Books are hip for both decorating and political grandstanding, but they're even better if you read them.
By John Rasmuson
I have friends who renovated their condo just before the
COVID pandemic began. It was a standard makeover with recessed lights in
the ceiling, flat-screen TVs on the walls and Persian-style carpets
afloat on a sea of laminate flooring.
One living room wall was given over to built-in shelves.
On them—in addition to some books—were family photographs, a pottery
vase, some candles and other stuff you might find at HomeGoods, all
displayed in deliberate asymmetry, shelf by shelf.
On a visit to admire the completed project, I gravitated
to the bookshelves and the rows of colorful books, as orderly as a rank
of soldiers on parade. Curiosity draws me to others' book collections
because I believe what a person reads is as telling as what they wear or
what's in their refrigerator. To find Moby Dick sharing shelf space with Pride and Prejudice that day surprised me.
"Wow! Moby Dick!" I exclaimed, taking up
Melville's novel. But a conversation about the "great American novel"
quickly collapsed, losing its legs before ever reaching Jane Austen. I
realized my friends had not read—and likely would not read—the books on
their shelves. Reading the books was not a factor in their
display-shelving: Their collection was strictly decorative.
This is "biblio-chic," I thought, taking a cue from Tom
Wolfe's 1970 satirical coinage, "radical chic." Or put another way, it's
just "putting on the dog." Either makes the point, but both are
premised on the fact that readers have an edge over nonreaders.
I recall a visit to a richly appointed house in
Washington, D.C., in the company of a bookish friend. Afterward, I
commented on the considerable appeal of the decor. "I didn't see any
books," he replied disapprovingly.
In my experience, reading imparts status. Reading such classics as Moby Dick and Pride and Prejudice
grants higher status. By displaying them in your living room, you make
the unspoken claim that you have bought them, read them and saved them
to be read again.
Sometime after my visit to the renovated condo, and
during the pandemic, I detected traces of biblio-chic in network
newscasts. In the darkest days of COVID, television journalists tended
to work from home—so did the pundits they interviewed on the air.
Most appeared against a backdrop of overflowing,
floor-to-ceiling shelves like you see in a college professor's office.
(Nobody appeared with a background of kitchen counters or a walk-in
closet.) Besides armloads of books, the shelves held curios, photos and
objets d'art carefully curated to look un-curated.
The setting seemed incidental, but I soon realized its
staging was deliberate. The camera's frame was adjusted so that a
viewer's wandering eye was steered to a particular place on the
bookshelf. In the case of PBS News Hour anchor Judy Woodruff, it
was a vase of flowers visible to viewers from just behind her left
shoulder—a comforting, springlike touch in the depth of the COVID
winter, I must say.
Such staging was even more noticeable when the
interviewee was an author. Oftentimes, their latest book was placed so
the front cover faced into the room from behind the shoulders of the
talking head. I took it as subliminal advertising. To the viewer whose
eyes had found the staged book and were squinting to make out the title,
the message was: "If you like what I say on TV, you'll love my book!"
I concede that a fondness for reading skews my view and
causes me to judge those who don't share it. I am better served by the
concept of "bookshelf wealth." It is manifest in much the same way as
the wall-size collage I have fussed about as "biblio-chic," but an
article in January's Architectural Digest praises it as a leading
design trend of 2024. The difference between the two is that "bookshelf
wealth" accrues like compound interest when books on display have been
read and saved for rereading. If "'bookshelf wealth' is about
authenticity," as the article asserts, then showcasing unread books is
not.
Those who display literary classics acknowledge the cultural import of a novel like Moby Dick.
That they feel no need to read it hints at inauthenticity. I imagine
them visiting a bookstore to pick up a classic novel or two, 10-to-12
inches high, with a green cover to match the accent pillows on the sofa.
However, "biblio-chic" is a minor fault given the
determination of the philistine caucus in the Utah Legislature to clear
shelves of books they don't like. Utah schools have recently banned more
than 250 books, but HB 417 threatens a misdemeanor charge to those who
make "objectively sensitive" books available to school kids.
The list of usual suspects includes The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Any of the three would be a welcome contribution to my own "shelf wealth."
Utah isn't the only place with censorious officials.
According to PEN America, an advocacy organization dedicated to free
expression, 4,000 books have been challenged in the last three years in
the U.S. A church in Tennessee actually burned a pile of J.K Rowling's
books in its parking lot.
I doubt most of the book burners had read any of Rowling's Harry Potter
novels, and I don't mean to make a connection between a few unread
novels gathering dust in a Salt Lake City condo and the live-streamed
torching of Harry Potter.
I find both troubling. It's just a matter of degree.
