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Literary Review
The groaning shelf
PRADEEP SEBASTIAN
LATELY, for a bibliomane, I have been acting strangely — trimming my library, cutting down my book collection. I've given away books to friends or sold them to second-hand bookshops. This radical downsizing of my personal book collection stems from two impulses. The first, to streamline my book-crammed apartment (not to forget my book-bound life) with its cluttered bookshelves and the desire to restore my library to something like an essential collection: the kind I had when I was a student and had just begun collecting books. Then there were only 150 books or so and I knew every one of them intimately — I had read and re-read them all. Now there are too many unread books on my shelves (and too many books I've read but will never read again) and it feels like I'll never get around to reading them. Over the years, I've been trying to find the right readers for my unread books. But only now and then have I managed to match reader and book. I pack them off to used-book stores in the hope that they would meet the reader they deserve or want.
But all this book downsizing has made me wonder if I am a book collector, after all. Aren't bibliomanes supposed to collect books indiscriminately and wantonly? Don't book collectors collect everything? And that's when I realised that there are two kinds of book collectors and that I belong to the second order. We are used to thinking of book collectors as people who collect a lot of books — the emphasis is on volume, on numbers. But there is the other kind of collector who collects only the books that she has a specialised interest in: it could range from mysteries to Georgette Heyers to antiquarian books. Or writers and particular books that have come to mean a great deal to her personally. This could be true of the first order of book collectors, too, but the difference would be this: the first kind would make absolutely sure she had all the Heyers on her shelf, while the second would look for and keep only her favourite Heyers. (This is only an example: it is entirely possible that all Georgette Heyers are equally good and anyone collecting Heyers would want to have all — or as many — of them. You could substitute Wodehouse for Heyer — collecting fave Wodehouses instead of every Wodehouse — but I suspect fans are going to say the same thing: you've got to have all the Wodehouses).
I now realise that this streak to possess an essential collection over a vast one has always been with me. For instance, even when I've liked the books of a writer very much, I've tended to keep something by that writer only if I've come to adore it. A book I want to (or have) read over and over again. I admire the supernatural thrillers of John Farris, and though I have bought every book of his as they came out, the only one that remains on my shelf now is his masterpiece, All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By. I've delighted in all the Irwin Shaws but keep only one: Bread upon the Waters. The first kind of collector, it seems to me, is a completist — if he has liked something by, say, Ayn Rand, he will make sure that, in time, he owns them all. He might like them, he may or may not even read them — but he has to have them all. I've enjoyed The Fountainhead a lot (even if it's unfashionable to do so) and though I've read all the Ayn Rands, I've had no interest in keeping the others. In some cases, I've enjoyed the books of a particular writer — William Goldman, for instance — enough to want them all but have, over time, come to feel that not all of them mean as much to me now as Marathon Man. And so, gradually, I've let go of The Princess Bride, Boys and Girls Together, and Magic. With the mysteries of Tony Hillerman, I keep a close guard over my fave, A Thief of Time, and don't mind too much when the other Hillermans go wandering.
On the other hand, being the second kind of collector hasn't always meant being austere, spare and essential — when it comes to my five all-time fave writers, I have to confess to an extravagance: I keep multiple copies of each one of their books. I began collecting them as second-hand paperbacks and then updated them: first as new paperbacks, then as hardbacks and finally, first editions. I find I do the same with individual favourites like Donna Tart's The Secret History and Peter Hoeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow. Eventually, these extra copies come in handy: I can give them away to friends or lend them out to someone I know will like them as much as I do. (Coincidentally, after reading my tribute to Martin Cruz Smith in this very column, two readers wrote recently saying they have begun reading Cruz Smith but were unable to get hold of all his books. To one I wrote saying I could courier my extra copies and to the other — who happens to live in the same city as me — I was actually able to give him all the Arkady Renko thrillers he wanted).
When I see out of print and rare books in used-book shops or on pavements, I buy them up even if they don't particularly interest me because I feel I have to rescue them. The early out of print books of John Farris, The Saint series by Leslie Chateris, anything by Edgar Wallace, the Lew Archer detective series by Ross MacDonald and the Travis Magee series by John. D. MacDonald. (Recently, Wallace and both MacDonalds have been re-issued in the Crime Masterworks series). I continue to indulge when it comes to my specialised interests — which have taken different forms over the years: at one time it was a certain kind of mystery — the literary mystery — and then it changed to anthologies of contemporary personal essays. Currently, it is collecting books about books. Books on the "romance of reading and the eternal passion for book collecting".
In his essay, "Books Won't Furnish A Room", Joseph Epstein asks himself, "They say books furnish a room but where is it written that they must furnish every room?" and then proceeds to keep just 450 books from a collection of 2000. I'm not going that far (not only do books furnish my rooms, they seem to furnish my life as well) but the sight of unread books on my shelf (on any shelf) that I don't even have an acquaintance with, let alone know intimately, depresses me. Books should be read (and re-read), should be known, should be loved.
pradeepsebastian @hotmail.com
Graphics by Nethra Shyam
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