Download This PDF File

Book Reviews 585 Book Reviews Baker, Nicholson. Double Fold: Libraries ing some researchable informa and the Assault on Paper. New York: tion that is not text, gone forever. Random House, 2001. 370p. $25.95, Baker finds blame every alk. paper (ISBN 0375504443). LC 00 where. He infers CIA and other 59171. conspiracies in those who cre Ever since its initial appearance in the ated microfilm technology; New Yorker, Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold those chemists and paper scien has been prompting passionate and par tists and conservators who evolved some tisan debate among professionals and the of our theories on the decomposition of public on the subject of preserving our paper were all charlatans and egoists; documentary heritage. Perhaps now, with those charged with charting the course of the passage of time, there can be a rea libraries are mad futurists. But he saves soned review of this book. his true disgust and disdain for those who Or perhaps not. For although the sub created the film Slow Fires and accelerated ject is serious and the debate necessary, the call for the preservation of paper the objective reviewer can only be struck through microfilm with grants from the with the unfair, one-sided nature of the office of Preservation and Access of the author’s arguments. Yet, to dismiss Baker National Endowment for the Humanities. and his work would be to follow the He seems amazed to discover that librar author’s own policy—for he sees evil, stu ians and library directors could take time pidity, incompetence, fraud, and con worrying about balancing budgets and spiracy in nearly everyone who holds an finding shelf space and that librarians opinion different from his. As such, the could have believed all the wonderful irony is immense: Baker sees the library things we all were told about technology world and its “assault on paper” similarly before discovering that microfilm was not to the microfilm he detests so much. Al the panacea it declared itself to be. (No though he allows for some shades of gray, where in this book is this trust in tech pretty much everything in his viewfinder nology begun in the 1950s put in context is black or white. with our larger culture, and there is no For years now, Baker asserts, librar context for anything else, such as discuss ians, preservation administrators, and ing the larger issue of de-accessioning.) policymakers have been willfully de He nearly shrieks with delight when he stroying our paper heritage, changing gets Pat Battin of the Commission of Pres countless bound volumes (bound news ervation and Access to admit that her papers are his special delight) into bad phrase “books turning to dust” is not ex microfilm, and then throwing the origi actly true. That librarians and those con nals away, or worse. Baker has a cerned with brittle paper could have the collector’s (not a researcher’s) reverence savvy to come up with an advertising slo for old printed text; he cringes at the sight gan to help catch the public’s imagina of bound volumes being guillotined and tion he finds one of the blackest sins of assumes that the librarians are as de all. (One can only imagine the scene he’d lighted as the Paris mobs were during the make exposing the vile coiner of the reign of terror. The wonderful originals phrase “Dust to dust.”) vanish, while in their place appear the However, Baker does raise some very changeling of bad microfilm—with pages interesting points, leads the readers on skipped, many frames illegible, and the some amusing digressions, and makes original format of the materials, contain valid observations in his tour of 585 586 College & Research Libraries November 2001 microfilm’s inferno. He clearly shows that that it exits at all. For if it had not been librarians and library directors were too filmed and if it had been used by the gullible in believing the lure of microfilm countless researchers who turned the and gives some wise warnings against crank on the microfilm machine instead trusting in optical-imaging technology. of the literal page, it would truly have But he tries to hide the fact that others turned to, if not dust, then small brittle knew this long before he did. Although pieces. If further proof of the instability he quotes library literature and preserva of his major argument is needed, just look tion librarians who concede that decisions at the pictures. As a pièce de résistance, were made too quickly, too early on, about like an attorney just before the case goes discarding original materials, he quickly to the jury, Baker saves the best for last. dismisses those comments as either not Finally, in the last fifty pages, there is a enough or not really serious. lovely picture of the New York World, in Far more distressing than the stupid bound format, and there is the ugly pic ity and deliberate evil attributed to nearly ture of it on a microfilm screen. (Let’s not all of those he disagrees with is the level pay attention to the fact that Baker chose of invective present in nearly every chap an image that would be hard to micro ter. For example, he charges Verner Clapp film to show the best of the original and of the Library of Congress of being “be the worst of the filmed format.) But, un sotted with microtext.” Clapp, Baker re fortunately, the images themselves turn lates, helped broadcast William Barrow’s against their passionate defender. For the theory of paper durability (the fold test tightly bound format proves that the of bent corners, giving the book its title). pages are impossible to read in their This, in turn, led to the wholesale pitch bound state. Certainly, they are lovely to ing of paper-based collections, which, he look at and a prize for a collector to own charges, was “ a willed act that has un and show off, but for the historian or dermined American historiography far seeker of information, they have to be cut more seriously than anything that alum apart to be read. It is sad, but perhaps not (the chemical that progressively the tragedy Baker would have us believe. embrittles paper) tormented newsprint On the final page, Baker comes up with could possibly have done to itself.” four simple solutions to solve the prob On the newspapers that have been lem; but, unfortunately, they are as im guillotined and de-accessioned, Baker practical and unworldly as some of his waxes eloquent, lovingly describing their arguments. Certainly, it is wise not to dis appearance and touch. Here, his text card everything filmed (no library or ar reads like a film pitched to appeal to the chives this reviewer has worked in has public—a story in which the little guy ever discarded any item it filmed), but wins against all the big evil experts; but Baker is being childish and disingenuous he does not appeal to our wisdom or our if he believes buying storage space to save common sense. For the major argument all these originals is as inexpensive as he Baker makes is so seriously flawed that suggests. These simplistic solutions and one feels like the child in the tale of the his insistence on evil in his enemies are emperor’s new clothes. Throughout the the true weights that sink Baker’s book, book, Baker counterpoises two images— and not just his purple-hued, vein-pop actual newspapers he can touch, those ping prose. Double-Fold, it is interesting that have been discarded by libraries, to note, is printed on acid-free stock, so with the microfilm that came from them. its pages will not yellow with time. In He argues again and again that the news stead, it is the yellowness of the author’s papers should have been kept and not journalism, quite similar to that of the filmed at all. But nowhere does he ac 1890s newspapers so dear to his heart, knowledge the fact that it was because the that is the inherent vice in this book (a paper he holds in his hand was microfilmed term he ridicules) and which shows the Book Reviews 587 author’s true colors.—Harlan Greene, many virtues, modesty is not among Charleston County Public Library, South them. But that’s OK; modesty tends to be Carolina Preservation Project. oversold these days. The author’s achievements are real, so let him crow a Epstein, Jason. Book Business: Publishing bit. As a missionary of great literature, Past, Present, and Future. New York: W. Epstein sees himself as a rescuer of noble W. Norton, 2001. 188p. $21.95 (ISBN: traditions in the context of banality and 0393049841). LC 00-60079. mediocrity. His crusade has been to bring Jason Epstein’s brief memoir is part his to Everyman the joys of reading serious tory and part professional autobiography. literature that he experienced as an un Best known to readers of this journal as dergraduate at Columbia in the 1950s. If one of the founding editors of the New he made some money along the way (and York Review of Books, Epstein gives us a he did), fine. But he was in the business somewhat potted history of the decline of culture for the sake of culture. and fall of trade publishing in America. Book Business is almost totally lacking According to him, from its apex in the in personal detail. We learn nothing 1920s, trade publishing declined precipi about young Jason or his family or for tously in the postwar period from a in that matter from whence he hales.

Load more