BHSIB Syndrome

I fell victim to Big, Heavy, Serious, Important Book Syndrome last month. You’ve probably experienced it too.

BHSIB Syndrome is an affliction whereby you feel the need to acquire and conquer a BHSIB, deluding yourself with the false hope that this time you really will devote half an hour each morning and evening to reading it thoroughly, for days on end if necesary, until you finish it. However, it’s usually all downhill from there.

In the first phase of the syndrome—the pleasure of initial association—you notice the book on the library shelf, just sitting there waiting to be claimed. So you grab it, announcing to the assembled multitude of a couple of people catching up on back issues of the newspaper “Ah, how fortuitous! Just the book I’ve been looking for! My, this book does seem heavy! Good gracious, 685 pages, with more than 100 of them devoted to notes and references! This is my kind of book!” And to the librarian, you say “I understand you have a no-fines policy over late books, but no worries: I’ll be able to polish this baby off in a few days.”

You bring it home, and leave it artfully placed at the top of a pile of books (with Hulk Hogan’s autobiography discreetly parked out of sight)—just in case a someone happens by and wonders what you are reading. You often find it helpful to place a decoy bookmark somewhere in the middle of the book, just to give the casual observer the impression that you are deep into its contents. And for a brief time, you can luxuriate in your association with the BHSIB without having read it. “So,” you begin, “have you read the new book that everyone’s talking about? You haven’t? Oh, me, yes, I have it from the library at the moment and I’m just getting into it.” Deliberately, and rather deliciously, no representation is made that you have either read the book or will read it; but the impression is left that you are the serious sort who no doubt will.

In the second phase—the confrontation with reality—you begin with a small rush of pleasure as you crack the BHSIB open at the introduction and realize that the pagination actually begins at page one and not some false set of latinesque page numbers. “Good,” you say to yourself, as you master the first page, “684 to go and I can knock off 100 more for the references, so that’s 584.”

That rush quickly gives way to a soporific state, during which you realize that you have fallen asleep somewhere on page two, imagining you were Peter Rabbit in Mr. Mc- Gregor’s garden. So you try again, and this time you make it to page five, at which point you realize that you have been daydreaming about whether you would choose kale or broccoli if forced to eat one of the two. You shrug off these distractions and take another crack. This time, you make it all the way through the introduction. But just when you are about to reward yourself with a cookie, or perhaps even a stiff drink, you bring yourself to your senses and realize that you haven’t absorbed a word you’ve read, unless it was something about using rabbits to harvest broccoli.

It is around about this point where the third phase— the messy compromise—kicks in. It dawns on you that there is no way that you are going to finish the book using the convential front to back, page at a time, method. So you look for handy ways to get the gist of the thing. Read the first and last chapters. Flip and scan the pages for a key word, like “wrestling.” Eventually, you read the last paragraph, and fling the book aside with grim sense that you were not quite the intellectual you thought you were. So you start rehearsing your excuses: “Oh, I had a bad attack of toenail fungus and had to return it.” Or, “I saw this collection of Wisdom of the Dalai Lama— only 123 pages long—and just had to read that first. After all, what can be more important than spiritual growth? I’ll take the BHSIB out again soon and finish it then.”

What was my BHSIB? It was Capital in the Twenty- First Century, by French economist Thomas Picketty. Two things I can tell you about it for sure: one, it was not written for the lay person, and two, it hardly mentions wrestling at all. I think it says that the rich get richer off the earnings from their accumulated wealth faster than the poor get rich by working hard, which is a bad thing for the poor and a good thing for the rich. Or something like that.

Speaking of which: let me tell you about a really gripping read. It’s an autobiography by Hulk Hogan that has quite a hold on me.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca