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“A
room without books is a body without a soul–Cicero.”
“ A book is like a garden carried in the
pocket–Chinese Proverb.” “Books
break! Please support the covers when open.
(The proprietor).”
These
sayings greet browsers at Miriam Green, along
with a steely, practiced ‘librarian stare’.
Such as was employed to engage silence in a
reading room, now employed to engage attentional
respect from readers for what they are handling--or
from children running off leash. Miriam Green,
while know for its ‘distracting curiosities’,
is at heart, a scholar’s library of rare,
out-of-print, and out-of-the-ordinary books,
approximately three thousand titles, organized
with some semblance of order, sometimes by size,
age, sometimes by subject. The collection is
always changing–after all the books are
for sale, albeit sometimes reluctantly.
Books are to be used, to be touched, opened,
pages turned, absorbed. Like sipping fine whiskey
or applying perfume, with delicacy, with appreciation.
But with indifferent handling, people unintentionally
spoil, damage, or break books. So I watch carefully
how people handle books, how they remove them
from the shelves, how they open the covers,
and yes, even turn the page. When I am satisfied,
they may browse freely through the collections,
some on open shelves, some in locked cases.
Bibliophilia
is the love of books. I have a passion for books,
their artistry, their history, their audible
voice to ages past. Books and delicious digressions
on the "evils of book collecting",
the history of libraries, collectors, even bookshelves
are subjects of endless fascination. For more
than a thousand years books were considered
so precious, so rare, that to own them conferred
its own status. The privilege ownership of books
conferred was enormous, difficult to fathom
until we understand how Richard deBrury, Chancellor
to Edward III and a celebrated bibliophile,
once gave 50 pound weight of silver for a book,
and Alfred the Great bartered an entire estate
to a Benedictine Abbot for a single title on
Cosmography.
I
have had the prodigious gift of familiarity
with the rarified atmosphere of sublime collections,
handling thousands of rare books and manuscripts,
had the pleasure of assisting scholars to navigate
what was familiar to me and eye-opening to them.
Therein lies the gift. To appreciate a book
and share this.
So
immediate, so intimate, a book is the perfect
package: like the egg, it cannot be improved
upon. From papyrus, to vellum, to paper, books
hold all our culture between their covers. From
the introduction, in the second century A.D.,
of the ‘codex’, a square book format
that replaced the roll or scroll (volumen, from
volare, to roll, which remains in our vocabulary
as ‘volume’) there has never been
a more accessible more intimate vehicle for
the transmission of knowledge. Forget the e-book,
you cannot compare an electronic device with
the tactility and personality of the printed
text. You do not need a power source, you are
the plug.
The
book is a quintessential human design, even
the terminologies that describe its parts are
anatomically expressive. The spine of the book
secures the covers. The spine has a head and
a tail piece where the sewing connects the book
block to its covers. The heads are weakened
and frayed by being pulled from the shelf, you
should always grasp the book in the middle of
the spine. The spine can be damaged, broken,
most often by opening a book too far, and not
supporting the covers. Pages must be turned
carefully, deliberately. Books should not be
forced alongside their neighbors, there should
always be ‘wiggle’ room to facilitate
removing another title. Nor shoved to the rear
of the shelf-- books need breathing room. Books
should be ‘edged’, so that the spines
are almost flush with the front of the shelf,
known as straightening the shelves. Oversize
or hefty tomes should be stored flat, and when
opened supported securely because of their bulk.
If this all sounds rather fastidious, perhaps
you have not experienced the electricity books
communicate in the simple act of discovery.
Pulling a book off a shelf and allowing it to
wrap you so tightly in its spell that you are
no longer where you are. Books command respect.
So
what makes a book rare? While space does not
permit further amplification, succinctly, the
demand for it is greater than the supply. And
in this market place that determines rarity,
a sought-after ‘modern first’ with
a dust jacket will fetch as much or more than
a 16th century Book of Hours. I infinitely,
unabashedly prefer the latter. We will discuss
value, rarity, and condition of books in another
column. For the reader, the collector, what
makes a book beautiful, desirable, elusive,
remembered, or necessary, in the final analysis
remains far more important.
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