Getting Rid of (Gasp!) Books

Breaking a Lifelong Taboo

Nu, after turning off the radio fifteen minutes into the debate, I thought: I’d elect a shoe instead of Trump. I’d elect a shoe with a hole in its sole instead of a man with no soul.

But that’s not what I want to write about.

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When I was a kid, my parents had about 2,000 books on the shelves of our apartment, including titles that were ubiquitous in communist Jewish households in the 1950s: Seven Plays by Bertolt Brecht, John Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World, Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy, J.D. Bernal’s Science in History, and Yuri Suhl’s They Fought Back, among others.

My father always had a book or a magazine in front of his face and a wreath of cigarette smoke over his head. Me, I was less interested in reading than in watching “Mighty Joe Young” for the twentieth time on “Million Dollar Movie.” Eventually, though, I got bitten by the bug, although I remain far less devoted to books than Dad was.

When my mother dissolved their second apartment fifteen years or so after his death in 1981, I tried to sell their precious collection, but I found very limited interest among used bookstores, and I was quite intimidated by the thought of having to shlep them on the subway or by car to gain a few pennies. The Strand in New York City took a few volumes, and that was it. Even Goodwill and the Salvation Army turned me down. It wasn’t because of my parents’ politics — I never got far enough to have the titles surveyed — it was simply that books themselves seemed to be going out of style, bound for the attic instead of the shelf.

Another two decades passed, and I woke up one morning staring at my own bookshelves and realizing that the only time I put a hand on most of my library was with a dust rag. Yes, I had my active Judaica shelves, as I was in the midst of editing Jewish Currents, plus I had a shelf or two of books that I had reviewed in the magazine or that I regularly returned to for information or inspiration. As for my other volumes, in truth, I had either read them or hadn’t and never would.

The taboo with which I’d been raised — that you can’t discard books, books are alive, books are precious — burst like a soap bubble that morning. Still, I couldn’t consign them to the landfill, so I got on the telephone with Half Moon Books in Kingston, NY. One of the proprietors lived only a couple of miles from me, so I invited her over and prepared for the visit by filling up four large plastic tubs with my books.

Within five minutes of her arrival, she came to me with a single volume in hand, and offered me $350 for it. Holy cow! It was a first edition, she said, of Kerouac’s On the Road.

I argued that the book had two dates on its copyright page — I had checked the night before, as the book had just come to me from my aged mother-in-law and was new to my shelves — but the dealer insisted that one of the two dates had to do with magazine publication, and that the book was a real first edition. I thanked her for her honesty and let her take away all four plastic tubs, including the Kerouac, for $400 plus a standing 10 percent discount at her store. Within a month she had sold the first edition for $1,000, and we were both happy.

Among the books I still hold onto today are truly aged hardcovers, some of them signed by whoever had given them to my parents. These are antiques, beautiful objects, interesting to handle as well as to read. Among them is a recent acquisition: After I wrote here about Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, which I had read in my adolescence as often as I watched “Might Joe Young,” a friend gave me a very old edition as a birthday gift. Unlike my experiences with most of the old literature that I revisit, Black Beauty was as compelling and delightful as I remembered. Wikipedia says it’s the sixth best-selling book in the English language, and it served the be-kind-to-animals movement the way Uncle Tom’s Cabin served the abolitionist movement, as a call to conscience.

Meanwhile, Half Moon Books is still open, and I periodically exercise my 10%-off rights, but I’m reading most of my books on a Kindle these days, so my shelves remain far less crowded than they were. I won’t spend time raving about the advantages of a Kindle over a hardcover for fear of assassination, but in truth, I’ve very rarely missed any of the books I’ve sold or (gasp!) thrown away, nor have I, in this lonely, overstocked world of ours, been unable to buy or borrow the two or three volumes that I’ve really wanted to see again. My house (and attic) still contain scores of books, and as both a writer and a reader I am still far more engaged with print than with online texts — but the taboo about getting rid of books no longer hovers over my conscience.

Next I should probably start culling my CDs . . .