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 an apartment 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.
This incident leads me to a series of inquiries, some of which will be posted here, while the others will float around in my mind like chapter headings to a long lost book buried deep within a stack piled high in an apartment somewhere in the West Village.
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Through this door passed many thousands of books. On the way in, brought under secret cover, under coats, inside waistbands, inside satchels. Then on the way out in large cardboard boxes, headed for a truck set to rumble the lot of them back to the Public Library.
