Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Book Review: A History of Reading


Book Review: A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel
Toronto: Penguin Books, 1996. 372 pages.

I thought it fitting that I begin the Book Review section of my blog (which I plan to call Endpaper Pages for reasons I hope will be apparent later) with a sparkling piece of non-fiction entitled A History of Reading by Argentinian-born Canadian writer Alberto Manguel. I can’t resist throwing in a few superlatives: OUTSTANDING! INGENGIOUS! But this book truly does merit them all. It’s not a Christian book, although the author is fairly well versed in the Scriptures - pardon the pun. It traces the “history of reading” (I’ll explain the quotation marks in a moment) fairly equitably through the past seven thousand or so years.

Before I proceed further, let me add a disclaimer I have borrowed from a book called Italy Fever by Darlene Marwitz: “For obvious and countless other reasons, my reading experience will be different than yours. What I like, you may hate. Books that race my heart may leave you cold. My reading is prejudiced by the sum of my years, not yours.” Disclaimer over.

Back to A History of Reading: I first read Manguel’s writing – the final chapter of this book, called "Endpaper Pages," as it happens – in a literary criticism course for the University of Waterloo. I was immediately struck by the fluidity and unselfconsciousness of his prose, a great accomplishment for an author whose first language – nor his second, third or fourth, I believe – is English. Manguel just knows so much, so much about so much. Another sign of a brilliant writer, I think, is that "Endpaper Pages" both wraps up A History of Reading as a whole and is capable of standing on its own as a self-contained text in a LitCrit course.

The blurb on the back cover begins with a cliché-ridden phrase: “A History of Reading is a wonderful celebration of the human race.” Blech, yuck, bah humbug. And it’s simply not accurate. I don’t find that Manguel celebrates the human race so much as the human endeavour of reading – a fact that should be evident from the title. Some blurb writers should be charged with literary crime.

The quotation marks (or speech marks, as the English call them) in the first paragraph of this reveiew refer to Manguel’s imaginative chronology of the history of reading; in short, there isn’t any – chronology, that is. The narrative (and I feel justified in calling it a narrative although it’s technically non-fiction) weaves in and out of various centuries and literary traditions. But even the ‘real’ world is up for debate as far as Manguel is concerned. He all but comes out and says that the ‘real’ worlds are the ones between the covers of books.

Not to pop the balloon, but it’s a romantic notion rather than a realistic one. Books can become idols like anything else. Let’s define an idol as anything that has inordinate control over one’s actions. If you are only able to make it through the day because you have a good story waiting for you at home, then you probably have an idol. If you regularly choose to read a good story rather than your Bible, you may have an idol. All of these are areas of conviction I’ve worked through, and continue to work through, in my own life. None of this is an indictment of reading. I have simply wanted to put books and reading into proper perspective before I move on to other reviews, and this book has afforded me a means through which to both gain and impart that perspective.

So sit back in your favourite wingback chair, put on a pot of Twinings to brew, and relish the reviews. I sincerely hope you do.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That review is an A++. I'll tell mom about it, she always loves reading the books you recommend.

9:40 AM  

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