Would You Cut Books In Half?

I’m about to show you a picture that will make you hurl your phone across the room in anger.

Here goes.

I put a poll on my Instagram, and the results came down in a landslide victory in favor of WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

Here’s what I think: I’m OK with cutting books in half.

I have no problem (mostly) with someone doing this.

A few scattered thoughts that will resemble some sort of coherent explanation (© Bill Simmons):

1. I love books. I have hundreds of them in my house. I fully expect to buy hundreds more in the years to come, which is going to become a problem when I run out of bookshelf space and have to start using them as pillows.

But as much as I love having books around me, as much as they please me to have on my shelves, as much as I have devoted myself to writing them…I don't kid myself that the books are important in and of themselves.

After all, if that were true, if books were sacred and inviolable objects, then audiobooks and e-books would have no value whatsoever. That's obviously nonsense. I value books as physical objects much less than I value the stories inside them. Stories are sacred. Books, as a medium, are not.

Think about it like this. All of us have been brought up not to deface or destroy books, to respect them, to treat them well. And that's great, and that's how it should be.

But it's very rare for us to actually question why this is. Why are books, as objects, so valuable? Isn’t it the stories that matter more than anything else?

2. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the chap in question presumably owns the books he has split in half. He will have paid his own money for them, and so he’s entitled to do with them as he pleases.

I think the intention matters a great deal here as well. He clearly values the stories inside these books, and wishes to experience them, but has found the task of doing so arduous and uncomfortable. For whatever damn reason.

Now look: I personally think the idiot should buy a Kindle, or as my buddy Ryan said on a very lively discussion on our friends group chat, just buy bigger bag. But those are, ultimately, opinions, not mandates.

Put it another way. If this guy bought these books and turned them into art but involved destroying the actual physical object, would that be any less valuable? I can tell you right now that if someone buys a Frost Files book, and uses it to create a piece of art, I am 100% OK with that.

3. This image sparked a long debate between me and my wife, and she made the interesting point that if you do this to books, you can't pass them on. That should be a key feature of what a book is. It's a point that was echoed by our friends in the group chat, more than one of them pointing out that this is peak capitalism: destroying something you own in a wasteful manner, so that it can't be passed on to the next generation

Well, OK. That’s valid. But answer me this. What if you read and reread a book until it falls apart? Until it—shock, horror—splits in half, the binding damaged? You have, in effect, the same thing as if you’d just cut the book in half deliberately. Unless you engage in some major repair work, you can’t really pass either on.

Why is the read-to-death book more valuable than the chopped one? Why do we have to pass things on for them to be valid?

4. I hope it's clear at this point that I would never ever do this to any books I own. My books are old friends, and it pleases me to see them whole and undamaged. I also think that anyone who damages a book that is a special edition—something specifically created to be an art object—is a vandal and a loser.

But I am also in the privileged position of being able to a) buy books with money, and b) use my own two hands to hold them up and read them.

I don't know the specific circumstances of the person who tweeted this image. But imagine someone who doesn't have the full use of their hands, or has weakness in that part of the body, who struggles to lift heavy objects but still wants to engage with physical books.

Are we saying that they can't alter the book in this manner that lets them read it? Isn’t that a tiny bit ableist?

Again, I'm not saying that that is the case in this particular scenario. I'm just saying that it's not as cut and dried as you might th

5. Don't you dare start equating the act of cutting books in half, as in the photo, with burning them. Burning books has a whole lot of baggage behind it, and it's a completely different subject entirely.

There's a difference between altering a book you own so that you can use it more effectively, and destroying one because you don't think others should be able to read it. The moment the act has malice, it becomes universally not OK.

Also, if you do this, you are an asshole.