Criminal Books…

Not to be confused with crime fiction, which is an entirely different concept.

My dear, talented friend and lit-blogger Maitresse recently translated this commentary by Christophe Claro on the Salon du Livre, and I found it a really compelling way to think about reading.

Why should a book not lead one to commit a crime, when it has so often led its author to the gallows? How can a book be innocent? Who hasn’t dreamt of a book who would change his life? Why must it be changed for the better? [...] Let’s rename the Salon du Livre the Salon of Anything is Possible. Let us stroll down the aisles while saying to ourselves that on each square inch of table sleeps a work which could drive us to rape, kill, fall in love, eat oranges, churn up the foundations, or become president. Let us lift up the veil (it’s outlawed anyway now) and concede the power of the book. Let us bow down before the magnificent or dreadful consequences of reading. Think of Sade, think of Villepin, think of Cadiot, think of Asimov or Adorée Floupette… doesn’t matter which flask as long as you get drunk. To each book its own crime or virtue.

I still remember back in high school, when I first discovered that reading could be dangerous, could be an illicit pleasure. I’d always read a lot of books — whatever came into my hands — but I think of that time as the moment when I became a reader.

Well-meaning school districts and libraries have a tendency to present literature as a form of eating your vegetables — good for you, possibly pleasurable, definitely the way to gain adult approval. It was a great revelation to me that books could be dirty — filthy, even. Better yet, they could teach you about life, about drugs, about revolution, how to build a pipe bomb, how to run a meth lab, and that everything you learned in those other books was lies, lies, lies. Or hell, to eat oranges. (What book does he have in mind? I’m intrigued.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 11:29 pm and is filed under books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.