Archives' stacks - photo by flickr.com user dolescum, CC-licensed
Not every writer’s personal papers end up preserved forever in a library or archive.
The personal library of US novelist David Markson has found its way into a bookshop. Markson’s heavily annotated hardcovers are scattered among the shop’s stock, sorted by subject and all available for sale.
“There are too many inscribed books for any one civilian to buy; most have notes, check marks, underlined passages. I’d guess that a few of them – especially the more heavily annotated ones – belong in a proper archive. And yet, here they are: hundreds of hardbacks …, some of them with price tags covering Markson’s name, as if the buyers were afraid that his signature would somehow diminish their value.”
Bookshop owner Fred Bass said, “David wanted the books recirculated at the Strand. And really, if you face it, a university library, what are they going to do with them? They end up storing them. I think he realized that. This way, his books are in circulation.”
