Shelf life: confessions of an unrepentant book collector

If you enjoy an author and happen to come across more of his work, at prices too good to ignore, or books about the author, given away on Sunday afternoons by flea market proprietors who don't care to lug them home - aren't you obligated to acquire them? If you happen to be perusing stacks of books heaped in the corner of a cluttered, marginal thrift shop, stacks not alphabetically arranged but perhaps organized there by the level of mildew implanted in the binding, should you not rescue the worthiest of the lot? Are you not required to keep one of the last copies of the 1927 first edition of Daniel W. Streeter's Camels! from reaching oblivion? And what about Treadmill to Oblivion by Fred Allen? You going to let them find their way to the trash bin?

I collect books written by those writers who published in The New Yorker during the 1930s and 1940s - Benchley, Thurber, Parker, Lardner, Perelman. Doing so leads to collecting books about The New Yorker, and about other magazines that published during that period, about publishing in general, about the people involved, about the technology. See how this can steamroll?

I collect books, in part, to preserve - for my kids, for myself, for my self-respect and perhaps ultimately for the junk man - a version of what got published: books, phrases, words, concepts, ideas, lies and truths, which, by continuing to exist, make this a better world.

I wonder if a row of paperbacks - you know, old Pocket Book titles, with their noir covers - lined up on top of the refrigerator, could withstand a slam or two, should the freezer door closed rapidly? Like, if I had eating the ice cream on my mind instead of collecting books?

Charles Kraus, his family and his book collection reside in Seattle.