So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance

By Gabriel Zaid

Book Overview

"Gabriel Zaid's defense of books is genuinely exhilarating. It is not pious, it is wise; and its wisdom is delivered with extraordinary lucidity and charm. This is how Montaigne would have written about the dizzy and increasingly dolorous age of the Internet. May So Many Books fall into so many hands."--Leon Wieseltier

"Reading liberates the reader and transports him from his book to a reading of himself and all of life. It leads him to participate in conversations, and in some cases to arrange them...It could even be said that to publish a book is to insert it into the middle of a conversation."--from So Many Books

Join the conversation In So Many Books, Gabriel Zaid offers his observations on the literary condition: a highly original analysis of the predicament that readers, authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and teachers find themselves in today--when there are simply more books than any of us can contemplate.

"With cascades of books pouring down on him from every direction, how can the twenty-first-century reader keep his head above water? Gabriel Zaid answers that question in a variety of surprising ways, many of them witty, all of them provocative."--Anne Fadiman, Author of Ex-Libris

"A truly original book about books. Destined to be a classic "--Enrique Krauze, Author of Mexico: Biography of Power, Editor of Letras Libres

"Gabriel Zaid's small gem of a book manages to be both delectable and useful, like chocolate fortified with vitamins. His rare blend of wisdom and savvy practical sense should make essential and heartening reading for anyone who cares about the future of books and the life of the mind."--Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Author of Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books

"Gabriel Zaid is a marvelously elegant and playful writer--a cosmopolitan critic with sound judgment and a light touch. He is a jewel of Latin American letters, which is no small thing to be. Read him--you'll see."--Paul Berman

"'So many books, ' a phrase usually muttered with despair, is transformed into an expression of awe and joy by Gabriel Zaid. Arguing that books are the essential part of the great conversation we call culture and civilization, So Many Books reminds us that reading (and, by extension, writing and publishing) is a business, a vanity, a vocation, an avocation, a moral and political act, a hedonistic pursuit, all of the aforementioned, none of the aforementioned, and is often a miracle."--Doug Dutton

"Zaid traces the preoccupation with reading back through Dr. Johnson, Seneca, and even the Bible ('Of making many books there is no end'). He emerges as a playful celebrant of literary proliferation, noting that there is a new book published every thirty seconds, and optimistically points out that publishers who moan about low sales 'see as a failure what is actually a blessing: The book business, unlike newspapers, films, or television, is viable on a small scale.' Zaid, who claims to own more than ten thousand books, says he has sometimes thought that 'a chastity glove for authors who can't contain themselves' would be a good idea. Nonetheless, he cheerfully opines that 'the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.'"--New Yorker

Gabriel Zaid's poetry, essays, social and cultural criticism, and business writings have been widely published throughout the Spanish-speaking world. He lives in Mexico City with the artist Basia Batorska, her paintings, three cats, and ten thousand books.

Natasha Wimmer is an editor and a translator in New York City. Her recent translations include The Savage Detectives and 2666 by Roberto Bola o andThe Way to Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158988003X
• ISBN13: 9781589880030
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Paul Dry Books
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.3" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

For Writers to Think About

This is a short, worthwhile book. Zaid does a great job of separating romantic ideas of "immortal words" and how books and writers "ought" to be appreciated from what makes a book truly worthwhile. As a writer, I found this short book of essays relevant to my own ongoing questions about what publishing ought to do. It helped me better understand that the success of a book isn't so much about numbers of copies sold as about whether the book participates in a real conversation. Take Me With You When You Go

Purposes of reading and publishing rethought

Gabriel Zaid's "So Many Books" is a stimulating andprovocative book for anyone interested in bookpublishing. His brief, inexpensive book can be read ina single sitting, yet its ideas will, I suspect,percolate for a long time afterwards.Books need to address small and specific readerships,and computer digitization and internet communicationtechnologies are fostering that. Thus, a renaissance ofreading is now at hand. How we think about books, Zaidargues, needs to be reoriented from emphasis onpublishing and best-sellers to emphasis on reading andthe conversation that books can stimulate. Books, Zaidargues following Socrates, are a means to somethinggreater: private and public conversation enlivening andsustaining civilization and culture.Books of paper, ink, and glue will endure long into thefuture, helped, not hindered, by new technology tobypass their current commodification by big corporateentities. (For more about that, read Jason Epstein's"The Book Business" (2001).) Already, books arerelatively cheap to produce (compared, for example, tofilms). One needs only a few thousand readers to breakeven. (Think, for example, of the impact of samizdatpublications of Soviet dissidents, of Thomas Paine's"Common Sense", and of contemporary zines.) Theseadvantageous economics, making possible publication ofniche works, should grow as print on demand technologydrives the costs lower. (The primary way this willhappen is by reducing the expense and risk assumed bypublishers and booksellers in maintaining inventory.)Zaid's approach identifies new concerns. First, abook's major cost is not the purchase price but thetime and attention required to read it. Brevity andconciseness are important, as Zaid's book itselfdemonstrates. Second, matchmaking becomes even moreimportant: books and readers must be able to find eachother.

Wonderful meditations on the place and value of books

It's largely coincidental that I read this at the turn of the old and new year, but I may just make re-reading this thoughtful little book an annual event. Both elegant and wise, "So Many Books" is not simply a defense of the book as a medium. It's also, on a larger scale, a defense of reading, of those who choose (and, as the author notes, really know *how*) to read, and of the place of reading in inter-cultural and inter-generational "conversations."Gabriel Zaid looks at the economics of the publishing industry, and also the relative merits of books over both older (oral tradition, parchment) and newer (e-books, CD-ROMs) means of storing and exchanging information. He places reader, author, and individual book within a "constellation" of books in which ideas are exchanged. And he weaves "a hairshirt for masochistic authors" by showing how few books are read, preserved, or -- frankly -- even noticed by the reading public.But most of all, Zaid shows that books are nothing less than the cornerstone of the effort to define, preserve, and expand culture. The fact that there are so many books to read shouldn't depress us but, instead, excite us and make those of us committed to reading a bit more secure in what some no doubt consider our eccentricity. This is a title I hope to return to again and again.

Beautiful and astonishing

This beautifully written and translated book takes the reader down surprising paths, and delights on every page. A mature, serious, and erudite thinker, Zaid smoothly meshes his ideas about the purpose of books and of reading with a fresh and clear-eyed understanding of the business of producing books. This is a book you will want to share. Too bad more of his work has not been translated.