but they left their own belovedmanuscript unclassied and undescribed, and thus it never attainedthe status of a holding, which it so obviously deserved, and wasinstead tacitly understood to be merely a “nding aid,” a piece offurniture, wholly vulnerable to passing predators, subject tojanitorial, rather than curatorial, jurisdiction—even though thiscatalog was, in truth, the one holding that people who entered thebuilding would be likely to have in common, to know how to usefrom childhood, even to love. A new administrator came by onemorning and noticed that there was some old furniture taking upspace that could be devoted to bound volumes of Technicalities, TheElectronic Library, and the Journal of Library Automation. The cardcatalog, for want of having been cataloged itself, was thrown into adumpster.

The authors made one serious mistake, however. Although theyhad taken great pains to be sure that within their massive workevery book and manuscript stored in their building was representedby a three-by-ve page, and often by several pages, describing it,they had forgotten to devote any page, anywhere, to the very book

Discards

Nicholson Baker on commonplace books: “My own bristling brain-urchins of worry melt in the strong solvent of other people’s grammar.”