The Book Club
They met once a week around the firepit in T’s backyard, the encroaching weeds kept at bay by his gardener’s relentless slash-and-burn campaign. As the sun set, T built the fire, the other three members arriving in turn, watching and waiting in silence. They had no desire to speak to one another; they detested small talk, and indeed, each other. They were united only by the book club, of which they had been members for many years. None of them could remember how it had started, perhaps with an ad in the newspaper, or a nondescript flier on a bulletin board. At this point, the origin of their club was trivial. The important thing was that it existed, and each was secretly glad to belong, glad to have found a few like-minded individuals with which to share their passion.
In many ways, their book club was like any other. They dealt with one book a week, selected on a rotating basis. With four members, they thus went through four titles a month, a pace which kept them busy without burning them out. In the club’s early days, none of the four had had any particular taste in literature, but as time wore on, each developed their own preferences, preferences resented by the others. T was the most conventional of the four, beholden to the traditional canon, from Aeschylus to the modernists. Everything after Joyce T considered contrived and derivative, which set T against M, the apologist of the club, a disciple of postmodernism, absurdism, and anything else impenetrably pretentious (a word rejected by M and guaranteed to set her off on a defensive diatribe). J was the purist; with a demure yet firm disdain for prose of any kind, she was interested only in poetry and plays. Last, but not least (except in the eyes of the other three) was D, whose broad taste was considered dilettante by the others, a taste which, in his own unspoken opinion, was diverse, and indicative of a balanced personality.
Now, the fire built, the embers glowing, the club gathers around the pit, the four figures circumscribed within the knot of light, the rest of the backyard having succumbed to shadow. The weekly leader (tonight it’s J) opens the meeting by announcing the title, author, and year of the work of the week: The Dance of Death, August Strindberg, 1900. Approximately here is where the club parts with conventional book club tradition. The housekeeping over, the leader delivers her book to the blazing fire. Each member has their own method; J prefers to gently but not fussily lay the book against a snarling log, with the cover facing outward. She does so, then all four watch somberly as the book starts to blacken and curl, its dumb agony suspended in their eight eyes.
For years, that was that. Each member took a turn burning their copy of the weekly book, then the meeting was adjourned. To destroy books was the club’s original, singular purpose; none of the members felt compelled to interact, or speak whatsoever. Each had their own, private convictions for joining the club, but politely kept these to themselves, knowing that the reasons were of no consequence. They were united, in their aversion to the aesthetic, in their insatiable anti-intellectualism, in their passion for book burning; and that was enough, for a while.
However, at some point, the meetings changed, developing into more than impassive destructions. To this day, the club disagrees as to who spoke first, who inaugurated the tradition of interpretation. J and T say it was T, M says it was M, and D considers the argument loathsome. Regardless, at some since-forgotten juncture, the club began to analyze the books, that is, to analyze the burning of the books. Their observations started out simple enough, with an earful of onomatopoeias and a few olfactory descriptions. Over time, though, the commentary became more elaborate, each member adopting their own approach, their own style; and so, J begins to sway, standing upright as if center stage, her shadow a grim isosceles. Her eyes closed, she sniffs once, twice, then speaks:
“On the nose, a bouquet of blood, iron, rust, and mercury, aroma of burning dust, resinous notes of wallpaper, opening up into the noxious fog of the domestic, of drawing rooms and studies, of weak tobacco and oil cloth, of passion soon spent. Look, already the flame consumes itself, the fire cackling, laughing at its own demise, reduced to ashes dancing on the air, with a long finish of tarnished silver, an alchemical return to whence we began.”
The firepit crackles; J opens her eyes. T nods, M licks her lips, and D stares into the flame, until the last singed scrap of the book is inhaled by the black lungs of night. J graciously steps back, and T steps up, solemnly. With one foot forward upon the rim of the pit, he opens his book and sets it cautiously atop the peak of the fire, like a paper hat, pages down. He then begins his own analysis, without enthusiasm.
“Disregarding the common sensations, eg. the tang of acid-free paper and the rancid smell of scorched glue, on the nose is bay laurel and roast fowl, grouse, ptarmigan perhaps, giving way to a curiously savory, medium-bodied melange of soot, stone, and seafoam, before finishing briefly and bittersweetly with charred pomegranate, a—”
Before T has finished, amidst the updrafting remains of his book, M leaps forward, violently throwing her book down into the fire, as if burying a hatchet. Logs dislodge and split, casting sparks about, a slough of embers landing on T’s planted boot, which he withdraws in exasperation. As for M, she seems not to notice the flames, though nearly standing in them, her eyes lustrous as the outer darkness edges a step closer to the club’s circle of light. She waits, frantically, as her book murmurs and smokes, until she can wait no more, letting forth in the very same moment that the book finally flares up, as if set off by M’s words.
“My god, there’s something there, beneath the infernal cacophony, a madcap tapping of keys, or wait, it’s morse code, plain as day, short long short short, long long long, short short short long, short, short short short short, short long, long, short, over and over, back and forth, bang bang, like machine-gun chatter, salvoes of martial conversation, no, marital conversation, and what’s that, another sound, too, a jangling of silver, not dull and tarnished, no, shining, like polished spurs dancing a wicked step, the timeless jig of alienation, a dance of life and death, love and hate, slave and master, I can feel it in my own two feet, the flame of, wait, holy hell, my boots—”
M leaps out of the cinders, her analysis cut short, to the relief of the other three. As she curses and stomps her boots, all eyes shift to D, who for the first time looks up from the flames, his enchantment broken by their palpable impatience. Soberly, he tosses his book underhanded into the now precarious fire, its logs on the verge of collapse. He opens his mouth as if to speak, then closes it, repeating this vacillation several times, while the others lean in and out accordingly, eager for him to speak his mind, for once, to betray at last his unsophistication.
But D will not speak, in fact, he never does. He considers interpretation to be heretical, antithetical to the original purpose of the book club, which was the destruction of books, pure and simple, a noble cause now sullied by the nauseating words of the others. Unbeknownst to them, D holds the other members in a contempt of his own; week after week, he bites his tongue and swallows his bile as he listens to their self-indulgent, contradictory analyses, their synaesthesiac word-vomit and incomprehensible phantasmagorias cheapening the book club into conventionality.
Do they not realize their hypocrisy, their grotesque egoism, he seethes, they’ve lost sight of our purpose, the immolation of books, the repudiation of fiction. Are they really so blind to the fact that they’ve been seduced by the very thing we set out to destroy? They debase every meeting with their creativity, suffocate every fire with their imagination, as if they fundamentally misunderstood the very act of book burning—and so forth. Week after week, D’s mind roils thus with contempt for his fellow book club members, in a tirade he keeps to himself. Now, silent as ever, he watches reverently as the book collapses upon itself, slouching into the embers, and he mourns the others’ lack of delight at this, their original ideals shamefully corrupted.
In truth, there is only one meeting of the year that D wholly enjoys, the club’s one and only holiday. In a perfect world, they would celebrate the anniversary of Alexandria’s destruction, the greatest book burning of all time. Unfortunately, that date was lost to time, and the club instead celebrates Anti-Book Day, April 23, in defiance of the reprehensible World Book Day.
Let us leap forward to this hallowed occasion. Preparations for the annual holiday begin a week in advance, as T’s gardener clearcuts the backyard into a barren plot, a three-day affair in itself, after which the entire yard is salted and raked. No trace of weed or greenspace can remain, for safety reasons. The firepit is then expanded, and a massive pyre built, the foundation for a proper bonfire, a conflagration worthy of the impending celebration.
Meanwhile, as the backyard is de-landscaped and uncultivated, each member of the book club readies their contribution, a matter not of quality but of quantity. The custom of Anti-Book Day is the unprejudiced destruction of as many books as possible, and the members hoard books for fifty-one weeks for the occasion, each in their own fashion. T stores his collection in a hermetically-sealed, temperature-controlled cellar, an antique collection of classics meticulously compiled, managed by an assistant. M crams her books into her wretched apartment, from floor to ceiling, the water-spotted, sagging ceiling supported solely by the decrepit, postmodern columns, the removal of which is always a delicate deconstruction job. In contrast, J hoards her books properly, on bookshelves; her clean albeit disorganized collection fills both rooms of her apartment, her bed long ago relocated to the narrow kitchen.
As for the most pious member of the club: D has dedicated his entire life and property to the hoarding of books, his home itself a scrapheap of thrifted volumes, a massive molehill of a dwelling on the outskirts of town. Every free hour of his life is devoted to the collection of written material, the storing of which has necessitated more and more acreage over the years, as D’s property has come to resemble more a landfill than a place of human habitation. Nevertheless, he wouldn’t have it any other way, and he continues to amass a collection as diverse as it is unreadable, both in quality and quantity, his property glutted with everything from cookbooks to classics, textbooks to quarterlies, a hoard that, unlike the others’, inevitably rolls over year after year, too big to burn all-at-once on Anti-Book Day. Even so, D doesn’t mind this encroachment. He entertains the hopes of one day hosting a book burning of his own; and if not, better that the books be out of public circulation, even if they go unburned for years.
Now, the holiday upon them, T and his assistant stand aside the pyre in the late morning light. Beside them stand two piles of books, each six-feet high: the entire contents of T’s cellar, representing a year’s worth of conscientious collecting. These four figures stand motionless, silently awaiting the arrival of the others. First comes M, swearing and sweating profusely. Along with two hired helpers, she carts twelve wheelbarrows full of books from pick-up truck to backyard, dumping them unceremoniously into a sprawling literary puddle, as the two helpers exchange curious, perhaps intrigued, maybe even sympathetic, looks. To their chagrin, M dismisses them once the work is done, with a handful of crumpled bills, and just in time, too, because J is waiting on the street in a moving truck. Enlisting the begrudged help of the others, J unloads her library, the bookshelves themselves dolleyed down the ramp and into the backyard, there toppled into a crunching heap of particle-board and broken book spines.
And finally, typically, D arrives, honking the horn of a literal dump truck, filled with books. As the others look on with envy, with ridicule, with admiration, D expertly backs the truck into the lot. Casting one triumphant look out the window at the others, he tips the bed and unloads the deluge of books, a landslide of literature, temporarily burying his resentment for the others. With that, D shuts off the truck and leaps out of the cab to join them, his eyes shining, a youthful grin across his face.
The hoards assembled, the club’s preparations are only half finished, as they must now add the books to the pyre. This process takes several hours, an ordeal of engineering guesswork, hard labor, ladder acrobatics, and frequent breaks, with light refreshments, courtesy of T’s servants. No words are exchanged; the work is conducted with a quiet professionalism, or, in D’s case, with a flurry of fervor and enthusiasm. It’s not uncommon for D to end up doing half the work himself, his normally calm person energized into an inexhaustible mania; but he doesn’t mind. All that matters to D is that the bonfire is built before sunset—and behold, they’ve managed it again, with half an hour to spare.
As the others rest, D inspects their work, a ziggurat of books twenty-feet high, a monolith of texts. He cannot help but feel dwarfed by it, overwhelmed by its dimensions, intimidated by its inertia. His reassurance is the knowledge that it will soon be engulfed in flames, reduced to ashes, annihilated, and only thus is he able to endure its silent, impervious pride, as he walks around it, once, twice, thrice, eventually losing count as the sun begins to set.
Shadows prowl around the backyard, growing bolder by the minute. At last, the hour has come. Instinctively, the other three gather round, bleary-eyed, like sleepwalkers. D ceases his circulations, joins them. To the holiday leader (de facto D for many years now), T’s assistant hands a massive document, a tome unto itself, an index of all the books contributed that year to the fire. D clears his throat, then formally opens the holiday meeting:
“We gather here today, on the 23rd of April, in the year 2021, in defiance of literature, in opposition to the nefarious forces of fiction. For this purpose, we condemn tonight a sum of,” here he opens the tome and flips to the very back, “four thousand, one hundred and eighty-one volumes, to be destroyed by fire, in an act both figurative and literal. Although our efforts may seem negligible in the greater scheme of things, we nevertheless hope and strive for a world in which, one day, such destruction will be unnecessary, all books having been burned. Until that day, we remain committed to the book club and its principles. Let the burning begin.”
D slams the index shut, and hands it back to the assistant. The gardener then appears, like a hobgoblin, handing to each of the four a propane weed torch, chrome wands glistening in the moonlight. The four nod somberly to each other, then disperse, each to a corner of the pyre. Once surrounding it, in perfect harmony, they turn their torches upon the monolith at the same moment and let loose the first blast of flame upon the foundation. Orange light beats back the prowling darkness, and eight pupils contract at the brilliance (the assistant and gardener having retreated into the house). Already the foundation begins to hiss and char, and another torrent of flames is unleashed upon it, again and again, until the foundation ignites, tearing open the silence of the backyard.
Torches are cast aside, as each tier of the ziggurat catches fire in an upwards rippling inferno. In seconds, the entire pile is alight. The deafening heat forces the members back, all except for D, who stands as one hypnotized, his face streaked with tears and ash, a mask of sludge, set with two glistening eyes. The others submit to the blaze in their own way, T with stoic dignity, M with prankster’s glee, and J with the martyr’s bliss. The fire grips them, a fist of heat and noise and glare crushing them in a vice grip of conviction and awe.
The bonfire, now a vertical pillar of flame, threatens to ignite the very sky itself. The fire lurches and twists; curlicues of burning books whip up and away in every direction, flung into the far reaches of the blasted lot. The members have forgotten time and space, forgotten each other, forgotten themselves, become effigies, scorched witnesses, silent to the destruction. D does not blink, he dares not miss a thing, even as his eyes cloud over, as if with cataracts. What do his stinging eyes see in the flames, between the reams of smoldering pages and sizzling ink? What do his fluttering lids perceive within the mountain of melting words?
Memories, perhaps: himself a boy, curled up in a battered chair, his tiny face half-hidden in a book, his ears deaf to the violence around him; himself a young man, his now-studious beak buried week after month after year in book after book, as he jettisons the jetsam of life and youth to make way for fiction and truth, so-called; and finally, himself a man, more stooped than wise, learned and laureled yet hollow, a man suddenly and irrevocably aware of his own swindling, aware of the fraudulence he has built his life upon.
Or perhaps not. Maybe his mind is empty, and the others’, too. Scoured mercifully clean of all thought, laid bare to the heat and the roar and the light, to the flame itself, their skins singe and their eyes open, their very selves incinerated like the books, destroyed by something undeniable, something intensely and utterly real.