This piece, by Elinore Standard, appeared in the Bedford, NY, "Record
Review" as one in an ongoing series, "My Reading Life."
MOVING THE BOOKS
When I realized we were going to move out
of the house in Pound Ridge, NY, where we lived for 35 years, I began
worrying about the books. We had a fine core library, heavy on English
history, big on Latin America with an impressive Cuba section. We had a
lot of biography and some decent poetry including a City Lights edition
of Alan Ginsburg’s “Howl”. We had a good Black History and 1960’s
collection and a nice assortment of what is called “literature” – that
is, Austen and Trollope and Thackeray. We also had contemporary writers –
first editions of Roth and Updike and Bellow, for example. I had a
shelf of memoirs, old and new, and many books about God. We measured
American and English history in feet. We inherited a large maritime
collection: the law of the sea, seagoing union history, and knot tying.
I found a 1924 presentation volume about Lenin that my in-laws
must have got when they traveled to Russia on their honeymoon in the
early 1930s. There was a juicy one devoted to Kim Il Sung published in
Pyongyang. We had special editions of the Lillians: Hellman and Smith.
I did not want to transport all of this stuff 300 miles north to
an apartment in the heart of Burlington, Vermont. I knew every pound
would cost. I was all for finding a dealer and selling everything. I
took most of my own books to the local library for their book sale and
kept just few, including some of the memoirs, the Austen and Trollope
and Thackeray. I preserved a few anthologies, left over from when I
taught writing.
Obsessively, I began cataloguing the rest: I handled each volume
and listed each book I thought might be collectable and worth something
to most hard-hearted dealer. Into my computer I entered title, author,
publisher, date, condition, plus any outstanding feature such as
illustration, dedication, and so on. Slowly the list grew.
There were inscriptions by famous persons, including Jessica Mitford,
and a Nobel Laureate who, early in his career as an economist, wanted to
court my mother-in-law but she spurned him, according to family legend,
because her mother objected to his foreign accent.
We had wonderful children’s books and I listed many of those
including two inscribed first editions of Norton Juster’s “Phantom
Tollbooth.”
I forged ahead with my list and you cannot imagine how huge
and time-consuming a project it was. I was absorbed and determined. I
sensed we were sitting on a gold mine. I would sell the entire lot and
off we would go, up north, unlumbered by the ton of books and all set to
inhabit a much smaller place where there would be plenty of wall space
for art, mirrors, and plain, unadorned wall. We would read books on
line. We would get library cards.
My dear partner, husband of 40-some years, and owner of many of
the best books, said no. He was taking them all. He thought my list was crazy. He felt it was the work of a compulsive and didn’t mind saying so.
No dealer would con him out of his library. It was all going to
Vermont. Shelves for books must be built and we commissioned them. An
entire room would have zero wall space. There would be the doorway and
the windows, the rest -- shelves. The largest room in the apartment
would become the new library.
Every day, I packed a few boxes of books, labeling each one and
sealing it with tape. I had help and the process intensified. Our son
came down from Vermont and spent a weekend packing the Cuba books and
the books from his grandfather. Boxes lined hallways and were stacked
four deep to the ceiling in the library. By the time we were done, we
had more than 100 boxes of books. The original system ultimately
crashed. Books were chucked into boxes in a last-minute frenzy.
Everything would go, except the few I managed to jettison.
I felt like Tallulah Bankhead in “Lifeboat”. I knew that one
more ounce would tip us over and in a way I was right. A closing date
was finally announced. The moving truck came and it was loaded with the
boxes. A few pieces of furniture made it, plus some clothing and dishes
and linen, but mainly it was books. As darkness fell, it turned out
truck was marginally too small and a second van was frantically
arranged. The logistics of this screw-up were costly and infuriating. I
was ready to snap.
Once everything was unloaded in Vermont, the apartment –
one-third smaller than our house – reeled beneath the sheer volume of
books. Young helpers came to shelve what they could, ignoring labels and
categories; it became a push to get at least some of the books off the
floor so we could move around. There remain about fifteen unopened boxes
and nowhere to put the contents. More shelves must be built.
As it stands, the person who caused all these books to make the
journey now says he made a mistake. He realizes he doesn’t even want to
see some of what we brought. We acknowledged that it was a process, that
before we moved he was not ready to part with anything, that it all had
to happen the way it happened, hang the labor and the expense.
The Cuba collection will get its own shelves and will remain
boxed up for weeks. Some of the other stuff will be given to the public
library down the street. All must be re-sorted and re-shelved in some
rational order. This, too, is a process. It is impossible to duplicate
what existed before and it is a big mistake to attempt doing that in a
much smaller space.
Out of stubbornness, before we moved I sent my precious list to a
book dealer who had expressed interest -- and what do you know? He
offered $350. for the absolute cream of the entire collection including a
first edition of Robert Frost’s “West Running Brook” (Holt, 1928).
Secretly, I think what he most wanted was “Ant and Bee and Kind Dog” by
Angela Banner, (Ward, 1968), a little green book I bought for our son
when he was about two years old.
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ehstandard@gmail.com
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