I’ll be taking Billy Collins’ advice this week:
I recently entered what might be called a literary version of the horse latitudes, which required me to throw overboard a lot of books for the sake of staying mobile.
For anyone attached to the book as an object of beauty or to one’s own library as a physical testimony to the depth and breadth of one’s literary experience, such shedding requires a certain ruthlessness.
But once I decided to simplify the process by keeping only books I was sure to open again, I was amazed at how many books suddenly fell on the dispensable side of that dichotomy. No matter how fond I am of you, “The Duke of Deception,” I’m not going to read you again. It’s been really great, “Get Shorty,” but into the cardboard box you go.
And so it went, leaving me with what resembles a reference department at the local library. Of course, I made lots of exceptions, reprieving such books as “Miss Lonelyhearts,” “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” and other vade mecums. But in the end, it was a relief to narrow the shelves down to the basics, the Zen essentials you might say. Yes, I’m talking about you, “Anatomy of Melancholy,” “Seventeenth-Century English Poetry” and “Lolita.”
Frankly, I am well into the second phase of life when one begins to enjoy getting rid of all the stuff one enjoyed accumulating in phase one. And who needs such elaborate announcements of one’s literary credentials?
After all, is a gentleman’s library of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves anything more than a vanity? Now if I can just get rid of all the mirrors in the house.
