Judged solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of Argentina borrowed from the public library in Schenectady, N.Y. At home I discovered the previous reader had marked his place with a twenty-dollar bill. I returned the book but not the cash. It reminded me of Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King. The title character’s father “used currency for bookmarks—whatever he happened to have in his pockets—fives, tens, or twenties.”
A reader has
sent me an email that made me itchy. I’m accustomed to hearing from readers who
write about the volumes they prize for their extra-literary qualities – first editions,
signed and associate copies, and so forth. But this guy has hired an appraiser
to judge the value of his collection and supplied me with itemized specifics –
the estimated worth of his personal library. The total is impressive but sharing
the statement seemed a little tacky. My correspondent admits he has read few of
the books in his collection, which is, admittedly, beautiful. His books are
largely an investment – financial, not literary or intellectual.
When young
and poor, I acquired and sold several books for a hefty profit. Because I’ve
always been a reader rather than a collector, I’ve owned few valuable volumes. Purely for their liquidity, I once bought several Thomas Wolfe first
editions, a first of Kerouac’s On the Road and another first of William
Gaddis’ The Recognitions. I turned
them all into quick cash, without gouging the purchasers, and feel as though I
didn’t so much own them as briefly rent them. Treating books like so many Fabergé
eggs leaves me feeling queasy, and I've tried to assuage the uneasiness by
recalling that none of the books I sold were valued by me for their literary
qualities. I’ve given away more books than I’ve sold. My experience with
books and book dealers is closer to the arrangement Dick Allen describes in his
poem “The Bookshop”:
“What you’re
searching for, among
These
histories, these poems, these illuminated guides
To the soul,
or the soul’s companions . . . these compendiums
Of fossils,
stars, speeches, journeys when the world
Was a path
through forest or waves against painted eyes
On the bow
of a wooden ship plying the Aegean,
Is a single
line of calm.”
3 comments:
One runs across poets in surprising places, sometimes. I've started reading Richard Hakluyt's (1552?-1616) "Voyages" (a collection of travel and exploratory narratives, edited by him) in the Everyman's Library edition (8 volumes, 1907) for which the English poet John Masefield (1878-1967) wrote a very interesting 13-pages introduction.
Okay, here you go. My mother had moved into assisted living, taking only a few valued possessions. My brother was visiting her one day, and pulled a book off the shelf. Six or so twenty-dollar bills fluttered out. But that wasn't what interested him. He looked inside, and saw that it was the one of the two-volume edition of "Moby Dick', illustrated by Rockwell Kent - first edition - and the other was still on the shelf.
"Mom, where did you get this?"
"It was a present from [our rich uncle]," she said. "He gave it to me when I was a little girl."
"Well, these are valuable books. You shouldn't keep them here with helpers are walking in and out all day. I'll tell you what. Let me hold on to them for you. I'll give you a receipt, and inform everyone else in the family. I'll keep them in my house, where they'll be safe."
"Okay, if you say so."
So my brother took the two volumes in their slipcase back to his house in west Texas, where they sat on the shelf for less than a year before a wildfire came through and burnt his house and everything in it to a fine grey powder. End of story. (Oh yeah, after my mother died, the grandchildren shook out the pages of her other books and "inherited" a nice bundle.)
I have a handful of signed books, mostly science fiction people (sorry boss) - Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Harlan Ellison. I also have a numbered copy of Cormac McCarthy's play The Stonemason that he signed and that's likely worth more than I paid for it fifteen years ago. But the signed book that I value most is an 1891 copy of Sigurd the Volsung by William Morris. I wanted to read it, and when I saw that the edition available on Amazon was abridged, I picked up an old copy on Ebay; I think it cost me ten or twelve dollars. When I opened it, I saw, written in pencil on the flyleaf in a neat, legible hand, "Sarah Anderson Bates 1892". Who was she? I'll never know, but I know that we both wanted to read the same book, and having this scrap that remains of her life makes me feel connected to her somehow, as if I'm a link in a chain that stretches back into the past and extends into a future I'll never see, when my life will be lost and forgotten like Sarah's.
Try that with a Kindle!
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