|
|
 |
|
FOR LIBRARY HEAVEN!
|
Saying farewell to books you've never opened
By GERALD NACHMAN
of TheColumnists.com
Tossing out old books, both read and unread, used to be a hopeless and painful ritual, but now that I’m 68 and about to be flung into the remainder bin myself, weeding out books somehow seems a much easier, do-able chore. It’s painfully, realistically clear that I can’t kid myself any longer and that a final reckoning is long overdue
Whether I’m crueler or just more realistic, I’m now willing to bite the bullet and send several old hangers-on around the house out into the world to fend for themselves. They’ve hung around here long enough and are sure to find a much better home almost anywhere else. I’ve coddled them long enough.
I prefer to think of this periodic exercise as thinning the herd, or “de-accessioning,” as libraries and museums chillingly label it. I may not flinch quite as much when I bury an unread book in a box but I do still feel a slight twinge when finally forced to part ways with titles that now feel part of my life--even as they stare forlornly at me from the shelf in my study and instill small pangs of literary guilt.
A few hundred books that made what could well be the final cut have earned a place of honor on my ever-shrinking shelves, while the other pretenders--books I should have read, books I know I won’t read but told myself I just might, books I just enjoyed owning and looking at, books I vowed to re-read--now get the heave-ho with much less remorse. I’ve filled four boxes of books to brimming, with more book cases yet to go.
At this age, it’s pointless to keep kidding myself that I may someday read “The Web and the Rock.” My some days are rapidly running out. I realize--and after 30 years I somehow suspect the book must also realize--that I’m never going to crack another Thomas Wolfe opus in this lifetime.
For one thing, I’m first obligated
to finish “You Can’t Go Home Again,” whose bookmark
on page 475 is a corner of the campus newspaper dated March 23,
1960; I graduated three months later and have been meaning to
finish the book for 46 years, but it’s becoming clear I’ll
need another lifetime to make a dent in my vintage collection
of unread books; I’m counting on reincarnation to give me
another crack at Wolfe, Melville and Faulkner. My post-graduate
grade in fine literature is a permanent “Incomplete.”
It seems only fair to give all of these lovely unread books--many
of which have followed me from coast to coast two or three times--a
chance to get read by a more conscientious reader. I strongly
suspect I’ve been hoarding several of these dust-encrusted
books just to flatter my intellectual ego, but I really need
to focus on books I will actually make a halfhearted effort to
read--well, open, anyway.
Recently, I forced myself to take a shameful hiatus from my book
club, having failed to read the group’s last three choices.
To have done so seemed disloyal, knowing that my own books, like
faithful old retainers, deserved priority. It struck me as unfair
to put the club’s current best-sellers at the head of the
line when so many famous great books have been begging me forever
to please read them. It was like cheating on a faithful wife
of 40 years for a quick roll on the sofa with a fresh, seductive
best-seller.
Even so, I must confess that I am hardly a faithful reader. In
fact, I am something of a literary fraud, holding onto many titles
just because they’re classics, books I simply enjoy having
around to make me feel a lot better read than I am, like Dreiser’s
“The ‘Genius’,” Thomas Jefferson “On
Democracy,” Arthur Schnitzler’s “Anatol,”
Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus,” a collection of Emerson
essays. Well, my intentions were honorable anyway. Oddly enough,
once you’ve lived with “The Fountainhead” and
“Dodsworth” for three decades, you almost feel as if
you know it--that in fact you almost can tell a book by its cover--or
its movie.
Beyond their literary worth, certain books become life touchstones, trendy titles and covers that seem as fondly familiar as old photographs. These are titles -- “How to Be a Jewish Mother,” “Up the Down Staircase,” “The People’s Almanac,” “The Kandy-Colored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,” “Paper Lion,” “Working,” “I Lost It at the Movies”-- that I take down every few years to relive and revel in, if not re-read. Some books I like so much I’ve accumulated several copies--three collections of Irwin Shaw short stories, two copies of “Babbitt,” a few Fitzgerald repeats.
Many once hugely successful authors are now, unfairly, almost unread and forgotten, and throwing them out seems like the ultimate insult--books like Richard Armour’s light verse and his “It All Started With…” series, or Harry Golden’s cozy essays of Jewish life, or Leo Rosten’s “H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N” series.
Nothing dates like humor, but none of the great humorists truly date--they just go out of fashion. Armour, Golden and Rosten are, in fact, as witty, urbane and incisive as they ever were, if maybe not so relevant (that wretched word).
The times tend to tame certain favorites, like Robert Benchley, whose comic essays changed my life but whose delicate pieces now seem a little mild (Woody Allen compared them to soufflés), at least alongside the insult humor that now passes for wit and muffles quieter personal humor. Benchley seems just too civilized to be appreciated in today’s uncivil world, but no man is more crucial today. It seems to require a loud vitriolic voice like Mencken’s to be heard above the rowdy contemporary uproar.
In the end, even just getting rid of old unread books turns into a tender, nostalgic journey, recalling other times, interests and memories, making the once cruel process a little easier. Each book represents a little piece of me then, and--dismaying as it can be --it’s time to bid a fond toodle-oo to yesterday’s literary flings and spent passions.
©2006 by Gerald Nachman. The Nachman
caricature is ©2000 by Jim Hummel. The illustration is from
IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San
Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Oct. 23,
2006.
You
can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Gerald Nachman. To send
an email, click here and don't forget to mention Gerald's name:
talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|