[Rimbaud]

(Digressing a little, as I found saved the basis of an old post I had for this thread (2002!), added a little at the end and am posting it now.)


I imagine a pyramid representing the number of different book titles sold, with the base set in the past and the needle stretching past us into the future. The pyramid is also slanted as you look at it so that it comes from the past upwards into the future. This slant is to indicate an increased number of sales of books in total.

More books are sold today than ever – yet fewer titles year on year. Naturally this decrease cannot have been going on forever, perhaps you can conclude that there is a cyclical pattern of increasing and decreasing numbers of titles sold. (On a side note, the UK has the most different titles published per head in the world. Can’t see it lasting long, though).

The centre of gravity for this pyramid, that which keeps it narrowing into the point, is the market force, as determined by the best selling books. This process is augmented by the currently observed trend of consolidation among book chains, reducing choice for the consumer. The market looks to release books similar to those that do well – and why not? It’s only curmudgeons like myself who want a vast choice of titles…right? (It’s difficult to evade accusations of elitism on and from either side of the debate.) This trend of bookshop consolidation is likely to be turned on its head, beginning a new cycle.

Why? The joy of the internet! The mighty web has injected a heady dose of choice back into the market. Obscure books are now readily available, and smaller independents have been thrown a lifeline, transforming themselves into online dealers of that which is tricky to find on Amazon. As mentioned above, it is easy to fall into melodrama. The world of books is a fairly ruddy one, just try and avoid those odious big shops with small ranges.

Indeed, perhaps that’s the point; that it’s choice rather than a form of objective qualitative analysis for which we should be striving. I rather agree with Aiwendil above with a distaste for classifying ‘good art’; it is moreover in my opinion a phrase to be avoided,

If, however, you take the possibly more accurate view – that there is no ‘art’, only the perception thereof, the argument glides into a smooth downward spiral that comes to rest on Descartes. Not of much benefit to a discussion, but the point being that it is impossible and perhaps unwanted to create hard and fast rules for perception for any more than one person.

Choice, then. Let’s not dictate what should and should not be read, rather let’s question the uneven playing field for a wide range of books. I think this is what I was driving at in my last post on this thread, made with customary glibness, that it is the practical side of the argument that merits discussion. With this, I refer to the original discussion on fantasy books.

To the wider discussion that has been happening on and off between some bright minds on this thread for a while, I will for now restrain myself to a rather facetious quotation from Auden: “Some books are undeservedly forgotten, none are undeservedly remembered.” Looks like we’re back to longevity equations.