An Acceptable Compulsion
How do you feel about throwing away books? If you’re like me, you think it’s a loathsome idea.
Can’t do it. Even the books I hate—there are a few and I won’t tell you what they are. I can’t bring myself to open the bin and dump them.
If, like me again, you keep buying books, we have a serious problem in the making. Especially if, despite an increased reliance on the digital versions, you can’t resist walking into a bookshop and, most of the time, come out of it with a couple of irresistible buys. Shelf space is limited. We can’t all afford to build a manor-house sized library. That stuff has to go somewhere.
I thought about this after reading an article in the Wall Street Journal. The writer discovered a dumpster full of books behind the local library. First reaction: sheer horror! After enquiring, it turned out that most of these books were filthy, torn up, so damaged they could not be offered on loan anymore. A shocking end for literature, granted, but understandable. The author of the article still dumpster-dived (I would have too) and recovered a couple of volumes, well-thumbed classics, and felt good about it. The same way you would feel after rescuing a rain-soaked kitten I guess.
What should we do with all the books we can’t keep? Because let’s face it, voracious readers won’t stop buying, and writers won’t stop writing. An estimate puts the number of new titles published every year at around 4 million worldwide. The Renaissance aspiration of reading all that is available to human knowledge is no longer achievable. I suspect it was near impossible in Leonardo’s times too. Who could master Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese … and had the resources to collect all the masterpieces? People tried however, the great libraries of the world are there to prove it.
Anyway, none of us have the equivalent of the Trinity College Library in our backyard. So, what will our children do with all the books we leave behind? They might keep a few that have special meaning for them, or that they’ve always wanted to read, but the bulk will have to be disposed of.
Hopefully, they’ll do what I did with my parents book haul. I kept a few and donated the rest to charity. And yes, it’s only displacing the problem, passing the buck as it were. Another way of saying: I didn’t trash the things, let somebody else, with less qualms or emotional investment, shoulder the responsibility. Considering how many books I buy in used book stores and thrift shops, there’s a hope some of these volumes will find a home.
When I moved to the U.S., the shipping container held pieces of furniture, crockery, and twenty-three boxes of books. Jim had his own, of course, and no room for any of mine. Our first purchase as a soon-to-be-married couple was a set of bookshelves and a wall-long ceiling-high entertainment center. Stick the TV and the DVR in there, and start stacking books in all the available slots. After assembling the damn thing. Which took us hours of sweating and cursing. Not at each other. A good omen for our future together.
Then the problem repeated itself, by an order of magnitude because the loot had grown like fungus, when we moved from our Houston home (that had yards of wall space) to the lake house (that mostly has windows). Choices that we had avoided for years had to be made. Some were easy: We had duplicates. Some were logical: Did I really need that French translation of The Great Gatsby? Some were hard. As any certified bookworm knows, the go-to question “will I ever re-read this?” is moot. The pleasure of books is to know they are there “if I ever want to re-read them,” which is a very different proposition.
After a lot of huffing and puffing with denial, we managed to make three disorderly piles. The keep-yes-absolutely, the can-go, and the (much bigger) maybe-not-sure. At the end of the process, about a third of our literary possessions/obsessions went into the back of the SUV, filled to the roof, destination the Houston Library. They were very nice over there, accepting my French paperbacks with a slightly sad smile. Book lovers of the world understand how difficult it is to part with old friends.
Since then, we improved our storage options with the purchase of two sturdy barrister’s bookcases, the kind with glass doors that can take the weight of volumes stacked two-deep, with more on top. One of these days, I’ll organize the things so I don’t have to root in there forever to find what I’m looking for.
And one of these days, we’ll have to do a clean up again. I already dread it.
To make matters worse, last month, our local library had its quarterly book sale. On the second floor of the building, there are shelves after shelves of volumes that are either too battered to get prime space, or too obscure, or duplicates, or … whatever. It isn’t really a “sale”, you can take anything you want and donations are accepted. After a fun treasure hunt, we went back home with Elmore Leonard, George Pelecanos, James Ellroy, Jennifer Egan, C.S. Forrester, and Connie Willis. We relocated a loudspeaker and found space on a shelf. We’re good. For now.
And no, I didn’t go back to the library to see if they brought in a dumpster. That would have been too heartbreakingly devastating.