Books make a room – and speak volumes about their owner.
By John Walsh, The Independent, Saturday, 25 September 2010
GEORGINA GOODMAN: THE BRITISH SHOE DESIGNER CAME UP WITH THIS CONCEPT OF A COMBINED BOOKCASE AND CLOTHES RAIL (HIDDEN ROUND THE OTHER SIDE) FOR HER LONDON FLAT
Cicero's ideal room was a library in a garden. Montaigne dreamt of having a literary den in an attic. Anthony Powell informed the world that books do furnish a room – but the Victorian, Reverend Sydney Smith, got there first when he said, "No furniture so charming as books". In the fairytale, Beauty and the Beast, the heroine's dream of perfection isn't romance, it's a big library. "When I step into this library," wrote the 17th-century French diarist Marie de Sevigne, "I cannot understand why I ever step out of it..."
The human love affair with books en masse is ancient and profound. The possession of a collection of volumes has long been thought an emblem of sophistication and learning, evidence of its owner's civilised commitment to sitting still and meditating on words.
It's when you put up some shelves and display the books on your living room wall that the trouble starts. When I had my first flat in London, and proudly displayed my huge collection of literary paperbacks – from Amis to Zola – that I'd accumulated over the years, low-life visitors would scan the shelves and ask: "All these books – you read 'em?" I would have to answer that, well no, I hadn't, but I looked forward to doing so one day. It's hard not to sound pretentious when saying such a thing.
People could be forgiven for thinking I had scanned the pages of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and bought the lot, out of cultural pressure rather than a love of literature. ("Faulkner? Yup, I've got a few of them. Virginia Woolf? I think there's a couple on the bottom shelf. Shakespeare? Yeah, I've got three yards of Shakespeare plays. No, of course I haven't actually read any of them...")
Full piece at The Independent
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