Eric Mowery presents: A Life In Books, or The Travel Agent for Those of Us Who Have Passed On

Years ago, my boss bought a collection of books belonging to a local professor and avid traveler. I'm not going to put his name in this blog; however, at Old Editions, his name is synonymous with Collector, and you'd be hard pressed to open up a few books and not find his signature in one of them. Friends of the store have been making comments about it for years, and--while I'm trying to avoid going full-on 'Hallmark' about this--his 'presence' in this store makes sifting through book-after-book a treat.
     If he had actually read all the titles I've found his name in, he would've had to have been a Literary Juggernaut. His name is plastered in scholarly books like The Poetic Image in 6 Genres and also in trashy, throwaways like Candy, and while I marvel at his ability to transcend genres, I'm more impressed with the kind of history he left behind in all the books he'd owned. Allow me to explain.
     Along with a signature, most of his books come with a date and a location. The man traveled. I mean TRAVELED, and on those long trips he'd purchase books to keep him entertained. Even without the locations, the ticket stubs--used as bookmarks--tell me where he'd been. If I wanted to, I could sit down and map out most of this man's life just through the things that he read...

...and I'm completely blow away by this.

There are days when I feel like a voyeur, privy to information that I'm not supposed to know.

There are days when my mind runs rampant and I imagine him saving lives (or taking them) in the cities that he visited.

Sometimes I love seeing his name because it feels like we have similar tastes (his name is in all the F. Scott Fitzgerald Biographies we have)

Sometimes I hate seeing his name because I feel like he was just 'collecting' books and not reading them (His name is in every scandalous Ted Kennedy book we have. We have many.)

And sometimes I just get depressed. This is the inevitable path for all my books. And, as much as I enjoy looking through his collection, it makes me sick to think that one day there may be a cranky, twenty-something sifting through all my old comics* and pondering the life I led. However, such a feeling isn't going to make me stop buying the books I love. I would have stopped a long time ago. 

    And for all of my hang-ups, there's one thing I can't deny: Since I've begun working here I have sold countless scores of his books. I've sold them to local customers, I've sold them at trade shows in different states, and I've even mailed some of them to different parts of the world. And while the people buying them may not understand what the location and date symbolize, I do: That even in death, this man is still traveling with all of his books.   

And I could probably write a book about that.  

Eeeeeeeppppppiiiiiiccccccc.

     The accompanying picture is a Travel Coupon celebrating the Collector's 14 years of traveling via Greyhound Bus. I found this tucked away inside of a Book Club Edition of Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions. 

Heartbreaking or Heartwarming? Little bit of both?

*Well, not my comics. I'll probably be buried with those.