Not Unpacking My Library

I have moved a lot in my life, too much, and in the chaos that every move entails, in the churning and trashing of possessions, in the reckoning with everything unfinished and forgotten that inevitably rises to the surface, it is the unpacking of books that always served as a kind of a ritual act, an alignment of physical and mental: I’d look at them and feel that I finally landed, that I’m back in the familiar. [...]

This time around, though, our books are not making me feel content or at home, and that’s why there are still 15 or so hefty boxes stacked atop of each other. [...]

Seriously: Is there another way for me to construct an outward-facing identity? As Walter Benjamin admitted, pacing around his own still-in-crates library, “what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order?” Jake Marmer, Tablet

la complicata relazione con i libri e con la lettura. Ma anche la complicata relazione con la scrittura:

Still, the act of writing poses a predicament for anyone who recognizes the temptations of pride and self-aggrandizement. We simultaneously desire to attract recognition and seek to avoid it. We want to engage an audience, yet we see that approbation flatters our egos and that criticism is painful. Although wiser people tell us not to read comments, with today's technology, readers' responses are exceedingly difficult to evade. And try as we might to ignore them, the words of critics can still wound us.

How, then, should we think about displaying ourselves — or at least our thoughts and words — in public? And where does the allure of public writing leave the activity of scholarly writing? Elizabeth Corey, National Affairs