What struck me as I read Benjamin’s “Unpacking my Library” was the idea of ownership, and specifically the collector’s relationship to it. What does it mean to “own” a book? Does purchasing a book automatically mean ownership? Do the attributes and qualities that the book holds somehow pass onto its “owner”? What do our collection of books say about ourselves? What do they say about others’ perceptions of us?
In his essay, Benjamin claims that “the purchasing done by a book collector has very little in common with that done in a bookshop by a student getting a textbook, a man of the world buying a present or his lady, or a business intending to while away his next train journey” (62-63). In other words, Benjamin implies that book collectors’ acquisition of books has less to do with other people’s desires—such as a professor or a significant other—and more to do with a desire to “renew the old world” (61). But then, couldn’t you argue that in one way or another, we are all collectors of books (or at least objects that contain similar monetary value and knowledge that books do)? However, the difference between book collectors and the rest of the world lies in the intent. To Benjamin, a “real collector” would not only be someone who is able to discover the old and renew it with new life, but also someone who also has “a tactical instinct…and must be able to recognize whether a book is for him or not” (63-64).
Most people that make up the “higher” society of sought-after intellect seem to base their tactical instinct on reputation. Everyone makes judgments based on the books other people read. There’s a subtle, but enormous, difference between the judgments formed about a person whose bookshelf contains War and Peace, Finnegans Wake, and Les Misérables than someone who owns books like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. On the other hand, true book collectors don’t care about the connotation or reputation of owning a book, but rather the specific relationship that comes from ownership itself and the life it gives to both the book and its owner.
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