Word: shelvesful
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THE STUDENT, who has no fixed place of residence, soon learns what a burden erudition is. Obligated, several times a year, to transport his entire library from one apartment to another, he develops the habit of regarding it as an object, like furniture, to be packed up, unused and unread...
Others, which remain unread, serve a less concrete, though no less estimatble purpose: the well-known two-volume translation of La Recherche du Temps Perdu, issued in 1934, has been on my parents' shelves since is was published. When I reached an age where it was intolerable not to have...
Still, the character of a work alters through time; it appears in successive eras as a new text, to be read and validated. Our object is to pore over this literature and revive in in our time, to deposit our sensations, which are themselves imbued with a specific social resonance...
MY LIBRARY, then, exhibits a rather unusual number of books by Delmore Schwartz and Issac Rosenfeld, two writers who possess reputations even though their works are not read. Schwartz's unprocurable volumes are lined up on the shelves, all seven of them borrowed from Widener Library and long over-due...
In Rosenfeld's case, it is important to own the complete oeuvre, since it comprises no more than three texts, none of which are ever available. Because he didn't live long enough to write or publish all that he could have, these volumes reside on the shelves like orphans...