There’s a name for someone who behaves the way I do: Reader.
There is a proud tradition of extracting lines from poetry and songs and using them in this way. And for centuries, people have kept “commonplace books”: journals filled with transcriptions of quotes and extracts. But not everyone is a fan of cherry-picking odd passages from random books and using them to direct your life. Some people argue that lines from novels and plays are dependent on the context that surrounds them—that it’s unseemly and self-serving to grab the odd line here and there, especially if it comes in the voice of a character and may not have anything to do with what the writer thinks. I don’t buy this. It ignores the way that your brain collects, refracts, sorts, and combines information. Our search for meaning isn’t limited to thoughts that were created to be meaningful and packaged in verse or easily extractable chunks. We can find meaning in everything—and everything is fair game. Your brain is, in fact, the ultimate commonplace collection, and everything you’ve ever read is in there somewhere, ready to come back into your consciousness when you want or need it.
So I spend my life collecting books and sentences from them: books I’ve sought alongside ones I’ve stumbled across, and sentences I’ve forced into my brain through rote memorization alongside ones that just found their way in by themselves.
At home, I’m a librarian, forever curating my collection. Outside of my apartment, I’m a bookseller—hand-selling my favorite books to everyone I encounter.
There’s a name for someone who behaves the way I do: Reader.
~ Will Schwalbe, Books for a Living (Vintage, December 27, 2016)
