The Captive Reader

I adored the first two Alberto Manguel books I read: A Reading Diary and The Library at Night.  I am always searching for books about books and, of the ones I have read, Manguel’s have been by far the most eloquent.  He has a gift for describing his library and his reading experiences in a way that is very intimate but also recognizable.  I always come away feeling that he’s captured my experience exactly, though he is talking about himself.  For example, I think that most bibliophiles view their book collection not just as a library of knowledge and favourite stories but as a repository of very personal memories and experiences, specific to each book and the circumstances under which it came into their life.  Manguel understands this perfectly:

The library of my adolescence contained almost every book that still matters to me today; few essential books have been added.  Generous teachers, passionate booksellers, friends for whom giving a book was a supreme act of intimacy and trust helped me to build it.  Their ghosts kindly haunt my shelves, and the books they gave still carry their voices, so that now, when I open Isak Dinesen’s Gothic Tales or Blas de Otero’s early poems, I have the impression not of reading the book myself but of being read to out loud.  This is one of the reasons I never feel along in my library.

A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel is full of wonderful quotes like this but on the whole I can’t say I adored it as much as I did his other books.  I think I was just overwhelmed by the amount of information here and the dizzying array of topics covered.  The book is a collection of essays and while all of them incorporate Manguel’s experiences as a reader somehow, a large number are not particularly book-ish in focus: these are definitely essays by ‘a reader’ but they are certainly not always ‘on reading’.  Argentinean politics, gay literature and how to classify it, Voltaire and Frederick the Great, lots of Borges and Homer (as usual), ponderings on the digital age, even a consideration of proper comfort reading for hospital stays (Cervantes)…Manguel covers an overwhelming number of issues, of varying degrees of interest to this reader.  I certainly skimmed some of the sections – if you’re interested in Borges you will be well served by one section; I am not, so it was dispensed with quickly – but on the whole I was enraptured by Manguel’s thoughts, in awe, as always, of his vast literary knowledge.  This was also a more personal book than the other two I’ve read, giving more insight into his family background, his cosmopolitan early childhood, his school years and the many different book-related jobs he’s held as an adult all over the world.     

Reading Manguel just for the beauty of how he writes is always a pleasure but there is also a joy that comes with all of his literary references, particularly the obscure ones.  I am in awe of Manguel’s familiarity with all these books and poems and people and can only dream of what it must be like to have such a broad range of interests and to be so knowledge about them.  The reverence and respect I feel for him as a reader, not even as a writer, is part of what makes every Manguel reading experience so precious and why I take my time with his books.  Manguel, bless him, is a prodigious quoter, dropping in lines of poetry and passages from novels with delightful frequency and whether they are familiar to me or brand new they are always perfectly chosen and worth contemplating.

My favourite of the essays was “The Gates of Paradise”, a consideration of how erotic love is expressed by writers.  He examines the works of St John of the Cross, John Donne, a Sumerian poet circa 1700 BC, Nabokov, D.H. Lawrence, Marian Engel…the list goes on and its variety is part of what makes this essay so engaging. 

And then there are his lists: “Notes Towards a Definition of the Ideal Library” and “Notes Towards a Definition of the Ideal Reader”.  I love any kind of list but these – so delightfully random! – are better than most.  Here are a few points from each:

Notes Towards a Definition of the Ideal Library

• The ideal reader is a cumulative reader: every reading of a book adds a new layer of memory to the narrative.
• Ideal readers never count their books.
• Reading a book from centuries ago, the ideal reader feels immortal.
• For the ideal reader, every book reads, to a certain degree, as an autobiography.
• The ideal reader is not concerned with anachronism, documentary truth, historical accuracy, topographical exactness.  The ideal reader is not an archaeologist.
• The marquis de Sade: ‘I only write for those capable of understanding me, and these will read me with no danger.’
• The marquis de Sade is wrong: the ideal reader is always in danger.

Notes Towards a Definition of the Ideal Reader

• The ideal library has comfortable but supportive seats with armrests and a curved back, like those of the lamented Salle Labrouste at the Bibliotheque nationale de France.  The ideal library has ample desks, preferably with smooth leather tops. Sockets for electrical equipment (on condition that they perform in utter silence), and soft individual lights that remind you of the green-glass reading lamps at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires.
• The ideal library allows every reader access to the stacks.  A reader must be granted the freedom of chance encounters.
• In the ideal library there are no forbidden books and no recommended books.
• The ideal library (like every library) holds at least one line that has been written exclusively for you.

Reading Manguel allows me to indulge in the fantasy that I am more intelligent, more sophisticated and far better reader than I am in fact.  It is a valuable fantasy that brings me a warm, if deluded, inner glow.  Part of Manguel’s magic is making his readers feel included rather than condescended to, whether they are familiar with the books his is discussing or not.  I love writers who write about the books I read – the wonderful Anne Fadiman for instance, – love recognizing my own reactions in theirs and love getting to know a familiar book better through other eyes.  But I love Manguel for reminding me just how vast the world of literature is, how many centuries and continents I’m yet unacquainted with, and how beautifully poetry, novels, history, memoirs, etc all compliment one another, how all have something new and thrilling to share with their readers.