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Selective violations of the Eighth Commandment
The word bibliophile refers to a lover of books. This term has all sorts of warm-fuzzy associations, such as curling up by a fire to read a leather bound volume on a cold rainy Sunday afternoon. It is reminiscent of all things cozy and sweet. But it has virtually nothing to do with what I am going to talk about here.
By contrast, the word bibliomaniac implies a darker, pathological relationship with books. The term contains notions of compulsive, even obsessive behavior. In its extreme form it can include the actual theft of books one desires.
I was a bibliomaniac for a few times in my life.
It is true that, as a child, I loved books in an innocent, wholesome way. I was given many lovely volumes which I devoured hungrily. So I was a bibliophile; the mania came later.
1. When was I first introduced to bibliomania? I think at college as an undergraduate. There was a fellow in our dorm who prided himself on being able to steal anything from the University Bookstore. I recall that, out of skepticism, my roommate and I challenged the fellow to get us each a copy of Apostol's Calculus [i.e., a hefty tome]: he had them in our hands within the hour.
He would do this by the most elementary of methods: he simply placed what he wanted to steal on the counter beyond the register; thus the attendant would assume the items were already paid for and so not ring them up. His most blatant theft was a huge pink stuffed dog.
I must admit, I was a bit in awe of this fellow, who had the nerve to pull off such stunts (certainly I never would have dared do such a thing!) Yet, should I add that I felt a bit of disgust as well?
I never dreamt that I myself would become pretty disgusting within the next several years.
2. At the University of Illinois, there was a fellow music composition student who had a nice little library of political writings. But when I looked at one of the books (it happened to be Adorno's Prisms), I noticed that it was the property of a public library near Chicago. As my friend was supposedly a socialist, I confronted him: How can you violate the most perfect socialist institution in this society - one founded on utter egalitarianism and supported by the government? He gave me this cynical answer: It's simple May: I asked myself, 'Who would find this book more useful - me, or ail the other residents of Evanston Illinois? The answer was obvious!' He added, 'To each according to his need' - remember? I concluded sadly that my friend was not a socialist at all, but rather an elitist. (The fact that Adorno was a socialist writer only heightened the irony.)
So yes, I was still disgusted by such behavior then. But I'm afraid that a seed was planted in my head at the same time.
3. In my third year at Illinois, I got the job as page for the Music Library at $1.70 per hour. This involved picking up books, scores, and records fresh from the publishers and bringing them back to Smith Hall. As such I had official access to all the holdings of the third largest university library in the country. I was never stopped or even questioned as I was leaving a building with books. It was like having letters of transit signed by General DeGaulle himself! Can you imagine the sheer number of temptations in such a situation for the budding bibliomaniac? Putting such a person in the position that I held would be like hiring a dipsomaniac to manage a chain of liquor stores.
Fortunately for the libraries of the University of Illinois, I was not yet at this stage of my - development - when I worked there. Yet, I found myself hugely tempted!
(Question: How can you tell when a bibliomaniac has been in a library? Answer: By ail the water-damaged books - from the excessive drooling.)
(Another question: How could library officials devise a job application which would screen out bibliomaniacs? Naturally the questions would have to be subtle enough so that the potential miscreant is lulled into betraying himself. Here are two samples:
Sample Question 1: Complete the sentence: 'I like books...'
a) not at all
b) a little
c) quite a bit
d) more than my life.
Sample Question 2: Do you have library books at home?
a) No.
b) Yes. They are all due in the next three weeks.
c) Yes. But they are all overdue.
d) Yes. But none of them has a due date.)
4. So when exactly did I abandon all scruples and pass over to the dark side? When, one day, I found myself holding a book which didn't belong to me [yet], and being suddenly overwhelmed by a desire for it. Not the desire to read it per se (though that might be part of it), but rather the need to possess it utterly and in perpetuity.
I hesitate to confess my first offense, since it is so transparently evil in so many ways. First, I lifted [I shall use these sorts of euphemisms often in this treatise, since words like 'stole' and 'theft' are so - harsh] the book from a lending library; second, the library was part of a Christian association; and third, the book so pilfered was - gasp! - a Bible.
Now before you start scourging and mocking me, would you allow me a few words of defense?
First of all, no library employee was present at the time I effected this - transfer (the library was unstaffed in the afternoons.) What can I say about an organization so trusting? I would contend that this library was virtually inviting people to steal from it; I simply took them up on the invitation.
Second of all, as this was a Christian conference center, there were, between the members and the association itself, a plethora of Bibles already there. (The place was lousy with Bibles, fer chrissake!) So, in that sort of situation, I was actually relieving them of an unwanted surplus.
And then, third of all, I took the plainest, most down-to-earth Bible. True, it was the Oxford edition of the King James, with good sturdy finely-etched black type; and it had the Apocrypha in the middle between Old and New Testaments. But there were other, no doubt more valuable Bibles on the shelves. For example, there was an obscure 19th century edition with 'an exact and faithful translation' of the original texts. So I turned to Luke and made a comparison of this with the King James version. I leave it to the reader to guess why I made the choice I did:
KING JAMES: 'She wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger.'
NEWER EDITION: 'She wrapped him in bandages and laid him in a stall.'
5. Once I had broken the bibliomaniacal ice, other situations would follow. From my local library I would lift a copy of short stories by Hermann Broch [quasi-obscure German contemporary of Thomas Mann] called (another irony?) The Guiltless. I was attracted to its dust cover, which showed two people, hand in hand, running through a wild landscape. And of course it just happened to fill a gap: I had, in hard cover, the other two Broch novels available in translation.
(Didn't I feel guilt about taking from a library? Of course. But I was able to rationalize it thus: as I was a citizen of that town, I in effect owned a small fraction of each book. So all I was really doing in appropriating books was augmenting my ownership portion a bit.)
From another library I would appropriate a [abridged, regrettably] deluxe edition of Don Quixote illustrated by Salvadore Dali. I was attracted to the handful of paintings [there was also a plethora of sketches], which were [as one would expect from this artist] garish and outlandish and, well, utterly over the top.
(And how, you ask, did I manage to smuggle those things through the electronic detection devises? Actually, I did those things before the advent of said devices. In fact, they were installed precisely to put a stop to people like myself [he said, bragging.] Of course, a few proverbial horses had left the barn by then!
(But shall I confess? I also harbored resentment against the library authorities for installing those things! Yes, I was indignant that they would think me - untrustworthy.)
(Still, I recall at least one attempt on my part to beat those detectors. I had found a lovely little book called Goethe in Italy in the library of a community college at which I was teaching part time. The frontispiece had the most engaging drawing of the young Goethe sporting a broad brimmed hat and sprawling languidly before an exotic landscape. I wanted that book very much! [Indeed, I never saw another copy anywhere.] So I spent an inordinate amount of time frantically attempting to pry (pull, yank, wrest) the magnetic strip from the spine of the book. But to no avail: whoever had inserted that strip knew well the wiles of bibliophiles! (I know, I should have written 'bibliomaniacs', but I couldn't resist the rhyme.)
(I imagine that one could beat the detectors [though, never being present with accomplices {accessories?}, I never tried this] by simply walking through said device while holding the desired book over and outside it. [Would my arms be long enough? Dry runs needed to be undertaken to resolve this issue!] Of course, the attention of the library staff should be diverted as one is pulling this off. [See Appendix 1 for a masterpiece in this genre.])
6. When I was a teacher, books would sort of leech into my own library, as follows: I would bring books home to use as references for my courses. (Sometimes the definition of 'reference' was stretched mighty thin. For example, how could I justify bringing home a volume like Courant & Robbins's What is Mathematics? for which there was no course? Simple: the book 'enhanced my general mathematical erudition', thus 'making me a better teacher.') And at the end of the year when the course was over? I might bring them back to school, but sometimes I wouldn't; after all, they might prove to be useful again! And often they were.
But what does one do when one is going to a new school system? Well, I might return them - but maybe I wouldn't. For, after all, by using them so extensively, haven't I in a sense earned the right to keep them? (Besides, isn't there e statute of limitations which states something about coming into ownership of property you've 'maintained' for a certain number of years?) By such rationales did books drift into my library.
7. A few years later I was teaching music at a high school whose music department had an excellent library. Besides the usual musical songbooks, it contained genuine scores as well as writings by composers themselves. And so for example beside a full score of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde might be found Debussy's polemical tract Monsieur Croche the Dilettante Hater and Berlioz's Memoirs. And many of these were cute little out-of-print hardcover monographs.
One day I noticed that no one had claimed the desk next to the music library. So I immediately moved all my stuff over. And there I would sit, like a nobleman in his baronial manor, surrounded by books I loved and coveted. I would dip into one or another of them on occasion in order to relax after a grueling class. Indeed, it was, for all practical purposes, my library, since none of my colleagues seemed to have much interest in it. And yet I had no desire to transfer it to my own house, especially as it enhanced my life at school so much. So you might say that it functioned as a sort of branch library for me.
I began to feel genuinely protective of that little music library! When I noticed that a colleague had borrowed something from it (a rarity, but still) and then didn't return it in a reasonable amount of time, I would hound them for it (yes, I even threatened fines!) Indeed, I guarded its integrity as a mother dog would guard her young.
Then one day I was told that my contract wouldn't be renewed for the following year. Outwardly, I maintained my devil-may-care attitude (a seasoned faculty member even said I had 'class'.) But inwardly I was furious. I wanted to get back at the institution that had wronged me.
So, integrity of the collection be damned! I plundered that wonderful little library and made many of those scores and treatises by Debussy et al my own. And then, not content with that, I rifled through the main library of that less-than-august institution, and thereby appropriated such niceties as some hardcover editions of books by Marshall McLuhen to complete my own holdings by that author.
(Was I not guilt ridden by these thefts? Please - the word 'theft' is so - blunt! I preferred to think that I helped myself to a small severance package.)
8. Several years after that debacle, I got a job as chair of the math department in a private school. This position included the administration of a significant budget, which I could use to purchase anything of use to the department.
'Anything'?
It did not take me long to realize what sorts of things I wanted to buy. In fact, I grasped immediately that this would allow me to continue practicing my bibliomaniacal ways, but this time through perfectly legitimate means.
What sorts of books did the math department 'need'? By definition (and by some wild coincidence), the very books that I lusted after and craved! (Should I have bought books I didn't like [he asked defensively]?) So every Saturday morning I found myself at the Boston University Bookstore or the MIT COOP, both of which had sizeable math sections. (In particular, I found some nice books on mathematical modeling [or is it 'modelling'? I have books that use both spellings.])
So, for the first time in my career, I was able to create the library of my dreams. As I bought the books, I introduced them to my colleagues at department meetings. That library, I decided, would become my legacy to the department once I retired.
And when I was canned from that job (but not, I hasten to reassure the reader, for suspicious or fraudulent use of the math budget!)? Well then I was able to augment my own home mathematics library with all sorts of wonders I never could have afforded myself. (Did I pillage the library? That is too mild a word, for it implies that I was selective. No - rather, I transferred it whole-hog; for, in a sense, wasn't it 'my' library already?)
But once I had completed that exercise in wholesale hijacking, something changed in me. Perhaps I had reached a saturation point concerning such booknapping. Or perhaps my old disgust with such a silly and stupid enterprise had returned. Whatever the reasons, I never appropriated another book that wasn't my own.
9. An interview with the Morals Police (MP)
MP: So - is this blatant series of admissions in reality a kind of confession?
Me: You may think of it that way if you like. I myself prefer to view it as a sort of primer for the budding bibliomaniac.
MP: And is this brash manifesto to end for you as it did for Alec Guinness in The Lavender Hill Mob - with its protagonist being led away in handcuffs?
Me: Hardly. No search warrants have been issued for my house. No officials have come calling. I seem to have gotten away with all of the above scot free.
MP: In the midst of all the braggadocio and the bravado, is there no - remorse?
Me: Well, yes, it seems that there is a price to be paid for all those shenanigans, and that price is, at the very least, a bad conscience.
MP: Haven't you joked that you sleep soundly at night precisely because you have no conscience?
Me (smiles): I assure you, I do have a conscience!
MP: Ha! It's easy to have a guilty conscience after the fact, but what use is that? One person feels lousy, and (n-1) people are robbed of their books; so everyone is a little more miserable. Why couldn't you have had your self-indulgent attack of conscience before you stole the damn books, thereby saving everyone a lot of heartache?!
Me: True. But another reason (besides the conscience) that I have come to realize that lifting books isn't worth it, is that the book so heisted is somehow not the same in one's own collection as it was originally. It loses that attractiveness, that allure it had when it was forbidden fruit. My favorite books are ones that I purchased.
MP: Oh great. You might just as well have left those books where they were. Or made amends later...
Me: Amends? Well, I recently donated my entire mathematics library (the vast majority of which I purchased by legitimate means) to the math department of a school which treated me well when I taught there. How is that for a start?
MP: Too little too late!
Me: By the way - I never stole (ugh - there, I've said it!) anything other than books. No stereos. No cars. No social security numbers. Not even a pack of gum from the corner store. Nope - I was a bibliomaniac, pure and simple, and that's it. Nothing else particularly interested me - at least not that much.
MP: What do you want - applause?
10. Oh yes - there is one more peril that I need to caution the budding bibliomaniac about: the perforated library identification tool. This pernicious bother will cut the library's name into a page by means of scores of tiny holes. Gone are the simple days of the ink-stamped ID, which could be covered over with Wite-Out, neutralized with that old standby Ink Eradicator, or even erased using a sufficiently abrasive tool. I have thought long and hard about how to counter that unfair one-upmanship on the part of the library!
One rather far-fetched notion I had was to study the process of making paper from wood, thence to fashion a sort of paper 'putty' which would allow one to 'spackle over' that multitude of tiny holes. Such a method might actually work; but it would require much time and effort.
Recently, though, I have hit upon a much simpler solution to this perforation problem: Go to a stationary store and purchase an ink pad and a stamp. The stamp should simply read, in big block letters: DISCARDED.
Appendix 1: A Masterpiece in Diversion
Although this has to do with general kleptomania rather than the particular bibliomania, I include it here for its entertainment value.
When my wife Dorothy was in middle school, her minister father had a church in Newark, NJ. Dorothy's older brother fell in with what then were called 'hoods': toughs with leather jackets and ducks-ass haircuts and taps on their shoes.
A gang of five of these juvenile delinquents (including the brother) set their sights on knocking off the local Five-and-Dime. Were they intent on shoplifting? Hardly - that was small potatoes. Their goal was to rifle the cash register itself.
Two of the hoods were sent into the store to begin with. One wandered to the very back, looking furtive and suspicious and, well, hoodsy. Naturally the store owner gravitated back there as well to keep an eye on him.
The cash register was in the middle of the store, and the second hood took his place right beside it. Wasn't the owner worried that this urban menace would attempt to steal from said register? No. He knew that if the lad depressed even one key, the register would emit a resounding and cheerful 'DING!', thus alerting him to the nefarious attempt.
At that precise moment, the other three hoods entered the store, marching together in lockstep with their taps:
Click! Click! Click! Click! DING! Click! Click!
They divided up the take on the parlor floor of the parsonage.
Appendix 2: The Master of all Bibliomanics
My peccadilloes were child's play compared to those of a fellow who had attended the University of Illinois before my time there.
He began stealing from the Music Library over an extended period of time, as follows: first he pried off the grate from a large air duct on the second floor. Into this cavernous open shaft he then threw various books and scores he had coveted (and, indeed, what better way to assuage the sin of covetousness than to steal the things one desires and make them one's own?) He would then retrieve those goodies from the bottom of the air shaft in the basement at his leisure.
I think it was universally agreed that this person held the record for the sheer volume of his thefts, which numbered in the hundreds. Indeed, it seems clear that he had an enormous, a voracious - indeed, an unquenchable - appetite for books and musical scores.
And not just any old books and scores! One example should suffice to show how discerning he could be as a connoisseur of fine things. Stravinsky had hand written his score to The Rite of Spring in four different colours of ink. The U of I Music Library had purchased a beautifully bound hardcover facsimile of this for at least $100 in the 1950's; and this was one of the multitudinous things he had tossed willy-nilly down into the air shaft.
(But as well, due to the sheer volume of things stolen here, is it not conceivable that this fellow became less selective and began tossing any and every banality he could lay his hands on? That, in fact, his mad goal might have became to eventually steal everything in the Library? After all, if something so absurdly impossible becomes possible, why not try to do it?)
In the face of such - thorough behavior, the word 'theft' seems paltry and anemic indeed. No, we must seek more robust words: we could say that he was looting, sacking, or even ravaging the library.
But I'm afraid that the exploits of this young man went beyond mere bibliomania. For, in his role as poseur, he brought misery upon another person. This outrage indirectly concerned George Hunter.
George Hunter was Professor of Harpsichord at Illinois (I myself studied with him.) A student of the great Ralph Kirkpatrick, he was a dapper gentleman of impeccable taste and bearing. And: he was the soul of discretion.
One day the bibliomaniac (I shall refer to him as 'Biblio' here) was practicing the harpsichord by himself in Hunter's studio (yes, he was one of those high-strung effete individuals who studied that instrument) when there was a knock at the door. It was an undergraduate who had never met the Master. 'Professor Hunter?' asked the student. 'At your service,' replied Biblio with a slight bow. The student asked whether he could audition for him. Biblio stepped aside and motioned elaborately toward the instrument: 'The magnificent Dowd awaits your gentle touch!'
But the student had barely begun to play when Biblio smashed his fist down on that 'magnificent' instrument (thereby probably upsetting its delicacy enough to put it out of tune) and began to rant and rave at the student. He said that the student hadn't even the slightest hint of musicianship; that he was 'a heavy-fisted lout'; and that, if he (Biblio) wanted to massacre Couperin, he would sooner take an ax to the score. He finished by demanding to know what the student's father did. The poor student, hardly able to speak, stammered that he was a pipe-fitter. 'That seems like a good profession for you!' replied Biblio with a sage nod of the head. Then he screamed, 'Get out!' and the student was treated to Biblio's foot on his backside as he lurched out the door.
Well - the various outrageous exploits of this arch-miscreant were eventually found out, and he became persona non grata in the University of Illinois Music Department.
I wish I had known him!
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