Wharton
Moravia and Yourcenar, of Proust and Colette, without
feeling vacuous. After thirty years of book collecting, my
permanent library was distilled down to books on the
decorative arts; novels and memoirs I read and discarded
no matter how much I loved them, with a tiny group
of exceptions, books I could not live without: Truman
Capote's Answered Prayers; Paul Bowles' The Spider's
House; Hilton Als' The Women. (Gay writers, gay books;
but that is another library, another life.)
But my library, solid, even massive, heavy with intelligent
picture books, was not to prove so permanent. Short of
funds and wits, I sold it, in 2008, to the Strand Bookstore,
HYLAND
