Here is how connections can work near miracles (or curses) in one’s life:
Run-on sentences are great for this kind of stuff.
I wrecked my car while I was in college but needed to move my stuff so I found a 1970 Chevy step-side, 6-cylinder, three-on-the-tree pick-up which I paid for by selling an old Cadillac Eldorado that my mother didn’t want. I drove that until I graduated (journalism) and went home and reconnected with some old friends one of whom had a bibliophile father and local judge who had died while living alone, and in hoardishness, and left behind hundreds of books which was too many for this friend’s small house that was already packed with books. This friend worked at Sears and had just purchased a new washer and dryer and had no way to haul them home but knew I had a truck so he asked me to deliver them and, in return, I could have all the books which were in boxes and exposed to the elements in his driveway. I agreed and got a lot of books.
A LOT OF BOOKS: 560 volumes. I counted
If had not wrecked my car, I would not have bought the truck which enticed my friend to ask for help and give me the books.
These books changed my life. Not because I read them all or very many, but because I had to build a special shelving unit inside a closet to hold them. I already had a lot of books, but NOT these kinds of books. These were not paper back science fiction and arcane text books. These books had belonged to people, maybe a lot of people, over the decades. The oldest of them was from 1854, a good many from the 19th century and the majority were pre-1960.
How did building a bookshelf for old books change my life? It did not, per se. Taking charge of these unloved and neglected volumes forced an epiphany: old books are worth keeping. The coalescing effort of reading, caring and repairing them carried my soul to the permanent things…and showed me their enemies.
Could I have bought them new, with no dust, spiders or notes? Yes. But what about THESE books? Where would they go? What kind of soulless, black-hearted bastard would turn away a homeless dog? That dog was loved once. They know old tricks. Feed her and she will show you them.
Certainly this sentiment is not lost on any literate person. Grandma’s favorite cookbook and great-grandpa’s bible are books cherished by all but the meanest lout. We saw mom or dad read them when we were little. They wrote in them and spilled coffee on them. Their scars were earned and tell a story, cryptic as it may be, about another’s life and their times.
I have since shed most of that original hoard. Today, I make an effort to buy only used books. These books often arrive with interesting messages and names on the inside covers. The ones that touch me most are the gifted books. While in college, I met a elderly lady who was moving into a rest home. She was a court reporter at the famous Nuremberg Trial. She gave me all of her books. Sadly, one of these was a small Bible given to her by her mother. She confessed she had no family. I think she figured I was as good a person as any to give a Bible. A libertine always needs a Bible.
A book I recently ordered from Biblio.com, was a Christmas gift to Bill from his loving parents. I wonder how old Bill was that Christmas? Did Bill read it? Did he keep it for years until, after their passing, he no longer felt an attachment? Did Bill himself pass away, his widow or children now burdened with Bill’s flotsam memories? The book is, The Clowns of God by Morris West. West was read by millions in his day. People used to give books at Christmas… they really did!
Morris West is hardly a children’s writer, so Bill was likely an adult. I don’t have many old children’s books. They were usually made of cheap, acidic pulp paper and eventually break into brittle, brown bits. But one I do have is Uncle Tom’s Cabin and it, too, was a Christmas present. This book was once an important a read as Huckleberry Finn among the boys and girls of America. Not that Beecher-Stowe's book was “children's book” in the modern sense. It was a book children found easy to read.
Think about this: little Paul lived among living Civil War veterans. Fifteen years before, 50,000 Civil War veterans reunited at the Gettysburg battleground. When kids read, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, they read it with Lincoln’s first words to its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, in their minds: “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” Paul Phillips thought so as well, most likely.
I have noticed that none of my non-fiction books have such loving messages. Perhaps their subject matter is too serious. “Merry Christmas, please enjoy this biography of Pol Pot.” But I do have one, gifted to me, so not exactly a “gift-book.” It was previously owned by the serious Mr. Baxter who didn’t have a street address.
Like I said, very serious subjects don’t have messages inside. Anatoli Granovky’s horrific account of the Soviet NKVD was a thoughtful gift (long story) from two friends who frequented “rummage” sales. Does anyone say that anymore: Rummage sale? If you ever see this book at a “rummage” sale, buy it.
I love those inside-cover messages that say a little about the owner. I cherish my copy of, Up Front, by the famous Bill Mauldin, a World War II (and later) cartoonist. My copy has a stern warning against taking this book out of Mel’s room. Mel liked his Mauldin close at hand. So serious was Mel about this, he finished the warning with his best John Hancock flourish as if to say, “just try me.”
Christopher Dawson, the great scholar who influenced T.S. Eliot and J.R.R. Tolkien, apparently did NOT interest the former owner of my book, The Making of Europe.
Dawson was an awesome force, but he was not writing pulp detective novels. His book, The Crisis of Western Education was prescient (1961) and not all about education, but rather a coming crisis in Western Culture…which, golly-shucks, really started happening just a few years later.
I get a giggle about things written in text books, the doodles and margin notes, etc. I do not have many textbooks now, but I have kept some older ones. A note in a 1932 calculus book intrigues me.
This youngster apparently missed a quiz and noted the make-up time inside the cover of the book. I guess that is normal normal stuff. However, note the class times above: Tuesday, Thursday, SATURDAY!!! What kind of collegiate hell did this poor kid live in? I think it was a Saturday class that pushed the Unabomber over the edge.
Some used books arrive autographed by their authors (someone’s autograph anyway). I operate under naïve optimism generally, so I assume they are real. One I prize is the once widely-read, When Hell Was in Session by Admiral Jeremiah Denton. Admiral Denton, a prisoner at the not-so-nice Hanoi Hilton, was famous for blinking, “ T-O-R-T-U-R-E” during a 1966 press conference.
Comes now the library book. Libraries have to make way for the new stuff and clear away the boring, never checked-out things like Black Elk Speaks. Look at that due-date card. Wow. The library likely ditched it because of the bad water stain in the upper page corners. I think it is bong water.
Black Elk Speaks is one of those books you have to read and don’t really need to read again. Because it stays with you. But read it again, you will.
Books have long been ornaments, their display more often a testament to vanity than to wisdom. Books, bought in bulk at “rummage” sales or thrift stores are a cheap decoration in restaurants and furniture stores. Several years ago, I noticed an unnerving trend. Books are being displayed backwards, hiding their spines. From Georgia to California, I have noticed this in all those shops that look like they were white-washed in Joanna Gaines’ pee.
To me, this this creepy. It is the same as turning family photos around so the faces don’t distract us from the frames. I recently asked a manager about this. Her answer was, “It’s a design thing.”
Stock your shelves with old, marked up, scarred books. They are cheaper than dogs, stink less than cats and live a lot longer.
I mean no offense to the many great Substack writers, but y’all are too quick to hyper-link each book reference to Amazon. Stop doing that. They have enough money.
Please link your references to a used book store or website for any book older than a few years. The old books deserve a home, orphans that they are. When you want to inspire a reader with a book that inspired you, let them be inspired with a book that another once held, read and kept for posterity.
Vale
I once found a handwritten personal letter, probably from the 1940s, tucked inside an old book I bought. Several older books I have are imprinted with the name of previous owners. Each old book has its own history, and even if you don’t know the whole story, if you own it you’re a part of it. It’s a really cool little glimpse into what Burke called the eternal contract of the dead, the living, and the yet to be born.