Decrepitude

One other thing I might have mentioned about Night Birds in Nantucket: my copy smells great. I bought it back in 1986 so it's a little bit more than twenty years old now and it's aged well. It wouldn't have done quite so well if I'd shipped it over here back in 1988. The humid tropical climate has a way of rapidly aging books, especially Penguin paperbacks, oddly enough. But it's only been in these parts for three years or so, and most of its time in England was spent in a nice cold attic - perfect conditions for the preservation of bibliographical youthfulness. So it'll probably maintain its present mustily-sweet maturity for another couple of years.

At one time I found the whole business of textual decay rather depressing. I suppose if I've ever collected anything it's been books, and no collector enjoys seeing his prize pieces showing distinct signs of decrepitude, if not outright senile collapse. (There's a wonderful lament over Singapore's climate and what it does to the written word in Philip Jeyaretnam's Abraham's Promise - my copy of which is printed on really nice paper.) But I think I've come to terms with it. A book is only really a book if it's being read, and reading is a thing of the mind, which can always be kept fresh (I hope.)

And now it's time to contradict myself: is there any smell more satisfying than that of a well printed brand new book? And isn't the experience of reading a finely designed, handsome volume made the more pleasurable as a result of said design? When I did Jane Austen's Emma for 'A' level the school gave us a little hardback of the text, printed on very thin paper. Somehow it was just right for that apparently frail but most wise of all novels. I can still remember reading the opening pages, the look of the text on the page and, even though I've read it twice since then, no other edition has quite worked for me in the same way in terms of the sensual experience of the reading.