It’s the autumn of 1978 and I’ve just moved into a flat in Liverpool. A new friend is watching while I unpack my books. After sorting them by genre (novels, poetry, plays, biography, criticism, history), I start to alphabetize the fiction by the authors’ last names.
At which point Clare tilts her head of flame-colored hair to one side and says: “You’re an order out of chaos person, aren’t you.”
Well, yes. I don’t trust inanimate objects. I think they get up to all kinds of mischief when my back is turned. Which would be okay if I were getting up to mischief myself, but I don’t have time. I’m too busy keeping track of the inanimates.
Socks de-materialize in my dryer. Pens get beamed up to other planets. Death-wish dishes bang themselves against the sink and break while being washed. I’ve lost at least two jackets because they decided to go home from a restaurant with someone else.
The problem with socks, pens, dishes, etc. is that I use them frequently and have to keep moving them about. But books are different. They’re on their shelves most of the time, so if I sort and alphabetize them I will always know where to find them.
Fruitful adjacencies
My system creates some odd bookfellows, especially in biography. Beloved children’s author Beverly Cleary is probably fine sitting next to Quentin Crisp. The girl from Yamhill might seem a world away from the flamboyant Naked Civil Servant, but both were rebels from an early age, both are funny, and both, in Mr. Crisp’s words, could never be anything but themselves.
I’d love to ask Alan Bennett how he feels about being flanked by the Beatles and Vera Brittain. For that matter, I’d like to ask Jane Austen what it’s like being next to the Beatles. Is there any cross-pollination going on?
Darcy to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice (new edition): “In vain have I struggled. It will not do … You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you, yeah, yeah, yeah!” Note in the margin in Jane’s handwriting: “A most judicious supplement, the repetition adding emphasis to the ardour of Darcy’s declaration.”
And a new Beatles song to the tune of “Penny Lane”: “In Mansfield Park there is a girl of stern morality, who doesn’t like the thought of acting in a play … ” And here’s another one: “We all live near the town of Meryton, the town of Meryton, the town of Meryton … ”
In the bookcase that holds my fiction, T.H. White’s great book The Once and Future King cuddles up to the collected oeuvre of P.G. Wodehouse. King Pellinore will fit right in at Totleigh Towers, home of Sir Watkyn Bassett (“Charming fellah. Never met him in me life”) while Jeeves shimmers over to Gramarye to put Mordred in his place.
Of course, a haphazard shelving method will also create some fruitful adjacencies, if that is the word I’m grasping for (Wodehouse’s style is infecting me now). If you have any odd couplings you’d like to share, please leave a reply below.
Time now to take a photo to illustrate this post. I’ll just get my camera … hmm. Now where … it was in this drawer yesterday …
