PREV ARTICLE       NEXT ARTICLE       FULL ISSUE       PREV FULL ISSUE      

V4 2001 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE




The E-Sylum:  Volume 4, Number 50, December 9, 2001, Article 11

YOU CAN NEVER BE TOO RICH OR TOO THIN ... OR HAVE TOO MANY BOOKS (CAN YOU)?

  While looking up other things I came across an article in
  the Sunday, July 6, 1997 issue of The New York Times
  that should ring true with some of our readers:

  "It says something about the nesting habits of certain
  bookish New Yorkers that when a shopper took a wrong
  turn out of the Strand one day, he wandered into Hank
  O'Neal's apartment and mistook it for an annex of the
  bookstore.

  He was looking for the rare book room, but he took the
  wrong door, which led to the wrong elevator, which
  opened directly onto Mr. O'Neal's front hall.  There the
  man was, methodically making his way along a hallway
  bookshelf sagging under the complete works of Djuna
  Barnes when Mr. O'Neal's wife, Shelley Shier, looked up.

  ''Excuse me, can I help you?'' she called.
  ''Oh, no,'' the man answered cheerily. ''Just browsing.''

  New York City is full of people like Mr. O'Neal -- lifelong
  bibliophiles with a proclivity for accumulation, holed up in
  compact spaces in the intimate company of thousands upon
  thousands upon thousands of books."

  "There is an airline claims manager with 4,500 cookbooks
  in her Murray Hill apartment, an architect with 10,000
  architecture books, an obstetrician-gynecologist whose
  Brooklyn apartment is overrun with books about Napoleon.

  There is Edward Robb Ellis, an 87-year-old writer, who
  shares his four-room apartment in Chelsea with what he
  estimates to be 10,000 books, including, he reveals proudly,
  five sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Ron Kolm, a writer
  and bookstore night manager, lost his bedroom in Long Island
  City, Queens, to his archive of downtown writing. For years,
  he and his wife have slept in the living room on a fold-out bed."

  "I've been in places where there were books in the bathtub,''
  said Henry Holman, who rummages through apartments as the
  buyer for Gryphon Bookshop on the Upper West Side. ''I've
  been in apartments where there were books in the bed. I've
  been in apartments where you were hard put to imagine exactly
  where they did sleep.''

  "Some people keep their books sprawled in heaps. Others
  pack their books meticulously in built-in shelves -- horizontal,
  vertical, and in double rows in what one called a three-
  dimensional jigsaw puzzle.  Books are insulation -- psychic,
  emotional, physical."

  "The congenital collectors are also awash in other things. Dr.
  Alvin H. Weiner, who collects books on Napoleon, also collects
  Napoleonic coins, Napoleonic death masks, Napoleonic
  autographs, Napoleon ceramics, and toy soldiers in his three-
  bedroom apartment in Brooklyn."

  "The unwritten rule is this:  There is always room for one more.
  And if one, then why not five?  Eventually, books overflow even
  the most expansive  shelves. Then the book-besotted learns to
  rationalize: That pile is not in the way; I can still reach the
  bathroom."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

Google
 
coinbooks.org Web
The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization 
promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor 
at this address: whomren@coinlibrary.com

To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum
Copyright © 2005-2011 The Numismatic Bibliomania Society.

PREV ARTICLE       NEXT ARTICLE       FULL ISSUE       PREV FULL ISSUE      

V4 2001 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE


Copyright © 1998 - 2011 The Numismatic Bibliomania Society (NBS)
All Rights Reserved.

NBS Home Page
Contact the NBS webmaster