NOSTALGIA AND THE PHYSICAL BOOK

Cheyenne White

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A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green

State University in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
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MASTER OF ARTS

May 2021

Committee:

Kristen Rudisill, Advisor

Esther Clinton
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© 2021

Cheyenne White

All Rights Reserved

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ABSTRACT

Kristen Rudisill, Advisor

We are used to seeing books, handling them, reading them, but we are not so used to

analyzing our relationship to the form of the object, yet in this thesis, I argue that the very shape

and composition of books has an impact on our interactions and relationships with them. By

looking at the material book, we must confront the cultural, social, and individual significance

that these material objects are imbued with. The physical attributes of books, from the smell of

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ink and paper to the distinct feel of a hefty hardback or flexible paperback, contribute specific
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things to culture and an individual’s experience as physical books carry commercial, aesthetic,

and emotional value. By looking at material culture studies, memory and commemoration, as
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well as theory behind nostalgia, I argue that the physical book can be both a powerful object and

carrier of social meaning by utilizing Grant McCracken’s notion of displaced meaning, academic

studies of nostalgia, the science of book scent, bookshop curation, and book collecting, along
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with essay compilations by booklovers. From the affective power of the sensory aspects of books

to book collecting and book spaces, the materiality of the book is revealed not as a mere vessel

for texts but as essential to the physical book’s ability to anchor memory, emotion, and identity.
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For my grandmother Elaine White who never doubted I would finish this project even when I did

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First I’d like to thank the Popular Culture staff at BGSU for their support and guidance in

these chaotic times. Thank you to my thesis committee Dr. Kristin Rudisill and Dr. Esther

Clinton for providing me with guidance and feedback that helped shape my ideas into an actual

thesis. I’d also like to acknowledge my undergraduate mentors Dr. Steffi Dippold and Dr. Naomi

Wood from Kansas State University who taught me much about writing and scholarship. I relied

on the tools you gave me to carry me through tough times.

My cohort provided support and commiseration through this process as we struggled to

find our footing not only with the stress of graduate school but in the midst of a pandemic. Our

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time together was disrupted, but I’ll always be grateful for the kindness shared. Thanks, as well,
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to Joshua Smith for being a sounding board and commiserating with me over the writing process.

The tips you provided from your own experience made it all a little less intimidating. To all of
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you, your friendship was one stable thing I could count on in an uncertain time to keep me afloat.

To my family, I cannot express enough how much I appreciate your patience in listening

to me ramble and rant about my topic, research, and writing process. I am sure some of you are
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even more relieved than I am that this project is complete. Thank you to my mom, Debbie White,

for patiently listening to me during many stressed-out late night phone calls. To Danny White,

my father, and Samantha Swank, my sister, thanks for providing support through it all. Lastly,

I’d like to thank my grandmother, Elaine White, who was a willing ear everyday for years even

if she didn’t always understand what I was talking about. Your blind faith in my academic

abilities kept me going even in your absence. You trusted that this would come together even

before it had started.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER I. THE SENSORY AFFECT OF BOOKS: NOSTALGIA, IDENTITY AND

EMOTION ............................................................................................................... 20

CHAPTER II. BOOK COLLECTING AND THE AFFECTIVE BOND................................ 52

CHAPTER III. BOOKSTORES: CURATION, BRWOSING, AND IDENTITY................... 88

CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 126

WORKS CITED ....................................................................................................................... 137

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INTRODUCTION

Books have been a major part of my life for as long as I can remember, with teetering

stacks piled haphazardly around the house a constant presence. Library books, Scholastic book

orders, used book sales: any time I have had the opportunity to get my hands on books, I do.

Once I was old enough to start acquiring books for myself (sparing my parents’ wallet the

burden), I took to it with what has been at times considered too much zeal. My passion for books

is not focused solely on the stories or information they contain, though. There are times I buy

books purely for the aesthetic value of the object: old, outdated science books with somewhat

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grainy pictures in them, a classic literature work with pages worn soft by age, an edition with an

attractive binding. For several years now, I have been buying nearly every copy of illustrated
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Peterson Field Guides I find because the art style of the illustrations combined with the overall

heft and design of the books speaks to me. Some books I value because they have a particular
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aesthetic with yellowed pages or certain fonts, while some carry the special “old book smell” that

triggers memories from previous encounters with books and the spaces they fill. Regardless of
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how much I enjoy reading, the mere act of handling a physical book has an appeal all its own.

Ownership is not the only allure either, as library books to me are just as satisfying to behold,

while libraries and bookstores (especially the best of them) have an atmosphere that cannot be

matched by any other retailer or shop.

Books in the popular imagination hold a place of endearment. People are book lovers,

collectors, and readers. Bibliophiles and bibliomania loom large within book culture. With the

position of the book in our cultural imagination, strong feelings are bound to arise. In what

follows, the interplay of nostalgia and the physical book is explored. I will be researching the

nostalgia that is evoked by physical books and the memories associated or carried within them. It
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could be said that people have a “book fetish” that lends the material object a certain power in

the cultural landscape. This reveals the need to investigate the power and influence of the book

as a physical object, shaped by and interacting with nostalgia. The role of the material book in

culture is part of why it is not nearly as endangered by digital technologies as one might think.

Many people go through life not contemplating books as objects except when there is a

perceived threat to their continued existence, such as that of digital technologies replacing or

phasing out the material. Otherwise, people mostly tend to be aware of the sensory aspect of

books only as background noise to their lives, not fully considering the role of these objects.

Overlooking the book as object is a common behavior, but by doing so, we miss out on just how

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important the materiality of the book is. Looking at material culture studies, memory and
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commemoration, as well as the theory behind nostalgia, I argue that the physical book can be

both a powerful object and a carrier of social meaning.

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As other scholars have noted, “Books, despite their ubiquity and cultural endurance, are

rarely considered objects whose significance extends beyond their capacity as content providers”

(Lenaghan 3). This work seeks to bridge the gap between the love for books as reading material
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and the evocative power of the physical book by showing how the material form of the book

interacts with the emotional landscapes of individuals. I also consider bookstores as physical

book spaces that have a similar affective dimension as individual books, as it is essential to pay

“simultaneous attention to the multiple dimensions of the material, the social, and the aesthetic”

as Frederic Jameson reminds us (Jameson 67).

Much has already been written about nostalgia and the book in popular culture, although

frequently the works that most prioritize the aspect of nostalgia and the physical book are not

academic but rather from self-proclaimed booklovers or book collectors, such as The Man Who
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Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary

Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett (2010), I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and

Dilemmas of the Reading Life by Anne Bogel (2018), The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis

Buzbee (2006), Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (1998), and The

Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell (2017). Even analysis of antiquarian book collecting

(everyday book collecting is usually accounted for in the same works that espouse the love of

books and literature) tends to devote some attention to the text of the books—as seen in works by

Margot Rosenberg, Jean Peters, Henry Petroski, Seumas Stewart, Allen Ahearn, and Robert A.

Wilson—rather than fully focusing on the physical attributes which determine the value of the

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object in the book market. This is in spite of the fact that antiquarian books, unlike records or
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other collectibles that carry texts, are often experienced only as physical artifacts rather than

being read for their contents. In fact, the idea of reading the rare volumes so coveted by
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antiquarian book collectors is, at times, scandalous, as doing so could decrease their value

through wear and damage imposed by the very action the books were originally printed for.

My research explores the interaction of the physical book with wider cultural and
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emotional responses, allowing for a more interdisciplinary analysis of the widespread connection

between nostalgia and the physical book. There are many writers who have analyzed books as

cultural icons along with the more expected literary analysis that accompanies book research—

such as Leah Price, Peter Mendelsund, Stephen Greenblatt, Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean

Martin, and Margaret Leslie Davis—but few studies fully devote themselves to the material

culture aspect of books. While some works may contemplate the impact of the physical book and

its impression upon buyers or readers (or even within the cultural imagination, such as with the

proverb “don’t judge a book by its cover”), when one brings up books as a topic of study, the
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next question is generally “what genre(s)?”. This shows the somewhat limited availability of

studies on the material aspect of books. It is important that scholars approach this topic with as

much dedication as is given to the content of a book (literature) or the classification awarded to

its information (genre). By researching the interplay of nostalgia and the physical book, I expect

to find insight into why the physical book has continued as long and as well as it has even in the

face of technological advancement—or perhaps even because of such changes.

Books are all around us. They pervade the world in various ways and forms. The book in

the physical shape that we know it today is the codex—a block of pages bound between two

covers or boards. Previous iterations of the book throughout history that served similar purposes

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but that we are less familiar with include scrolls and tablets. Tom Mole, director of the Centre for
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the History of the Book at the University of Edinburgh, explains that “The codex form emerged

long before print, in the first centuries of the Common Era. It consists of a series of leaves
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stacked on top of one another and gathered together along one edge. In other words, it's the book

as we know it now” (15). While early codices could be made using vellum or rags for pages and

may have been manuscripts (hand-written rather than printed), the modern codex today can also
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be referred to as the paper book.

Even though most people share a common mental picture of what a book is, few realize

how the technology of the codex has pervaded many parts of our everyday lives. From

audiobooks to e-books, digital texts are named after the physical book and the English language

abounds with “books”: booking an appointment, a central object being book-ended, even

influencing the development of technology such as the MacBook or Facebook. The book as

object is ubiquitous in the cultural imagination and personal emotional landscapes. As Mole

explains,
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Once I started to pay attention to books as objects in private and in public, I soon began

to notice how many other objects we use alongside books. Books sit at the centre of a

constellation of other objects, which orbit around the book like planets around the sun.

Before long, I had a whole list of other items that are more or less related to books and

reading: bookmarks, bookplates, book bags, reading spectacles, reading lights, reading

chairs, and many more. Many of these things exist only because of books: they've been

specially designed and manufactured to be used alongside books…Thinking about the

book as an object opens the door to a wider material culture of bookishness. (38-9)

Bjørnar Olsen, a Norwegian archeologist who studies material culture, advises us to “Think how

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the routines, movements, and social arrangements of our daily lives are increasingly prescribed,
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defined and disciplined, as well as helped or encouraged, by networks of material agents” (97).

By looking at the material aspect of books and the role they play in our everyday lives, the
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cultural and social significance of these objects becomes strikingly clear.

It is important to note here, that the topic of this research does not concern books as

reading content but rather focuses centrally on their materiality and the experience it provides for
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people in their interactions with them. Separating reading from books as objects is often a

struggle, as the two things are so heavily connected in our minds. Mole explains this is a

culturally learned connection, as once we learn to read: “The book itself starts to vanish, to seem

as though it's hardly a thing at all. As we gain the ability to lose ourselves in a book, the book as

an object begins to get lost” (7). Even scholars who focus on material culture in their studies tend

to use the book as an example not for its physical materiality but for its textual contents. For

instance, Olsen quotes philosopher Michel Serres, who wrote, “You can’t find anything in books

that recounts the primitive experience during which the object as such constituted the human
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subject, because books are written to entomb this very experience, to block all access to it, and

because the noise of discourse drowns out what happened in that utter silence” (qtd. in Olsen

100). While perhaps the point of Serres is that the written language of books is incapable of

addressing the topic of objects constituting subjects, he too fails to acknowledge that books are

objects that can interact with people beyond their textual content, arguably even constituting

subjects. In this way, the materiality of books is somewhat unique because it is so often lost in

the content printed within.

Modern life is dominated by material objects and our relationships to them. Material

culture is increasingly coming under scrutiny due to the seemingly unprecedented challenges and

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changes brought about by digital technologies. While technology is definitely causing major
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changes to our everyday lives, materiality still holds a significant sway over individuals. Olsen

points to phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s idea of

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“the pact” between us and the things, the intertwining, the chiasm (the intersection or

cross-over). As beings of a tactile world, belonging to “their family”, we are intimately

connected to things, our kinship welds us together; and “things themselves”, Merleau-
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Ponty now says, are “not flat beings but beings in depth, inaccessible to a subject that

would survey them from above, open to him alone that…would coexist with them in the

same world.” (Olsen 98)

People do not live on a separate plane from the objects they use, consume, and purchase, so the

binary notion of there being an “us” of people and a “them” of objects isn’t necessarily reflective

of how we actually interact with the world. Olsen notes that the typical story is of the subject

creating the object and that everything is “language, action, mind and human bodies,” but he
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counters that attention should also be paid to the other side of the story: “how objects construct

the subject” (100).

In this particular work, I look to do precisely that by analyzing how the physical object of

the book shapes our emotional and social lives as well as our identities. Olsen notes that “People

establish ‘quasi-social’ relationships with objects in order to live out in a ‘real’ material form

their abstract social relationships” (94). He goes on to cite Emile Durkheim’s The Suicide

(1897): “it is not true that society is made up only of individuals; it also includes material things,

which play an essential role in common life…Social life, which is thus crystallised, as it were,

and fixed on material supports, is by just so much externalised, and acts upon us from without”

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(qtd. in Olsen 97). In other words, “books don't just mean things to us. They also do things to us”

(original emphasis) (Mole 12).

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Tim Dant advocates for renewed attention to studying material objects in Materiality and
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Society (2005): “To be human is to live in a material world in which our experience is always

grounded in the actions of our bodies in relation to other material entities within our world”

(136). Objects are incorporated into our lives and allow people to extend some notion of their
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selves out into the world (both the material world and the social/cultural world) (Dant 60). Dant

argues that there is a need to explore the often overlooked “more intimate and embodied

relationships with objects that communicate the culture through practices that are meaningful to

those who participate in them” (136). He emphasizes the process of “material interaction”—the

mundane interactions we have with things through which material culture helps constitute social

worlds (Dant x). Dant further notes two ways that we engage with the material world: “first, by

the direct impact of objects on our perceptions channelled via the bodily sensations of sight,

touch, smell, taste and sound; and second, the meanings and significance of these bodily
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sensations are shaped through the embodied processes of mind and memory by our cultural

experience” (x-xi). With this in mind, our relationship with books can be seen not just through

our physical interactions with the objects but through the meanings the books are imbued with.

Similarly, Sherry Turkle in Evocative Objects: Things We Think With writes that

“Objects help us make our minds, reaching out to us to form active partnerships” (308). They

“have life roles that are multiple and fluid. We live our lives in the middle of things. Material

culture carries emotions and ideas of startling intensity. Yet only recently have objects begun to

receive the attention they deserve” (Turkle 6). Olsen explains this disparity in academic

attention, writing “One reason frequently given [for why the material world is not studied more

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often] is that things do not call attention to themselves — they are so integrated in our lives,
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being at the same time the ‘most obvious and the best hidden’” (94). Precisely because our lives

are so intertwined with physical objects, we struggle to see their significance, much as Serres
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managed to forget the book is an object and not only a printed text.

Olsen further writes that “These things are so close to us, our being-in-the-world is so

enmeshed in networks of things, that we do not see them unless they call attention to themselves
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by breaking down, are in the wrong places or are missing. Heidegger’s concept of ‘care’ relates

to all beings we engage with, our being is a ‘dwelling alongside’ (and a ‘being towards’) other

beings” (96). Mole writes of how he only confronted the materiality of a book when reading a

copy of Middlemarch and realizing that the book was missing a chunk of the story, moving from

page 140 directly to page 109 and repeating what came previously (23-4). In this way, Mole

describes how disruption to the normal or typical experience of an object is often what makes us

realize its materiality. As Olsen speculates, sometimes we are simply too close to what’s in front

of us to consciously realize how important it is. Even so, people who love books talk about the
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object of the book being kind to them, sharing space with them, and even being “something very

much like breathing creatures that share my bed and board” (Manguel 50). Likewise, interior

designer Nina Freudenberger writes of the role of the paper book in homes in Bibliostyle: How

We Live at Home with Books (2019), positing “What are the elements that move a house beyond

its physical structure and provide the warmth that we all crave? In my fifteen years as a designer,

I’ve come to understand that the answer is simple: It is about surrounding ourselves with things

we love” (11). For many, surrounding themselves with books creates not only a home but also a

sense of self. At the end of the day, “To encounter books is always to encounter a physical object

that is burdened with meanings” (Mole 212).

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Mole gives an example of the significance of the physical book in The Secret Life of
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Books: Why They Mean More Than Words (2019), explaining that “The US House of

Representatives allows newly elected members to choose the book used to swear them in. It
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doesn't have to be a religious text. But there has to be a book: you can't be sworn in without one.

The power of the book to signify the seriousness of the oath is more important than the contents

of the book chosen” (35). In the discussion of evocative objects, material culture can be said to
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carry “emotions and ideas of startling intensity” even if we have only recently started to

seriously give such objects much attention (Turkle 6). Turkle notes that it’s easy to consider

objects “as useful or aesthetic, as necessities or vain indulgences” but we often struggle “when

we consider objects as companions to our emotional lives or as provocations to thought” (5).

However, the study of evocative objects is important as it “underscore[es] the inseparability of

thought and feeling in our relationship to things. We think with the objects we love; we love the

objects we think with” (Turkle 5). When it comes to books as objects, they are highly effective at
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evoking emotional responses from individuals and one of the predominant emotions tied to their

form is that of nostalgia.

While most people have personal experience with nostalgia, there are also a variety of

ways nostalgia is discussed in wider culture. The Oxford English Dictionary defines nostalgia as

an “acute longing for familiar surroundings, esp. regarded as a medical condition; homesickness”

or “a sentimental longing for or regretful memory of a period of the past, esp. one in an

individual’s own lifetime; (also) sentimental imagining or evocation of a period of the past” or

“something which causes nostalgia for the past; frequently as a collective term for things which

evoke a former (remembered) era. Cf. memorabilia, n.” (original emphasis) (“nostalgia, n.”).

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Nostalgia as it exists in the emotional landscape is a heavily romanticized concept. It is an
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emotion of memory, but often of constructed memory. Frequently triggered by physical stimuli

(scent, sight, or other sensory experiences), nostalgia ties us to our pasts, whether as it was or
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perhaps constructed retroactively. Nostalgia can be seen as a “universal groping for the

transcendent” (Daniels 373) as well as “a special moment in remembering—one in which there is

a commingling of past become present, even future manifesting itself in the present as already
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past’” (Daniels 379). Nostalgia can be “a constitution of the world characterized by a yearning

for the hidden, a time always was, is, and will be hidden. A moment of reaching out, the moment

itself reaches out toward the infinite horizons of past and future; an immanent moment always

yearning to transcend itself…Nostalgia is a suffering of illusion, a search for what cannot be

found” (Daniels 379). In this way, nostalgia can be a bittersweet emotion. It is often tied to social

aspects of life as well: “Nostalgia is...the yearning to return to an experience of community we

imagine hidden in home…all the homes, where, like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, we

think we will find our lost home: the home of our everyday-life world, our world-as-community,
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and the community of our world-as-home” (Daniels 381-2). In other words, “humans are prone

to seeking and maintaining meaningfulness…They do so, in part, via nostalgizing” (Sedikides

and Wildschut 57). Regardless of which definition one finds most appealing, nostalgia is

integrally tied to abstract notions of memory and desire.

Through nostalgia, books serve as reservoirs of displaced meaning, often tied to

inaccessible pasts or perhaps even self-construction for the present and future. Grant McCracken

explains displaced meaning, writing, “Confronted with the recognition that reality is impervious

to cultural ideals, a community may displace these ideals. It will remove them from daily life and

transport them to another cultural universe, there to be kept within reach but out of danger”

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(106). Then, “Consumer goods are bridges to these hopes and ideals. We use them to recover this
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displaced cultural meaning, to cultivate what is otherwise beyond our grasp” (McCracken 104)

as inanimate objects aid in the recovery of cultural meaning and “come to concretize a much
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larger set of attitudes, relationships, and circumstances, all of which are summoned to memory

and rehearsed in fantasy when the individual calls the object to mind” (McCracken 110).

McCracken says that the way goods give people access to displaced meaning is through the
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“physical, economic, and structural characteristics of goods and the contribution these

characteristics make to nonlinguistic communication…Goods serve so well in this capacity

because they succeed in making abstract and disembodied meaning extant, plausible,

possessable, and, above all, concrete” (113-5). As such, books can be seen as retainers of

meanings—both cultural and personal—through their role as consumer goods, as objects we can

possess.

In chapter one, I will show that not only do books have an appeal for being physical

objects, but that their materiality allows abstract ideas to be anchored to our environments and
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into our lives. Books are especially good at evoking ideal moments in our pasts through

nostalgia, frequently built on memories of loved ones or self-defining moments. As such, their

materiality is not going to be fully replaced by digital technologies. In chapter one, I will explore

the sensory aspects of books, such as the smell, the art, the construction materials, and how this

all builds into the nostalgia people have for books. By exploring the affective influence of

physical books, the way in which materiality is tied to our relationship with abstract, non-

concrete concepts and emotions can be understood. Using both theory and popular culture

coverage (from news articles and non-academic works on the book), this chapter will show

which aspects of the physical book are valued by individuals and what impact those aspects have

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on individuals’ interactions with the book as object and on the larger cultural role of the book.
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Turkle notes that “objects remind us of people we have lost” (8). Books can act as

connections to people from the past, whether an individual we personally know or someone
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removed from us in time and place (such as historical figures or a particular author). Meanwhile,

translator and writer Alberto Manguel notes the memory-evoking abilities of books in the

process of unpacking his private library: “The unpacking also conjures up images of my own
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younger self at different times: carefree, brave, ambitious, solitary, arrogant, all-knowing;

disappointed, bewildered, somewhat afraid, alone and aware of my ignorance. Here were the

magic talismans” (28-9). This magic contained within books as comfort objects comes not only

from the meaning that these objects can hold but their role as containers of memory, including

memories of past selves or identities. Indeed, books are often discussed as icons for childhood

memories and nostalgia. Perhaps Mole expresses it most poetically when he writes, “Books are

sandbags stacked against the floodwaters of forgetting” (80). More plainly, books anchor the

abstract to the concrete in our everyday lives.

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Physical interactions with books also tie into the affective power of the book. Haptics

(having to do with the sense of touch), smell, aesthetics, and more all influence the power of

books as carriers of displaced meaning. For example, people’s sense of smell is a strong memory

trigger and is often the most volatile sense for triggering memories (Bogel). Sensory input is a

significant factor in nostalgia and can often exert a substantial influence on what people report as

their favorite aspect of books. Many people write about the power of the physical book, noting

the import of sensory appeals such as scent or haptics. In research on the fate of reading in an

increasingly digital world, professor of linguistics Naomi Baron quotes one of her undergraduate

students who spoke of a digital text as “‘not a book. It doesn’t have a smell, you don’t touch it’”

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(133). Baron further quotes author Will Schwalbe, who explains “‘printed books have body,
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presence’” while Michael Dirda is quoted as writing “‘Books are home—real physical things you

can love and cherish’” (qtd. in Baron 133). For many, the materiality of the book is essential to
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its book-ness.

From analyzing the physical nature of paper books and the specific components of

people’s interactions with them, the role of books in memory and emotions—such as nostalgia—
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can be explored as a factor in the significance of material books to culture and the everyday lives

of individuals. In chapter one, I will be utilizing Grant McCracken’s concepts of displaced

meaning and possession rituals as well as Tim Dant’s analysis of everyday interactions with the

material world and Sherry Turkle’s discussion of evocative objects to discuss the material culture

aspect. Research done by psychologists Chelsea Reid, Jeffrey Green, Tim Wildschut, and

Constantine Sedikides contributes to my analysis of the psychological and cultural role of

nostalgia. This section will also include a look into the scientific studies done on scent and

memory with a particular focus on “old book smell,” utilizing Cecilia Bembibre and Matija
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Strlič’s research into the science of scent and its value to cultural heritage. I will also be pulling

from popular accounts of book lovers including works by Nina Freudenberger, Ann Bogel, Anne

Fadiman, Alberto Manguel, and Allison Hoover Bartlett.

While chapter one looks at the interaction between physical and abstract as a concept

broadly applied to most individuals and their relationships with books, chapter two looks

specifically at book collecting and the various ways collectors interact with books. Here I will

explore how the act of collecting physical books not only affects space and memory but also

influences the construction of identity. Turkle describes how this works, writing “we often feel at

one with our objects” (9) and “Some objects are experienced as part of the self” (7). Paper books

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indeed play a huge role in how book lovers shape their identity. They can create social
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connections as well, granting groups a communal identity construction. As Mole writes, “Book

buying, owning and collecting can create and sustain social bonds” (96). Looking at book
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collecting to understand the motivations that make an individual book-obsessed (from nostalgia

to financial investment and more), the materiality of books comes to the forefront. For collectors,

digital is no replacement for the physical object. Avoiding the issues of digital ownership by
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possessing a hardcopy book, collectors are individuals who are more closely attuned to the

power of the book as object. From antiquarian collecting to popular collecting—assembling

whole series, buying different art edition covers, re-purchasing childhood favorites—the practice

provides a space to explore the integral aspect of materiality to the appeal of the book to

collectors. Here, the import of the book’s materiality reflects not only the way books are used to

shape identity but also how books are used to make social groups and to send messages about

one’s identity through public display. From this, we see that the physical book is not merely a
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container for text but is an object worthy of study itself (as well as an object of admiration and

affection for collectors of all sorts).

Olsen’s argument that more attention should be paid to material culture is emphasized by

the power of objects in shaping individual and cultural identity. He writes that consumer goods

“are actively used in social and individual self-creation in which they are directly constitutive of

our understanding of ourselves and others...people appropriate objects from the manipulative

forces of production and commerce and turn them into potentially inalienable and creative

cultural products vital to their own identity formation” (Olsen 91). Olsen goes on to defend the

validity of culturally influential materiality as not mere fetishism, noting that

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no suspicion arises when we establish intimate relations with a human subject, fall in love
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with a girl, or honour our parents. No misplaced emotions, no conspiracies here. So we

have one set of relations that are taken for granted as real, authentic and honest; another
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set that a priori are false. The falseness seems to arise when we transgress a certain

border, between the “us” and the “it”, projecting relations prescribed for one realm onto

another. (95)
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In this way, Olsen lays the groundwork for arguing that objects—in the case of this work,

books—deserve to be studied without a bias for their textual contents or a dismissal of their

importance as mundane objects.

Chapter two utilizes theories about collecting from Kevin M. Moist and David Banash, as

well as continuing to build on the work of McCracken and Dant. In this chapter, I will also be

referencing Elizabeth Lenaghan’s dissertation on Print Matters: Collecting Physical Books in a

Digital Age (2012) and Eugene Daniels’ notion of nostalgia as described in “Nostalgia and

Hidden Meaning.” My analysis in this section will also pull from accounts of common collectors
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and writers of non-academic analyses of book collecting such as Alberto Manguel and John

Dunning.

From collecting, I will move on to explore the role of the bookstore as a space not only of

commerce but of culture in chapter three. This chapter will cover the emotional connections

people forge with bookstores through their sensory experiences with the physical space as well

as the communities that develop around them. This will also be where I explore the lengths that

people go to in order to protect their relationship with physical books and the nostalgia found

therein. Examples such as how communities rally around independent bookstores to protect them

from competition or even save them from having to close, as well as the emphasis that bookstore

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frequenters place on the act of browsing as a sort of communion with the physical book that
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cannot be obtained through online shopping, will be explored.

Tate Shaw, referencing the work of N. Katherine Hayles in Writing Machines, notes that
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there is “a feedback loop from materiality to mind. Obviously, artifacts spring from thought, but

thought also emerges from interactions with artifacts” (qtd. in Shaw 52). As such, the places

where people interact with books (i.e., bookstores), influence thought and therefore culture in the
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local community. Part of the way the cultural import of books and bookstores as physical entities

can be seen is through the visceral reaction individuals have to perceived threats to the continued

presence of books and bookstores. As Bill Brown writes, “the study of objects in books clearly

shares with the new study of books as objects an interest in determining how subjects are formed

and transformed by the material world. Both have coincided with the much circulated claims

about the effect of digital media on that world, what I’ve come to think of as the melodrama of

besieged materiality” (26). Brown’s notion of besieged materiality is increasingly obvious in the

public reaction to digital technology affecting the brick-and-mortar bookstore. Beyond the uproar
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that potential bookstore closings cause, though, people rarely investigate where those strong

emotions come from. Turkle points out that “We forget that objects have a history. They shape

us in particular ways. We forget why or how they came to be” (311). Indeed, physical books are

forgotten all the time, until they are seen to be under threat. Then the story printed on the pages

is no longer the main focus; the story of the physical book leaps to the forefront of individuals’

minds as modern technology challenges the primacy of the codex as ubiquitous medium.

As a result of the materiality of the book being ignored by individuals, the role of the

book as a commodity in the market is also dismissed. In relation to the bookstore, books are still

rarely discussed as commodities by book lovers. Instead, books are written about in terms of

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literary value, romantic notions of identity and place—whether present or past—nostalgic
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memories, and emotions of things removed from the here-and-now. To investigate the economic

and commodity aspects of books, I will employ anthropologist Greg Urban’s analysis in
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Metaculture: How Culture Moves through the World (2001) of how culture is spread by

dissemination through material culture and its interactions with capitalism. In chapter three, I

will also draw on the work of Ann Steiner (professor of publishing studies at Lund University in
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Sweden) on curation in Swedish bookshops, Jim Collins’ analysis of popular book culture in

Bring on the Books for Everybody: How Literary Culture Became Popular Culture (2010), and

Chantal Harding’s research on U.K. bookselling practices from 1997-2014. I also utilize

accounts by industry insiders, such as booksellers Lewis Buzbee and Shaun Bythell, as well as

the American Booksellers Association and British publishing magazine The Bookseller to

explain the context of the bookselling scene and the perspectives of industry insiders. I also refer

to articles from Forbes, Quartz, Slate, The Irish Times, and Design Week to survey the general

discussion of bookstores going on in everyday life. Throughout this thesis, McCracken and Dant
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provide a theoretical backing to the argument, while Mole reveals the power of mundane

interactions with books.

Breaking down the chapters in this manner allows me to, first of all, assert that the

nostalgia of books affects more than just our perceptions of the books themselves (i.e., the way

we conceptualize bookstores is also influenced by this romanticized notion of the book as a

physical object), secondly to showcase how nostalgia impacts interactions with books (such as

through collecting), and thirdly to demonstrate how book spaces, such as bookstores, are shaped

by the physical attributes of the book itself as well as our emotional responses to them. The role

of the book as an object of import becomes clear by showing how sensory experiences of the

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paper book evoke memories through scent and tactile sensation, connecting individuals to
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childhood or ideal times as well as an idealized notion of self. The manner in which the

materiality of books interacts with the public’s emotional landscape through nostalgia in the
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cultural scene can be seen to show the subconscious impact of the physical book as well as its

reality as a commodity. The book is a cultural carrier for both individuals and groups.

Part of the import of looking at the materiality of the physical book and how it affects the
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emotional lives of individuals comes from the tensions that many currently feel are threatening

what they hold dear. Online sales and e-books are discussed as threats to the book and the book

industry as we know it. Yet, even now, the average person struggles to explain their strong

defensive emotions about books and bookstores beyond a love for the material object. While the

question of how “transformations in the way knowledge is organized, stored, and

transmitted…may impact on our sense of individual identity” (such as the role of books in

identity construction) has been studied before, today we need to look at what it is about the

physical book that makes it so powerfully evocative (Rhodes & Sawday 184). By looking at the

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