2/01/2006
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Rearranging books for a new office at school.

Home: poetry, poetics, poetry criticism, chapbooks, poetry magazines, literary novels, popular novels, modernist emphemera, Americana, foreign language, dictionary and other reference books, art books, recipe books, geography (maps), and travel. Still need to decide what goes upstairs, downstairs, and main floor.

Campus office: critical theory, continental philosophy, modern history, non-poetry literary criticism, academic journals, non-poetry anthologies, writing guides. I think that's all I can squeeze. Someone like William James will stay at home but late 20c Cavell, Rorty, et al can go to school. Or should I treat Cavell book-by-book so the Emersonian ones stay at home with the Americana and the Wittgensteinian ones go with Wittgenstein at school? No, this won't work though because his lines cross in each book from chapter to chapter. I also started putting anthropology in the school box, but what about Alphonso Lingis who is more of a travel writer? (This one is easy. His translations of Levinas are definately for school because I want to keep them in the same boat.) Another problem is that many of the informal theory books currently headed to school need to stay at home because I read them for relaxation. The non-U.S. Anglo books are a mess. I still have a couple dozen books at school from the British 18C class that I taught last year. It also has a lot of Americana books because my pitch was basically "18C Globalization," though not in those exact words. The Americana books need to come home, except that I don't have any more room on the current shelves.

Another problem: Does Dante go in poetry? I have a linen closet upstairs that has become a catch-all for Greek and Roman through the Renaissance. It currently holds Virgil, Pindar, Chaucer, Dante, and so forth right alongside the extra toilet paper. But does the old poetry belong on the same shelf as contemporary poetry? And in that same batch I find work from Plato through Descartes, which should really go with the philosophy books at school.

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