I REMEMBER more sharply those who have borrowed books and not returned them than those who have borrowed money and not looked back.
Not that I’m like Caesar’s wife. In my tiny library – named The Mignon O. Agard Memorial Library – in recognition of my aunt’s contribution to my school fees, there are a few volumes whose owners have long since forgotten about their whereabouts after several years.
Among my borrowed-but-not-yet-returned treasures is Oliver Jackman’s Saw The House In Half, autographed by the late diplomat for another former diplomat, Besley Maycock, back in 1975. I shift the blame here to my wife, who borrowed that novel and hasn’t so far returned it. For years, she has promised: “Next time Besley visits . . . .” Besley has visited several times.
The name of Gercine Carter pops up in Whistle Blowing – to which I referred in my last column Editor Needed; Chris Griffith, on more than one occasion, has “borrowed back” his World’s Great Men Of Color; and Tony Best has turned loan into gift with The Making Of A Public Relations Man.
I’ve tried, in vain, to recall the rightful owner of Adam Smith’s The Wealth Of Nations. I gave up and welcomed it among my prized possessions.
So I throw myself on the mercy of the court and plead guilty to the felony of book theft. As if to remind myself of this ongoing flaw on an otherwise well-meaning disposition, and to expiate my sins, I recently bought a book titled The Book Thief.
So you can place me among the incorrigibles who are not swept away by the lure and the excitement of the new technologies around us.
My son took no offence the other day when he offered to bring back an iPad from a holiday in Toronto. I told him no thanks; a book would do. He presented me with a gem titled Bridges, by David Blockley.
Curt’s relief in spending a few dollars on the book, compared with a few hundred on the iPad, had less to do with his post-graduate training in finance than with his understanding of my attachment to the printed word.
I reasoned with him that an iPad would be equivalent to a new pet: I would have to feed it (with apps), play with it, buy things with Barbados’ scarce foreign exchange, use 17½ per cent VAT electricity to charge its battery, and marvel at its magic – while it stole my time for reading.
Apart from bashing a burglar on the head, there are not many other things you can do with a book other than to read it.
As Barbadian education authorities struggle to excite the 21st century generation – not only about the joys, but the value of reading – I regret to tell them they are fighting a losing battle. There’s too much distraction.
If today’s technology were available in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, we too would’ve been tethered to our BlackBerrys, Kindles, iPads and other “smart” gadgets.
In The Lost Art Of Reading, David Ulin reminds new media reactionaries that the technology they are trying desperately to hold on to was once itself at the cutting edge. He says: “We take books and mass literacy for granted, but in reality, they are a recent iteration going back not even a millennium.”
Less than 400 years ago, John Milton could still pride himself on having read every book then available, the entire history of written thought accessible to a single mind. Those days are over. The opposite is today’s reality. There’s a flood of information.
Don’t give up on the book yet, even though it has an uphill struggle to stay relevant in today’s technological deluge. When you read you are transported; you see the world through more than one pair of eyes.
Show me an iPad that can do that and I’ll take you to see Richard Hoad’s favourite goat operating a tractor!
• Carl Moore was the first Editor of THE NATION and is a social commentator. Email: [email protected]
