Comment

Abstract

ANY TIME YOU can buy a hardback Walden in good condition for sixty‐five cents, you should grab it. And so I did. Thoreau would have approved, for I contemplated just what sixty‐five cents was and whether I was likely to find another Walden for less. I set it to one side for further consideration while I browsed through other volumes in the little bookshop on 40th Street in Philadelphia. Here was a Proust for ninety cents, here was Billy Budd, here was an old edition of Hawthorne. The Proust, however, staggered under the weight of heavy inky under‐scorings; I already had a copy of Billy Budd; and the Hawthorne, I knew, existed in much better editions. Later there was a tempting French dictionary and an interesting cache of history books, but one by one Walden vanquished all comers. By the end of the afternoon it was the only possible purchase.

Citation

Lawson, S., Apted, S., Dart, M., Saunders, C., Moss, R. and Duckworth, A. (1978), "Comment", New Library World, Vol. 79 No. 7, pp. 125-131. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb038405