'A Good Reader, a Major Reader'

The proprietor of Bibliophilia Obscura’s Twitter account posts a photo of his envy-stirring Nabokov collection, noting that the author of Pale Fire is the only writer in his library whose books fill a shelf of their own. This is a truer, more personal and heartfelt honor than a Nobel Prize which Nabokov, to his eternal credit, never received. Without readers, writers and books remain latent. They hardly exist. Without writers and books, readers drink and watch television.

The photo sent me back to my library to confirm the writers I have similarly honored – out of readerly greed, mind you, not gratitude. Filling shelves of their own are Nabokov, Chekhov, Dr. Johnson, Guy Davenport, Samuel Beckett, A.J. Liebling – and Joseph Epstein, the only living writer whose books I’ve accumulated with such perseverance. Nearly full are shelves devoted to Charles Lamb, Evelyn Waugh, Geoffrey Hill, W.H. Auden and Ford Madox Ford. All are writers I reread when impulse strikes, without a strategy of “self-improvement,” whatever that means. As Nabokov famously puts it: “A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.”