The Unknown Unknown E-Book

Mark Forsyth

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Mark Forsyth - author of the Sunday Times Number One bestseller The Etymologicon - reveals in this essay, specially commissioned for Independent Booksellers Week, the most valuable thing about a really good bookshop. Along the way he considers the wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld, naughty French photographs, why Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy would never have met online, and why only a bookshop can give you that precious thing - what you never knew you were looking for.

Leseprobe

The Unknown Unknown

BOOKSHOPS AND THE DELIGHT OF NOT GETTING WHAT YOU WANTED

MARK FORSYTH

Published in the UK in 2014 by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP email: [email protected]

Sold in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia by Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DA or their agents

Distributed in the UK, Europe and Asia by TBS Ltd, TBS Distribution Centre, Colchester Road, Frating Green, Colchester CO7 7DW

Distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball, Office B4, The District, 41 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock 7925

Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd, PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street, Crows Nest, NSW 2065

ISBN: 978-184831-784-0

Text copyright © 2014 Mark Forsyth

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset in Minion by Marie Doherty

Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

To Julia Kingsford (Because I’m too frightened not to)

About the author

MARK FORSYTH is a writer whose books have made him one of the UK’s best-known commentators on words and the English language. His most recent book, The Elements of Eloquence, told the story of the flowers of rhetoric. The Etymologicon was a Sunday Times #1 bestseller and BBC Radio 4 ‘Book of the Week’, as was his second book The Horologicon. He writes the Inky Fool blog and has contributed articles to the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Spectator, New York Times and Wall Street Journal among others. He lives in Clerkenwell, London.

The Unknown Unknown

Most of my opinions on bookshops were formed by Donald Rumsfeld. In case you’ve forgotten, or never knew, Donald Rumsfeld was the American Secretary of Defense in the administrations of both Gerald Ford and the younger Mr Bush. He is often rather hysterically accused of starting unnecessary wars, believing he is above International Law, and being more interested in origami than in human life; but that is not all that he and I have in common. It’s his opinion on the necessity of bookshops that truly binds us together.

There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.

For some reason that I shall never understand, there are those who find these lines perplexing. They ridicule it. The Plain English Campaign even awarded Mr Rumsfeld their Foot in Mouth Award of 2003 for ‘a baffling comment by a public figure’. But there’s nothing baffling in it really. I know that Paris is the capital of France, but more importantly I know that I know Paris is the capital of France. I know that I don’t know the capital of Azerbaijan, although I’m sure that they have one. It’s the sort of thing I really ought to check up on. But I do not know … well, here it gets complicated. You do not know that you do not know the capital of Erewhon, because you had no idea that there was a country called Erewhon, and therefore you had no idea that there was a gap in your knowledge. You did not know that you did not know.

The same thing applies to books. I know that I’ve read Great Expectations: it is a known known. I know that I haven’t read War and Peace: it is a known unknown to me (and barring a long prison sentence is likely to remain so). But there are also books that I’ve never heard of; and, because I’ve never heard of them, I’ve no idea that I haven’t read them.

I’d love to name one of these books that I haven’t heard of. I’d love to give you examples, but, you see, I can’t because I’ve never heard of them. Tolstoy, Stendhal and Cervantes, these men follow me around. They stand in dark corners and eye me disapprovingly from beneath supercilious eyebrows. And all because I’ve never got round to reading their blasted, thousand-page, three-ton, five-generation, state-of-a-nation thingummywhatsits. I don’t care. Or rather, sometimes I do, and at other times I remember that I’m a tortoise-slow reader and that there’s a pub just around the corner. Testes to Tolstoy, that’s what I say; and I say it in full knowledge of his vast reputation and beard.

But the others. Where are they? Who are they? I’ve absolutely no idea. They’re probably having a party next door. The best sort of party filled with beautiful wines and delicious women. But I am not invited. Not that I can blame them. We’ve never met. And I can’t find them, because I don’t know their names. They are the unknown unknown, and I can’t even pine after them, such is my double ignorance.

And thus and therefore the bookshop; for, though there is a popular myth that Mr Rumsfeld was discussing Mesopotamian weaponry, he was, of course, discussing methods of buying books. We are all a little misunderstood at times.

There are, as he said, three kinds of books: the ones you’ve read, the ones you know you haven’t read (like War and Peace), and the others: the books you don’t know you don’t know.