Rare Book Monthly

Articles - June - 2020 Issue

Books: Maybe We Aren't Reading Them, But They Still Make Great Props

Former Vice-President Joe Biden speaks in front of his bookcase.

Former Vice-President Joe Biden speaks in front of his bookcase.

Books have long held a position of high esteem in our households, likely as far back as Gutenberg. You probably have a bookcase containing every book you have ever owned. Why? Do you keep a collection of the old tires from your cars once they are no longer being used? No, you don't, so why do you keep your old books? You won't read them again, presuming you ever did. The answer is in what books say about us, or what we imagine they say about us, even if not entirely accurate. They imply we are learned, intelligent, seekers and possessors of knowledge. They imply wisdom, or to use a recently more common term, credibility.

 

While our credibility is usually on display only to the few people who visit our homes, most of whom know us too well to be fooled, the bookcase has suddenly become an important prop in the time of the coronavirus. Politicians, newscasters, and celebrities of all sorts, those whose faces we normally see on our TV screens, are no longer seen in public. They now reach us through cameras in their homes. This gives us access to something we have never seen before – the inside of their houses. They speak to us in front of their possessions, those they want us to see. So there they are – the bookcases, filled with books, implying they are readers, people of education and intellectual depth. They help the celebrity create an image, just as clothes and jewelry used to do when they were out and about town.

 

This practice has become so widespread that it has attracted a following. There is a Twitter account named “Bookcase Credibility.” It only took about two weeks to attract 50,000 followers. Their motto is “What you say is not as important as the bookcase behind you.” It is filled with pictures of newsmakers as they appeared on television or computer screens seated in front of their bookcases. Other places on the internet have gathered viewers who try to discern the titles of the books the important person reads (or doesn't read). It is often difficult if not impossible, as they are more distant in the background and titles on the spine are not that large. Nonetheless, they sometimes are able to decipher what is on the bookshelf, though it may be the mere existence of a collection of books that relays the image the person wishes to create.

 

One thing I have not seen is the housebound speaker standing in front of a television set. Does everyone read more than they watch TV? Even the President of the United States is known for watching a lot of cable news while not being too much of a reader. Is he the only politician or other celebrity with that preference? Unlikely, and if not, some people are trying to fool us with their images.

 

Someday, all of this will be over. We won't be pouring over TV stills trying to read the spines of books in the background. We will have real things to do, places to go, people to see. We will again be able to live life, not just imagine it. Until then, stay safe.


Posted On: 2020-06-01 05:27
User Name: artbooks1

I have signed in to say that Ivana Trump revealed that Don kept a copy of Mein Kampf at his bedside shelf


Posted On: 2020-06-01 18:49
User Name: Giordano

Alarming!

"You won't read them again, presuming you ever did" . Read them - or read them again?

Behind me are my bookcases (no photograph!). I've read almost all of the many books on them and today, not for the first time, picked up one at random to read again. The pleasure of reading a book again is remarkable, like treading a well-worn path and discovering new things at every step.

I expect there are people to whom old car tires are equally pleasurable - but the space they'd take!


Rare Book Monthly

  • Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Johnson (C.). A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most Notorious Pyrates, 1724. £3,000-4,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Ordonez de Cevallos (Pedro). Viage del Mundo, 1st edition, Madrid: Luis Sanchez, 1614. £1,000-1,500
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: North America. Merian (Matthaus), Virginia..., 1627 or later. £1,500-2,500
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: World. Waldseemuller (Martin), Tabula Nova Totius Orbis, Vienne: 1541. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Erasmus (Desiderius). The ... paraphrase of Erasmus... 2 volumes, 1st edition, 1549. £3,000-5,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Bible [English]. [The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament, 1562]. £3,000-5,000
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Smith (Lucy). Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, 1st edition, 1853. £1,000-1,500
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Derain (Andre). Pantagruel, signed limited edition, Albert Skira, 1943. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Austen (Jane). Pride and Prejudice, illustrated by Hugh Thomson, Large Paper edition, 1894. £1,500-2,000
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Ellison (Ralph). Invisible Man, 1st edition, New York: Random House, 1952. £200-300
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Taschen Collector's Edition. Annie Leibovitz, limited edition, 2014. £1,000-1,500
  • Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
  • Bonhams, Apr. 8: First report outside of the colonies of the American Revolution, from American accounts. Printed broadsheet, The London Evening-Post, May 30, 1775. $20,000 - $30,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce, James. The earliest typescript pages from Finnegans Wake ever to appear at auction, annotated by Joyce, 1923. $30,000 - $50,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce's Ulysses, 1923, one of only seven copies known, printed to replace copies destroyed in customs. $10,000 - $15,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: ATHANASIUS KIRCHER'S COPY, INSCRIBED. Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell' Accademia del Cimento, 1667. $2,000 - $3,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Bernoulli's Ars conjectandi, 1713. "... first significant book on probability theory." $15,000 - $25,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Aristotle's Politica. Oeconomica. 1469. The first printed work on political economy. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: John Graunt's Natural and political observations...., 1662. The first printed work of epidemiology and demographics. $20,000 - $30,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: William Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas, 1786. The first work to pictorially represent information in graphics. $15,000 - $25,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Anson's A Voyage Round the World, 1748. THE J.R. ABBEY-LORD WARDINGTON COPY, BOUND BY JOHN BRINDLEY. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: La Perouse's Voyage de La Perouse autour du monde..., 1797. LARGE FINE COPY IN ORIGINAL BOARDS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Francesca Woodman's Some Disordered Interior Geometries, 1981. Untrimmed publisher's proof sheets. $4,000 - $6,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Charles Schulz original 8-panel Peanuts Sunday comic strip, 1992, pen and ink over pencil, featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Lucy as a psychiatrist. $20,000 - $30,000

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