"This book has really saved my life," Paul Gascoigne once said of his autobiography, Gazza: My Story. The great midfielder was speaking metaphorically of course – but his assertion begged another urgent question: could a book save one's life in literal terms, too? Specifically, could it stop a bullet?
It's exactly this question that American short-story collective Electric Literature set about answering last week. In a video posted on YouTube, Electric asked, via its spokesman, comedian Tom Shillue: "Of all the big books that came out in 2010, which would be the most likely to protect you in the event of a shooting?"
Up before the firing squad were David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (480 pages); Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (562); Rick Moody's The Four Fingers of Death (736); Adam Levin's The Instructions (1,030); Joshua Cohen's Witz (800); and a Kindle (several thousand kilobytes).
With more than 1,000 pages, and a solid hardback cover, you might think The Instructions would be the most reliable book-cum-body-armour. You'd be wrong. The bullet blows a hole so big Shillue can shove his finger through it – and he's appalled.
Franzen's Freedom doesn't fare any better. Meticulously proof-read it may have been – Franzen had the first editions recalled because of a minor error – but it's certainly not bullet-proof. Indeed, post-shooting, the book looks like those withdrawn first editions: pretty pulped.
The Kindle, The Thousand Autumns, and Moody's The Four Fingers of Death – "aptly named", Shillue points out – are similarly unprotective. Thank heavens, then, for Joshua Cohen's Witz. "It's almost intact!" notes Shillue, picking pieces of bullet out of the back pages.
Of course, if you really wanted some surefire literary armour, you'd be best off putting a Bible in your breast pocket. In 2007, a US soldier serving in Iraq claimed he was saved from a sniper bullet by none other than the Good Book.
Comments in chronological order (Total 34 comments)
9 January 2011 11:25PM
slow news week?
9 January 2011 11:34PM
how about Clarissa, The History of a Young Lady, by Samuel Richardson, the penguin edition . the tediousness of it seemed to slow time, but it might have been a relativistic effect due to the sheer mass of the tome. i think it could bring a bullet to a complete stop, or if it didn't, at least it would be a relief.
10 January 2011 12:44AM
War and Peace nearly killed me in school and now I assume its thickness wouldn't save my life. What a waste.
10 January 2011 1:32AM
I love literature and I'm a stubborn son of a bitch but I couldn't get though James Joyce's Ulysses...I'd be surprised if a bullet could get through it.
10 January 2011 2:52AM
I'd be amazed if a bullet managed to penetrate The Brothers Kamarazov. Most likely it would make it through the first 150 pages before getting really bored and confused, and then wandering off to find something more interesting to do.
Or was that just me?
10 January 2011 3:39AM
So that's it then.
All US states with high gun crime rates are gonna force their kids to read WItz.
10 January 2011 4:17AM
I know that my organic chemistry textbook did not stop six .44 magnum rounds the day after I passed my exams.
I've still got it in a ZipLok baggie.
10 January 2011 6:51AM
"Begs another question?" Not even a Guardian writer knows how to use the phrase correctly. "Beg the question is not a way of asking a question. it is fallacy.
10 January 2011 7:03AM
How about Ray Mears' survival guides?
10 January 2011 7:17AM
Language is alive and meanings develop and change. The majority would recognise the expression when used in this sense. It might be 'incorrect' but it has value, so it can be used.
10 January 2011 9:36AM
They really should have tested the bible and the qur'an... To really test the bible you'd need a Kalashnikov and a dirty bomb of course.
10 January 2011 9:56AM
I'm sure this article will be much appreciated in Tucson.
10 January 2011 10:00AM
Another good reason not to fall for the ebooks hype...
10 January 2011 10:08AM
This is possibly the most pointless article I have had the misfortune to read for a long time.
10 January 2011 10:28AM
Not a new idea. There was an advert on telly some years ago where a guy's walking down the street and gets shot, then he pulls 'Ulysses', which saved him, out of his jacket pocket. He then gives pursuit for them having shot the book.
Can't remember what it was advertising.
10 January 2011 10:42AM
You're buggered if you read Kafka then.
10 January 2011 11:16AM
This is completely dependant on the calibre of shot. Most of the books would stop a .22, but chuck a .50 cal towards them and nothing paper-based will stop it!
10 January 2011 11:34AM
This will be the Readers Digest abridged version presumably.
10 January 2011 11:36AM
Surely Neil Gaiman has the right definition of a good book - can it stop a burglar at twenty paces?
10 January 2011 12:04PM
Check out the Kevlar lined Kindle cover at Amazon.com
10 January 2011 12:24PM
This is completely dependant on the calibre of shot. Most of the books would stop a .22, but chuck a .50 cal towards them and nothing paper-based will stop it!
Close, it also depends on the weight of the round and the size of the charge behind it - an Armalite fires a .177 round and will make mincemeat of a telephone directory whereas my .177 air rifle will barely get to the Ms.
10 January 2011 12:26PM
Gee ... How long will it be before Mythbusters picks this one up?
10 January 2011 12:53PM
@TheSmokingMan
They already did...
Paperback rider mini myth/
10 January 2011 1:07PM
@Mainliner. 'The Golden Bowl' by Henry James -ditto. And I do love literature so will carry on with Trollope' Orley Farm. Life is too short to struggle with a thick book in the hope of trying to understand the plot.
10 January 2011 1:12PM
Dear Guardian Online,
Thank you for managing to put a book-related story on your homepage, especially one that isn't about Amazon's bloody Kindle.
Admittedly, it's an article about shooting books rather than actually reading them, but it's a start.
Any chance you could follow it up with an article on which newspaper is best for lining my cat's litter tray?
Yours,
A Bookseller
10 January 2011 1:19PM
I'm hoping I should be safe with my 32 volume Encyclopaedia Britannica strapped to my chest. Mind you, my back will be buggered.
10 January 2011 3:00PM
Holy Books are the best for both stopping bullets and for attracting them.
10 January 2011 3:38PM
A-L on the front. M-Z on the back. And pray they don't go for a head shot.
10 January 2011 5:23PM
Not a fair test. "Witz" is printed on Kevlar.
10 January 2011 5:25PM
@systemaddict:
Sorry about this, but an Armalite fires a 0.223 round as the local narcos well know.
10 January 2011 5:45PM
Woody Allen had a routine in which a crazed Gideon hurled a bible out of a hotel bedroom window -
"that bible would have gone right htrough my heart if it wasn't for the bullet in my breast pocket".....
Just saying...
10 January 2011 6:38PM
the only thing i imagine ulysses might be any good for.
11 January 2011 1:14AM
Say, how about the author of this stupid and pathetic "article" standing in front of a bullet whilst holding up a newspaper? Thatd work...!
11 January 2011 3:28AM
I'd take my chances with the Sunday New York Times...