The Gifts of Reading is an anthology of essays about the joys of reading and of giving books, from some of the world’s most beloved writers. On Christmas Eve, when so many people will be giving or receiving books as gifts tomorrow, we thought it would be lovely to share an essay from the book about the joy to be found in the act.
We’re lucky enough to feature Max Porter’s essay from the anthology, ‘It Could Be Any Book’, on the blog today. Max Porter is the author of two highly acclaimed novels, Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and, in addition to his novels, has written and published poetry, essays and short stories. He is also a dazzling speaker.
Read on and have a safe and merry Christmas!
It Could Be Any Book
I have been a dedicated giver of books for as long as I have been able. Because it is beneficial to the cultural ecosystem, because books are extraordinarily good value, because part of being evangelical about literature and literacy should be putting your money where your mouth is. It is a political gesture now to borrow books from a library, to buy books from a bookshop, to pay for an album, to go to a museum. These gestures keep culture alive, and we know beyond any doubt that culture is our lifeblood, is civilisation’s impulse towards betterment, complexity, nurture
and growth.
I take a book to meet a friend. I take a book to meet an enemy. My mind is made of books. My marriage is made of books. My children fall asleep every night clutching books. In this world of entrenched opinions and partisan politics, the book as thoughtfully crafted, slowly imbibed vehicle for nuance, for diversity of opinion, becomes ever more important and ever more radical.
I believe in the gift economy, especially if what you are giving is words and images, ideas and stories. Let us give and give and give.
There is a book I have recently been giving as a gift. This particular book only costs a pound, which helps. Given what a coffee costs, or a pair of shoes, or a disposable whatnot from the whatever-we-have-to-keep-upgrading-to-next shop, this book is a miraculous bargain. The bookshop I worked in years ago still gives me a staff discount, so actually this book cost me sixty pence. The price of a chocolate bar.
And so when this short book impacted me as much as it did, I felt compelled to share it, so I bought fifty copies. I carried copies of the book around with me. I gave it to my friends and family, to colleagues, fellow writers, and audience members at events. I also gave it to some strangers. I gave it to a woman who was protesting Donald Trump’s state visit to London, and she was extremely grateful. She knew of the author. I offered it to a man who asked me for a cigarette and he said No, he didn’t fancy it. I told him what it was about, and he said, No, definitely, that sounded boring, he would rather have a cigarette. But most people did accept the book, and the fifty copies didn’t last long.
The book is printed on Forest Stewardship Certified paper, which is important. It fits inside a standard pocket or adult human hand. It weighs about as much as ten acorns.
The book moved me greatly, because it is by a wise and kind man who loves language and the planet. The short essays it comprises were originally written some years ago, before the full extent of human damage to the environment and to other species was fully evident. Before the normalisation (linguistic, political and practical) of our complicity in that damage was so entrenched. What I mean is, it’s prophetic. This book does a thing which is very unusual in these hot-headed days of extremist social media opinion; it gently suggests some ideas on a subject. Then it shares the criticisms that were levelled at those ideas when the ideas were first published. Then it calmly responds to those criticisms, accepting some, cleverly rebuffing others. Its main characteristics are warmth, receptiveness, courage of conviction and wit. The wit is the best bit. The wit’s the thing I drank most thirstily, in these humourless times, when I first
read this book.
I met this book during a local political crisis overshadowed by the planetary ecological crisis and I realised that the earth-facing, generative, cautiously romantic, considered, poetry-enriched, ethical, crafted and worked-hard wisdom of this book was exactly what was missing from the behavioural vocabulary of the present. And I know . . . it was ever thus. We read things by wise and brilliant people and fantasise that the author could be running whatever shit-show we are currently observing. We wished for more John Berger and less Margaret Thatcher. We wished for more Thomas Browne and less Charles I, more Virginia Woolf and less Neville Chamberlain. I knew I could not travel to the author’s farm in Kentucky and bring him back here, to heal our local wounds, touring him like a guru to speak truth to assembled fans, deniers or hecklers. I would not do that to him.
So buying the book and giving it as a gift was a decent place to start.
Beyond that, beyond the physical book, I resolved to weave this man’s spirit into the work I make, into the conversations I have, into my ideas and behaviour. From the intimate workings of my domestic life (how did I speak to my son, when he angered me, this morning?) to the ways in which I treat other humans, and non-humans, in this time of ecological disaster.
This book sent me off into other books. It sent me to my apple tree. It sent me to my best friend to apologise. It sent me to a website about recycled keyboards. It sent me to the charity shop to see if they had a vase for the flowers I was given (to thank me for the book), because the idea of buying a new vase seemed preposterous after reading this book.
I’ve had a couple of good conversations with people to whom I gave this book, but for the majority of recipients I have no idea what they thought. I don’t know if they enjoyed it, or binned it, or had a profound intellectual reckoning with it. It’s important not to need to know. We don’t plant trees to know with any certainty how long they will survive, who will stand beneath their branches, or what they will live to see. As Lewis Hyde says, ‘the passage into mystery always refreshes.’
I felt refreshed by this little book, and refreshed again every time I gifted it. I will list some of the book’s gifts to its reader:
A gorgeous non-doctrinaire feminism.
A chirpy, melodic, rambunctious intellect.
A visionary understanding that rampant capitalism’s end-game would be planet death.
A self-deprecating honesty.
A taking of umbrage to meanness.
A conservationist political impulse, in the content and the style.
A profound love of language, and attention to its details.
A celebration of craft.
A refusal to flinch from the philosophically unanswerable.
You see? Sixty pence incredibly well spent.
I think the point I’d like to make about giving books is this: do you need to know the title and author of the book I’ve been describing? I hope you do not. You will have given or been given books like this. As well as books which offended, revolted or bored you. Each of us wanders along our reading maps nudged and steered by the gifts of others, dragged hither and thither, distracted, sometimes lost, sometimes charging forward with great purpose. It could be any book. Any book given with good reason from one person to another.
It is one of the most wonderful things about this short strange life, to give these little paper packets of set-down thought to other people, and to receive them in turn.
But I’m keen for you to share in my joy, and maybe spread it further. The little book is called Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer, by Wendell Berry.
—The Gifts of Reading, inspired by Robert Macfarlane and curated by Jennie Orchard (Hachette Books Australia) is out now.

The Gifts of Reading
An anthology of essays about the joys of reading and of giving books, from some of the world's most beloved writers. Inspired by and including Robert Macfarlane's own essay, 'The Gifts of Reading', publishing to coincide with the 20th anniversary of global literacy non-profit, Room to Read
'This story, like so many stories, begins with a gift. The gift, like so many gifts, was a book...' So begins the essay by Robert Macfarlane that inspired this collection. In this cornucopia of an anthology, you will find essays by some of the world's most beloved novelists, nonfiction writers, essayists and poets...
Comments
No comments