"Madness!"

I think I remember the end of that film The Bridge on the River Kwai, which I've not seen in many, many years. It was released in October 1957, just a month before my thirteenth birthday. I saw the film shortly afterward--and I think it was in Chicago, where I'd gone with my friend Johnny Kelker and his dad, who was the admissions guy for Hiram College, where my dad taught. Some kind of recruiting trip. Got to see this great film as a result.

Okay--the end. Some captured British soldier (WW II--southeast Asia), the bridge having just been blown up, standing in the stream, crying "Madness!"

I just looked at a video clip of the end of the film, and the guy is not standing in the water when he first cries "Madness!" So much for my memory, sixty years later. (Link to that clip.) (But ... the clip ends just before the end of the film ... I still think he was out in the water by the end!)

Anyway, I was thinking about "madness" today because I know that I suffer from a particular form of it--bibliomania. (See OED definition below.) Many of you probably know that Joyce and I have been selling volumes from our library on this Internet site: Link. Joyce, who does by far the most work on this is very diligent, every morning adding some books to our list that now has about 2400 titles. She also handles the packing and mailing. I, well, I scan the book jackets for her--it's so hard, you know? Exhausting.

Here's the problem: I keep buying. (So does she--though not nearly so much as I do.) Just the past couple of days the following volumes have come into our house:

1. unnamed (it's a gift for Joyce--Christmas, you know)
2. A William Faulkner Encyclopedia (1999)
3. John Banville, Mrs. Osmand (2017)--based on H. James' The Portrait of a Lady.
4. Jonathan Blunk, James Wright: A Life in Poetry  (2017)

We did sell a couple of books this week--but our net (math! math!) is +2. Keep that going for a while, and we'll soon have no place in the house to sit down.

The only difference between me and a Cat Lady? Shelving. (Which is now, due mostly to me, in scant supply once again.)

Of course I don't read everything I buy. I want to ... but often before I get to a book I want to read, here comes a newer one that I really want to read. And so the Want to Read pile grows ever more like a Tower of Babel--and you know what happened to it!

So ... on it will go, I suppose, until it can't.

At which time our son will (1) call a disposal service or (2) call a used book dealer to come get them all (3) sit in our tub, turn on the water, and cry "Madness!"

bibliomania, n.

Etymology: < biblio- comb. form + Greek μανία madness, after French bibliomanie.

  A rage for collecting and possessing books.

1734   T. Hearne Diary 9 Nov. (1921) XI. 389   I should have been tempted to have laid out a pretty deal of money without thinking my self at all touched with Bibliomania.

[1750   Ld. Chesterfield Let. 19 Mar. (1932) (modernized text) IV. 1517   Beware of the bibliomanie.]

1809   Dibdin (title)    Bibliomania, or Book-madness; containing some account of the history, symptoms, and cure of this fatal disease.

1836   T. Hook Gilbert Gurney II. i. 11   The bibliomania which appeared to engross my friend.