book collecting is only meaningful if it’s personal,” Oscar clarified. “If it’s just another way of accumulating wealth instead of for the books themselves it isn’t right. Collectors are trying to protect themselves. To separate themselves. It’s a hierarchy.
Yes, surprising, isn’t it?” he said. . . . “You’d think everyone would ask for what they want and there’d be hundreds of tailors catering to specification. But most people don’t know what they want.
And when I think of my few acquisitions, I have to admit how fiercely the autodidact struggles for her education, and how incomplete that education remains. How illusory is any accumulation of knowledge!
