The Burden of Books

When we moved a couple of years ago, Steve and I did a major book purge. We had too many books. American politics textbooks, old theory books with notes in the margins, great American novels from college lit classes, and shelves of Steve’s Hitler books. With me unlikly to return to academia and the actual cost of moving the books, we had to cull the herd. We were ruthless in the purge. Paperbacks with cracked spines went. All textbooks and readers gone. I think we cut the supply down by nearly 50 percent.

It was a sad process in many ways. We had invested so much love and time in those books, and they were worthless to others. We sold what we could through abebooks.com. Others we left in bags outside the town library before opening hours. Like orphans outside a hospital. But it was thrilling to be rid of the weight of the books. To have near empty bookshelves in the new house.

Due to the scientific process known as “Book Creep,” the books are slowly returning. Book club novels are stacked by the living room lamp. The nearly-empty bookshelves aren’t so nearly-empty any more.

And then, I developed a weekend hobby of selling used books on the Internet. I get a stack of old books at an estate sale, artfully arrange them, and sell them at exorbitant prices. Why didn’t I pick up knitting? So, my desk is enveloped with books right now.

Stanley Fish has a sweet post in the Times about getting rid of his old books and retiring.

I have sold my books. Not all of them, but most of them. I held on to the books I might need while putting the finishing touches on a manuscript that is now with my publisher. I also kept the books I will likely need when I begin my next project in the fall. But the books that sustained my professional life for 50 years — books by and about Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare, Skelton, Sidney, Herbert, Marvell, Herrick, Donne, Jonson, Burton, Browne, Bacon, Dryden, Hobbes — are gone (I watched them being literally wheeled out the door), and now I look around and see acres of empty white bookshelves.

I suppose we get rid of books when we are “moving on” from something. Fish is moving on from his old job. And we moved on to a new home and town. Book purges create the blank slate for a new life and new interests. For book lovers, life is measured in tomes.