![]() ![]() This modification proved effective over several years. This did not alter the original scheme in any way at all: only instead of talking about 361 books, it was decided that the sufficient library was ideally made up of 361 authors, whether they had written a slender opuscule or enough to fill a truck. ![]() Whence it was adjudged that this or that recently acquired novel by this or that English-language novelist of the second half of the 19th century could not logically count as a new work X but as a work Z belonging to a series under construction: the set T of all the novels written by the aforesaid novelist (and God knows there are some!). First, a volume was to be seen as counting as one (1) book even if it contained three (3) novels (or collections of poems, essays, etc.) from which it was deduced that three (3) or four (4) or n (n) novels by the same author counted (implicitly) as one (1) volume by that author, as fragments not yet brought together but ineluctably bringable together in a Collected Works. The plan was as follows: having attained, by addition or subtraction, and starting from a given number n of books, the number K = 361, deemed as corresponding to a library-if not an ideal then at least a sufficient library-he would undertake to acquire on a permanent basis a new book X only after having eliminated (by giving away, throwing out, selling, or any other appropriate means) an old book Z, so that the total number K of works should remain constant and equal to 361:Īs it evolved, this seductive scheme came up against predictable obstacles for which the unavoidable solutions were found. One of my friends had the idea one day of stopping his library at 361 books. Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books 1 Georges PerecĮvery library 2 answers a twofold need, which is often also a twofold obsession: that of conserving certain objects (books) and that of organizing them in certain ways. ![]()
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