'The Finest Collection of Shabby Books'

Once I dropped a copy of Ian Frazier’s The Fish’s Eye into a full bathtub. While reading a paperback edition of Nadezhda Mandelstam’s Hope Abandoned, the spine snapped as I was marking a passage, turning it into two volumes. The same thing happened with my copy of Mezz Mezzrow’s Really the Blues. The cover of my Webster’s Third, a gift from friends in 1973, detached, turning the fat dictionary into a paperback. My old copies of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are held together with rubber bands. Once I left Edward Dahlberg’s Can These Bones Live on the ground after a picnic. By the time I realized it was missing and turned the car around to retrieve it, rain had swollen the book into a pulpy blob. I try to soothe my conscience by recalling that Dr. Johnson was a serial book abuser. He routinely tore the covers off books to make them easier to read. Books were tools to be used, not trophies. He never reformed. I have, mostly. I strive to no longer be a clumsy vandal. I don’t even write in…