The Complete Works of...

One thing I can't figure out: why do people buy The Complete Works of Someone Prominent? The thickness and the subsequent heaviness necessary to contain a person's entire published works in one volume makes the book more suitable for hurling at a roommate/spouse/significant other/robber than reading. Besides, buying books isn't always about the reading, so really, why do people buy those monsters?

Consider also: there is a steep activation energy curve for those books--you have to pick one up (oh the ATPs required!) and carry it over to the cash register. Then you have to fork over money for the thing and lug it home. So many onerous steps in which to simply give up. So it must take some singleminded determination to carry the mission through and become the owner of all thoughts published by someone.

Some guesses: People want to reference their revered writer. I see this a lot with people who own the Complete Works of Shakespeare. But there must be other reasons... you wouldn't go around referencing Plato, would you? So is it maybe a form of homage to a favorite writer? Or is it a form of therapy: you feel a pride of ownership and therefore feel good/intellectual? Or, is it to alleviate a different form of insecurity--the insecurity that stems from possibly not being able to open up a book and point to a quote when you want/need it? Is that similar to why people used to buy a set of encyclopedia? Did they feel relieved knowing they owned knowledge itself (until the next edition came out)? Did anybody actually read the encyclopedia the whole way through? If you don't read it, do you really own the information? Ah, but now I am getting into a list of things to ask Google. So going back to the complete works...

Maybe the book is really pretty on the bookshelf. The complete works do tend to look like real books: hard cover, maybe leather bound, substantial and serious looking. Or or or.... maybe the book is bought to actually be read?

Ah for me it was both the extreme prettiness of and the desire to read the works of Jane Austen that prompted me to buy the Barnes and Noble produced book of seven Jane Austen novels. I am usually not a huge fan of Barnes and Noble classics. Though they are well-priced, the paper doesn't smell so nice and, in general, the binding is cheap. But the Jane Austen book was pretty. It smelled nice. And more importantly, I saw it when I was just starting to get obsessed with Austen. Yea, I know girls in their late teens fall in love with her novels. But having totally misunderstood Pride and Prejudice in the seventh grade, I vowed never to subject myself to books so boring and insulting to women. I even argued with my 11th grade English teacher when she said Austen was a feminist. Not my most proud academic moment, but eventually I saw how clever she is when I read Northanger Abbey a few months ago. And now I am hooked on the world of parties and marriages.

So here I am trying to read all of Jane Austen in one book. I even went far as saying June is my personal Jane Austen month. Reading thin, almost translucent, paper with font 10 writing while breathing in the allergy inducing gold dust is a whole new experience than reading a paperback.

Ah, but I still don't really get why people buy the complete works of someone. Full disclosure: I do own a couple of other complete works of... Emily Dickinson (a great bargain) and Plato (college class). But can we really own the complete works of someone? What about the unpublished writings? Or the thoughts that were disrupted before being put on paper? Or the thoughts that went unrecognized? Even The Bible, with its various versions that leave out different texts, isn't the complete works of God.