On Packing My Library
June 27, 2011 by Edmund de Waal
Away go the books on the Hapsburgs. The Baedekers for Austria and France, the sale catalogues for auctions in Paris, marked up with the prices realised for family furniture, the books on fashion, on post-war Tokyo, the stack of Gazette de Beaux Arts. The section of books on Freud and the shelves of Musil, Zweig, Roth will stay,of course, but may have to move up. Some things—Grossman, Benjamin, Babel—are needed here at eyeline, but surely the de Goncourt journals can be banished. I won’t need to go through them again. I wasn’t sure if I could bear those brothers once. The proofs have gone back to the publisher and it is time to pack up.
