The late-great Flann O’Brien (aka Brian O’Nolan, aka Myles na Gopaleen) would, I feel have approved wholeheartedly of Anne Fadiman and her family. The idiosyncratic exponent of the art of Professional Book Handling would have been delighted by their belief that books are there to be read and enjoyed, and that it is quite right for them to look battered and well-used, because the content is more important than the book itself.
Anne’s family, as revealed in Ex Libris, Confessions of a Common Reader, are book handlers par excellence. They leave open books face down on surfaces, break the spines, turn down the corner of pages, underline passages, and write comments in the margins. Anne’s father used to reduce the weight when reading on planes by tearing pages out as he read them, while her young son eats books.
The book is a beautifully crafted collection of essays on books, reading, language and writing, all originally written for the author’s Ex Libris column in the American magazine, Civilization. And it refutes my theory that one should never believe a book blurb, because it really is ‘witty, enchanting and supremely well written’ – just as The Observer’s Robert McCrum says.
