bibliophilia

It has been said that one sure way to spoil the illusion of any writer’s originality is to elucidate the resemblance between his (or her) work and his book collection. But perhaps the opposite is true(r): that whatever books and ideas and experiences we’ve collected, each according to one's own inclinations, and some small serendipities of time and place, are exactly what makes us each unique and original, as writers or thinkers or lives.

There was a man named Torfinn Stahl (Finn to friends) who served for many years as the Swedish Consul in the town where I live. He died recently, an old man, leaving behind an amazing accumulation of books and art and other objects, crammed into a huge house bursting at the seams with all the things he had collected to the very end. Unfortunately, he died alone, and for some reason, the city became heir to his house and all of the legacy within it. Someone suggested donating some of his books to the city library and others to the local Scandinavian cultural association. The books were refused; no one was interested. Somehow, the owner of a local bookshop was appointed to go through the house, to get rid of everything, selling what he could.

I spent hours last week, combing through those information-dense rooms with a friend, treasure-hunting, speculating, piecing together what must have been a fascinating life, giggling at some finds and finding ourselves moved to silence by others. The guy had eclectic tastes. He had books in Swedish, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, German, Japanese, and I don't know what other languages. He had whole libraries, multilingual all of them, on every possible subject: language, literature, poetry, religion, travel, politics, psychology, sociology, death and dying, gay porn. He had a picture book about Boy George, all kinds of dictionaries and maps, all of Proust in French and Grass in German, My Mother, Myself, and at least two copies of I’m Okay, You’re Okay.

Exercising restraint, I chose the following 15 books, listed in order from least sexy to most:

· Poetry: A Modern Guide to its Understanding and Enjoyment (1959)
· Language in the Modern World (1960)
· Omnivore: The Role of Food in Human Evolution (1971)
· Edge of Awareness: 25 Contemporary Essays (“provocative views of man in a complex world by distinguished modern writers”) (1966)
· The Dictionary of Misinformation (“amazing facts to astonish your friends and annoy your enemies”) (1975)
· Thirst for Love, by Yukio Mishima (1969)
· On Life and Sex, by Havelock Ellis (1931)
· The Undergrowth of Literature (“a fascinating dip into the pornographic underworld, a well-documented study of current sexual fantasies and fetishes as displayed in books, magazines, and modern advertising”) (1967)
· Italian Short Stores (Penguin Parallel Text) (1965)
· Vicious Circles and Infinity: An Anthology of Paradoxes (1975)
· Lying on the Couch, by Irvin D. Yalom (1996)
· When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession, by Irvin D. Yalom (1992)
· Seeing Voices, by Oliver Sacks (1989)
· Adventures in the Skin Trade and Other Stories, by Dylan Thomas (1960)
· Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero, by Charles Sprawson (1992)

The books are still stacked neatly on my desk, a source of pride, and I’ll read them all eventually. But the experience itself, the dusty hands, the invitation-only sense of collusion, that great old house near the port, those tall walls, covered with shelves and covered with books, the life of a man I would have liked to have known – those are the things that have made my collection(s) all the richer.