(I promise to get around to that question in this post, albeit in a somewhat roundabout manner.)
Since Kieran has already reserved the right to ask for $50 bills here, I thought I’d ask for something else. Forget bills, they all look the same anyway. I am looking for something more random. I am still in the midst of unpacking some of my things since my move earlier this year and I recently came across my Absolut vodka ad collection. I haven’t looked at it since college when I began (and ended) gathering all the Absolut ads I could find. I have about seventy. By now there are some helpful Web sites for those of us interested in seeing the types of ads the company has featured. I found a few I had not seen before and would really like to have so I thought I’d see if anyone here can help me out.:) These mostly have to do with ads for places where I have lived (e.g. Budapest, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Texas, Geneva, Switzerland) or visited (Paris, Brussels, Jerusalem, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, St.Louis), but also include some others just because I like them aesthetically speaking or because they are funny. I thought I would find listings on eBay, but I’ve only come across a few there and none of them of interest.
But so what’s this about cutting up a book?
There are books out there that feature Absolut ads. So if I was really desperate (which I am not, to be sure) to find some of the above ads then I could simply buy a copy of the book and then cut it up (assuming I wanted to have the pieces individually, which I do, because I want to put some of them up on my walls). But that just does not appeal to me. I cannot imagine cutting up a book. I have absolut(e)ly no problem cutting up newspapers and magazines. It is not as though some books don’t exist in numerous copies. In fact, publishers sometimes find themselves destroying books to save on storage costs, a sad reality when I am sure many schools, libraries and individuals could use additions to their collections. Many books are not a scarce resource and can actually be obtained for less than certain magazines. Thus it is not a question of scarcity. So why the aversion to cutting up books? In this particular example it may be partly that there is something about collecting ads that have appeared as ads and not simply collecting the images. But that is not fully convincing given that I am interested in some of these images purely for decorative purposes and I am not a fanatic collector. Clearly I have been socialized to consider books as something quite sacred if I am not willing to go at them with scissors. (I also won’t use pen to mark books although I will mark them using pencils.)
By the way, as a thank you to those who can contribute to my Absolut ad collection, I will be happy to send the contributor a copy of this neat book filled with great images, for free. (Just don’t tell me whether you decide to cut it up in the end.;) Send me a note for more info.
{ 22 comments }
Graham 07.21.04 at 10:35 pm
When I worked at a chain bookstore in college, one of my main duties was to rip covers off books. It took me quite a while to get used to that.
Most mass-market paperbacks are sold to bookstores on consignment: the publisher sends out a box, the store sells as many as they can, and sends back the proceeds. Of course, the publisher needs some kind of proof that the store only sold X books. The most obvious thing would be just to send back the unsold copies; of course, this means double the shipping costs, unacceptable. The accepted solution is for the store to send back just the covers of the unsold books. The store is then supposed to destroy the bodies of the defaced books (owning a coverless book is a crime, and keeping a copy will absolutely get you fired, at least from Waldenbooks).
Most of the ones I ripped up were potboiler romances and Star Trek serial fiction — the new ones came in every Wednesday, and we sent the covers from last week’s back on Thursday morning. Those were fairly easy to get used to. Others were harder.
serial catowner 07.21.04 at 10:41 pm
You’re like my mother. When she told me a paperback book was too thick to hold easily while reading, I told her to tear it into sections. She was horrified and couldn’t do it, even after I reminded her that I have the same book in hardback.
People used to take books apart to get illustrations all the time. Those framed etching-looking prints in the antique store? Often genuinely old, if by old you mean about 100 years. Age before television and all that.
So, be free. Most books are just a means to an end.
Mac Thomason 07.21.04 at 11:15 pm
I would (reluctantly) but then I’m a librarian and we do awful things to books all the time. Aren’t the ads mostly in the front or back anyway?
eszter 07.21.04 at 11:49 pm
Graham – that’s interesting, I didn’t know about that practice.
Mac – the ads are often on the back cover, but I’m not concerned about taking apart magazines regardless of the location of the ad. It’s the books that I don’t think I could cut up.
Anthony 07.22.04 at 12:00 am
I have the same problem, and even attempt to read paperbacks without damaging the spine. Some of my books from 20 years ago look unread (OK, some are unread, but that’s a different story).
I did however once purchase a history of the Russia Revolution to read on a long strenuous hiking expedition, and to my eternal shame removed pages as I read them to cut down on weight. I have never felt so guilty, I felt like a fireman out of fahrenheit 451.
Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were all slowly discarded; quite literally ripped from the pages of history.
asarwate 07.22.04 at 1:23 am
I could never rip up a book either. But in my case it’s conditioning from my upbringing. My parents (and perhaps this is an Indian thing) taught me that books are somehow sacred, and to rip up a book is pretty evil (not evil enough to get you reincarnated as a worm, but still…). Along with that, touching a book with your feet is Right Out, since feet are dirty.
agm 07.22.04 at 2:07 am
Well, a plausible argument might be that when books were extremely rare, one-of-a-kind rare, those who once cared for them valued them extremely highly. Think about it this way: would you tear a page out of a Gutenberg bible? Exactly, other than social developments we consider unhealthy (e.g., Fahrenheit, of Nazi Germany) people do not destroy signs of wealth/power/influence easily, and books represent (or once represented) those. Thus the attitude could develop and spread along with books, become common just as books become common. I do not even highlight textbooks; to me doing so is to not sufficiently honor my tools. I even revere my laptop as a sumarai revered his swords; slightly melodramatic, but the generalization is there.
bob mcmanus 07.22.04 at 2:14 am
Like Anthony, I won’t even bend the spine of a bought-used $2.95 Stephen King thriller.
1) The inhibitions discussed here.
2) Aesthetic appeal. I am right now looking at several thousand (and there are the other rooms & closets) paperbacks, arranged alphabetically, etc. The closer to new, the easier they stack and the better they look stacked.
3) Reciprocity. Since I buy many books used, and usually the best copy on the shelf, I have some weird faith that if I treat mine well, others will also. Not for resale value, they all go for a dime no matter what shape.
4) For a while I was collecting Science fiction for reading purposes (wanted to read everything before 1975) and had an unspeakable pleasure in finding (among many others)Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles” (194?)1st pb in mint condition in a small town used bookstore. I would like to give somebody else that pleasure 50 years from now.
bob mcmanus 07.22.04 at 2:19 am
Related question:Do people here read their hardbacks with dustjacket on or off? To preserve the dustjacket. :)
Lindsay Beyerstein 07.22.04 at 2:22 am
I think reverence for books goes beyond their residual associations with wealth/power/influence. I wouldn’t mind taking apart an decrepit BMW or scavenging a broken Rolex for parts, but I’ve never cut up a book. I think it’s partly that books are designed to be permanent. Newspapers and magazines are disposable. Saving all one’s magazines is eccentric, saving all one’s old newspapers is prima facie evidence of mental illness.
It’s irrational, but I feel uncomfortable throwing away books, even admittedly worthless ones. I have to put them out for other people to take. I own one book that is so bad that it stays on my shelf because I don’t want to burden some random passer by with it, but I don’t feel right just throwing it away. I bought it for 1 cent plus shipping, so I think its former owner had a similar attitude.
vivian 07.22.04 at 2:26 am
I used to rescue books from ‘discard’ piles at the end of library sales and even yard sales, knowing otherwise they’d be destroyed. As others do with stray cats – my parents would not let me adopt stray pets, but they put up with the book thing. (Lack of shelf space at home has ended this habit – I can’t bear to get rid of the old ones either.) I always loved reading centuries’ old books at the 42nd street library and reading the ancient marginalia – communion with readers from so long ago, perhaps. So I don’t mind making margin notes as long as they seem worth keeping as long as the book. Underlining is annoying fwiw.
johnny p. 07.22.04 at 4:39 am
I’ve destroyed a few books in the process of scanning them. A couple century-old ones that I paid a good deal of money for too. Of course the substance of the books lives on in the (usually illegal) digital copies.
anne 07.22.04 at 5:43 am
Libraries do this all the time, in order to microfilm. Some see this as a scandal.
A Guardian article: [http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/referenceandlanguages/story/0,6000,672274,00.html]
schwa 07.22.04 at 6:52 am
bob – I read hardcovers with the jackets off, but not so much for the aesthetics of the exercise (though I am one of those happy freaks who breaks out in hives at the thought of a bent paperback spine) as because dustjackets get in the way. Unless the book is flat on a desk (which is a bloody annoying way to read for pleasure) the dustjacket is an inconvenience.
Doug 07.22.04 at 8:55 am
Eszter, as a practical decorating matter, why not scan and color print at photographic quality? The big honking design or advertising books that the ads are probably in will certainly survive their time on a flatbed scanner. Printing it out is dead cheap and just a matter of time. Even if you don’t know anyone with a color printer, getting it done at a dtp place is bound to be far less expensive than what you’d pay for a poster-like approach. Plus no metaphysical concerns about hurting books.
James 07.22.04 at 11:26 am
I absolutely can not tear up a book. Or mark one with a pen. My fiance is trying to get me to give to a charity shop some of my old, very poor, fiction titles. I can’t do it. I might read them I say, though I know I never will. They generally reflect some awful phase of my teenage life, which I should be embarressed by.
My University has a large number of Greek students, and the most infuriating thing about getting a book out of the library is that I know there will be Greek script IN PEN scrawled around all the “difficult” words. Horrifying.
pw 07.22.04 at 3:47 pm
I would consider cutting up a book if _I_ had another copy to hand. Paradoxically, the very wide distribution and bulk-product nature of many modern books makes them that much less replaceable. If you don’t get a spare during the three months between publication and pulping, you’re going to have a heck of a time finding one later.
Mac Thomason 07.22.04 at 4:43 pm
I was thinking you might try to pick up an ex-library copy. For more popular books, anyway, lots of them wind up back at the distributor a couple of years later (picture entire truckloads of Stephen King and John Grisham, speeding towards Kansas or whereever the warehouses are) and get sold along with the remainders. Since they’re already mutilated (stamping, taping, often rough handling by patrons) it’s not a big loss if a page is cut out. Public libraries run through books pretty rapidly.
eszter 07.22.04 at 4:53 pm
Doug – That’s a great idea about scanning and printing photo quality, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that! Unfortunately, the Absolut Budapest ad (the one I’d most like to find) is not featured in that book. Maybe I can get a good printout from a Web site.
Enrique 07.22.04 at 6:14 pm
The scanning and printing is an excellent idea, particularly for the purposes in question here.
Regarding destroying or tearing up books, with one notable exception I have never done so, and can’t imagine the scenario in which I would. The one exception was a coffee table print book of MC Escher that I wound up taking apart to put the prints up on my cube walls, simply because there was little to the text that I was interested in or would ever read. I don’t know that that justifies it in any way (strangely enough for me it somehow doesn’t after reading everyone’s thoughts here), but it was my reasoning and wasn’t too far from what you were wanting to do to collect the ads.
Side note re: paperbacks. An aunt’s ex-husband was a voracious reader of paperbacks and the like. He used to “eat” his books as he read them. He would tear off pieces of the cover and chew on the pieces as he went along. You know how much he liked a book by how much of the cover was left. No front or back cover was his version of a must read. Weird stuff.
Mary Kay 07.23.04 at 5:45 am
I swear, sometimes I feel like a space alien and this is one of them. I am a retired librarian and have been a reading fanatic since I was 10 years old and I have never ever regarded a book as a sacred object. What’s important, if it is any good, is what the book says, the words and their meaning, not the physical manifestation. I highlighted and wrote in text books and I still will if reason presents itself. My books have gravy, spaghetti, and iced tea stains on them. Mass market paperbacks are not going to last much longer than you are anyway.
Now the book in question is one I take very good care of and would not cut up to send our hostess pictures. But that’s because I love it and the dammed thing cost $50. I think my favorite is the moonlight on water one.
MKK
Roger Hurwitz 07.25.04 at 2:31 am
as some of the postings suggest, there’s need to distinguish between the book as an object/ fetish and as a means of communication. Here’s another way of asking the question to get at that difference:
Would you cut open the pages of a book with uncut pages, in order to read it? Would you do this, if you knew its value as a rare book would drop 50%?
Would you read the first (London) edition of Moby Dick, at the risk of soiling it, when you could read (maybe) the same text in a paperback copy?
Do you throw away dust jackets of modern first editions?
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