Books as Vehicles

“The Liar”, Stephen Fry’s first novel follows a Wildean young man studying language at Cambridge University. I wonder where he got his inspiration.

This passage covers our hero Adrian’s meeting with his Senior Tutor, philology professor Trefusis:

Trefusis’s quarters could be described in one word.

Books.

Books and books and books. And then, just when an observer might be lured into thinking that that must be it, more books.

Barely a square inch of wood or wall or floor was visible. Walking was only allowed by pathways cut between the piles of books. Treading these pathways with books waist-high either side was like negotiating a maze. Trefusis called the room his ’librarinth’. Areas where seating was possible were like lagoons in a coral strand of books.

Adrian supposed that any man who could speak twenty-three languages and read forty was likely to collect a few improving volumes along the way. Trefusis himself was highly dismissive of them.

‘Waste of trees,’ he had once said. ‘Stupid, ugly, clumsy, heavy things. The sooner technology comes up with a reliable alternative the better.’

Early in the term he had flung a book at Adrian’s head in irritation at some crass comment. Adrian had caught it and been shocked to see that it was a first edition of Les Fleurs de Mal.

‘Books are not holy relics,’ Trefusis had said. ‘Words may be my religion, but when it comes to worship, I am very low church. The temples and the graven images are of no interest to me. The superstitious mammetry of a bourgeois obsession for books is severely annoying. Think how many children are put off reading by prissy little people ticking them off whenever they turn a page carelessly. The world is so fond of saying that books should be “treated with respect”. But when are we told that words should be treated with respect? From our earliest years we are taught to revere only the outward and visible. Ghastly literary types maundering on about books as “objects”. Yes, that does happen to be a first edition. A present from Noel Annan, as a matter of fact. But I assure you that a foul yellow livre de poche would have been just as useful to me. Not that I fail to appreciate Noel’s generosity. A book is a piece of technology. If people wish to amass them and pay high prices for this one or that, well and good. But they can’t pretend that it is any higher or more intelligent a calling than collecting snuff-boxes or bubble-gum cards. I may read a book, I may use it as an ashtray, a paperweight, a doorstop or even as a missile to throw at silly young men who make fatuous remarks. So. Think again.’ And Adrian had thought again.

• Snippets