{"id":95370,"date":"2016-03-08T17:12:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T22:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=95370"},"modified":"2016-03-09T11:59:00","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T16:59:00","slug":"the-great-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/03\/08\/the-great-books\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Books"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Gunnar Asplund, View of Interior for Paris Exhibition 1925, Bookcase Wall Elevation<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s something profoundly sad about being surrounded by books and unable to find anything to read. It feels like a failure: yours, society\u2019s, the universe\u2019s. It can happen in a poorly stocked library branch, a failing bookstore, an airport newsstand. And it\u2019s a horrible feeling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other day, I wandered into a small used bookshop that looked like it would be filled with treasure. Instead I found two surly proprietors, about two hundred paperback mysteries and thrillers, a shelf of old high school Shakespeares, and a large selection of CliffsNotes. It smelled strange. It was sort of like \u201cThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner.\u201d Somehow it felt worse than had there been no books at all. In a sense, I could understand the owners: if it were my place, I would have been surly, too.<\/p>\n

I desperately wanted to find something\u2014anything\u2014to buy. In the tradition of the worst used bookstores, it was also quite expensive, but on that point I could hardly blame them. There was a small shelf marked CLASSICS<\/small>, and I pored over the terrible assortment of crummy paperbacks with mounting desperation. It had become symbolic, somehow. There was a midnineties\u00a0Don Quixote<\/em>. The same edition of\u00a0Absalom, Absalom!<\/em>\u00a0I\u2019d been assigned in twelfth grade. A volume of Robert Frost.<\/p>\n

When I was a kid, my brother had a bookish friend who could immerse himself in anything\u2014a dictionary, a phone book, a take-out menu\u2014and be fully absorbed. Why can\u2019t we all be like that? Medieval people had zero books! And here I was, an avowed reader, absolutely repulsed by the dozens of volumes around me.\u00a0What if you were on a desert island?\u00a0I asked myself sternly.\u00a0What if it were a game show?\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the owners kept following me around, saying, \u201cYou want a book? Here\u2019s some mysteries! You like romance? We got a lot of those. We\u2019ve got everything. Classics. Those are what we call the great books … \u201d It was like a nightmare.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally I grabbed a Zola novel with a third-rate threshing painting on the cover and went up to the register. I didn\u2019t think for a moment I\u2019d read it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNever heard of it,\u201d said the woman behind the counter weirdly. \u201cI\u2019m around all these books, but I don\u2019t have time to read anything. Ten dollars. That\u2019s a good price, for a classic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something profoundly sad about being surrounded by books and unable to find anything to read. It feels like a failure: yours, society\u2019s, the universe\u2019s. It can happen in a poorly stocked library branch, a failing bookstore, an airport newsstand. And it\u2019s a horrible feeling.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[17,2574,8095,21437,17024,20470,6664,10358,12275],"class_list":["post-95370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-books","tag-bookstores","tag-emile-zola","tag-no-books-to-read","tag-sadness","tag-shopkeepers","tag-shopping","tag-shops","tag-the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSurrounded by Books and Unable to Find Anything to Read<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein visits a very depressing used bookstore.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/03\/08\/the-great-books\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Great Books by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"March 8, 2016 \u2013 There\u2019s something profoundly sad about being surrounded by books and unable to find anything to read. 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