At this point, I’ve given up on the alphabet–that tried and true system of ordering and organizing the printed word.
A rushed move to a new apartment made it impossible to organize the books by author, genre, or even physical size. They were simply tossed into boxes along with old lunch pails and yellowing term papers. The rushing continues with the unpacking. All these cardboard boxes have a way of crowding the house, and so the books just have to go on the shelf–no careful arrangement, no debates over titles and subtitles, pen names and real names.
And so we have here a shelf of disrespect and displacement.
–A volume of Post Secrets lives right next to The Yale Shakespeare. Both volumes are gifts; both think a great deal of themselves.
–A tatttered (and unread) copy of Roots fits uncomfortably between the Shakespeare and another gift book about sassy ancient women.
–The books by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are only on the top shelf because they have hardcovers. However, I treat them well. While peanut butter sandwich crumbs may very well live between the pages of The Yale Shakespeare, these books don’t even have creases on their spines.
–Yes, those are paperback romance novels (and The Princess Bride) wedged between Our Bodies, Ourselves and a book on black sexual politics. And, yes, that is a book on the philosophy of “South Park” living next to the textbooks I’ve used for composition classes.
I can’t shake the suspicion that some authors would not appreciate their work sharing tight quarters with a Spanish dictionary or a dream encyclopedia. And this suspicion undoubtedly comes from a lifetime of understanding the hierarchy of books. Bibles were never to touch the floor. African-American authors preceded their white contemporaries. Ancient texts belonged on the bottom shelves, where they provided a foundation along with the thick Russian texts. And once those categories were firmly established, the alphabet took over–Fitzgerald before Hemingway, Melville before Morrison, Bishop before Capote, DuBois before Johnson, Plato before Sophocles.
Perhaps, this arrangement shouldn’t feel wrong. These are, after all, my books. If I didn’t want them, if I weren’t proud of each and every one of them in some way, then they wouldn’t have survived the packing. Maybe it’s time to remove bookshelf privilege from Shakespeare and find the wisdom and truth in The Greek Tycoon’s Defiant Bride on the top shelf there. Maybe it’s time for a new order.