There it stood on a sale table, all eleven volumes lined up tight and orderly as cadets on parade, Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization.
The Friends of the Library had slapped a price tag on Volume IV.
$4.
Surely, I thought, the Friends intended four dollars per volume. When I checked with the cashier, however, she shook her head. Four bucks, and the Durants, all eleven of them, could be mine.
At my favorite coffee shop, a 16-ounce Ethiopian costs $4.10, including tax. At my local grocery store, a rotisserie-cooked whole chicken goes for $4.99. At the Dollar Store north of town, I can plunk down four George Washingtons for bubble gum and enslave an entire tribe of grandchildren for a week or more.
The Friends of the Library had slapped a price tag on Volume IV.
$4.
Surely, I thought, the Friends intended four dollars per volume. When I checked with the cashier, however, she shook her head. Four bucks, and the Durants, all eleven of them, could be mine.
At my favorite coffee shop, a 16-ounce Ethiopian costs $4.10, including tax. At my local grocery store, a rotisserie-cooked whole chicken goes for $4.99. At the Dollar Store north of town, I can plunk down four George Washingtons for bubble gum and enslave an entire tribe of grandchildren for a week or more.
Will Durant, joined later by his wife Ariel, spent over forty years creating this history. The Story of Civilization became a best seller. Book clubs once offered this set at a low price as an enticement for membership, and in 1968 Volume X, Rousseau and Revolution, won the Pulitzer for General Nonfiction.
Now there it sat, a life’s work in all its faded glory, pathetic and forlorn as an evicted widow, each hefty volume costing less than 37 cents.
It was deplorable.
It was atrocious.
It was irresistible.
When you are crazy about books, and a deal like this one crosses your path, you acquire at once those symptoms commonly associated with love at first sight or the onset of influenza. Your blood pressure blossoms, your face become flushed, your palms dampen, and your brain races like a NASCAR driver on the final lap.
Past experience reveals only two possible cures for such book lust: the slow cure, where you muster your resolve and walk away, shoulders slumped, hands in your pockets, pursued for hours or even days with snuffling pangs of conscience, another brick added to your wheelbarrow of regrets, or the quick cure, where you stuff those books into the truck of your car and drive like the wind.
In this case, I wanted the quick cure. There was, however, one major complication.
For more than a quarter of a century, a set of the Durant histories, also purchased at a Friends sale, has decorated my bookshelves. I say decorated because I so rarely open them. They served as an infrequent source of reference during my teaching days, and on rare occasions a few minutes spent with “Caesar and Christ” or “The Age of Voltaire” have provided some diversion and entertainment.
Otherwise, nada.
Given that lethargic track record, I couldn’t justify giving up another 23” of shelf space for Will and Ariel. That price of four dollars was a bucket of gasoline thrown onto the match head of my desire, but if I took home The Story of Civilization for myself, I’d look like a maniac, even to the man in the glass.
For most of us, rationalization comes as easily as crossing a country road, and so it was with me. As I stood guard over the Durants, I recollected that my good friend John had recently told me how much he enjoyed reading non-fiction these days, his tastes having shifted from novels to biographies and histories.
It took me two trips to carry Will and Ariel to the cashier’s desk.
There you go, John, I thought as I handed over five singles, kicking in an extra buck for the Friends. That should give you enough reading for a few years.
After packing the books—one large box, one small—and wrapping the boxes in holiday paper, I presented the collection as an early Christmas gift to John, who was delighted and will, I suspect, use the books as have I all these years, as dippers, that is, as volumes to be opened now and again, perused, and returned to the shelf until the urge again strikes to learn something about the wisdom of Confucius, the conversion of Constantine, or the beheading of Marie Antoinette.
It was a fine gift, but with unforeseen and possibly dreadful consequences.
Here is what happened: For the next few days, each time I passed my own set of Durants, they caught my eye, slowing my pace and demanding my attention like that Sunday afternoon stranger whose striking demeanor intrudes, however briefly, on our sidewalk peregrinations.
A crazy idea stole over me. Suppose, I wondered, I read this collection in its entirety? Suppose instead of dipping, I opened Volume I to page one and read the entire set cover to cover, making some notes as my journey progressed?
I felt like a novice climber contemplating Everest. Could I tackle such a mountain of words? And more importantly, why would I want to?
The mountain is formidable. The Story of Civilization, an admirable title, by the way, promising narrative as well as history, weighs in at a hefty 36.6 pounds. Excluding the bibliographical notes, the footnotes, and the indices at the end of each volume, The Story of Civilization runs to 8,945 pages.
Suppose I ascended this mountain by reading 100 pages each week? With time given to note taking, that task would require three to four hours a week at most.
I did the math. At 100 pages a week, the climb would take me 89.45 weeks, or about twenty months.
Daunting, yes. But not impossible.
Next time: More on the mountain
Now there it sat, a life’s work in all its faded glory, pathetic and forlorn as an evicted widow, each hefty volume costing less than 37 cents.
It was deplorable.
It was atrocious.
It was irresistible.
When you are crazy about books, and a deal like this one crosses your path, you acquire at once those symptoms commonly associated with love at first sight or the onset of influenza. Your blood pressure blossoms, your face become flushed, your palms dampen, and your brain races like a NASCAR driver on the final lap.
Past experience reveals only two possible cures for such book lust: the slow cure, where you muster your resolve and walk away, shoulders slumped, hands in your pockets, pursued for hours or even days with snuffling pangs of conscience, another brick added to your wheelbarrow of regrets, or the quick cure, where you stuff those books into the truck of your car and drive like the wind.
In this case, I wanted the quick cure. There was, however, one major complication.
For more than a quarter of a century, a set of the Durant histories, also purchased at a Friends sale, has decorated my bookshelves. I say decorated because I so rarely open them. They served as an infrequent source of reference during my teaching days, and on rare occasions a few minutes spent with “Caesar and Christ” or “The Age of Voltaire” have provided some diversion and entertainment.
Otherwise, nada.
Given that lethargic track record, I couldn’t justify giving up another 23” of shelf space for Will and Ariel. That price of four dollars was a bucket of gasoline thrown onto the match head of my desire, but if I took home The Story of Civilization for myself, I’d look like a maniac, even to the man in the glass.
For most of us, rationalization comes as easily as crossing a country road, and so it was with me. As I stood guard over the Durants, I recollected that my good friend John had recently told me how much he enjoyed reading non-fiction these days, his tastes having shifted from novels to biographies and histories.
It took me two trips to carry Will and Ariel to the cashier’s desk.
There you go, John, I thought as I handed over five singles, kicking in an extra buck for the Friends. That should give you enough reading for a few years.
After packing the books—one large box, one small—and wrapping the boxes in holiday paper, I presented the collection as an early Christmas gift to John, who was delighted and will, I suspect, use the books as have I all these years, as dippers, that is, as volumes to be opened now and again, perused, and returned to the shelf until the urge again strikes to learn something about the wisdom of Confucius, the conversion of Constantine, or the beheading of Marie Antoinette.
It was a fine gift, but with unforeseen and possibly dreadful consequences.
Here is what happened: For the next few days, each time I passed my own set of Durants, they caught my eye, slowing my pace and demanding my attention like that Sunday afternoon stranger whose striking demeanor intrudes, however briefly, on our sidewalk peregrinations.
A crazy idea stole over me. Suppose, I wondered, I read this collection in its entirety? Suppose instead of dipping, I opened Volume I to page one and read the entire set cover to cover, making some notes as my journey progressed?
I felt like a novice climber contemplating Everest. Could I tackle such a mountain of words? And more importantly, why would I want to?
The mountain is formidable. The Story of Civilization, an admirable title, by the way, promising narrative as well as history, weighs in at a hefty 36.6 pounds. Excluding the bibliographical notes, the footnotes, and the indices at the end of each volume, The Story of Civilization runs to 8,945 pages.
Suppose I ascended this mountain by reading 100 pages each week? With time given to note taking, that task would require three to four hours a week at most.
I did the math. At 100 pages a week, the climb would take me 89.45 weeks, or about twenty months.
Daunting, yes. But not impossible.
Next time: More on the mountain