Hot Wheels – Frank McNally on the mystery of why anyone would steal a Dublin BikeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\nThe hard copy is of no great rarity or value, I think, but it smells attractively of old book. Also, I recall that compiling it \u201cruined the mental health\u201d of its author, Robert Chambers (1802-1871). So rather than see his magnum opus end up in a dump, I decided to give it a home.<\/p>\n
Even as we scavenged, the family of the former bibliophile \u2013 who were happy for people to take what we wanted \u2013 were still working on the house. When I asked if the departed had read all the books, his brother laughed that, no, he couldn\u2019t possibly have. \u201cHe read a lot in his 20s and 30s all right,\u201d apparently. In later years, \u201che just liked having them\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a twist that literary critics might call \u201cmeta\u201d, one of the titles I took home is Buried in Books: A Reader\u2019s Anthology (2010), by Julie Rugg. Compiled by a self-confessed \u201cbibliomaniac\u201d, it\u2019s a miscellany of writings by or about others who live with the condition. <\/p>\n
Those quoted include the Chicago newspaper columnist Eugene Field (1850-1895), writing about the biblio-erotic qualities of a woman he fancied: \u201c[S]he approached closely to the realization of the ideals of a book \u2026 fair to look upon, of clear, clean type, well ordered and well edited, amply margined, neatly bound.\u201d <\/p>\n
The great Myles na gCopaleen of this parish makes it in too, via one of his special offers for collectors with more money than sense: \u201cLimited edition of 25 copies printed on steam-rolled pig\u2019s liver and bound with Irish thongs in desiccated goat-hide quilting – a book to treasure for all time but to lock away in hot weather.\u201d <\/p>\n
In her introduction, Rugg notes that women do not tend to be bibliomaniacs and speculates: \u201cPerhaps this is because men can continue to indulge manic behaviours long into adult life, but women invariably have to grow up.\u201d Contradicting which, there was at least one woman in the skip \u2013 literally – at Drumcondra. And Rugg might have been in it too had she known. <\/p>\n
Likening herself to \u201ca recovering addict \u2013 prone to spectacular lapses\u201d, she confesses: \u201cToo often I wander out of a second-hand bookshop with a blush and a bag that is just a little too heavy. When I get home I hide the purchases by spreading them about on existing piles of books, so my husband won\u2019t notice. It\u2019s a method learned from the tunnellers in The Great Escape, and I heartily recommend it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later she broaches the subject of bookshelves designed to project an image of the owner but betrayed by untouched pages (Myles\u2019s famous \u201cbook-handling\u201d service was designed to address just this problem of the vulgar rich). Of certain writers, she adds: \u201cIn all the academic offices I\u2019ve been in, I\u2019ve never found a copy of Foucault that shows any sign of being read; Baudrillard looks similarly pristine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Interestingly, this is one of many passages in my copy of her book that the previous owner had marked in the margins. So even in his later years, he read that one anyway. But he was a shy and minimalist adder of marginalia. There\u2019s no \u201cYes, but cf. Homer\u201d or \u201cI remember poor Joyce saying the same thing to me\u201d (the kind of detail Myles\u2019s professional book maulers would have added).<\/p>\n
Instead, the man whose library was now in a skip had noted interesting passages only with short dashes, in pencil. Modest as these are, however, some give glimpses into a life\u2019s philosophy. <\/p>\n
He marks, for example, Harold Bloom saying: \u201cWe read, frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own.\u201d And he also notes this, from the 1911 diaries of WNP Barbellion, a sick man who would die aged only 30: \u201cReal happiness lies in the little things, in a bit of gardening work, in the rattle of the teacups in the next room, in the last chapter of a book.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I was at home minding my own business last Saturday afternoon when a friend texted about something he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,20227,156,20226,20225,20224,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-18723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-drumcondra","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-flann-o-brien","12":"tag-frank-mcnally","13":"tag-irish-diary","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}