Well, I hope all of you had a lovely Thanksgiving! I drove a carriage all night, but actually had a great time! So, I have a book called A Book of Angels by Sophie Burnham which had accidentally been put in the wrong section. As I was returning it to its home-away-from-home, I started flipping through it. My mom had a thing for angels some time ago, but other than knowing that, as a kid, I was followed around by my Guardian Angel, I have not giving much thought to angels in my adulthood. Lo and behold, this book is really cool! It deals with death, ghosts, all kinds of interesting things. Will I be sitting up here all day, reading, instead of working? Maybe. Just maybe. I can't say for sure.I am enjoying this book and although it is for sale for a mere three dollars ($3), give me a little time with it before you all come in to snatch it off my shelves! Of course, the book starts off with a poem by Ranier Marie Rilke, who is, to me, the very definition of what a poet is!
But if the archangel now, perilous, from behind the stars
took even one step down toward us: our own heart, beating
higher and higher, would beat us to death. Who are you?
-Ranier Marie Rilke
Duino Elegies, 2
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3 comments:
It's really cool that you talk about your personal connection to and interest in a book you're selling...some writers on the history of book collecting and bookselling talk about the notion among collectors and dealers that we are all just temporary custodians of books, and that our "ownership" while important to us is implicitly intended to be impermanent. If that sounds a little crazy, it could be...writers on book collectors and collecting like Nicholas Basbanes have recognized that it's just a little crazy (but hopefully not too bad.)
It's funny, I tried to apply the 'temporary custodian' idea to the books I have that I don't want to sell, and it is hard. I do think of them as mine, when they are not. I guess it's the idea of temporary ownership in general, not just towards books, which is challenging. This is my ruler but is it really mine? I use it, have a legal right to have it, but I am really just temporarily in charge of it? I tell you what, though, I do truly love books. I love the idea and the reality of the written word. I am in love, what can I say?
Ideas about people, things, and the relationships between people about things are all bound up in culture anyway, though, right? So in a culture that places so much importance on the written word why should it be surprising that the artifacts that embody that word (printed books, for example) occupy a special place in peoples' minds when they think about the idea of "property"?
Bibliophilia is as old as printed books themselves, so are you really that unusual? And loving one's books isn't inconsistent or incompatible with selling them.
Sell a book and find it a new home, right? Make a fair profit on your selling and turn that over into more books you can sell along with an honest livelihood, right? Nothing wrong with that in my mind.
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