Diary: Sven Birkerts, Catalogue

Too tired to read, but too jangled yet for easy sleep, I brought an old Lame Duck Books catalogue to bed last night. Wherein I found two inset images on facing pages, one of the front cover of Walter Benjamin’s Einbahnstrasse (One Way Street) (Berlin, 1928, $8,500) and the other the original cover of his Habilitationsschrift, or PhD thesis, the “Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels,” “The Origin of German Tragic Drama,” (Berlin, 1928, $6,500)—I had to sit up and adjust my glasses for a clearer look. Then, later, a full-page color reproduction of a manuscript page by Jorge Luis Borges (from an essay on Francisco de Quevedo), the whole manuscript on offer for $125,000. Trust me, I could keep listing. There is distinct pleasure for me in this nomenclature, these details: “Holograph manuscript, nine small quarto sheets.” Not that I could—or would—ever buy such a thing, and not that I care for the fine points of the items being described. What I care for is the fact of description. But that’s not all of it either, no. It matters to me that there is a forum, a milieu—however limited—within which these particulars matter, and I both despise and celebrate the extravagance of these market valuations. Despise because these books and manuscripts are priced for rare-books libraries and collectors, who consider these remnants not as themselves, but as components of their larger holding, which has value according to its comprehensiveness. God forbid someone should buy any of these offerings to stroke its pages and get a proximate high from its greatness or rarity! No, for some of the biggest buyers these objects are like corn futures.