I don’t only mean this in terms of the re-discovered time freed from leisurely browsing (on- and off-line) and unspent dollars of course, but more significantly in terms of the erection of boundaries and its surprising effects.

We are forced to engage with limits – of resources, of our own finitude – and embrace the truthfulness of the present and contingent; what lies before us is no longer the infinity of projected wisdom and undiscovered islands. This self-constrained working within bounds – simultaneously a departure from the imagined future – is a rejection of deferred “presents” and is a condition for sanity.

The glut of publishing and the decay of reading are entwined; the former chokes and strangles the other, while diminished readers fuel infantile information.

Stimulating, and equally engaging, is David Harvey’s video lecture series Reading Marx’s Capital – 13 classes / lectures, each approximating 2 hours – at www.davidharvey.org. Visit also the accompanying discussion site at www.readingcapital.org

Both are highly recommended. Thank you, technology!

The entrance recalls one of the masses of  remainder-stocked, clearance stores around Tottenham Court Road, but the interior does not disappoint.The ground floor makes for an easy, that is to say, undemanding welcome with rows of recent fiction and classic literature with the itinerant running the additional the risk of being held captive by rows of stationary: diaries, notebooks, calenders, postcards and the like.

Upstairs, via an uncommon stairwell, finds the shop changing into a little bookshop, as an actor falls into character; the reader here becomes a willing hostage, wandering amidst random passages and corridors created by neatly arranged shelves, each strategically positioned in relation to another. The tightly defined subject shelves nonetheless melt one into the other, effortlessly, anonymously.

I am particularly engrossed with Sheldon Wolin’s most recent work (and generally perturbed by the pricing of books in the heart of the EU). A woman waltzes by, wrapped up in warmth but still carrying the sting of cold, one that sticks to her winter clothes. It feels as if she has brought an invisible cloak of the icy outside indoors. It burns like a scent.

That’s what I miss about Old Europe and its early spring chill.

Further down the road, before le Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, is another creature. Sterling Books is a friendly place – almost out of place in the dour Brussels day. Yet its charm offensive fails: the books are all too topical, the rows of shelves in an indecent straightness to one another. Worse still, even the lazy, late winter sun did enough to dispel its attempted coziness.

It is instructive to learn of the machinations that led to the final decision. Maureen Freely, one of the judging panel, wrote on “The complex problems of judging the Warwick prize” (The Guardian). There is one passage that bears highlighting, and it is presented as one answer to the question “What is complexity?”, and more specifically what does complexity mean in the context of the Warwick Prize?

If we accept that writing makes you think, and that the formation of knowledge depends partly on the complex and often playful process of writing, then what role does the process of writing perform on that very edge of ‘not knowing’ and ‘knowing’: a place of creativity, energy and adventure

Here’s the freedom – from sponsorship, external pressures – that such a brief creates:

If we had been confined to the usual categories, we would have been measuring the books up to some definition of a form. [...] But what a refreshing change it made to read 20 books for their ideas, and to track the ways in which the very act of writing changed them.

All this takes reflexivity and the inter-action in-between writing into another plane; in some sense, it requires that the judging panel and its criteria reside inside, or within, the writing process itself. I wonder how this will be re-defined for the 2011 Warwick Prize for Writing, the theme of which will be Colour.

The winner is Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. While I have reservations about the book’s general thesis, it is something that successfully motored the continued working of whatever remaining grey cells left in me, an aspect noted by the judging panel:

It has started many debates, and will start many more

Postscript:

See this profile of Klein in The New Yorker.

While we’re on the subject of prizes, money and prize money, spare a thought for Colin Robinson, who was recently despatched from his position as editor at “a large publisher in New York”.

The Warwick Prize for Writing, launched by the University of Warwick

is an international cross-disciplinary award which will be given biennially for an excellent and substantial piece of writing in the English language, in any genre or form, on a theme that will change with every award.

Further,

The new Prize is part of the University’s Vision 2015 plan to enhance the University’s already significant international links and position it as an intellectual gateway to the UK and beyond.

The Prize brilliantly underlines the University of Warwick’s position at the forefront of academic excellence, its thematic approach to cross-disciplinary learning and reputation for creative excellence.

(Read more about the Warwick Prize for Writing here.)

This year’s short-listed books include Lisa Appignanesi’s Mad, Bad and Sad and Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. For both the short-list and long-list, see here.  The winner will be announced next week, on the 24th of February.

Apart from the unique way in which nominations and the long-list are compiled, I must say that the Prize is exactly as described: a prize for writing, never mind the £50,000.

For the aspiring writers out there / in here, the next Prize “will be awarded in 2011 and the theme will be announced at the award ceremony in February 2009″.

Karl Rove, writing in the The Wall Street Journal, reminisces about his friendly “contest” with the then-incumbent President of the United States of America. For the final three years of the Dubyah administration, from 2006 to 2008, Messrs. Rove and Bush, Jr. participated in a duel to see who could read more books.

The use of the terms “read” and Dubyah in the same sentence is surprising; what is shocking is that Dubyah managed to read – again, I use that term loosely – 95 books during their first 12 month window. Broken down, the books fall into the following categories:

• Fiction: 37 titles, including Michael Crichton’s Next and Vince Flynn’s Executive Power.
• Non-fiction: 58 titles, of which 
  • • History & Biography: 44 titles
    • Sports: 6 titles
    • Current Events (“mostly on the Middle East”): 8 titles

Or, in percentage terms: 38.9% (fiction), 46% (history and biography), less than 8% on issues related to the Middle East. Included in the list of 37 fiction titles are eight “Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald” (more than works on the Middle East, count ‘em!). Apparently, the “Travis McGee Series” is famous for it “having a colour in the title” (no kidding).

First, let’s look at the numbers, the criterion the gentlemen utilised. Ninety-five books over 52 weeks entails reading close to 2 books a week, or a book every 3 and a bit days. That is prolific page turning, especially by someone moonlighting as “Leader of the Free World”. Perhaps speed-reading was something the former President developed while at Yale; perhaps the material was no challenge to cerebral capacities. But let’s leave aside the speculation and ask: What does it mean to participate in a reading contest? Is it meaningful to race through books? Is that what a book is for, to be numbered and consumed – “read”? – as part of an annual book target? I am sure Rove has never heard of  Paolo Freire, who wrote in The Act of Study the following:

The act of study should not be measured by the number of pages read in one night or the quantity of books read in a semester.

Numbers and words – let alone raw data and comprehension – are no clear equals, and the premise is founded upon incomparables which betray a basic incomprehension. Some things are just unimaginable. It is simply indecent to race in reading.

[...] In a critical vision, things happen differently. [...] To study is not to consume ideas, but to create and re-create them. (source)

Predictably, “the competition soon spun out of control” and Mission: Quantify reached its nadir with the following confession.

We kept track not just of books read, but also the number of pages and later the combined size of each book’s pages — its “Total Lateral Area”

I’m sure no-one has yet described this practice as infantile, though it merits such judgement. Think of it: the President of a once proud nation and the President’s Senior Advisor measuring … total … lateral … area. It reminds me of when Thomas the Tank Engine raced against James to the wharf. The chorus is marvellous:

Thomas and James are racing, racing to the Wharf. Everyone likes to be the first not second, third or fourth! Pistons pumping wildly, boilers fit to burst. There’s something really special for the engine who comes first.

Rove does not mention why their respective tallies tailed off from 2006 (Dubyah’s 95 and 110 for Rove) to 51 and 76 (2007), before ending on a complacent 40 and 64 (2008) respectively; nor does he volunteer the composition of succeeding reading years, whether there was a development of themes or return to first principles, or even whether the fictional works were primarily comics or graphic novels. It bears considering that there is no mention of Finance or Economics related titles, nor titles that cover jurisprudence or religion.

Indeed, it appears that Dubya’s history background remains as his guiding Light. As Richard Cohen observed,

The list Rove provides is long, but it is narrow. [...] But [Bush's] books reflect a man who is seeking to learn what he already knows (source: The Washington Post)

Cohen is brutal in his damming indictment.

But the books themselves reveal – actually, confirm – something about Bush that maybe Rove did not intend.  They are not the reading of a widely read man, but instead the books of a man who seeks – and sees – vindication in every page

While correct, it is neither brutal nor damming enough. Let’s be clear on one thing: the tomes of history that Bush Jr. revisits and seeks justification from is best described as popular history, hence the appearance of Rick Atkinson on the list, and David King. Hardly the most rigourous. Indeed, viewed from this perspective, the most apposite ridiculing of Dubyah stems from within the very mirror that he has chosen.

Rove concludes that

Mr. Bush loves books, learns from them, and is intellectually engaged by them.

These words ring hollow. This is Alan Brinkley reflecting on Jacob Weisberg’s The Bush Tragedy:

The Bush whom Weisberg skillfully and largely convincingly portrays is a man who has rarely reflected, who has almost never looked back, and who has constructed a self-image of strength, courage and boldness that has little basis in the reality of his life. He is driven less by bold vision than by a desire to get elected (and settle scores), less by real strength than by unfocused ambition, and less by courage than by an almost passive acquiescence in disastrous plans that the people he empowered pursued in his name. (source: The New York Times)

If, as if often observed, the American Presidency is prone to rapid historical revision, Rove’s hasty Yuletide interjection is but the first salvo in the re-casting of the Dubyah years as – hold on – the Renaissance Years, the Golden Age of American Empire where there is only Right and Wrong, where Right is always backed by Absolute Might, where Might only favours Right.

God save America; it needs saving.

See further the list of Top Shelves.

While researching the bookshop, I subsequently clicked my way to a fascinating site, probably as close to a labour of love as is possible these days: www.bookstoreguide.org; it does exactly what it claims (“an amateur guide to book shopping throughout Europe”). Their blog contains a detailed write up on bookshops in Berlin, too, something I would have so enjoyed.

I’m tempted to apply this concept to Asia, but perhaps Singapore is a more manageable – if also limited – starting point. Check back if this comes to fruition.

It’s the same photograph, of course, and they wish to convey, I think, the normality of the regime / the regime of normality. They give us a sense of the benign everyday.

Our eyes are concentrated on a particular girl. It gives new meaning to “poster girl”. For her, this was perhaps an outing with school friends. But here she is, the poster girl of The Naive Party.

I wonder what became of her, if the girl here frozen in time survived the war. And if she will survive this campaign.

Soon enough, you’ve taken her home and do what comes naturally. Then you realise that you’ve done this before. Years ago. And it wasn’t even that great the first time around.

So you bring her back to Customer Service and sheepishly write a reason for the change of heart in the “Returns Book”. What shall I write. I’ll be honest:

Duplicate purchase

How embarrassing is that.

I glance at the previous entry above mine, written two days before:

Fickle