Books!

My dear friend, running partner, therapist and builder extraordinaire, Gary Welch, constructed new book shelves in our basement. Nothing fancy, I admit. In fact, the new shelves are rather plain and simple. As Gary knows, we’re saving our money for a fake fireplace which runs on propane gas and which can be regulated by remote control from the ease of the comfy chair. I have in my life in my fifteen years in the Midwest already split enough logs for a New Yorker/Upper West Sider of the Jewish persuasion, and now, as I ease into middle age (ha!), I no longer feel compelled to assert my virility by swinging the awl. Actually, I no longer feel compelled to assert my virility at all—why bother, I wonder?

So, anyway, Gary put together floor to ceiling book shelves in the basement, and for the past few days I’ve been re-organizing the library. Oh, we had once purchased very nice bookshelves, but they had filled up all too soon, and alas, they had started to burst at the seams. There were books fatally falling from bulging shelves; there were books lying splayed every which way, many barely able to breathe for lack room, gasping desperately for air, pages screaming silently in ‘mute nostril agonies,’ to reference Jim Morrison of The Doors. Since the basement had been ‘moved’ about several times, and the bookshelves resituated and the books carelessly thrown up on shelves during these resituatings, everything was out of place. Imagine! Kenneth Stampf’s That Peculiar Institution sitting right next to William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. There was Sholom Aleichem’s Tevye Tales abutting Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall. Emma Bovary lay atop Leopold Bloom! There was unrest in the basement. And I worried about where to put the new books which streamed in regularly.

So, as my favorite librarian, Carol Hagness, might say, I’ve been re-shelving down there. I first decided that I would put all of the fiction on the new shelves in alphabetical order! Starting with A. Chinua Achebe. Sherwood Anderson. Aharon Appelfeld. Margaret Atwood. Nelson Algren. Suddenly, issues I had not anticipated arose. Should I fill a whole shelf at once, or should I leave room for yet-to-be purchased volumes? How much space should I leave for books we already own authored by people whose last name began with ‘R?’ Why do I have so many books by authors whose last name begins with ‘F?’ Should I save the several editions of Moby Dick each with personal annotations, or should I keep only one volume containing the most (or best?) reading notes? What if, when I am done, the books are unevenly spaced along the shelves?

The delight in finding books I’ve long forgotten is, without question, enormously satisfying. As I organized, I met so many old friends and acquaintances—and not a few enemies. And while I worked I thought of a wonderful chapter in one of my favorite novels: Italo Calvino’s, if on a winter’s night a traveler. There, the author describes a reader’s foray into a bookstore to purchase the new Italo Calvino novel, if on a winter’s night a traveler. Calvino catalogues, as only a bibliophile and scholar would understand, the taxonomy of volumes the book lover passes: Books You Haven’t Read, Books You Needn’t Read, Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category of Books Read Before Being Written, Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered; Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered; the Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody; Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them Too; Books You’ve Been Planning to Read For Ages; Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success; Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At the Moment; Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case; Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer; Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves, Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiousity, Not Easily Justified; Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread And The Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down and Really Read Them; New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You; New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you).

All and more were on my shelves. I am so comforted surrounded by my books. I am so content en-tomed.