collecting titles
enduring satisfaction
the wonderful books
Until moving them became a problem bigger than having them, I had a large personal library.
Never able to get books that were, by themselves, worth something other than their content (I mean autographed or rare books) the books in my library were there to be read.
Still, to read about ‘Unparalleled treasure trove’ of 16th-century texts worth $25m up for auction, I know what the feller, T Kimball Brooker, means when he is quoted saying, “collecting the titles had ‘been an enduring source of satisfaction and enjoyment‘ and that he had ‘mixed feelings‘ about parting with the ‘wonderful books.‘”
There were always be book people.
People who would rather have a book in hand over a book on a device.
At this time and place, I go both ways.
And time and place do not support a larger personal library at this time and I am okay with that.
I have access to more books than I could ever read.
But being in a room filled with books is as much a splendor as almost any view.
I have known many book collectors.
I have known many book collectors who got older and wondered more and more, what would happen to their books.
One friend told me they had donated a lifetime collection of Early American fiction to Grand Valley State Library thinking it would go into their collection, only to be told that friends found books with his bookplate in them at the Friends of the Library sales and it about broke his heart.
I had another friend who had collected a great library on the American West in general and General Custer in particular and the thought of it being broken up when he passed bothered him a great deal.
In his case, I was able to put him touch with the Special Collections at the University of Michigan which is well known for 1) accepting such collections and 2) guaranteeing that the collection will be kept together.
But what I think of most is a story told to me in passing by a Professor I had in college.
By chance we walked out of a building together and out on to the diag in the center of campus in Ann Arbor when some sort of crowd demonstration was going on.
We stopped to watch.
He looked around and pointed how the police had left one path out of the central campus open.
He said he remember that tactic from his days at Harvard in the ’60s.
Give the crowd a way out.
He then remarked, that like today, he had watched an anti war demonstration back when he was student, in the Harvard Square, standing next to his Professor.
I asked what did his Professor say?
My Professor laughed and told how the crowd was screaming and the cops were advancing and tear gas started flying and his Professor, a much older man, turned to him, shrugged and said, “Well, this time my library is insured.”
My Professor said he looked at his Professor and asked what he meant, “This time my library is insured.”
The Professor looked at him and shrugged again and said that when the Russians kicked the Jews out of Russia, he lost his library.
Then when the German’s kicked the Jews of Germany, he lost his library.
But this time, and pointed at the ‘demonstration’ and smiled, the library is insured!
Never took my library, big or small, paper or electronic, for granted after that.
Those books.
Those wonderful books.
They have been an enduring source of satisfaction and enjoyment.
Those wonderful books have.
No Haiku For You 