Today in Books (and so much else) Two: Splash Damage

Starting with Ursula Vernon.

Some of you have known that I have been annoyed with Ursula Vernon since, upon the day that same sex marriage was legalized, she posted about how she wanted to enjoy that and didn't want to hear about the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, done in the same Supreme Court session. As a Black woman who idolizes and is very grateful to the people who fought for Black people to vote in the US AND who is queer and invested in people being able to give their partnerships equal legal protection, I felt slapped in the face by her article and every single person who agreed with her. And in the years since I have seen piles of soi-disant liberals complain about how Black people vote, not least in the most recent Democratic Presidential Election Primaries, but just about none of those people talk about how the gutting of the VRA reduced voting access for Black Americans. and may have been one of the reasons Trump clambered into the Presidency

But be that as it may. Ms. Vernon recently tweeted in support of efforts to fight back against North Carolina's efforts at voter disenfranchisement, so. I officially need to stop being angry about her post from 2013.

Even though I don't think I'm ever going to forget it, and all the people who agreed with her. Even though I don't think I'm going to be able to stop wondering how many of those people care about Black Americans being able to vote.

Similarly, when I read about Paul and the library he intends to found (not least after having a brief debate recently but that's neither here nor there), I thought about how several librarians of my acquantance have gleefully been posting about book culling. Which needs to be done, and I understand they are pushing back against people who say no books should ever be disposed of, but -- I saw someone I had quite liked say that "a book is an object", and --

to backtrack for a moment, whenever I see someone state an opinion I wonder what actions they would take based on that opinion. One useful thing I learned from fundamentalism is that most people, given enough energy and opportunity, will indeed "take the notion of a fact/to its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act." Kipling was wrong that only women do this.

-- so I see a librarian and a mother say that "a book is an object" and I know that if she visited me and her kids ripped some of my books apart that's what she'd say instead of apologizing.

So I looked at Paul and the library he's trying to build and I really hope no one decides to tell him he's book hoarding or a book fetishist or otherwise shouldn't be doing this. I already know of too many people who would and think themselves liberal and helping the world to do so.

Sometimes I wish people could criticise one concept without pouring acid on related topics. Which of course reminds me to work on how well I strike this balance myself.

Current Mood: pensive

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From:

sovay

Sometimes I wish people could criticise one concept without pouring acid on related topics.

It's really hard. We're trained to zero-sum games. I wish we weren't; they take so much time to unlearn.

*hugs*

From:

minoanmiss

This is so true.

*hugs you a lot*

From:

lavendertook

Well, you know how I feel on topic one. I hated the tone she took in that post and her disregard for her positionality versa who she was criticizing and how as a white woman her saying “I will cut you” can be taken as light frivolity, aha aha ha! a privilege a Black writer doesn't have and if she is only envisioning a white reader for her diatribe, it is still a white reader who is valung the VRA because they are concerned about the rights of Black people a lot more than she does. Let alone that she disregards how Black queers who don’t get to choose pure celebration of one part of their identity over pure despair of another part as they go together in one Reeses cup of living. I'd like to know she learned a little of what was wrong with her privileged diatribe before I say, "oh good, she gets that voting rights for Black people in NC is a good thing in post-Trump 2021 when it’s a little clearer that all our asses are on the line, for those who bother to look. But I guess I’m a hard ass that way.

Who’s Paul and the library you’re talking about?

EDIT: Nevermind. I just saw your previous post. Now I see a picture of someone standing in from of the NYPL, saying to a friend: "It’s a great place. A beautiful building. Imagine how beautiful it would be inside if they just downsized! Surely not all those books spark joy!"

Edited Date: 2021-09-05 08:11 am (UTC)

From:

minoanmiss

I appreciate your understanding more than I can possibly say. you UNDERSTAND why this is so important to me. I have friends, good friends, who see this as me being personally upset about something that happened years ago, who don't see the broader context I see. I just --- sometimes I wonder, in my day of trouble, who would shelter me from the authorities and who would give me up, you know?

*hugs you tightly*

" Now I see a picture of someone standing in from of the NYPL, saying to a friend: "It’s a great place. A beautiful building. Imagine how beautiful it would be inside if they just downsized! Surely not all those books spark joy!"

YES THIS EXACTLY.

(God, I feel bad for Marie Kondo. One of these days when I'm feeling blazingly suicidal I'm going to write an essay comparing her to Jesus -- both have a good complex message that got cored out, boiled down, and turned into a weapon for assholes to use against other people.)

From:

lemonsharks

God, I feel bad for Marie Kondo

I don't. Not having grown up in various levels of poverty, with neither social nor familial safety net, including a couple lengthy periods in poverty with my depression-era grandmother as primary caretaker.

I have even less sympathy for Kondo's fanclub than I do for Kondo herself, because the entire entity that has sprung up around her refuses to engage with the uncomfortable reality that her system falls apart when faced with loathing of the half broken things one has no choice but to keep.

I do not think she's has ever struggled to fit too small hand me down boots with holes in the soles over three pairs of socks with disintegrating elastic that wash up gray in hopes that she won't get frostbite. I sincerely doubt she has ever experienced the chest clenching terror of finding a ladder down the front of her underwear (now they all have holes) knowing that she has to change for gym with her pubic hair sticking out for everyone to see.

And it shows.

I could go on. But you've heard this from me before so I'll stop here.

From:

kore

Yeah, I don't really have problems with Kondo herself, but OMG a lot of the people saying "And if you throw out something you find you need later, you can just replace it!" Uhhh no not a lot of the time. Both T and I will just automatically keep using stuff until it just wears out, because the idea that "you know, you can buy a new wallet before this wallet actually falls apart at the seams" just wasn't an option for so long. (And I grew up with parents who had gone through the Depression, so it was even worse.)

From:

kore

Surely not all those books spark joy!

AAAAAAAHAHAHAHA.

From:

amaebi

I feel that I should let you know that you probably dislike me.

I do view books as objects.

I also have about 40,000 of them.

I have worked at a used bookstore that did antiquarian work as it turned up (including, I was told, once handling sale of a first edition copy of Mathematical Principles), and I enjoyed it a lot and loved (and love) the owner. But I was troubled that the owner did not read. Not at all, beyond business necessities, at least in my sight. I don't think she was aware of it, but her appreciation of books had become very much an appreciation of them as objects, like the protagonist of Ellen Raskin's Figgs and Phantoms.

What I value most in books is what they have to say and how they say it. I value the the physical manifestation of those things, particularly in a book that's been constructed as art or as a gallery or as a craft.

But the reason I own those books is so I can access them. Because libraries, public or academic, don't operate to serve my particular needs, but the needs of a wide but particular clientele.

And to me, it's fine for librarians to prioritize serving that clientele, with the physical books functioning to serve them.

I've received a fair amount of criticism and condemnation for my library, but never a librarian coming in and sneering about how they should prune it. Because, I suppose, it's mine.

Believe me, I know that your experience may vary, and that you may be being attacked by deranged librarians, and I am genuinely sorry about every ridiculous criticism and denigration you've received. And I'm not fixing to condemn your book-owning, let alone come snatch your books.

But on the whole I like librarians, and while it may happen I have never seen a sign of them trying to prune any library but the ones they serve in.

From:

minoanmiss

Pfft, I love you and you know so. And I think I may have pissed you off with this post, which I am of course not happy with at all.

But, that's the thing, I adore librarians as a job, and I understand how having people yell at one for doing part of one's job (pruning book collections) can be enraging, but to see these librarians responding with glee over culling books and saying people are "book fetishists" and "book hoarders" for wanting to own books -- it's a little scary. Especially in this day and age when so many people are promulgating an idea that owning things whatsoever is a bad thing.

Saying flat out "books are objects" -- well yes, they are. Clothes are objects too. But it would be wrong to invite someone to an event and tell them to wear their best suit, then put them to work digging holes, wouldn't it? When I hear that term I think of my miniature book collection, about which I wrote in another such discussion:

do have a small collection of miniature books from before my eyesight deteriorated. I can’t read them anymore. I do own them, and I would be within my rights to destroy them, but I feel like that would be an unethical thing to do even if I didn’t want them anymore. They are beautifully made little works of art and I feel like they should continue existing in the world. Also, I still want to own them, but according to the main philosophical thrust of this discussion, someone could argue to me that I am being a hoarder by keeping them and I should throw them away because I can no longer read them, or even throw them away for me and be seen as being doing me a favor.

I just... worry about the weaponization of ascetisism combining with citing librarians as experts to support demands that people divest of their books. Or, put another way, it looks like public opinion is turning against book ownership, and to see librarians lending themselves to that movement scares me.

From:

amaebi

I'm not pissed off. I promise: I would say if I were. But I'm concerned that, feeling attacked (because sometimes attacked) by putative minimalists and various absolutist snarkers, you may be attributing attack more widely than is quite accurate, or than you'd want to.

I haven't really seen librarians talking the way you describe, though I quite believe some are. (I am here expecting that they're USians, because of the ways USians have been taught it's proper to behave.) Because USians are taught that every hurt that you don't want to knuckle under to should be responded to with some variety of contextually maximum force. I wonder whether those librarians mightn't be trying to fend off Attack, in a USian way, rather than expressing their purest and sincerest feelings....

From:

princessofgeeks

I guess some people can only think about one thing at time.

*sigh*

From:

minoanmiss

i just wish... people would think more about their power and their impact and their aim before they say things. I guess.

From:

stranger

You feel what you feel. It looks like you disagree with one thing Ursula Vernon said, and agree with a different thing she said, and these are two different things you can feel, and do feel. (I, also, felt the same-sex marriage decision was a sop to distract me from the gross damage to democracy of the VRA decision.)

A book is an arrangement of words (and maybe pictures and graphs and so on). In theory, and given good electronic records, the words are eternal. In practice, a single copy where you can find it is your access to the book, and of course you guard it accordingly. Please do not stop maintaining your mind and soul and identity by protecting your books.

From:

minoanmiss

How are you so wise? This made me cry. Thank you, a lot.
*clings to you*

From:

ilyena_sylph

...as a library staff person who has culled LOTS of books -- I would never, ever not care or not apologize if someone's personal books were damaged by me or someone I was responsible for.

The books in our collections are objects. They may be obsolete, they may have misinformation, they may be still be perfectly accurate but not useful to us anymore they need to leave for us to have shelf space .

They're not someone's personal property with value to that person. That's a whole different thing!

From:

minoanmiss

OMG thank you. I -- seriously, thank you. Because watching this metadiscussion across Tumblr and Twitter (two places not known for nuance, I know) I was drawing the conclusion that the intended message was "how dare you value books, including your own", so this is such a relief. Thank you, a lot.

From:

ilyena_sylph

+hugs you gently+

Yeah, no, I value my personal books A Lot, and other people should have whatever collections of them make them happy or have value to them.

+hugs some more+

From:

hitchhiker

yes, this exactly. i don't value books as objects per se, but i value the books people own and cherish.

From:

lemonsharks

Respect for personal property is the importance bit for me. I had a person I'm not close to anymore throw an absolute pearl clutching tantrum over my desire to do some papier-mache with a few personal mass market paperbacks of mine. Books that had enriched my life so much that they were literally falling to pieces. Because transforming the objects I had enjoyed into another object I could continue to enjoy past its lifespan was ... Somehow ... Personally painful to her? Because it was disrespecting the sacred nature of the book? or something?

It should be noted that the books slated for deconstruction into the craft cupboard are ones I own 3-6 times over in different formats and editions. They weren't even out of print, but from the way she acted you'd think I was making beads out of the single extant copy of a heretofore unknown Shakespeare folio from the way she reacted!

"You MUST weed your personal books!" and "You absolutely MAY NOT under any circumstance weed your personal books!" have the same flavor of disrespectfulness about them to me.

From:

minoanmiss

"You MUST weed your personal books!" and "You absolutely MAY NOT under any circumstance weed your personal books!" have the same flavor of disrespectfulness about them to me.

What is this nuance of which you speak?

(ughghghghghgh looking back over this discussion I really got triggered to insanity and back, didnit I?)

From:

gloss

One useful thing I learned from fundamentalism is that most people, given enough energy and opportunity, will indeed "take the notion of a fact/to its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act." Kipling was wrong that only women do this.

-- so I see a librarian and a mother say that "a book is an object" and I know that if she visited me and her kids ripped some of my books apart that's what she'd say instead of apologizing
This is neither logical nor reasonable: jumping from a person's opinion in a professional context to knowing they would enter your home and support the destruction of your property is saying that you know them better than themselves and, moreover, that those with whom you disagree are actually out to harm and endanger you.

Disclaimer, just in case: I have an info studies degree. I own a shit ton of physical books. I'm not in favor of anyone's beloved possession being destroyed.

From:

minoanmiss

"that those with whom you disagree are actually out to harm and endanger you."

I mean, that's kind of how my country looks right now.

The thing is, I'm scared, okay? I'm caught between conservatives, who, I don't need to describe how they think of me, and my soi-disant fellow liberals who keep talking about how wanting to own anything is wrong, how wanting to own books is wrong, how people like me should sit down and shut up about politics until "priorities" are met -- who in all this is actually on my side, when my political choices are people who hate me or people who benevolently condescend to me, people who would see me dead vs people who just want me to accept a lesser place?

It's just frightening. And my book collection, which conservatives have told me is wasted on me and liberals have told me I should give away for the sake of society, feels symbolic of all of that.

I don't know if this makes sense but it's where I am right now and why I found the topics of Ms. Vernon and anti-book librarians to be linked.

From:

minoanmiss

and I don't know if it provides context but I wrote all of that while crying. I'm not angry, I'm scared

From:

gloss

All I can say is that I'm very sorry for increasing your distress. I'll be going now.

From:

cjsmith

You get to feel what you feel.

You get to value what you value.

It’s okay to be you.

And you get to be scared and angry when someone flat out dismisses any sense of caring that you should have rights! That’s a healthy response, even! It’s effing TERRIFYING to be anything but a cishetdude in this country right now.

From:

minoanmiss

*clings to you*

From:

cjsmith

Not to mention it’s basically always been terrifying to be not white in this country, and particularly terrifying to be Black. This timeline is pretty nasty.

I think you are under no obligation to stop being angry at Ms Vernon’s post in 2013. It did harm. If she’s no longer doing harm, super, but she hasn’t repaired 2013, and you get the final say in how you feel about that.

From:

minoanmiss

*cries ridiculously and hugs you some more*

From:

jadelennox

ObDisclaimer: I don't know the context of the "a book is an object" comment, and maybe it came in the middle of something toxic.

As a librarian, I absolutely think a book is an object, and an individual object that's not of historical interest in and of itself shouldn't be treated as sacred. And I adore physical books, I side-eye so hard the people who say "why do you have physical books, jadelennox, when you can read everything on an e-reader?", I have 2,615 books catalogued at librarything and I have hundreds of books I've never catalogued, I would almost always rather read a physical book than an e-book, and I'd be horrified if I or my cats (lacking kids) damaged a friend's physical book.

But it's important, as a librarian, not to fetishize any individual book. That's not to say that someone who likes books is, perjoratively, a "fetishist", but that part of the profession means learning that sometimes an object can be discarded. Some specific thoughts on that:

In library school, I took the repair class, where we learned how to repair hardbacks and paperbacks. (So much fun, btw, and I suspect you'd love bookbinding as a crafty thing.) And then I worked in the library's technical services department and learned that for the vast majority of books, you use scotch tape, and then replace it when it's beyond scotch tape. Because for a mass market inexpensive book on acidic paper, getting out the bone folder and the cotton tape and the acid free glue is just, well, wasteful. It hurts to throw out a book, but it's an expensive use of resources and time to make a fragile, damaged, replaceable object into a still-fragile, mended, replaceable object.
People who believe all books are sacred artifacts often donate old books, creating a SWEDOW problem for schools and libraries. Old textbooks and computer manuals, water spotted middle grade fiction, ancient novels with atrociously racist plotlines, moldy comics, encyclopedias, 20-year-old GRE practice books with the tests written in, crayoned picture books: they all turn up in the donation bins. If they're salable in the book sale that's something, at least -- but lots of donations are the items above, and they aren't salable. Which makes it the recipient's problem to dispose of them, and sometimes it's politically impossible to throw away donated materials. When I decided to get rid of about 5 shelf feet of old O'Reilly books, I asked everywhere I could think of if there was a home for them. Eventually I ripped off the covers for an eventual art project and recycled the paper. It hurt, but it made more sense than donating them to be someone else's problem, or sticking them in the basement to get too moldy to be recyclable.
Another thing that working librarians learn is that culling and selection are an essential part of the profession. Even in archives and special collections, it's important to be able to say "this item no longer meets the needs of our collection policy / is irreparably damaged / is dangerous and should be culled." But in working, public access collections, that happens all the time, and is vital. There's not going to be room for the latest Ibi Zoboi or Corinne Duyvis book if we refuse to say "we don't need 5 copies of Five Little Peppers because it doesn't circulate anymore" or "we no longer want to be responsible for circulating that extremely racist trash." Heck, there's not going to be room for the latest romance novel or spy thriller if you're unwilling to cull the old romance novels and spy thrillers. (And while it's going to be tricky to remove some popular classics from the shelves, if you want to make sure you have room to offer Ruthann Emrys next to Lovecraft, Linda Sue Park and Louise Erdrich next to Wilder, Cynthia Leitich Smith next to J. M. Barrie, you have to make room on the shelves somehow.) There's a reason it's called "weeding": sometimes, in order to have a productive or beautiful garden, you need to pull up some plants.

So anyone who calls someone else who loves books a "hoarder" or a "fetishist" is a donkeydick and should be treated accordingly. But also, it's okay to toss books. It's okay to replace them. It's okay to say we're done with them, and they belong in the trash for reasons related to either the state of the physical object or the words therein. And none of that, absolutely none, makes it okay for someone to tell you that you, personally, are a hoarder or a fetishist. Most librarians love physical books, and most of us have also learned to be okay with throwing them out. Loving physical books, and knowing when to discard them, can both be good things.

Edited (missing sentence object) Date: 2021-09-05 06:11 pm (UTC)

From:

minoanmiss

Oh I got myself upset over things that people have said on Tumblr and Twitter, which was my first mistake.

Weeding/pruning a collection is totally necessary. I just... heh, let me quote myself.

"Culling is fine -- it's neceessary in fact. I called it pruning for a reason.

Librarians defending culling by saying it's wrong to care about books, not so fine."

Which is what was getting me so upset. Plus, as I just impassionedly wrote, "my book collection, which conservatives have told me is wasted on me and liberals have told me I should give away for the sake of society, feels symbolic of all of that." I look at what people say and I think, if this person had power over me would they decide I wasn't worth saving because I'm a bad person for having too many books?

TL, who is infinitely patient with me, pointed out that I read general statements as sddresed to me specifically. Maybe I need to uninternalize "if not me, who? if not now, when?" a little bit.

*hugs you a lot*

From:

jadelennox

after I wrote my comment I read everything upthread and I am glad you didn't see me as piling on. You know we love you and also we love your book collection, right?

Anyone who says it's wrong to care about books, full stop, is ridic. (I would certainly say it's wrong to care about books in certain contexts, but I think it's wrong to care about almost anything in certain contexts. Like, I think pets are family and cats are better than people, but I also think that guy who shipped a planeload of pets out of Kabul last month needs to be repeatedly punched. There were limited planes! The paperwork he crowed about getting through took up the time of officials who could have been processing people's visas! The taliban isn't going to be beheading any dogs! He left behind the Afghan people who cared for the animals! And most importantly, and I say this as someone who considers my cats family, there are actual human beings needing to leave the country and using limited airlift space on a planeload of animals is obscene.)

I don't know the context in which liberals have told you should give away your books for the sake of society, and I 100% believe you saw some assholes say just that. But it's possible that you also saw a general statement and felt judged. You brought up Kondo, and it's much like Kondo, isn't it? She said some stuff about how she processes material items, some assholes decided to turn that into general statements about moral purity because some assholes turn everything into general statements about moral purity, and you felt judged by that. And it can be hard not to, especially when some dicks-for-brains decide to run with it. "Why not just use a kindle?" "Why not move to a tiny house?" "Why not be cottagecore like me and hunt all your own meat?" Leaving aside the fact that every single one of those types of moral judgements is promulgating and equally problematic lifestyle (we're all problematic! nobody is pure! get over yourselves!), it's hard not to feel attacked when we're told that every leisure and retail and food and employment choice is evidence of God's Grace. "If you have too many books, Minoanmiss, you're not one of the Elect."

And, I mean, fuck 'em. You told the Christian moralists to fuck off, so you can tell the secular moralists to fuck right off alongside. We're so used to assuming everyone out there who's being an asshole is an actually dangerous person who wishes us harm, because between the *flails at everything* out there, so many of the assholes are dangerous people who wish us harm. But some tumblr pseudo-leftist who is just being a moral purist because every issue of taste on the internet is about whether you need to be expelled from the Garden of Eden by Azriphale with a flaming sword is not worth your heartache. Just go hang out with Azriphale and ignore them.

ilu so fucking much.

Edited (used your real name, oops, fixed) Date: 2021-09-05 06:48 pm (UTC)

From:

bikergeek

Some practitioners of secular liberal humanism do seem to practice it like a religion, complete with asceticism and concepts of "sin" and so on.

The thing about "stuff" is, for most of the 20th century, having "stuff" was a class marker. "Stuff" was expensive, especially the newest and shiniest and best-featured "stuff" and having a big house to store all your "stuff". (See George Carlin, A Place For My Stuff.) Then we exported all of our manufacturing to cheap-labor countries and "stuff" became cheap at Wal-Mart. So the script flipped, and now having "stuff" is déclassé and the class marker nowadays is living a minimalist lifestyle in a small apartment in an "A-list" city like New York or San Francisco. (I continue to maintain that Boston is at best a "B-" with delusions of adequacy, BID.)

Edited Date: 2021-09-06 03:45 pm (UTC)

From:

minoanmiss

*hugs you so gratefully and so much*

From:

anna_wing

I think perhaps taking social media comments too seriously is probably not good for anyone. Especially taking them too seriously as guides to ideological praxis. All ideologies presume to be universal, and all of them are wrong about that. And even if you prefer to follow a particular ideological structure, some random internet person is not an authority on it, you aren't required to follow their opinion or even care about it in the slightest.

Whatever applies to you applies to you, and whatever doesn't apply to you doesn't apply to you. Your views about your library have priority over anyone else's views about your library, especially random internet people's views of your library.

From:

minoanmiss

Thank you. :)

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