The Bookman's Melancholy

I am in the process of decimating my library. Actually, it's worse than that. I have had to set myself the goal of reducing my collection of books by at least two thirds.

This is a painful process for someone whose life has always centered around the written word, both his own and others. Don't misunderstand me, I appreciate a good movie, and although I seldom watch television these days, I enjoy some of it quite a bit.

But I grew up with books, and they are my first love. My parents say that I first started to read on my own when I was three-years-old. By the time I was in 5th grade, my bedroom was filled with bookshelves from wall to wall. As a freshman in high school, I was the only person other than the librarians to have a stack pass to the city library. (They told me that it was self-defense since I read so much and such varied subjects that it was easier to let me get my own books than for them to be constantly searching out yet another obscure book.)

The size of my personal library peaked many years ago at about 10,000 or so volumes. Since then I have tried to impose some discipline. Until then, any book that I liked, or thought that I might like better in the future, or that I thought I might need for research, etc. could easily find itself a home on my shelves. Well actually it would have had to be a book that was intolerably bad in some way not to achieve at least a temporary adoption.

These days, I try hard to be diligent about culling but, I probably have over one thousand books in this room alone, and another 500 or so scattered elsewhere throughout the house. Several of my bookshelves are stacked two layers deep.

People don't read as much as they used to, or so I am told. I guess that must be true since even the well-read among my friends are startled by the volume of books on the walls of my study. I must be out-of-date.

I have mentioned before, when in a listing frame of mind, some of the books that live here with me, so I will not revisit them all. But to return to the subject of this blog, I would like to examine here the melancholia of a bookman in the process of divorcing his companions.

Here is, as the King of Siam would put it, a puzzlement. I have three copies of Rabelais' works. Each contains the same text translated by the same translator, yet each has its own unique charm. Which of them shall be sent away, expelled from its place on the shelf? How am I to make a choice?

The first cut is easy. One of the copies is a paperback used only for reading to save wear and tear on the other two. With only a small pang I place the tattered Penguin paperback into the box to be joined later by other outcasts.

But the second choice is hard. The two hardcover books sit next to me as I write, waiting to learn their fate. The smaller is covered in brown cloth with goldleaf title on the spine and an illustration in gold on the front cover. Published by Chatto and Windus in 1879, it contains "numerous" illustrations by the great Gustave Dore. Illustrations even more delightful than those he made for Dante's "Divine Comedy". They are wicked, bawdy, and powerful.



... and yet ...

The book with the red cover has no date on it, but I know that it was published in 1927. It contains the same text, but this one was illustrated by Frank C Pape, an artist now mostly forgotten except by a few fanatics (in whose company I eagerly count myself). He is an illustrator whose delightfully vicious sense of humor was so perfect that James Branch Cabell once wrote him a letter apologizing that his text was no match for Pape's illustrations.



How do I choose between them?

The simple answer is ... I cannot. I place the two books back on the shelf.

My wife comes in to see how my task is progressing. She looks in the box at the single paperback, laughs and shakes her head. She pats me on the shoulder, kisses my on the ear and tells me to keep up the good work.