Rediscovery

I have one more thing to say about Christopher Fowler's The Book of Forgotten Authors before I place it back on the shelf — make that two more things. These are just comments on two things Fowler says near the end of his book, in which he writes about 99 talented writers who are now all but forgotten.

If you rediscover one author from this selection of ninety-nine, you will have conferred upon them a kind of immortality.

Harper Lee

The late Harper Lee did not achieve "a kind of immortality" by writing To Kill a Mockingbird. Rather it was achieved, at least for the time being, because people continue to read it. For the authors Fowler writes about in his book, immortality, you might say, hangs by a thread. In most cases, their books are out of print. Old copies of their books can still be found in used bookstores and perhaps a few attics, but few of us want to read old books we've never heard of by authors we've never heard of.

Fowler aids the cause by writing about them after reading their books himself, but any of us can do the same by finding and reading their books, too. And there are countless other forgotten authors for whom we can give a temporary breath of life simply by reading their work.

Life is not a box of chocolates, it's a weathered old paperback, and you never know what you're going to find in it.

This metaphor seems a bit confused to me since, unlike Forrest Gump, Fowler really isn't talking about our lives but rather just the lives of old books. But I do like the suggestion that old books can contain great stories, surprising information and amazing wisdom. Or we may find they are better left forgotten.

Earlier I wrote that few of us want to read old books we've never heard of by authors we've never heard of, but I could have condensed it to just "few of us want to read old books." And even when we do read old books, we prefer them in new editions.

But I agree with Fowler that many old books do deserve to be given new life. Somebody once thought these books were worth writing, worth publishing and worth reading. Perhaps that worth, that treasure, still rests within them waiting to be rediscovered. You never know.