FORTUNATELY THE TIME in which I began my long hunt for the books that now form my library was a sort of golden era for adventurous book accumulators—accumulation is a better word than collection when it comes to describing the miscellany that I have. There were then more than one thousand bookshops spread across the land—115 in Los Angeles, for example, and, in 1950, still 175 in New York city. Chicago, too, was a great book town then, and likewise Philadelphia, Boston, and various other places.
How I came to acquire literary taste at all remains a mystery to me. My parents were indifferent to books, and, indeed, to taste itself, although my father might admire a fine saddle. But taste of a broader sort would have fallen very low in their catalogue of values.
By browsing in, considering, and often rejecting a given book in a given bookshop I gradually came to have some confidence. I knew what pleased my eye. I like well-designed books, with a clear typeface and attractive, if simple, binding.
I’ve been in the hunt nearly sixty years, during which time much has changed in the world of books. But a casual visitor to my home, one who knew at least a little bit about books, would eventually come to suspect that all these fascinating books were selected and acquired by the same hand, assisted by the same eye.
In inspecting the large libraries I’ve mentioned (Alsop, Cairns, Sontag) one would guess within five minutes that these libraries had been formed by one intellect. The look of a reader’s books on the shelf is a kind of signature, in my case suggesting that there’s a certain style of bookmaking—or maybe several styles—and these somehow reinforce my desire to read a book.
I didn’t form my library, though, for the look of the books on the shelf. I formed it to read and I’ve read it, though, in the cases of some literatures (German, for example) at a somewhat attenuated pace.
What about books that disappoint? Many do. These, in my life, fall into two classes: boring, turgid books that I’ll never want to read; and interesting and worthy books whose hour has not yet come.