HARD COVER: A MODEST READING

The culture of reading books is designed very much as an elitist institution. It still shocks me the amount of pretense, which surrounds the simple object of a book. First comes the hardcover, usually endowed with the removable backing, because the elite, above all else, must be in control of their visibility. “You will know what I am reading, only when I decide you should, if I decide to show you.” All this to say that in the way books are packaged, as an object, and as a culture, it is only truly respectful of those who read hardcover. Those people who can afford these ridiculously expensive instruments of glamour, which is to say, hardcover is reading for those who want to ‘read and think,’ not ‘read and do.’ Black folks cannot afford to ‘read and think.’

I come upon this mode of thinking; or rather this mode of thinking has been crystallized, by my recent first time reading of Lerone Bennett Jr’s ‘The Challenge Of Blackness.’ The role of the oppressed in any society, Bennett asserts, is to continually fight against his situation with all the tools he has acquired with his personal and communal history. So when I get on the subway, it is my duty to discomfort the white man in his two-piece Armani, on his way to work for ING Direct. It is my job to make him read the cover of my book and see the words ‘The Challenge of Blackness.’ Not only must he read these words, but he must see brother Bennett on the cover with his afro, beard and pipe. He must see these things and he must in the moment, question his whiteness and question all the active decisions he makes for that day to live as a white man in America. Whether or not this action will achieve all those lofty goals, it is my duty to carry it out.

But my edition of ‘The Challenge Of Blackness’ does not allow for such “revolutionary” action. In order to preserve the value of my book (value based completely on aesthetics, which is completely counter productive as it only protects the books contents as a secondary goal), I must remove the cover; I must be the modest reader. I say ban hardcover, print it all in paperback, leather bindings and hard, illusive backings are for bibles and theology, mysteries. Social education, which I consider anything written outside all the scriptures of all the religions, cannot be a mystery. I’d like to see what everyone is reading on the subway so I can, in the least, judge him or her for being ignorant. (But in earnest that is not my primary concern). I’d just like to make my mark as the guy on the subway reading ‘The Challenge Of Blackness,’ because it says to a sleepy world, ‘there are Black people out there, average Black people, reading important things, so sleep with one eye open because come morning, they might be holding congress hostage and demanding your very soul be washed clean.’

As I write this entry, it disturbs me that I cannot now find this book’s cover image on the internet to share with you, heaven only knows the luck that thrust the book into my hands. I’m all for starting a reading circle, each one teach one, read it and then mail it to the next person in the circle, I’m sure Bennett would appreciate that attempt at unifying a community, even on such a local level.