2006-06-01

 
Books in the street.

There is so much to say about Berkeley's books in the street, clothes in the street, dishes and furniture and art in the street. Two nights ago, a friend of mine found two six-packs of beer, a pizza, and a bunch of groceries in the street in SF (all in different places). Most of my wardrobe has come either from the street or the free pile in my building.

But what I wanted to share right now regards a pile of books that were in the street on my way back from purchasing my quarterly supply of beans from a local Indian grocer. Unfortunately, my bike was already loaded halfway up with beans, but I was able to take some books. What is remarkable was that a young couple was moving in to a new house, and were angered to find that the previous tenant had left behind his books and CD's (they kept the CD's inside to get some money for them). Surprisingly, this irate couple had not noticed that the books were VALUABLE. It was a lifetime's collection of books on Marxism and Philosophy. The most distasteful part of it, besides her jeering in an un-Berkeley way at the radical topic of the books (she mocked a Sartre book because it had the title "Anti-semite and Jew"), was that she was so disgusted by the books that she did not even want them on the sidewalk and thus called a book dealer to take them away for free (she would have made at least $200 had she sold them individually, or might have been more genial and donated them somewhere so that they could be appreciated). The dealer arrived while I was trying to decide which books merited the small bit of space left in my backpack, in a rush and annoyed by my sifting through the books. He literally took ALL of the remaining books into his car.

A humorous curiosity was that despite all the books on Marxism, there were a number of books that indicated someone had been studying to get a real estate broker's license!!!

Among the books I managed to save are a collection of poems by Brecht, Marcuse's "one dimensional man", Breton's "surrealist manifesto", two books by Horkheimer, Adorno's book about music, Beckett's piece on Proust, a book by John McPhee, a book by Sergei Eisenstein (much appreciated by my filmmaker roommate!), selections from Marx and Engels, and Octavio Paz's "alternating current".

posted by MM 9:55 PM