How we build our invisible libraries

Erich Auerbach wrote his classic work Mimesis, a history of narrative from Homer to Proust, based largely on his memory of past reading. Having left his physical library behind when he fled to Istanbul to escape the Nazis, he was forced to rely on the invisible library of his mind. Each of us has such a library—if not as extensive as Auerbach’s—even if we are unaware of it. In this erudite and provocative book, William Marx explores our invisible libraries—how we build them and how we should expand them.

Libraries, Marx tells us, are mental realities, and, conversely, our minds are libraries. We never read books apart from other texts. We take them from mental shelves filled with a variety of works that help us understand what we are reading. And yet the libraries in our mind are not always what they should be. The selection on our mental shelves—often referred to as canon, heritage, patrimony, or tradition—needs to be modified and expanded. Our intangible libraries should incorporate what Marx calls the dark matter of literature: the works that have been lost, that exist only in fragments, that have been repurposed by their authors, or were never written in the first place. Marx suggests methods for recovering this missing literature, but he also warns us that adding new titles to our libraries is not enough. We must also adopt a new attitude, one that honors the diversity and otherness of literary works. We must shed our preconceptions and build within ourselves a mental world library.

"Libraries exist as physical things, but they also have a second form as abstract ideas about how we should organize and preserve information. In this philosophical but accessible book, Marx shows how better understanding our invisible libraries allows us to rethink our relationship to literature, culture and the forces that threaten both." - The Washington Post

"Renew that library card. This deftly written book reflects on the history of how we organize knowledge, classify books, and give meaning to our lives through reading. . . . An eloquent plea for reading by a true scholar of world literature." - Kirkus Reviews

"[Libraries of the Mind] is that rare volume on libraries and classification systems that reads simultaneously as an erudite philosophical treatise and a page-turning thriller. . . . Essential." - Choice