We learn this about a book editor for the New York Times, from his obituary in that paper, after his September 20, 2013, death.
Bruckner wrote about bibliomania for that paper in 1982:
Two years ago, needing to get rid of 600 volumes, I decided to sell duplicates....Who needs two sets of Goethe in six volumes? But I’d made different notes in each set: no sale.....I did cull out duplicates from thousands of pieces of poetry I had bought since the 1950s — broadsides, pamphlets, little books bought for 50 cents or $1 years back. When a dealer named his price, I was stunned: If some had appreciated 300 percent in 15 years, what might they be worth when I am old? But I steeled myself and sold them — and then fell ill for a day.
Bruckner, who died with no family surviving him, said this in an essay in 1985:
'The maniacal intensity of a cat's search into the unknown, or even into what it knows very well, is beyond reason, prediction or analysis. The cat seems to assume that either the whole creation is a trick or that nature and all other creatures are incompetent to get things done right. Shuffle papers in a file or move clothes or boxes in a closet and the cat will reexamine every scrap and thread, and make its own arrangements. The underside of a carpet, a hole anywhere, the space behind books on a shelf, cannot be left unexamined by this officious bureaucrat.''
This is a really nicel feline description by a man who was a book editor at the New York Times for 24 years. If he needed any other halos I guess we could add that he was on Nixon's enemies list.
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