Letting Go

My mission has me breaking a sweat in a storage unit near Houston, Texas with air-conditioning set on survival, not comfort.  I’m here to meet a university special collections librarian who has expressed interest in a unique biblio-archive, and I want to find it a home.   I’ve rescued the archive from a highly probable shredder / recycle bin.  The archive consists of the papers of rare book and manuscript appraiser John R. Payne.  Payne’s first career was as a rare book librarian, bibliographer, and administrator at the Harry Ransom Center, UT-Austin from 1969-1985.  He then went on his own as a full-time appraiser.  Over the course of his almost forty years of business he rose to the top of the profession, handling around 1,000 appraisals for private individuals and institutions.  He appraised not only rare books, but archives, documents, and photographs. 

John is a close friend and mentor.  I took a class on rare books with him while still a pup in library school at UT ca. 1990.  I assisted him with his appraisal business. I provided input and wrote the introduction to his magnum opus / labor of love Great Catalogues by Master Booksellers (2017).   My wife and I visited him and his wife Ann in Austin regularly for over two decades.  Their lifestyle in later years was insular outside of travel for work and family gatherings.  They were enthusiastic to see us -- our energetic visits filled with biblio-news and discussions of the rare book world.   But that is past now.  Ann has died and John is in a memory care facility with severe dementia.   He doesn’t remember Ann is gone for good, and he waits for her return.

These melancholy thoughts are interrupted by a sudden, mysterious loud pop coming from the attic which is adjacent to my office upstairs.  Alarmed, I enter the attic stuffed full of boxes of bookseller catalogues, reading copies, and other ephemera.  Nothing seems amiss.  Quiet and peaceful the items slumber, none admitting wrongdoing.  Not long after, I’m in the garage below the attic. I let out a favored expletive, one reserved for special occasions.  An attic joist has cracked under the weight of my boxes above and a gaping, fragmented section of sheetrock is dangling precariously over my near fine 2007 Chrysler 300 SRT 8.  There’s a coating of sheetrock dust on the hood.  My response time beats any seasoned NASCAR pit crew, and I have my baby backed out of the garage pronto.  (Who knew you could burn rubber in reverse?)

I grab a ladder and survey the damage up close.  A wasp buzzes me, already looking to form a new home in the open ceiling cavity.  The joist will need to be replaced and the sheetrock fixed but not today.  I carefully rearrange the boxes in the attic to relieve the pressure, exhale, select a craft beer from the beer fridge, and get back to writing.  Payne’s situation has me contemplating the challenge of eventually dispersing one’s library / archive.  This now weighs even more heavily upon my mind after the attic incident.

All who have determinedly and perhaps obsessively built a library face the challenge of finding a future custodian(s).  If an archive is involved another layer of complexity is added.    Our instinct for collecting is usually associated with the urge to preserve what has been collected, a private hope for immortality, or at least a memorial of the effort.  In most cases, an adequate catalogue is a realistic goal, even if the physical objects are dispersed to seed other collectors’ or institutions’ pursuits.  Donations, private sales, auctions, and dealers all come into play.  Not infrequently, dispersal plans are simply ignored by the collector. The decisions are then left to well-meaning but hapless family members or the whim of the book gods. 

Payne made no formal arrangements for his reference library and a gathering of collectible books focusing on T.E. Lawrence, fine bindings, and important bookseller catalogues.  Informally, he had told me he wanted to keep the catalogues together because they were the basis of his book. The rest of the library would be offered to his family first, but he provided no further guidance, and his archive was not mentioned at all.  By chance or serendipity, his daughter discovered a note by Payne that led her to me after his condition worsened.  I coordinated gratis the sale of his collectible books to a reputable bookman, and I acquired the catalogue collection and the core of the reference library.  The family was going to shred the business archive, but I realized its importance as a unique gathering with many research opportunities including provenance studies, private libraries, history of the book, history of collectors, history of antiquarian bookselling, history of libraries, economics of the book trade, the transition of material from private to public institutions, and more.  The sheer bulk of sixty-five boxes caused the first few institutions approached to hesitate, even when offered as a gift by the family with no strings attached.   Dispersal in this case has been stressful for all involved.  

Then there is my friend Mike Cox, noted and prolific author of books on Texas history, journalist, bibliophile, and bookseller in his earlier days.  His recent work Book Hunter: How to Collect Books, Sell Them, and One Day Let Them Go (2022), is a delightful memoir filled with his adventures and advice for the book collector.  He addresses the “letting go” part of his collecting with a blend of humor, realism, and pathos.  You’ll enjoy his “book collector’s prayer”: “Oh, Lord, when I die, please don’t let my wife sell my books for what I told her I paid for them.”

Cox recounts, after many frustrating years of effort, finding a home for his 6,000 volume Texana library via donation to the San Marcos Public Library in central Texas.  The solution was serendipitous: the library had a bond issue pass, was expanding the facilities, and were able to devote a new separate room to his collection christened the “Mike Cox Texas Collection.” Cox writes,

When I first began delivering books to San Marcos, each box going out the door seemed like a little bit of me going away. I mourned the loss of each book, even though intellectually I knew I would always have preferred access to them at the library.

So, while I’ve gotten a measure of peace in finding a willing recipient for my Texas collection, the psychological fallout has had a longer shelf life. The overriding issue, of course, is that disposing of my books is more than the ending of a chapter. It’s the beginning of the ending of MY ‘book’. . .

At least I know that my books will live on as I assembled them. I can be further pleased that they will be of benefit to future researchers, from genealogists and students to writers and historians.

Nicole and I attend the dedication ceremony of Cox’s library.  Mike and his family and many friends are there.  A stirring speech by Dr. Arro Smith of the library expresses their appreciation of the collection.  An assortment of other speakers round out the occasion.  There is even a book-themed cake to replenish our sugar levels.  We give hearty congratulations to Mike, and we step aside for a line of other well-wishers.  I watch from a distance, distracted somewhat by his books on long shelves in front of me, irresistibly pulling a few titles of interest, wondering why I hadn’t talked him out of a few before his donation.  But then I see him overwhelmed with emotion, a joyous emotion, a tipping point reached, and his tears begin to well up, and I have to look away, for I feel a sympathetic stirring, and Nicole and I soon make a soft exit.

I have no pontifical advice on the eventual dispersal of your library.  There are too many variables.  But let my thoughts stir your thoughts. Barring a disaster, your books will outlive you, and as much effort as you have put into gathering them, enjoying them, and caring for them, they also deserve a quiet moment or two in contemplation of their future.  

This essay first appeared in my column in the FABS Journal, Fall 2024.