Bibliomania

Bibliomania: Irrational, incurable but not serious except for those trapped in the stacks.

If madness has a method, if the afflicted person has a choice however narrow, bibliomania, or the unexpectedly massive involvement with books, could be recommended. It is benign, doesn't require expensive medication, is usually not detrimental to physical health, and doesn't keep family and neighbors up all night.

It's not even noted much, eccentrics hidden amidst the much larger crowd of bibliophiles. One, much as the other, totes books, wears glasses, walks with a slouch eyes focused into the abstract distance of ideas, histories and astonishing events.

But he can be sorted out by his works, for he is surrounded by books, buried in books. Books, books, books, day and night. He even reads books in the time he can spare from reviewing, caressing, cleaning, repairing, and going out for more. Always more.

Except for the madness there is no reason. The number accumulated is well beyond any sensible rational purpose.

That is the first defense, the resistance to insight, the discovery of a cover, of an ostensible purpose. The librarian, the bookdealer, the author, the specialist collector: All ideal occupations for this kind of maniac. Who would dare judge such useful people irrational?

A disease invisible but unmanaged. A librarian at a large research library in midtown Manhattan goes home at night to a frame house in Brooklyn that creaks with the weight of his private collection, the rafters so bent they require shoring. An author falls into the habit of borrowing but not returning public library books. The illegal collection becoming so large he has to rent another apartment to house it. A retired baseball player fights a street mugger not to save his money but to protect his bag of thrift store books.

Can it be helped? It appears beyond control, else it wouldn't be so insane.

Perhaps a cult movement on the order of AA: We could call it BB, Benighted Bibliomaniacs.

'I am holding thousands of books', the confessee would say to his peers assembled, 'Excuses aside, I must be a bibliomaniac.'

Further reading:

• Jackson, Holbrook. ANATOMY OF BIBLIOMANIA. It's been reprinted so there are a lot of copies around. Viewpoint is literary and anecdotal and not psychological.
• Muensterberger, Werner. COLLECTING: An Unruly Passion. Psychological Perspectives. By Pychiatrist/ Psychoanalyst. About collectors in general of which bibliomaniacs are a part. Material doesn't fit together well, but there are a lot of good case studies.
• Canetti, Elias. THE TOWER OF BABEL. A novel translated from the German, where it was know as 'Die Blendung'. In England it was published as 'Auto Da Fe.' One review of it was entitled 'When a bookworm goes berserk.' An unfortunate marriage and the material world invades the quiet precinct of a scholar-book collector and his library.

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Alvin Katz copyright 2000