. . . Well, now you already know how the story ends.
There’s a Cranky Old Man used bookstore in my town: your classic ramshackle, cobweb-covered treasure trove (I’ve bought books there as old as the mid-19th century, as well as 1940s and '50s pulp paperbacks, classics, biographies. etc.). I stopped in over the weekend, for the first time in a couple of months, and one of the shop’s two rooms was empty
Cranky Old Man told me that the township made him close the back room for zoning or safety reasons, and he was fined $1,000/day till he emptied the room out. “I tried giving the books away to libraries, womens’ shelters, charities, hospitals–no one wanted 'em,” he told me. He couldn’t even have people in for a book giveaway, as the township made him close till he complied with their regulations! So the whole back room–more than 4,000 books–went into the Dumpster. “Worst day of my life,” said Cranky Old Man.
I am still sick (well, with food poisoning, too) thinking of all the old books in that room I had wanted to buy but couldn’t afford, and now they’re all in a landfill somewhere . . .
Sadly, it’s happening a lot . About 10 years ago a lot of used book shops in the Harvard Square area went out about the same time (done in by Alibris and the like, I guess), and at least one threw out all its books in a dumpster. One iof the ciompanies I worked for ditched a lot of its library in as dumpster (before I came on board, unfortunately. I’d ‘a’ rescued a lot of them.)
If you need an upbeat story about this, read Aaron Lansky’s book Outwitting History, about how he and his associates rescued huge numbers of Yiddish books from libraries and private collections, many of them about to be dumped. A lot of this was in the New York Metropolitan area:
Great. It’s been so long since anything’s been funny, and here’s something else that is…sad.
I’m on record as believing that people who revere books simply as objects are on the same team as the book-burners (both mistake the vessel for the contents, which is a form of fetishism). However, this situation is a crime. Not the city’s closure of what for all I know might have been a tinderbox ready to wipe out the orphanage next door (it might have been an officious and absurd abuse of authority, many bureaucratic decisions are, but I don’t know): I’m speaking of the refusal of libraries, hospitals, and shelters to accept them as a gift on behalf of those whom they serve. That no one could spare a kid, a van, and some time for reasonable-quality books (these weren’t a pig in a poke, being offered out of some guy’s leaky attic that had been locked for the last thirty years, they were store-quality, presumably-saleable items) insults the very idea of universal literacy.
I’m sorry, Eve, and if I thought it would do any good I’d offer up a prayer that nothing irreplaceable was lost, but I guess we’ll have to trust Cranky Old Man on that score. With luck, he knew and loved his business enough to save anything that really needed it.
I’m negligent in this, but get well soon – I was sorry to hear about the food poisoning as well. My mother the retired nurse says to never just assume nothing else is wrong, especially after a week; see a doctor if you’re not better – all better – soon.
Sadly, though, it’s most likely that materials get saved if they are in a large metropolitan area or have cultural meaning to one particular group of people. Who knows who much stuff – not just books: movies, records, neswpapers, primary cource material –has been wiped off the map because it didn’t meet the criteria?
I can understand libraries and charities not wanting them. I love books too, but I wouldn’t want them for the same reason they wouldn’t. No room to store them.
Throwing out something of value does seem strange. Frankly, it makes me question the ‘of value’ part. Are you sure Cranky Old Man didn’t keep the good stuff and throw out the ones he hasn’t been able to sell in years? Why wouldn’t he rent some storage space until he could sell them?
In defense of the library, they’re probably facing their own problems. Most libraries (and hospitals and shelters) don’t get the funding they deserve and are having difficulty maintaining their current stock. I doubt they had any unused space so if they had accepted 4000 books from this guy they would have had to either throw out 4000 other books to make room or find some non-existent money to get more storage space.
Oh, I know. And hospitals might be afraid of mold, and shelters of content in a setting where children are present, &c., &c., &c…of course, you have a point.
That said, I have been in a lot of libraries, rural, suburban, urban, privately endowed, publicly funded, going begging, broke. I’ve seen none with maxed-out, no more room at the inn, just plain zero shelf space and no room for more. Actually, I’ve seen libraries get into financial trouble because the money got spent on structure rather than contents. Four thousand books, many of them pulp paperbacks, are going to average less than an inch in width, probably much less. At a maximum, that’s thirty-four feet of aluminum shelving, which costs less than a dollar per foot at Home Depot.
At worst, let the library give them away: the city’s not closing them down – yet.
lets face it though-not many novels written before 1950 get read any more. i would suspect that a whole lot of libary books haven’t circulated in years. I once checked out an old book (ca 1930). It hadn’t been checked out since 1956! i suspect most of the discarded books were worthless. Another thing i’ve noticed; there is a decorator’s market for old books! I once spent a weekend at an inn on Block Island. The old victorian house had a library-stocked with impressively-bound old books-just about ALL of them had “DISCARDED” stamps from some town library-obviously, they were oin the shelves just to look good! :smack:
I’ve just recently gotten myself toughened enough to throw away out-of-date textbooks in my classroom. I tend to be the person who gets other teachers libraries when they retire. My room was overflowing with texts and reference books. The latter I will either keep or give to the library, but nobody wants old textbooks. Into the trash they go, but I wince when I do it.
Oh lord. Oh lord. I am not hyperventilating. I am calm. I am in the quiet place. There were no old books thrown away. THERE WERE NO OLD BOOKS THROWN AWAY
Mental revision! These were undoubtedly corrupted, fungus-laced books, that would have infected and destroyed my own books if I had taken any. Yes, they were black with fungus. Or else they were all found by some keen-eyed person who pulled them out of the dumpster and took them home. All the good books were taken home and are now safe! And all this happened many years before I was born.
Yeah, this is one of those situations that’s nobody’s fault and everybody’s fault. The place is a firetrap and a shelf collapse waiting to happen. What pains me (other than my stomach–thanks, King and Queen Mum of Soup) is that I’d been in that back room a lot and I remember some of the books that I’d wanted to buy: two shelves of Reader’s Library classics; those great trashy paperbacks; a shelf of biographies of writers; and the novels: Booth Tarkington, Elinor Glyn, Christopher Morley, as well as all the classics . . . If only the town had let Cranky Old Man give the books away as a sidewalk sale, but he said they shuttered him till the back room was empty.
You know that scene from Animal House, when Delta House has been shut down? One of the workers trips and breaks a case of liquor all over the sidewalk and Bluto gasps in horror?
Yeah…there are books that need to go the way of the landfill. I don’t revere them simply because they’re printed pages between two covers. But if Ol’ Cranky had his wits about him, I’m sure he moved some of the good stuff to the safe room.
I just went to a library sale last week and got a grocery bag full of books for $5. Jesus…you’d think I was at a bridal sale at Filene’s or something. People were knocking each other over to get at the stuff. Unfortunately, 90% of it was crap I’ve no use for. Romance novels, books on palmistry, how-to books on haircutting…you know…soccer-mom fare. I did manage to score a bagful, but I did it mostly to support the library. I could have lived without half of them.
I did score a biography on Willa Cather and the journals of John Cheever. Those ought to be interesting.
Yeah, nothing stinks like dead pop culture. Into the memory hole with all of it. Besides, everything’s better nowadays. Let the market be the only judge.
There aren’t enough :rolleyes:'s in all the world.
Cal, do you know/recall which Harvard Sq. shops closed? I perused and purchased in several of them for several years that I lived/worked/got educated in Boston area. That saddens me, too, but I understand and must think what to do with MY 5,000 or so non-fiction volumes. I’m slowly indexing them into a Word table in case I can offer them to select interest groups before I get too senile.
I think they should have given him a warning first and more time to come up with a better solution. Couldn’t he fight city hall? There are a lot of churches in this area he could have donated them to that have yearly white elephant sales to raise money. He could have given them to other used book stores that have more room. This is a crime.
I hope you feel better soon.