Oedipus & the Sphinx...

I’ve been wrestling with this notion for awhile and trying to put it into some sort of context which would make sense. I guess the best way to explain it is to describe the incident which happened recently at the shop which brought the annoyance into sudden focus.

Picture the scene: I’m at work doing the things I need to do. A dapper, older fellow comes in looking self-satisfied and smirky (I was getting a bad vibe off him right from the outset). Standing there, hands in pockets, bouncing on the balls of his feet, he says:

“You won’t have this, but I’m going to ask anyway – do you have a copy of Rabelais?”

Well, just that week, we had taken possession of a nice old set of Rabelais’ Complete Works in two quarto volumes, translated by Urquhart and Motteux and illustrated by Papé, in an early edition, unusual for still having the dustwrappers. I duly produced them and allowed the customer to peruse.

“Right,” he said, fumbling for his wallet, “I need a copy to demonstrate a few things to my students, so I’ll just take the one volume – that should be enough.”

Imagine his annoyance when I told him that it’s a single work in two volumes – he would need to take both, or none at all.

“But I don’t need both! And lugging two books is just awkward!”

I steadily explained: it’s not two books; it’s one book in two volumes. Take one from the other and you are left with something of no value to anyone.

“Well,” he said, “I shan’t be buying it from you then.” And he left in a huff.

Now, I’m making both of us sound more unreasonable than we actually were in this exchange, but the essence is there. After he left, I had a bit of an epiphany.

It’s this: academics suck. They – intrinsically – value the contents of books, instead of the books themselves. They will dog-ear pages, inscribe marginal notes and underline, and stuff a book with all kinds of bookmarks from chocolate bar wrappers to those god-awful plastic flags that poke out from the text block and are a bitch to remove. In short, in career terms, they and I exist as polar opposites.

(It’s not that I disregard a book’s contents at all, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just think of the contents – which may be a swiggable wine, or a fine vintage, depending – as being carried in an exquisite container, one that should be of as much account as that which it carries. As Omar Khayyam says:

“...Why ne’er a peevish Boy,

Would break the Bowl from which he drank in Joy;

Shall He that made the Vessel in pure Love

And Fancy, in an after Rage destroy!”)

Academics become lost in their own little worlds, which narrow immeasurably down to what they study, who they work with (and the politics that go with it) and the materials they need to go about their business. At some point they assume de facto ownership of all works which impinge upon their area of speciality and get bewildered when they find a book – a book! – which is outside their price range, or is not in a format that they’d prefer.

“But,” they splutter, “it’s just a copy of Plato! Why is it $100?!” And I explain exactly why and they still treat me as though I’m a parent in a candy store, telling them that they can look but don’t touch.

I get it. Academia is increasingly cutthroat; there are too many people on the planet and they all have to have degrees to get on in life. Defending your academic patch is a full-time job before you even start writing your thesis. Most people in the world are content to just go to university, snag that bit of paper and the sprinkle of letters after their name, and get on with things; those who stay in academia become the very little rulers of tiny little castles. And they develop an ENORMOUS sense of entitlement to go along with it.

This often reveals itself by the fact that somewhere in the conversation, the academic will try and steer things to their particular bailiwick and then try to accuse you of not knowing anything. Anything at all. I’ve met academics outside of work and they always want to know what I do, right off the bat; afterwards they sneer and affect great world-weariness as they start to tell me of the difficulties they have with their students, or their magnum opus, or their wrestling with the works of Foucault or Barthes. It’s exactly the same kind of boring tripe that unloads in front of you when someone tries to tell you about the dream they had last night; or the acid trip they took last week. There are two smells that occasionally waft off people which guarantee that they will be regarded as utter turds – desperation and self-aggrandisement.

Just to hammer this home (and, dangerously, to dabble on the fringes of self-aggrandisement myself), my Wednesday night pub trivia team is composed only of booksellers: none of us are career academics, or particularly beholden to academia. Most of the other teams are composed of tertiary level students, or academics, past and present. We win every Wednesday. Every. Wednesday. Sometimes only a couple of us can show up: we still win. Sometimes only one of us can make it: we still win. We’re kind of wondering how long the pub will continue running this gig actually, because a $50 bar tab each week certainly mounts up. And each of us has an anecdote about how some jumped-up, single-focus, book-banger told us that we are “just booksellers and couldn’t possibly be expected to understand, blah, blah, blah...”

And so, I’ve come to think of this arrangement that I have with academics as akin, or symbolised by, the relationship Oedipus had with the Sphinx. The Academic is Oedipus – wrong-headed, wrong-footed, head full of expectations and the answers to obscure riddles; on the other hand, I am the Sphinx. I have the accumulated wisdom of the ages at my fingertips: if you want access, you jump through MY hoops.

And say “please”.