From the Storage Unit

++My Storage Unit is no more. The 10 foot by 30 foot behemoth has been emptied by the sale of over 8,000 books and the shredding of another twenty some boxes of records. Now it is reduced to a ten by ten with actual walk-in room.

++But now is the bitter end. I'm selling all but a core of my home library. This presents a dilemma since I recovered a whole art library I forgot I had in the storage unit, having sold the last one, and I am embarrassed by the logical choices of my ultimate core library. The reason is that the ultimate choices are essentially volumes I read in high school and college with only a few from the following years.

++In poetry, all of John Ashbery is saved,all of Mary Oliver (a later love),all of Robert Lowell,all of Dante, , Gary Snyder,Allen Ginsberg, Pound's Cantos,all of Shakespeare. T.S. Eliot goes.William Carlos Williams is iffy right now.

++Among novels,select J.G. Ballard, multiple copies, including my autographed Atrocity Exhibition,key Bill Burroughs,key Jack Kerouac,all of Faulkner, most of Hemingway,key Peter Matthiesson,James Ellroy,Raymond Chandler,Henning Mankell,John LeCarre. Strangely enough,all my Norman Mailer goes even though I loved reading him for years. Only Gore Vidal's essays stay even though I loved reading him for years. All my Ward Just, whom I love dearly but never re-read. Extensive Melville and Stephen Crane stay. Key Philip Dick stay.

++Plays--All of Beckett, all of Angus Wilson,all of Tennesse Williams, all of Eugene O'Neill. But Tom Stoppard, whom I've met, goes. Arthur Miller goes.

++Philosophers--++All of Albert Camus, including my high school versions of the Stranger and the Myth of Sisyphus, stays, Jean Paul Sartre's Portraits and War Diaries and Being and Nothingness, stays. Only a few of Hannah Arendt stays. We're talking complete when I say few or select stay. All of William James stays as does the remains of Charles Pierce. I sold my  detailed Charles Pierce library last month.

++ART Library. Rock Art volumes stay but extensive library to be sold, Joan Mitchell,Agnes Martin, Jackson Pollack,Mark Rothko,Helen Frankenthaler,Morris Louis,William DeKooning, Wolf Kahn,Pat Steir, Cy Twombley,Winslow Homer,Thomas Eakins,Matisse all stay. 

++Political. It is really amazing how extensive a political library I have had but how few I want to keep. All Bill Clinton went, Theodore Roosevelt and his era gone,Richard Nixon ( an extensive library on everything about the man) and Lyndon Johnson gone. I'm only keeping books on the radical Left since the late 19th century. I am going into another phase where politics seems less important to me personally and it would be more fruitful for me to talk to someone about Agnes Martin.

++It is interesting to see how my priorities fall after these many decades. Art comes first, music comes second,poetry third,literature fourth,mystery fiction fifth,philosophers sixth and politics last.

Now the object is to boil this down to 1,000 volumes after once owning a library of 12,000.