On the Commerce of Thinking: Of Books and Bookstores

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Copyright © 200 Fordham University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording , or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. This work was originally published in French as Jean-Luc Nancy, Sur le commerce des pensées: Du livre et de la librairie© 200 Éditions Galilée, Paris. This work has been published with the assistance of the National Center for the Book—French Ministry of Culture. Ouvrage publié avec le soutien du Centre national du livre—ministère français chargé de la culture. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Nancy, Jean-Luc [Sur le commerce des pensées. English] On the commerce of thinking : of books and bookstores / Jean-Luc Nancy ; translated by David Wills. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. isbn฀97-0-232-3036- (alk. paper)— isbn฀97-0-232-3037-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Booksellers and bookselling—Philosophy. 2.Books and reading. I.Title. z27.n3613฀2009฀ 31'.400201—dc22฀ 200900322 Printed in the United States of America 11฀฀10฀฀09฀ ฀฀4฀฀3฀฀2฀฀1฀฀ ฀ ฀฀฀฀฀฀฀฀฀first฀edition Commerce with books offers, for its part, the constancy and ease of its service. It is at my side throughout my course, and gives me succor wherever I am. It consoles me in old age and solitude. It relieves me of the weight of a tedious idleness, and extracts me at any time from unpleasant company. It dulls the pangs of sorrow, unless it be extreme and overpowering. In order to be distracted from a troublesome imagination, one has only to take refuge in books: they easily divert me toward themselves and remove what is troubling me. Thus it is that they by no means rebel when they see that I seek them out only for lack of other more real, alive, and natural comforts; they always receive me with the same countenance. montaigne,฀Essays, iii, 3 (“Of Three Types of Commerce”) Bookstore, (Comm.): the bookstore, as a type of commerce, is worthy of consideration, provided that whoever undertakes it possesses the intelligence and enlightenment that it demands. This profession is to be regarded as one of the most noble and distinguished there is. Commerce in books is one of the oldest known trades; as long ago as the year of the world 1816 one witnessed a famous library built under the auspices of the third king of Egypt. d’alembert฀and฀diderot, Encyclopédie There appeared certain of those rare men who forever deserve mention in the history of printing and letters, those who, motivated by passion for art and full of the noble and courageous confidence that superior talents inspire in them—printers by profession, but people with a profound literary sensibility, capable of confronting every difficulty at once—developed the most daring projects. diderot,฀“Historical and Political Letter Addressed to a Magistrate Concerning the Book Trade” ...