The Art of the Publisher by Roberto Calasso (2013)

This little book both irritated and inspired me. It is a collection of essays and short non-fictional bits by a noted author whom I've not read before. Calasso is also the publisher of Adelphi Edizioni, one of Italy's major literary publishers. I have to mention here that I am also a publisher on a very small scale, so I can be expected to have an inherent interest in this meditation, and do. Calasso is both perspicacious and woolly. He will match a splendidly pithy statement on the world's current dumbness to considerations of quality, for example, with an artfully vague portrait of a world swathed in zeroes and ones, boggled with them, if our current interest in technology continues. He'll match a fascinating comment on the relatability of some concept, in intriguing fact many concepts, in the philosophical framework behind publishing and books, to a precept which is represented in the Vedic texts to a seemingly inanely incorrect statement that the notion of a series is an obsolete one, or that it's shocking that the page is "a neutral and standard element". The constant counter-reminder in reading this that the author has enormous reach, and a contrasting startling limitation, can be a bit lurchy and stomach-churning. I still can't quite make out how he happily combines both tendencies; perhaps he's just more honest than most of us in fully explicating his contradictions? I'm not convinced he knows them to be that. Anyway, I can't say that I wasn't entertained. Perhaps the only other thing which needs mentioning is that some of the negative elements derive from what I would loosely call self-absorption; his natural Adelphi-centredness / Italy-centredness means that exceptions or contrary examples which might have provided balance were not cased. An intriguing, niggling, very personal set of studies on the current state of play in a neglected art.