Book Review: Bibliophobia

[osprey_archer]

Although I got Sarah Chihaya’s Bibliophobia: A Memoir for the book talk, in fact it’s a mental illness memoir with some books in. Chihaya is pondering about the stories we tell ourselves - in her case, her certainty that her story would end in suicide, and the concurrent certainty that this could only be averted if she found the exact right book to save her.

Also about her relationship to her Japanese-American identity, her feeling that as a person with ancestors who were in Japan during World War II she doesn’t really belong in the Asian-American community (because of the whole bit where her ancestors were brutally invading other Asian countries), the effect of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye on her own sense of racial identity, A. S. Byatt’s Possession as a book that shaped her understanding of what it means for “reader” to be a load-bearing identity, the fact that she doesn’t usually relate to characters in the way that many readers do as the point of a book, for her, is not to see yourself in it but to become an invisible eye experiencing things without having to be perceived…

Until she realizes upon rereading The Last Samurai that she actually does identify with one of the characters in the story, and maybe that was why she found herself able to read this particular book after her hospitalization, when for a time she found it impossible to read anything. Not just in a “I’m psychologically blocked on reading” kind of way, but in the sense that the text generally appeared to be swimming.

And it’s about the writing of books, the fact that what precipitated her long-awaited hospitalization (because she’d been waiting for this to happen for years) was, in part, her failure to write the book that she needed to write to get tenure. She didn’t write it and didn’t write it and then she lost the tenure-track position and therefore the need to write it and then wrote this book instead.

And she ponders: does that make this book the one that saved her? Or was it unrealistic all along to expect any one book to bear so much weight?

So, although it wasn’t quite what I was expecting, an interesting read for sure.

Comments

[landofnowhere]

Oh, wow, that sounds like a fascinating book! Though it might hit too close to home for me.

[osprey_archer]

It's hard to know. I found it gripping and emotional while reading it, but it hasn't stuck with me strongly.

[troisoiseaux]

I can't decide whether I absolutely need to read this book or absolutely shouldn't touch it, but it's one of those two extremes. I'm glad you found it an interesting read!

(Semi-relatedly: I'm not sure if it was you or someone else who posted about it, but I've also had a couple different IRL conversations lately to the same point of— does it feel like non-fiction books are increasingly advertised as one thing, but turn out to be about something different? I think the example was Jane Austen's Bookshelf turning out to be more memoir-y than expected.)

[osprey_archer]

I think that particular conversation must have been with someone else, because I didn't have that reaction to Jane Austen's Bookshelf specifically, but it's definitely the case that non-fiction books often are advertised as one thing (often in their very own subtitle!) and turn out to be something different. I'm not sure if this is increasingly the case, because it's been a problem for a while, but it might be becoming more of a problem.

[asakiyume]

the point of a book, for her, is not to see yourself in it but to become an invisible eye experiencing things without having to be perceived… --Oh wow, that's a cool thought. Gonna muse on that...

[osprey_archer]

Yeah, I think that's a pretty common mode of reading, actually! "I don't relate to any of the characters in this but boy are they fun to watch." But for whatever reason I think a lot of internet discussions of books focus on whether the characters are relatable, even though no character is going to be relatable to everyone. (And just because a character more or less shares your demographic data doesn't mean you'll find them relatable at all!)

[lokifan]

her feeling that as a person with ancestors who were in Japan during World War II she doesn’t really belong in the Asian-American community (because of the whole bit where her ancestors were brutally invading other Asian countries)

Oh man. I'd never have thought of that but it makes so much psychological sense (even though it obviously isn't true).

the fact that she doesn’t usually relate to characters in the way that many readers do as the point of a book, for her, is not to see yourself in it but to become an invisible eye experiencing things without having to be perceived…

Oh, interesting. I don't know that it's about experiencing without having to be perceived, but I definitely don't usually 'relate' to characters the way a lot of readers do. In fact, when I do, it sticks out in my memory because it's so unusual; Sara Crewe and Anne Shirley and Darrell Rivers and the protagonist of Anne Fine's The Tulip Touch were characters I related to as a kid, but there were hundreds of other books I read and loved that didn't hit that way at all.

[osprey_archer]

Aaaaah someone else who read The Tulip Touch! Real talk, I don't actually remember the protag of that book because I was so fascinated by Tulip, but nonetheless, what a gripping read.

My impression is that relating to characters is an aspect of reading that gets emphasized a lot in online discussions (maybe because it's something that isn't much talked about in things like English classes), which can obscure the fact that some people don't relate to books this way and many people don't relate to *all* books this way. Sometimes you relate to a character in one book and then read another book precisely because the characters' unrelatability makes them fascinatingly alien to read about.