A WORD FROM THE AUTHORA letter from Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen &n
A WORD FROM THE AUTHORA letter from Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen One of the characters in The Portable Veblen is loosely based on my father, who grew up in Palo Alto, California, apprenticed as a rare book dealer with William P. Wreden, went to library school at UC Berkeley, and was recruited by Lawrence Clark Powell to come to UCLA, where his career in the University Research Library spanned thirty years. He collected mountaineering books, books about conservation and the American southwest, about the history of California, of Australia and Oceania, and in short, would start a collection once he possessed any book of any type. Our house was wall to wall shelves, surrounding us with iconic spines. We crowded around him when he returned from ALA conventions every year, bringing us cool posters and buttons, and we proudly entertained librarians at our house when they visited from other countries, like Japan and Fiji and Nigeria. My impression at that time was that the world revolved around books and libraries. When we were kids he’d bring home armloads of books on the weekend, books that had been set aside because they were damaged. My sister and I would go through them, erasing scribbles and notations, unfolding dog ears, dumping out potato chips and other greasy crumbs that had fallen between the pages. We’d trim loose threads off the cloth binding, and glue down buckling endpapers. On behalf of the UCLA library, which held approximately two million volumes at the time, he’d thank us. I wish more than anything my father could see this beautiful book that Penguin has produced. For months after my first two books came out, in 2005 and 2007, he’d call to tell me about his latest findings on WorldCat. He had a yellow legal pad, and with the passion he kept track of baseball stats he’d jot down every new library that purchased one. “Wichita Falls and Downers Grove and Singapore Polytechnic!” he would report one day. “Multnomah County and Toronto!” he would say the next. I am talking about my father’s love and stewardship of books because this feels like an opportunity to thank him for making books so central and sacred to me. From his example, it seemed as if there could be no higher calling than to be charged with the care of books, let alone attempting to write one. For the same reason, it’s a chance for me to thank you, too. -- source link
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