'All He'd Read and Learned'

Eccentricity in books is a tricky quality. It can be charming and inspire lifelong devotion. Take Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, a book I discovered in my freshman year. I redundantly keep three copies on the shelves nearest my desk. Tristram Shandy is another endlessly readable eccentricity. Among the less successful are Ronald Firbank’s novels, which I have tried hard to love for many years but always find tedious. Daniel Mark Epstein has written a poem, “A Dream,” about acquiring a copy of the most eccentric and readable work of literary – not criticism, not scholarship, perhaps love letter – I know, Ford Madox Ford’s The March of Literature (1938): “Someone learned of my collector’s interest In the finer points of this autographed edition, The March of Literature: From Confucius’ Day to Our Own. I read it first at twenty-one, Then passed it on to one friend, then another, Several copies lost and found in bookstores Now abandoned to the online trade. I wanted a clean…