The books that gain esteem often strike me as books that appeal to human narcissism

3 Responses to “Different Types of Books” ~ by larvalsubjects on April 19, 2007.

One of Lichtenberg’s Waste Books entries observes that if libraries become cities (as, he says, some say they will or are doing), they’ll have slums, too. (Had I the book with me I’d quote it accurately.) ben wolfson said this on April 23rd, 2007 at 2:05 am

Ben, This is interesting. Could you maybe say more as to what sorts of books you would see in the slums? And is this a perjorative sorting? Freud, for instance, sometimes referred to psychoanalysis as a “ghetto science”. I suspect that psychoanalytic work will always be in the slums or ghettos due to the nature of resistance and defense surrounding the ego, making it perpetually difficult to accept the unconscious. It seems to me that something is similarly the case with Marx, Lucretius, Machiavelli, or Nietzsche. The books that gain esteem often strike me as books that appeal to human narcissism, whereas there’s a whole body of works that always haunt the shadows because of the way in which they wound narcissism. Consequently, being relegated to the slums might not be such a bad thing. What did you have in mind? larvalsubjects said this on April 23rd, 2007 at 2:42 am

I didn’t have anything in particular in mind, honest. The post just reminded me of that comment of Lichtenberg’s (there’s actually more than one that are very similar).
I don’t know if Lichtenberg thought the books in the slums would be actively bad books, or books of a determinate sort; he certainly did have strong opinions about the badness of many books produced in his time, so it’s possible he meant the comment pejoratively. But it needn’t be interpreted that way; compare Wittgenstein likening (a) language to a city. I don’t think he thought that in the slums of that city one would find the déclassé speech. But as for what sorts of books or speech one would find there, I’m not sure I’ve got an opinion. ben wolfson said this on April 23rd, 2007 at 3:07 am