Books about books, readers and collectors: the effect of simultaneous reading

The synergetic effect of simultaneous reading is examined using the example of a recent book by Oxford professor of English literature Emma Smith, “Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers”, and the half-century-old “History of Soviet Bibliophilia” by Leningrad professor of Russian literature Pavel Berkov. Simultaneous or joint reading is likened to conjoint analysis, where the reader finds himself in the role of a test subject. By confronting two traditions of book perception: the domestic one of the 1960s and the current British one, such reading helps to evaluate the current turn to materiality, which tunes attention to the agency of things. Modulations of the personal mode of writing, difficult memory, bookhood, and anthropomorphism are analyzed. The differently resolved inclusion of the author’s “I” is relevant in the context of current discussions about the transformation of the norms of academic writing. To what extent can a scientist’s text be personal and biographically colored, raising special questions and permeated with fundamental ethical issues? Joint reading shows in what cases and for what purpose the authors resort to personal accents. In Berkov's work, the personal mode is involved in the work of difficult memory, in the story about repressed scientists, bibliophiles (N.N. Orlov, N.P. Likhachev), in Smith's work it is somewhat different. She also solves the theme of difficult memory differently, in the context of global inequalities, but it is also there. Smith's concept of bookhood differs from that accepted in the Russian tradition and describes the multisensory materiality of a book, uniting form with content. Moving away from the romanticization of bookhood, Smith considers the participation of books in social macroprocesses: the confrontation of ideologies, the spread of marketing strategies, etc. Both authors insist on the agency of the book, but in Berkov's work it is an elevating force for a person, while in Smith's work it is ambivalent. For Smith, the refusal to equate books with people is fundamental.