Thursday, September 11, 2008

Feldman and the Infinite

In which I shamelessly plug the work of my oldest friend.

From See.Also:

15,000 Library Books Are Found in Lawyer's Village Apartment

"In 1975, Joseph Feldman, a 58-year-old lawyer in New York City, was discovered to have stolen 15,000 books from the New York Public Library. He had rented two or three apartments specifically to store these books, and it took 20 men, 7 truckloads over 3 days to remove them all.

Books covered the stove. Books filled the bathtub and sinks. There was only a small passageway leading through the apartment, not room enough to live.

But why did he do it?"

Why indeed! This fascinates me. Will someone PLEASE write me this book?

Wait, someone already wrote the play!* If you live in or near Philly, go see it at the Philly Fringe Festival this weekend (click here). Feldman and the Infinite was written by my friend Erika Mijlin, who is a creative genius and to whom I babbled at the age of zero. So go go go! And report back to the rest of us, because I am fascinated by this story.

In the meantime, I think he was housing and feeding an Ink Drinker. What do you think?

* This is really a Thursday News of the Absurd Will Someone Please Write This Book -- Hey! Look! Someone Wrote the Play! Moment. I know this is two weeks in a row that you have been left uninspired and probably crying for lack of anything to write; I promise a return to our regularly schedule TNoftheAWSPWTBIM next week.

6 comments:

Elise Murphy said...

Are you trying to imply this is a problem?

Snarf.

What an excellent, excellent tale!

I went to tour a house I was interested in buying once. It belonged to our local used book store owners. Books in the bathtub, books so densely packed you couldn't even get into rooms. Books in the kitchen cabinets. I'm pretty sure they owned those, though.

cindy said...

wow. that's an expensive "hobby". but doesn't everyone want to steal library books? haha! of course, i am a good two shoes and always returned them on time. =D

these days, maybe not... that's why i just buy my books.

Jacqui said...

Yeah, Cindy, I am curious what his fine total was! I am also a library goody-goody who still apologizes to the clerk when I have to pay a fine on an overdue book.

Elise - ha! You didn't buy the house, though, eh? Not if the books weren't included. Who puts books in a bathtub?!

C.R. Evers said...

wow! that's weird in so many ways!

Christy

Marcia said...

Hmmm. We could be serious and say the poor man obviously has a disorder.

We could say, "You go, guy! So many of us want to just glut ourselves with books and you actually had the guts to go do it."

You'd think a lawyer might suspect this was illegal. :) Which goes to show that education and knowledge will not alone change behavior.

Anonymous said...

Wow. I thought I had a lot of books, but I've got nothing on this guy. What an interesting story.