"A book lover should never go into publishing." I have written on this theme before. Many times before. This blog is aweary of this theme, I imagine, cracking like the spine of a paperback. (I stole that quote from Italo Calvino and paraphrased the grandeur out of it.) Well, glue that spine straight, set it in a cast, cover up the cracks with a nail file and a marker... Because that book needs to carry some extra weight.
Ulysses. The James Joyce version. Epic in a different way. (And no, I'm not comparing this blog to that tome - you always get antsy right about here. I should leave the second paragraph blank, just for you .The Point? Granted, sometimes this is where The Point bares itself. But said Point defies convention! Even if its existence depends upon it.)
Back to spines and books with heavy burdens. I am not a shameless name-dropper. I own said epic. I have pried open the covers and run my forefinger beneath a page, ready to turn it over. My ownership is proclaimed with a green bookmark. I even have an opinion about the book and author. But I have started it twice and never made it past page 96.
That is not an invitation to stop reading, you. Pay attention.
My bookshelf contains some equal and some lesser tomes. Roberto Bolano's 2666, Murakami's trilogy, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, another James Meek. Most of them unread. I also have a Kindle. Ditto. A library card, with a slightly higher rate of success. But ditto. And a magazine app to which my subscriptions get delivered. And ditto.
Time. I imagine Time as my scapegoat, on a leash, trotting at my heels towards a bridge underneath which a troll lives. As I get nearer, I realise the goat is the troll, and I wake up sweating. Like most bibliophiles, I need many lifetimes to read the books I own as well as many more for those I want to read. Having nine lives, though, is as realistic as a troll on a leash. Or even just a troll, I guess.
Turn on your heel and back to my career and here we reach my standard gripe (no, this is not The Point). Who wants to dissect an object they love? Intellectually, perhaps. But physically? I spend at least seven out of my allotted nine lives grappling with that.
This blog has been as lonely as a Skeleton Coast ghost town for about two weeks. So have most of my social media accounts. (This is not how I define my life. I swear. By my scapegoat.) I have been publishing. At silly hours. Doing silly, mindboggingly boring things. Convinced that these things, these assembled bits and pieces will change lives.
This is not just a job. This is passion - not a passion. Just, passion.
"A book lover should never go into publishing." Perhaps not. Unless there are (lucrative) career opportunities for people to read. I can think of lots of reasons to reskill, find another industry or find a wardrobe to hide in (with a book obviously). Most of those reasons are scattered in posts around this blog - many of which, I'm afraid, weren't labelled because they like the darkness of that wardrobe.
Ulysses, that big lug, is the part that best defines this whole: Do you really want to read something created by someone who doesn't think that book will change your life? Do you want to read something that you don't think will change your life?
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