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Recently, I visited the new home of two dear old friends. Both lawyers, they had moved from a large house on the outskirts of London into a reasonably small flat in the center of town. In order to accommodate their more modest spatial circumstances, my friends had done a “cull” of their personal library. Apparently, they had no choice. But, I wondered, how could they possibly decide which books would be executed. As the husband looked somewhat bereft, the wife explained, “We made a ruthless decision. If neither of us had opened a certain book during the last ten years, then we sent it to the charity shop. Plain and simple.” I quaked inside. How could one possibly discard a precious volume in such a cavalier fashion? After all, if one had not talked to a certain cherished old friend for ten years, one would still be happy to resume contact. Surely?
My friends merely chortled at my hypersensitivity to discarded books. In fact, over many years, I have had to arrive at the painful conclusion that not everyone suffers from advanced bibliophilia, as I do.
Ever since early childhood, I have always enjoyed my books. As the son of parents who collected antiquarian tomes, I grew up savoring leather-bound volumes as great aesthetic thrills. But I have not only enjoyed the books that I have read at home, I have also relished my trips to the library, those great temples devoted to the care and protection of books, ensuring that ruthless readers do not destroy its holdings at ten-yearly intervals.
Emily Dickinson had long ago found just the right words to describe what those of us of a bibliophilic disposition often experience when we enter one of those magnificent storehouses. In her nineteenth-century poem, “In a Library,” Miss Dickinson opined: