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Billy the Bookcase: A Cautionary Tale

Jenny Diski

Doom and gloom doubled last week when the Economist announced not just the death of books, but proved it by the death of bookcases. In particular Billy, a classic IKEA item of furniture that has been available for thirty years, has five adjustable shelves, is cheap enough for students to give up the brick and plank solution to book storage (though I don't know why they would) and which even 'may be completed with BILLY height extension unit in the same width for added storage vertically'. Billy, the Economist said, was suffering a redesign that suggested a change of use: the shelves were being deepened from 11" to 15" in order to hold ornaments, framed photographs, trophies, plants, decorative boxes. Glass doors have also been added: through which to look at objets, rather than to give instant book access. IKEA, it seemed, was declaring the end of books as we know them, a sure marker that the ebook revolution was complete. (Or possibly that people have simply given up reading books: an article in the Author by Andrew Franklin of Profile Books says that any novel not instantly 'compelling' – an easy read? – is pretty much bought and read only 'by the author's extended family'.)

A correction came three days later from the Reluctant Habits blog, the writer of which had taken the trouble to call IKEA and ask a question, unlike the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Wall Street Journal, the Week, Time,the Daily Mail and the Consumerist. In fact, it's an additional Billy: the open-fronted, book-sized original will still be available, the IKEA public relations manager explained, and then rather spoiled the effect of literary support (in three senses) by adding:

I hate to dispel those who think the bookcase is dead. We do not see it that way. We really see books as decorative. Books will still continue to be something used to adorn. They’re rich and they’re textured.

Some hope then, but not exactly the kind to keep the likes of me in handmade champagne truffles.

A solution comes to mind. Children's books (apparently anyone can write them, according to Martin Amis), which must have an ongoing market because the punters keep being born and have to learn to read (we can only hope). 'The Adventures of Billy the Bookcase': he gets wider and narrower, glassed (unsuitable for small children) or full-frontally open (ditto). It might be a health education book: 'Billy the Bulimic Bookcase'. Or perhaps a mystery: 'Billy the Shape-Shifting Bookcase'. Satirical, perhaps, Swiftian, Dodgsonian: 'The Tale of a Bookcase'; 'Billy the Bookcase through the Glass Doors'. Dozens of Billy the Bookcase books, like Mr Men, in millions of IKEA Billy Bookcases. I feel sponsorship coming on.

bookcases ikea books

Comments

  • 22 September 2011 at 2:35pm
    JWA says:
    I had a Billy the Bookcase. He fell over on my Stan the skeleton and decapitated him in a haze of seemingly vaporized Charlie, that my flatmate (also called Billy) used to keep in one of his eye sockets. I still sniff all my Lacans on the off chance.
  • 22 September 2011 at 3:58pm
    Phil Edwards says:
    Or it could just be a non-story based on a press release, and a misread press release at that.

    There's a Wild Rover parody doing the rounds at the moment -
    That's why I... fear... IKEA,
    I won't go there again.
    I don't want a bookcase called Billy
    Or a table called Sven.

    I quite like IKEA myself; put it this way, I don't miss MFI (or planks & bricks). But that doesn't make such a good story.
  • 23 September 2011 at 4:02am
    PhilipMSr says:
    I started The BookCase Project (BCP) on my Facebook page. The BCP will serve as an archival site celebrating books. The address is: http://www.facebook.com/ pages/ TheBookCaseProject /20173348654
    If you love books and want to display your bookcase, take a photo and post it on my page.
  • 23 September 2011 at 1:39pm
    ChrisRoberts says:
    Talk about a reach. A whole article about a dumb ass bookcase...LRB sucks.
    • 27 September 2011 at 1:23pm
      David Gordon says: @ ChrisRoberts
      The LRB could possibly be accused of many things - but it definitely does not suck. I can suggest publications, blogs and websites that do...
  • 23 September 2011 at 1:58pm
    Bob Beck says:
    That Ikea spokesdroid missed a splendid opportunity to quote the late great Anthony Powell (and of course one of his characters): "Books Do Furnish A Room." Perhaps he, or she, hadn't heard of Powell.
  • 25 September 2011 at 9:11am
    conflated says:
    It's doesn't seem surprising that Ikea see books as decorative. They always fill their bookshelves with seventeen copies of the same edition of the same Swedish books. When subjected to the place, I always imagine they are Swedish language classics, and Ikea have been inflating the readership numbers of them for years by their use as a type of expensive wallpaper.
    • 26 September 2011 at 7:29am
      Phil Edwards says: @ conflated
      I saw a copy (well, several copies) of Anna Kavan's Ice (Is) there once. I seriously thought about nicking one before I realised that I can't read Swedish, never have been able to read Swedish and (most importantly) almost certainly never will be able to read Swedish.
  • 27 September 2011 at 11:35am
    alex says:
    I look forward to the Tarantino film of this blogpost: Kill Billy.
    • 28 September 2011 at 1:52pm
      Bob Beck says: @ alex
      I can see it now. Monica Bellucci, say, goes on a vengeance spree, first fashioning weapons from those crummy tools that come with Ikea furniture.
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