Books Ill Served by Penguin Editions

December 16, 2006

There is an important and not often recognized bias at play when it comes to publishing works from the past. Classic works are great, but they need to fit into a small paperback edition that would be convenient for use in a classroom. The general public is willing to read a classic, but we have certain expectations when it comes to length. We expect a book to be good reading for a trip.. and not to be interminable. These social demands create a sieve that lets through a certain kind of work.. and I would argue that this work could be defined as a short book that is able to fulfill some of the expectations of a novel.

The problem is that our current reading expectations are not a direct match with many great texts. I find this particularly telling when it comes to Arabic classics, which are only rarely short and narrative-driven. Take, al-Maqrizi, the 15th century Egyptian historian. His major work is the Khitat which in its recent Arabic publication comes in five large volumes. It is a work that is important and fascinating, but which will likely never find its way into a Penguin paperback edition.. it is just too large. In addition to size, there is also the matter of illustrations.. to make sense of al-Maqrizi's close topographical descriptions it is helpful to have a map and historical photos. With that you can palpably imagine the complete loss of interest on the part of most publishers. The Khitat is a work that is large and costly to print.. and whose audience is naturally limited.

I am not out to force al-Maqrizi on the mass of Americans.. really, I'm not. I don't think his audience is large, and I readily understand why a publisher would not be interested in a multi-volume illustrated edition. I just don't want us to confuse the those modern market- and reader-driven preferences for a judgment of quality. Many important and interesting works don't get read simply because of historical shifts.. and connected to that is the fact that many books which are not interesting and which were not terribly important in their time make their way to the top of college reading lists simply because of their size and their convenience to contemporary publishers.

Enter the internet. A small readership does not matter because an internet text costs little to produce. It also does not need to be given a costly new printing evey few years.. it can just sit there online with little cost to anyone. The high cost of printing pictures is no problem on the internet, as anyone who glances at this page can see.. I can put up all the photos I want, and it costs me almost nothing. All of a sudden those illustrations and maps become easy to manage.. with a little tech know-how.

When one sits back and thinks about it, it is unavoidable that major changes will come to academic publishing. As I understand it, most academic books make very little money.. and their publication is driven more by prestige than by actual demand. What is the logic of expensive new editions of old texts when they can be given a permanent home on-line? These are all developments that I anticipate noting as the years pass..

But this is no jeremiad about losing books. It is a celebration of our new freedom from the publishing biases of our time. Some of the encyclopedic and daring works of the past.. works too long and obscure to make their way into our modern consciousness.. not have a shot at doing just that. And who knows, perhaps all these new forms will help create a new readerly sensibility.. an appreciation for eccentric life-consuming projects.. like the Khitat by al-Maqrizi.