Extreme Reading

Can you imagine a writer picking out a random shelf of books in a New York library, spending over a year to read them, and then writing a book about the experience ? Crazy idea, isn’t it ? And, yet author Phyllis Rose did exactly that. Realizing that we usually choose our reading from a list recommended by reviewers, librarians, teachers etc, she decided to select her reading almost blindly. She did set herself some ground rules : A mix of contemporary and older works, at least one of which had to be a classic. Several authors on the shelf, none of whom she had previously read. And, at most, one author represented by five or more books, of which she would read no more than three.
These were difficult criteria to meet but after surveying over 200 shelves( out of 1,350) at the New York Society Library on E.79th Street in NYC, she settled on the LEQ – LES shelf. The book she wrote is The Shelf, Adventures in Extreme Reading.
Who would want to read a book about Reading? Crazy, isn’t it ?
I thought so, too particularly when I saw that the list of authors on the shelf included William le Queux, Rhoda Lerman, Mikhail Lermontov, Lisa Lerner ,Alexander Lernet- Holenia, Etienne Leroux, Gaston Leroux, James le Rossignol. Margaret Leroy, Alain-Rene Le Sage and John Lescroart. Not exactly household names even if some of them were famous in their day. For me, the only familiar name amongst them was John Lescroart, a dozen of whose mysteries- legal thrillers I have read. I got The Shelf just to satisfy my curiosity, certain that I would dump it after I’d read a small part of it.
Want to know something crazy? I read the book from cover to cover and loved it.
Had this book only been a writer’s opinions about the books she read, I would not have gotten very far before throwing in the towel .However, it is much more than that. Much, much more.
Phyllis Rose is nothing if not thorough. The first book on the shelf she read was One for the Devil(1968), by Etienne Leroux, an obscure South African author writing in Afrikaans. Though she didn’t like it , she skimmed through another book in the trilogy, read about the author on various sources and even saw a Youtube video clip of his long ago funeral. The second book, A Hero of Our Time by Lermontov she read in four different translations, including one by Vladimir Nabakov and his son , Dimitri. The Nabakov translation is replete with explanatory footnotes running down the book being translated, and Rose comments acidly how ” one writer swallows and ingests another in order to create himself”.
I had thrilled to The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway but I did not know that it was based on a novel by Gaston Leroux. Rose reads two of Leroux’s detective novels ( terrible) and then goes into great detail about the author and the genesis of Phantom. There are details about the construction of the Paris Opera House where the action takes place, a discussion of the 1925 silent film classic starring Lon Chaney ( imagine that: a silent film about the power of music !) and about the enduring fascination with the Phantom theme. Rose points out the similarities with George du Maurier’s 1894 novel Trilby ( about the hypnotist, Svengali who hypnotizes a young girl and turns her into a great singer) and the popular Gothic fiction of that time including Dracula. Interesting stuff.
To be frank, I would not want to read the books that Rose did. I have no interest in Austrian writers even if one of them( Jelinek) did win the Nobel Prize for literature in 2004.Neither would I care to read books by Lisa Lerner or Margaret Leroy, good though they might be. The only book that might interest me is Gil Blas, the picaresque 18th century novel by Alain – Rene Le Sage but, at 758 pages, it is too long for me.
What does interest me are Rose’s digressions on book related matters, authors and libraries. Among them : Why there are comparatively few women writers. The difficulties that women writers face. Regionalism and Realism. Womens fiction as opposed to ” Real Literature”. And how libraries decided which books to discard. It is a complex process depending on the date it was last published, when it was last taken out by a patron and six other factors, As a library report states (” .. it can take much longer to select a book for withdrawal than to select it for purchase”.)
Reading Phyllis Rose’s modus operandi for her extreme reading made feel envious of her perspicacity and the depth of her knowledge even as it made feel ashamed of my slapdash approach to books. I read for enjoyment and my choice of books is , well … eclectic. I go to the library and prowl the stacks looking for titles and subjects that interest me. In a way, it is as random as can be. Mostly detective/ mysteries/thrillers, some non-fiction on a grab bag of topics, a few biographies and some history. Very often, I discard a book that ceases to interest and I rarely spend more than a week on a book. Right now, I am reading Second Wind by a gerontologist, Dr. Bill Phillips, about leading a slower, deeper, more connected life. It’s taking him a long time to get to the point and I may or may not finish it. I am also dipping into You Must Remember This ,an oral history of Manhattan compiled by Jeff Kisseloff.(Terrific). Next up are two South African mysteries by a young South African writer, Malla Nunn. All these far removed from what Phyllis Rose might read but, hey, we’re all different.
Do try The Shelf. I think you’ll find it well worth reading.
P.S. I was disappointed to find that Ms. Rose did not care for the John Lescroart mysteries. Ah well, different strokes for different folks.