Episode
129: I Got Rid Of All My Books (11 Years Ago...)
- Podcast
- WTF Bach
- Published
- Apr 7, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1440
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://wtfbach.substack.com/p/129-i-got-rid-of-all-my-books-11
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Summary
Back to Bach next week! In the meantime, I thought you’d appreciate a story I wrote after I ‘discarded’ the majority of my possessions— mostly books. Whereas I easily tossed things like clothes, artwork, komono , plates, pens, et cetera, getting rid of my massive library took months and was an emotional rollercoaster. I haven’t ever looked back! …mostly. Sans Eyes, Sans Books, Sans Everything If you go home with somebody and they don’t have any books, don’t f*** ‘em! -Not so old aphorism Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. -As You Like It, 2:7 -for Marie Kondo (and Rachel) At eighteen years old, I moved to New York City with five books: a Mozart biography, a Bach biography, a Beethoven biography, a book about Beethoven’s piano sonatas, and a Bible. My sheet music library (which was already massive) and any other books (which were insubstantial) I left with my parents. All I valued at that time was playing the piano and any reading dealing with that. After a year, my personal Pentateuch had grown four times in size, but was humble still. Eleven years later I had one-thousand nine hundred and thirty two books. Books bought, books found, books stolen, books given, books I printed: any way one could get a book, I got books. I dreamed of creating a library that resembled my teacher Lowenthal’s: wall to wall books, books falling out of books, books used as bookshelves themselves, pages on the ground from who knows which books, books with missing covers, covers with missing books, books rapidly-read-horizontally-stacked-under-coffee-cups books, books under-the-piano-to-muffle-the sound books, books piled-on-top-of-the-piano-to-complete-a-cliche books, the divi…