, 1) (Paris: P.O.L., 2000).

9 Daniel Pennac, Comme un roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1992).10 Hermann Burger, ‘Die Leser auf der Stör’, in Bork. Prosastücke (Munich and Zurich:

Artemis, 1970), pp. 119–125.11 Harald Weinrich, ‘Lesen – schneller lesen – langsamer lesen’, Neue Rundschau 95:3

(1984), 80–99, this quote p. 81 (‘We find ourselves in the historic stage of abundant

Bibliomania and the Folly of Reading 265reading. In many cases this may even be a superabundant reading, and for the greatestminds a defensive reading’).

12 Walter Scott, The Antiquary (1816), quoted from the Oxford English Dictionary,second edition, edited by John Simpson and Edmund Weiner (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1989), entry ‘bibliomania’.

13 For the vast realm of real bibliomania see among others Jackson, Anatomy or NicholasA. Basbanes, A Gentle Madness. Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion forBooks (New York: Holt, 1995).

14 Guy Patin, L’Esprit de Guy Patin (Amsterdam: Schelten, 1709), pp. 211–212, quotedfrom Daniel Desormeaux, La Figure du bibliomane. Histoire du livre et stratégielittéraire au XIXe siècle (St-Genouph: Nizet, 2001), p. 38.

15 Deutsches Wörterbuch, ed. by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (Berlin: Hirzel, 1854–1971;online at 〈http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/DWB〉), entry ‘Büchernarr’.

16 Lucian of Samosata, /Adversus indoctum, Ind. 4–5, in The works of Lucian, edited and translated byA. M. Harmon, 8 vols (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1921, reprinted 1969), III, 174–211, this quotation pp. 178–180. ‘What wouldyou gain by it in the way of learning, even if you should put them [the book scrolls]under your pillow and sleep on them or should glue them together and walk dressedin them? [. . .] What good, then, does it do you to buy them – unless you think thateven the book-cases are learned because they contain so many of the works of theancients!’ (pp. 179–181)

17 Ibid., Ind. 16, p. 194. ‘For what expectation do you base upon your books that you arealways unrolling them and rolling them up, gluing them, trimming them, smearingthem with saffron and oil of cedar, putting slip-covers on them and fitting them withknobs, just as if you were going to derive some profit from them?’ (p. 195)

18 Ibid., Ind. 28–30, pp. 208–210. ‘[B]uy books, keep them at home under lock andkey, and enjoy the fame of your treasures [. . .]. But you never lent a book to anyone’(pp. 209–211). It’s significant that Naudé’s Advis (1627), the first modern manualof library science and a vote for open access libraries, argues for the abandonmentof all exclusive ornament and binding and bibliophile editions in order to buy morebooks. Gabriel Naudé, Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (Leipzig: Neudrucke ausdem Buch- und Bibliothekswesen, 1963), pp. 80–81 and 85–87.

19 Lucius Annaeus Seneca, De tranquillitate animi, IX, 4–5, in Moral Essays, editedand translated by John W. Basore, 3 vols (London: Heinemann; Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932, reprinted 1958), II, 202–285, this quotationpp. 246–248. ‘What is the use of having countless books and libraries, whose titlestheir owners can scarcely read through in a whole lifetime? The learner is, notinstructed, but burdened by the mass of them, and it is much better to surrenderyourself to a few authors than to wander through many. Forty thousand bookswere burned at Alexandria; let someone else praise this library as the most noblemonument to the wealth of kings, as did Titus Livius, who says that it was themost distinguished achievement of the good taste and solicitude of kings. Therewas no “good taste” or “solicitude” about it, but only learned luxury – nay, not even“learned,” since they had collected the books, not for the sake of learning, but to makea show, just as many who lack even a child’s knowledge of letters use books, not as

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the tools of learning, but as decorations for the dining-room. Therefore, let just asmany books be acquired as are enough, but none for mere show.’ (pp. 247–249)

20 Petrarch, ‘De librorum copia’, in Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul. AModern English Translation of De remediis utriusque fortune, with a Commentary,edited and translated by Conrad H. Rawski (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1991), I, 138–142.

21 Seneca, Tranquillitas, IX, 6–7, p. 248. ‘What excuse have you to offer for a man whoseeks to have bookcases of citrus-wood and ivory, who collects the works of unknownor discredited authors and sits yawning in the midst of so many thousand books, whogets most of his pleasure from the outsides of volumes and their titles? Consequentlyit is in the houses of the laziest men that you will see a full collection of orations andhistory with the boxes piled right up to the ceiling; for by now among cold baths andhot baths a library also is equipped as a necessary ornament of a great house. I wouldreadily pardon these men if they were led astray by their excessive zeal for learning.But as it is, these collections of the works of sacred genius with all the portraits thatadorn them are brought for show and a decoration of their walls.’ (p. 249)

22 Jean Le Pautre, ‘Un bibliophile en costume de fou époussetant les livres de sabibliothèque’, in Inventaire du fonds français. Graveurs du XVIIe siècle, edited byMaxime Préaud (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 1993), Vol. XI, p. 236.Translation quoted from Roger Chartier, ‘The Practical Impact of Writing’, in AHistory of Private Life, edited by Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby, translated byArthur Goldhammer, 5 vols (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987–1991), III,111–159, this quotation p. 138.

23 Alexander Košenina, Der gelehrte Narr. Gelehrtensatire seit der Aufklärung (Göttingen:Wallstein, 2003), pp. 133–134. (‘No illness of a scholar is as incurable as bibliomania.But once there is not the slightest hint of it, true scholarship can be justifiablydoubted. The scholar lives off books for books. Who does not love and want topossess them, is considered to be an outsider in the Respublica litteraria. Amongall the weirdos he’s an outlandish stranger in the house of erudition, the library.Most scholars are bibliomaniacs, but among the true bibliomaniacs there are onlyfew scholars.’)

24 Apart from Nodier’s stories, who was himself a great bibliophile, and the essay-like defences of Dibdin and other bibliographers, the earliest straight sympathetictreatments of explicit bibliomaniacs (‘bibliomanes’) in literary texts I know of can befound in Octave Uzanne’s Caprices d’un bibliophile (Paris: Rouveyre, 1878).

25 Alberto Nota, Il bibliomane. Commedia in cinque atti, edited by Maria Christina Misiti(Novara: Interlinea, 2001), pp. 14 and 33. It is worth quoting Geronzio’s answerto Ergilio’s question as to why one should buy Greek books even without knowingthe language: ‘Ne ho dei [libri] greci, degli ebraici, degli arabi, dei teutonici, deicinesi, e perfino de’ sanscrittici. Che maraviglia? Non tutti coloro che posseggonoricche biblioteche, sanno leggere quel che hanno comprato.’ (II, vii, p. 38) ‘I havebooks in Greek, in Hebrew, in Arabic, in German, in Chinese, and even in Sanskrit.You are surprised? Not every one who owns a large library can read the volumes hehas bought.’ In The World’s Wit and Humor. An Encyclopedia of the Classic Wit andHumor of all Ages and Nations, 15 vols (New York: The Review of Reviews Company,1905–06), XIII, p. 103.

Bibliomania and the Folly of Reading 26726 Kirsten Dickhaut, ‘Bibliomane Fiktionen – fiktionale Bibliomane. Beispiele einer

rekurrenten Figur der französischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Das Schöneim Wirklichen – Das Wirkliche im Schönen, edited by Anne Amend-Söchting andothers (Heidelberg: Winter, 2002), pp. 407–422, this quotation p. 422. (‘Namelythe death of the bibliomaniac reinstalls the order at the end of the texts, whichhas been destroyed by the book collectors through their unbridled excesses.’) Seealso Dickhaut’s ‘Sammler und Jäger – Zur Pathogenese der Bücherlust und CharlesNodiers modernem Umgang mit den historischen Denkmustern in Le Bibliomane’,in Ästhetische Erfindung der Moderne? Perspektiven und Modelle 1750–1850, edited byBritta Herrmann and Barbara Thums (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003),pp. 55–75.

27 Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff. Nach der Erstausgabe (Basel 1492) mit den Zusätzender Ausgaben 1495 und 1499 sowie den Holzschnitten der deutschen Originalausgaben(Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1962, third edition 1986), p. 8. ‘I am the firste fole of allthe hole navy / [. . .] For this is my mynde, this one pleasoure have I / Of bokesto have grete plenty and aparayle / I take no wysdome by them.’ Sebastian Brant,The Shyp of Folys, translated by Alexander Barclay (London: Pynson, 1509,reprinted Amsterdam: Da Capo, 1970), f. XIIIverso.

28 Ibid., pp. 9–10. ‘Styll am I besy bokes assemblynge / For to have plenty it is aplesaunt thynge / In my conceyt and to have them ay in honde / But what theymene do I nat understonde / But yet I have them in great reverence / And honouresauynge them from fylth and ordure / By often brusshynge, and moche dylygence /Full goodly bounde in pleasaunt couerture / Of domas, satyn, or els of veluet pure’(f. XIIIverso).

29 Ibid., p. 10. ‘Lo in lyke wyse of bokys I have store / But fewe I rede, and fewerunderstande / I folowe nat theyr doctryne nor theyr lore / It is ynoughe to bere aboke in hande / It were to moche to be it suche a bande / For to be bounde to lokewithin the boke / I am content on the fayre coverynge to loke’ (f. XIIIIrecto).

30 Ibid., f. XIIIrecto. (‘I do possess many books, which I read rarely; the ones I readI neglect, and I don’t understand them.’/‘A multitude of books distracts the mind.And of making many books there is no end.)

31 ‘Il y a des personnes qui aiment les livres comme des meubles, plus pour parer etembellir leur maison que pour orner et enrichir leur esprit.’ (‘There are people wholove books like furniture, more to upholster and embellish their home than to beautifyand enrich their minds.’). Quoted from Christian Galantaris, Manuel de bibliophilie,2 vols (Paris: Édition des Cendres, 1998), I, p. 62.

32 Jean de La Bruyère, Les caractères de Théophraste traduits du grec avec Les caractères oules mœurs de ce siècle, in Œuvres complètes, edited by Julien Benda (Paris: Gallimard,1962), p. 389. (‘He never reads [. . .]; a smell of black morocco leather in which allthe books are bound; they are gilt-edged, decorated with gold threads, and generallygood editions; [. . .] his tannery, which he calls a library.’)

33 Centi-Folium Stultorum Jn Quarto. Oder Hundert Ausbündige Narren / Jn Folio. Neuaufgewärmet / Und in einer Alapatrit-Pasteten zum Schau-Essen / mit hundert schönenKupffer-Stichen/zur ehrlichen Ergötzung / und nutzlichen Zeit-Vertreibung / sowohlfröhlich- als melancholischen Gemüthern aufgesetzt; Auch mit einer delicaten Brühe vielerartigen Historien / lustiger Fablen / kurzweiliger Discursen / und erbaulichen Sitten-Lehren angerichtet. (Vienna: Megerle; Nuremberg: Weigel [1709]), pp. 37–40, these

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quotations pp. 38 and 40. ‘Those who read without any difference all books theyget their hands on and therefore partly get inverted, but not learned’ and ‘thosewho run through the books only superficially and think it’s enough to have read abook fast, but when they are through, they can’t tell anything of the end, the middleor the beginning of this book’. As the title implies the plate of the book fool wasalready published several years earlier in Weigel’s Ein Schock Phantastn in einemKasten mit Ihrem Pourtrait gar net in Kupffer gebracht und ausgelacht samt einer Vorred(Nuremberg: Weigel [approx. 1690–1705]), p. 6.

34 [Louis Bollioud de Mermet] De la bibliomanie (Paris: La Haye, 1761), p. 56.35 Jean Baptiste le Rond D’Alembert, ‘Bibliomane’, ‘Bibliomanie’, in Encyclopédie ou

Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, edited by Jean Baptiste le Rondd’Alembert and Denis Diderot (Paris: Briasson and others, 1752), Vol. II, 228.

36 D’Alembert, ‘Bibliotaphe’, in Encyclopédie (Neufchastel: Faulche, 1767), Vol. 17,pp. 757–758. ‘Bibliotaphia is the bibliomania of the greedy or the jealous, andconsequently bibliotaphs are in more than one way the disease of letters. For itshould not be believed that these sorts of people are few in number: Europe hasalways been infected with them, and even today he is not very inquisitive whodoes not bump into them from time to time on their way.’ In The Encyclopedia ofDiderot and d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project, translated by Erik Liddell,〈http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.521〉.

37 Thomas Frognall Dibdin, The Bibliomania; or, Book-Madness; Containing someAccount of the History, Symptoms, and Cure of this Fatal Disease. In an Epistle addressedto Richard Heber, Esq. (London: Longman and others, 1809), p. 58.

38 Ibid., p. 76.39 Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why? (London: Fourth Estate, 2000), p. 19. This

reservation is not restricted to literary studies, consider this poet’s diary entry for6 November 2000: ‘Draußen geht der Nichtleser um, ein gefährliches Tier.’ DursGrünbein, Das erste Jahr. Berliner Aufzeichnungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,2001), p. 240.

40 Hermann Burger, ‘Der Büchernarr’, in Bork. Prosastücke (Munich and Zurich:Artemis, 1970), pp. 41–54, this quotation pp. 43–44. ‘The man could sit in his chairwithout moving for an entire morning, staring at his book and not turning a page.’

41 Ibid., p. 53. ‘Now that is the only thing that books cannot stand, that one falls asleepover them. They are offended, and they are happy to take everything they everimparted. I’m read empty, I’m read free. Sleeping, I take myself away from them.’

42 Italo Calvino, Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), pp. 47–48.‘ “Me? I don’t read books!” Irnerio says. / “What do you read, then?” / “Nothing.I’ve become so accustomed to not reading that I don’t even read what appears beforemy eyes. It’s not easy: they teach us to read as children, and for the rest of ourlives we remain the slaves of all the written stuff they fling in front of us. I mayhave had to make some effort myself, at first, to learn not to read, but now it comesquite naturally to me.” ’ Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, translated byWilliam Weaver (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), p. 49.

43 Ibid., p. 149. ‘ “I was looking for a book,” Irnerio says. / “I thought you never read,”you reply. / “It’s not for reading. It’s for making. I make things with books. I makeobjects. Yes, artworks: statues, pictures, whatever you want to call them. I even hada show. I fix the books with mastic, and they stay as they were. Shut, or open, or else

Bibliomania and the Folly of Reading 269I give them forms, I carve them, I make holes in them. A book is a good material towork with; you can make all sorts of things with it” ’ (pp. 148–149).

44 Thomas Bernhard, Alte Meister. Komödie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985),pp. 38–39. ‘I have never in my life read a single book through to the end, my way ofreading a book is that of a highly talented page turner, that is of a person who wouldrather turn the pages than read, who therefore turns dozens, or at times hundreds,of pages before reading a single one [. . .]. Surely it is better to read altogether onlythree pages of a four-hundred-page book a thousand times more thoroughly than thenormal reader who reads everything but does not read a single page thoroughly, hesaid. It is better to read twelve lines of a book with the utmost intensity and thus topenetrate into them to the full, [. . .] rather than read the whole book as the normalreader does,’ Thomas Bernhard, Old Masters: A Comedy, translated by Ewald Osers(London: Quartet, 1989), p. 17.

45 Ibid., pp. 40–41. ‘He who reads everything has understood nothing, he said. It isnot necessary to read all of Goethe or all of Kant, it is not necessary to read all ofSchopenhauer; a few pages of Werther, a few pages of Elective Affinities and we knowmore in the end about the two books than if we had read them from beginning toend, which would anyway deprive us of the purest enjoyment. But such drastic self-restraint requires so much courage and such strength of mind as can only rarely bemustered and as we ourselves muster only rarely; the reading person [. . .] like thecarnivorous person, upsets his stomach and his entire health, his head and his wholeintellectual existence’ (p. 18).

46 Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine (Cambridge: Granta, 1989), p. 121, note.47 Ibid., pp. 123–124.48 Julio Cortázar, Rayuela (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1963); Giorgio

Manganelli, Nuovo commento (Turin: Einaudi, 1969); Andreas Okopenko, Lexikoneiner sentimentalen Reise zum Exporteurtreffen in Druden. Roman (Salzburg: Residenz,1970); Raymond Federman, Take It Or Leave It. An Exaggerated Second-Hand TaleTo Be Read Aloud Either Standing Or Sitting (New York: Fiction Collective, 1976);Dubravka Ugrešic, Štefica Cvek u raljama života. Patchwork story (Zagreb: Hrvatske,1981); Renaud Camus, P.A. (petite annonce) (Paris: P.O.L., 1997).

49 Bayard, Comment parler, pp. 21–62.