The great Flann O’Brien, frequenter of that wonderful establishment The Palace which now includes a memorial plaque in the ground outside to his memory, was born 100 years ago today. One of our greatest wits, be sure to mark the day in some small way. I’ve taken The Best Of Myles off the bookshelf. As the below extract from Bookhandling shows, not all books on shelves are read.
From Bookhandling:
A visit that I paid to the house of a newly-married friend the other day set me thinking. My friend is a man of great wealth and vulgarity. When he had set about buying bedsteads, tables, chairs and what-not, it occurred to him to buy also a library. Whether he can read or not, I do not know, but some savage faculty for observation told him that most respectable and estimable people usually had a lot of books in their houses. So he bought several book-cases and paid some rascally middleman to stuff them with all manner of new books, some of them very costly volumes on the subject of French landscape painting. I noticed on my visit that not one of them had ever been opened or touched, and remarked the fact.
‘When I get settled down properly,’ said the fool, ‘I’ll have to catch up on my reading.’
This is what set me thinking. Why should a wealthy person like this be put to the trouble of pretending to read at all? Why not a professional book-handler to go in and suitably maul his library for so-much per shelf? Such a person, if properly qualified, could make a fortune.
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 
I think you can get one of those book-handlers on JobBridge
Flann was not only a genius, he predicted our times accurately. As one who lives in a country where form is valued over susbstance, I can only embrace what he wrote! Marvellous stuff. Mine’s a pint, by the way……
I love it. The mauler gets a free read of all the books. He could also claim for board and lodgings as this would surely be a long task if he was to make sure every page looked like it had been read. He could also claim for exotic foods the more poshly read to make every page look.
Cheered me up, that did.