Miami -
Umberto Eco’s library came to mind, all 30,000 volumes of it. Most visitors to Eco’s Milan apartment would reportedly ask the late scholar, “How many of these books have you read?”
Our recent hotel room in San Diego was decorated with books, which got me thinking about the purpose and nature of books and learning. The room and lobbies were not delightfully jam-packed with books like the Betsy Hotel in this town, but tastefully appointed nonetheless. The volumes in our room added to a pleasant aesthetic. Would anyone actually pull down a copy of “American Law and Procedure - Volume 2”? To be fair, Richard North Patterson’s “Exile” and a sudsy treatise on Anheuser-Busch were also on offer, among others.
Professor Eco would reportedly bristle when people asked the predictable question as to how many of his books he had read. (By the way, he had another 20,000 volumes in his Urbino villa.) Why that reaction? The author and analyst Nassim Taleb wrote in “The Black Swan” (2007) that some people see reading books and acquiring knowledge, which are obviously very good things, as conquests, checklists, and linear events of sorts. He and others reminded us that Eco’s answer to his visitors’ inquiry was often, “The better question is, how many of these have I not read?”
Eco saw his 50,000-edition libraries as research tools, always available to him for framing, considering, and answering questions whether he had fully read a book or not. He believed that books animated the promise of what was to come and reinforced the humility about what is not known. Yes, it seems that the more you read (and listen, observe, and taste), the more you realize how little you know.
Writing recently in his Farnam Street blog, Shane Parrish echoed Eco. “A good library is filled with mostly unread books,” he wrote. “That’s the point. Our relationship with the unknown causes the very problem Taleb is famous for contextualizing … Because we underestimate the value of what we don’t know and overvalue what we do know, we fundamentally misunderstand the likelihood of surprises.” It takes real humility and emotional intelligence for even very smart people to understand the limits of their knowledge.
It’s a trap that ideologically blind people and tribe followers succumb to all the time, which is why we end up in bungled, unjust wars from Vietnam to Iraq. We weren’t exactly greeted with flowers and candy on the streets of Baghdad, were we? Any honest, clear-headed reading of history - let alone a baseline level of common sense - predicted both outcomes. A lot of people can die when we choose not to read or, with hubris, fail to apply the painful lessons of history. Sadly, there’s no doubt that we will again parade to Barbara Tuchman’s march of folly in unthinking ways.
So, if your living and working spaces are filled with books, great. If you feel guilty about not having read every one of them, forget about it. The wonder of titles and covers as yet read only suggests the many journeys to come and wisdom to be gained that will enrich your life and might just help prevent future damaging outcomes. Besides, even without reading every volume in your library, those books are not bad to look at, either. That will be the subject of Part Two of this essay.
Books at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar, San Diego.