Not Read in a Day

Around the turn of the millennium, I picked up an old copy of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. First published in the late eighteenth century, the six-volume history had been ruthlessly abridged to 704 pages. A softcover octavo, my Viking Press edition from 1969 is flotsam of a postwar wave: the “Great Books” were printed by the millions, universities opened, English departments swelled, and from the tenderest ages we were taught that reading and writing were sacred. I now see that I grew up in the dying days of a golden age. Didn’t we all?

As years go by, it’s hard not to look at the rows of bricks that line our walls, pile up on tables, and spill over onto floors and wonder why we need “another damned, thick, square book,” as one patron quipped to Gibbon. What makes us keep them around? Some of my books are bricks in the literal sense, holding monitors up and propping windows open. But what made me carry the unread Decline and...