Ivory Tower-itis

As I started reading this article by Thomas Benton on the death of secondhand bookstores, my first thought was, "Cambridge has the best used bookstores! That's where I always go. What's he talking about?" Then I realized that he hadn't said "Cambridge", only "in the vicinity of Harvard". Aaah! Well, that's different. 'Tis a pity that Harvard has so few used bookstores in its vicinity.

As I continued to read, the back part of my brain that's always categorizing and labelling told me this was one of those opinion pieces heavy on the nostalgia, though accepting of the fact that the world changes. Then I realized when I got to the end, that it was not nostalgic or accepting, but calling for change! A rallying of the universities to save the rapidly disappearing used bookstores!

Oh! See I was mistaken. When I read the author's statement that "Online bookstores are wonderfully convenient, particularly now that I live far from a major city. These days, I can obtain nearly any book I want, including rarities, on relatively short notice" I thought he was waxing nostalgic but only that. I guess I didn't take the "live far from a major city" part seriously since he'd already indicated that when he was at Harvard, "Two or three times a year, my long-suffering wife and I would take to the road in a rented car, traveling north to Gloucester and Newburyport in Massachusetts, Exeter and Portsmouth in New Hampshire, and Portland in Maine (being sure not to miss the Douglas N. Harding rare-book warehouse on Route 1 near Wells)" which seemed to indicate that he wasn't averse to travelling to obtain books. It also seems it paid off: "I probably acquired more than 2,000 books -- scholarly and antiquarian -- by the time I finished graduate school seven years later."

Imagine my surprise at the end when he writes, "If influential and wealthy people -- perhaps the kind who collect books themselves -- can be convinced of the importance of secondhand bookstores to an academic community, perhaps money could be found to subsidize their continuing existence in places such as Cambridge" Seems like a plan, or at the least a proposal.

I wonder who those influential book collectors might be? Hmmmm?