Rare Book Monthly

Articles - September - 2006 Issue

Retirement is a Four Letter Word

If we are not busy being born we are busy dying.

If we are not busy being born we are busy dying.


By Bruce McKinney

On turning 60 -- Sixty I'm told is kind of old but I beg to differ. From where I sit, and yes I sit, this feels like the catbird seat and I'm the cat, not the bird. What matters, of course, more than numbers is the intellectual stimulation that keeps us engaged. These days I have my hands full with the ever evolving possibilities and challenges of AE, tasks Byzantine enough to ensure full employment for several more decades. It's what I need to live. Too often we succumb to thinking that retirement is the goal. It's at most the baton handoff to the next and sometimes final lap. Life is a race we want to run, not watch because, in the final analysis it's the race that keeps us alive.

Retirement has its place and you can identify it by the stones laid out in rows. Many seniors [you're one if you get a discount at the movies] do jobs they do not like but stay because it's familiar, the pay and benefits satisfactory. For those in this circumstance the next stage will in time become the welcome option and hopefully not the final choice. After all, not doing the same old job is not the same as giving up. It's simply a shift. For all of us, by whatever routes we arrive at these gates of change, these final chapters will read better if we are intellectually engaged.

The very good news for those involved with books is that remarkable, if different opportunities, are every day emerging. These new ideas are lions roaming where for decades only squirrels were found. What was thought seismically stable is in fact the Vesuvius of our generation: the transforming awareness, display, market and marketing of books electronically. To us, to some the over-the-hill gang, falls the opportunity to pan the nuggets, map the fields and file the claims to what is becoming an interesting amalgam of the very old and the very new -- in the emerging world of printed material.

Why us? It's true the race is to the swiftest but it is also to the interested. Technologically we do not match up with rank and file youth but never mind because they aren't interested in this opportunity and don't think over-much about books and history. They will of course in time be as avid and committed as we are. For the time being though their disinterest is useful for it leaves the field open to we who have the knowledge to shape the field for future generations.

So, as I turn 60, I see an interesting opportunity. The world of rare and collectible books daily comes more into view. In a sense we are all heirs to Columbus: every amateur and professional book person a spectator or participant to a story not yet written, simply unfolding. For those who love books, words, phrases and paper is there a better place to be than on the rim of Vesuvius as the world is transformed?

For myself all this is quite enough.

Rare Book Monthly

  • High Bids Win
    Rare Books, Catalogs, Magazines
    and Machine Manuals
    December 24 to January 9
    High Bids Win, Dec. 24 – Jan. 9: Ellis Smith Prints unsigned. 20” by 16”.
    High Bids Win, Dec. 24 – Jan. 9: United typothetae of America presidents. Pictures of 37 UTA presidents 46th annual convention United typothetae of America Cincinnati 1932.
    High Bids Win, Dec. 24 – Jan. 9: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec signed Paper Impressionism Art Prints. MayMilton 9 1/2” by 13” Reine de Joie 9 1/2” by 13”.
    High Bids Win
    Rare Books, Catalogs, Magazines
    and Machine Manuals
    December 24 to January 9
    High Bids Win, Dec. 24 – Jan. 9: Aberle’ Ballet editions. 108th triumph, American season spring and summer 1944.
    High Bids Win, Dec. 24 – Jan. 9: Puss ‘n Boots. 1994 Charles Perrult All four are signed by Andreas Deja
    High Bids Win, Dec. 24 – Jan. 9: Specimen book of type faces. Job composition department, Philadelphia gazette publishing company .
    High Bids Win
    Rare Books, Catalogs, Magazines
    and Machine Manuals
    December 24 to January 9
    High Bids Win, Dec. 24 – Jan. 9: An exhibit of printed books, Bridwell library.
    High Bids Win, Dec. 24 – Jan. 9: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur Court By Mark Twain 1889.
    High Bids Win, Dec. 24 – Jan. 9: 1963 Philadelphia Eagles official program.
    High Bids Win
    Rare Books, Catalogs, Magazines
    and Machine Manuals
    December 24 to January 9
    High Bids Win, Dec. 24 – Jan. 9: 8 - Esquire the magazine for men 1954.
    High Bids Win, Dec. 24 – Jan. 9: The American printer, July 1910.
    High Bids Win, Dec. 24 – Jan. 9: Leaves of grass 1855 by Walt Whitman.
  • Sotheby's
    Fine Books, Manuscripts & More
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s: William Shakespeare.
    The Poems and Sonnets of William Shakespeare, 1960. 7,210 USD
    Sotheby’s: Charles Dickens.
    A Christmas Carol, First Edition, 1843. 17,500 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Golding.
    Lord of the Flies, First Edition, 1954. 5,400 USD
    Sotheby's
    Fine Books, Manuscripts & More
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s: Lewis Carroll.
    Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, Inscribed First Edition, 1872. 25,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: J.R.R. Tolkien.
    The Hobbit, First Edition, 1937. 12,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: John Milton.
    Paradise Lost, 1759. 5,400 USD

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