THE NINETY-FIFTH PAGE

Here’s another couple of pages on arrangement, which you may skip at your discretion in your race toward old one hundred. O.K., go right ahead to the ninety-seventh page.

The Library of America is one of the noblest American publishing efforts of the century, but for those who believe in completeness and order it has offered many a sleepless night.

Completeness is simple; you pay for it. You also write angry letters should the devoted subscriber be sent a copy from any printing other than the first.

Order is hell. It would be a pity to put the Baldwins next to the old Dial Press editions or the Nabokovs with the McGraw-Hill editions, so a hefty hunk of wall must be kept for the collection. Decorators employing them in the “libraries” of Midwestern lawyers might well arrange by color: green, maroon, navy, tan.

Non-fiction (and there suddenly was an influx of journalism) is easily handled. It can be put in the basement or attic, or, space permitting, it can be floored under the fiction shelves. The quandary of this prejudice lies in the fact that the travel writings of Francis Parkman, the nature studies of John Bartram, and the amazing memoirs of U.S. Grant are too good to be so easily dismissed. Thus, every man in his own humours for The Library of America.