As part of their Pocket Classics, Everyman released Stories of Books and Libraries, edited by Jane Holloway this year. The 494 paged hardcover features a fantastic collection of stories (and essays) from literature’s who’s who celebrating bibliomania. From Italo Calvino’s critique of censuring books in a fascist state in “A General in the Library”, Borges’ celebrated “The Library of Babel” with its fascinating inception of a cosmic library that contains every possible book to the German erudite Walter Benjamin, illustrating the exhilarating essence of book collecting in his “Unpacking my Library”, the book has a slice of biblio-spirit for every reader, of every taste and interest. What, however, is missing from the anthology, and what possibly could’ve been a cherry on top, is a rather neglected story that Gustave Flaubert, the author of the popular 19th-century novel Madame Bovary— a defining work of Realism — wrote at the age of 14 titled “Bibliomanie”. Beyond the convenience of the title, the story envelops the significance of books the stories ( and essays) emanate. It is a story of a bookseller, Giacomo’s eccentric bookhunting of an elusive book. Even though he hardly knows how to read, Giacomo undergoes an odyssey of lies, deceit, and murder to possess the book. What unravels beyond the madness of this hunt is the passion (of books) that drives it. Sarnath Banerjee re-creates a semblance of this eccentric passion in his graphic novel, The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers, where the quest for the titular book reveals the intimate structure of Calcutta.
Many years ago, long before I developed the cognitive capacity to read (and comprehend) Shakespeare, Keats, Freud, Foucault, my biblio-frenzy began with the cheap, compact-sized DC and Marvel comic books by Gotham Comics, the subcontinent’s distributor. I remember my first very own purchase was a copy of The Incredible Hulk. The cover had the Hulk wrestling with three mutated dogs, a scene recreated in the 2003 movie. My fascination was primarily with such covers and enticing adverts in between that packaged and introduced the American dream. To fend it off, my father bought a fair share of Tinkle and Chandamama. I can’t say that this plan of his wasn’t all successful. I im/patiently waited for the next chapter of Vikram and Vetal while wondering what Batman would do to Joker in the subsequent issue at the same time. My house had multiple sacks of these comic books, a prized possession I showed to every visitor diligently before the rats and fire had their way. Two stores, namely, Lila Bookstore and K. G. & Sons’ (vernacularly known as Machin Mano Dukan), were the main sources of this juvenile obsession. Memory blurs and bends with recollections of early days, but these two stores never seemed to have run out of comics. I would sometimes squeeze myself into a narrow path, as these stores were and still are not bookstores with ample space to move around and browse the shelves but stationery stores that happened to sell comic books as well, and read as many books as I could before the owners would beg me to give room for them. And on the extremely rare occasion when these stores weren’t open, I would ask my father to take me to a store opposite Naohallai Laikol ( pardon my failure to recall the store name). There, they had similar items but more. Kept by a retired English professor, the store served different people differently. For us children, we were enamoured by its large option of Gotham comics, teenagers went there for Digit and My Mobile, while the adults frequented to get their daily Telegraph, Hindu, and Times of India. The English newspapers my father read then acquainted me with Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, and Garfield. In the poor town of Kakching decades ago, before the advent of the internet, without an Archie, an Asterix and Obelix or a Tintin, or any expensive book, the thriving culture of books enthralled us and instilled in us a lasting impression of bibliomania.
Gone are the days when I pestered my grandmother to give me 15 rupees to buy a Gotham comic. My grandmother has died, and so has the spirit of books. No longer are the storefronts of the aforementioned stores gilded with colorful covers of comics, or any book at all. As a matter of fact, the only store I could still get Tinkle stopped keeping it a year ago. And when I once tried to get an English newspaper for a college project, it led me to a sad, futile task. The helpful owner of Lila Store has since passed away, and the store opposite Naohallai Laikol has new owners, and if one hadn’t experienced the social hub it was, none could ever imagine it now. The only store that sells books, besides school-recommended textbooks, had some copies of Camus and a handful of modern-day classics, most likely part of the local college syllabi, covering a tiny corner of a shelf among shelves of exam-oriented books when I last went there. Our local library stands as an edifying testament to the waning biblio-mania. I come across many felicitation functions there every passing month but observing the overgrown pasture that has hidden the building, I find no felicity. The spirit of books has effaced itself from my humble town.
I but like Giacomo have “one love, but one passion: books. And this love, this passion burned within him, used up his days, devoured his existence.” Deprived of the one thing that I cherish, an estranged biblo-flaneur I have become. Instead of the temporal reaches of my town, I visit the corners of an erstwhile Kakching my bibliomaniac memories induce me.
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