BOOK FIX

	February 7, 2001
	Essayist Roger Rosenblatt cherishes things worth fixing: books.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: The hardest thing to repair are the ones we value most: Friendships, hearts, books. So let us now praise a sublime anachronism, the book lovers repair kit: First aid for home libraries. The creator, Estelle Ellis, has decided to put her oar against the tide-- as Fitzgerald almost said-- and offer a manual on how to fix broken books, and an actual kit that contains such cool stuff as a document cleaning pad, archival mounting and hinging tape, brushes of several sizes, archival mending tape, thread, clips, erasers, and a pair of white gloves for using the materials. The manual contains instructions on reinforcing loose covers, repairing the head and tail of the spine, mending torn pages, drying wet books, and distressed headbands and tailbands -- a sort of last-aid, first aid kit for books about to bite-- and become-- the dust. It's a subversive little box. Imagine repairing something valuable when you can throw it out: A friendship, a heart, a book. America's consumer motto is "toss and replace." This kit says, "rebuild, preserve, save." Who is this Ellis, a Communist? It gets worse and odder. Everyone knows that books themselves are on their way out, so why repair and restore them? Would it not be wiser to maintain the permanent hospital of our home bookshelves, a hospital without a medical staff where the patients stand in permanent states of disintegration? Better still, toss the hospital. Here come the e-books, to replace the p-books, p for print, or post-modern, or posthumous. This box of goodies makes me melancholy. It reminds me of my typewriter, also on it's way out, though I try to resuscitate it. Once I had cornered the market of typewriter ribbons, which they don't make anymore. Now, I'm down to two ribbons. Where is my typewriter repair kit? Too late. Too late. Is it also too late to repair our books? This kit implies a moral question: Should we attempt to keep these patients, with their heads and spines on life support, even though everyone says they're doomed anyway? The answer lies in the individual book, in the history of our buying them, and in the things themselves. This kit is for a home library. Think of what goes on in a home library: The casts of characters, plots, thoughts. Once a book is repaired, King Lear may feel like his old self again; Emily Dickinson resumes her yearning; Robert Lowell sits up, brilliant and mad as ever; Kafka's mirror is no longer cracked. David Copperfield, Emma, Tom Jones, Gatsby-- eternally renewable Gatsby-- renewed again. A book repaired is a civilization restored. And since you acquired the book, that's your civilization. Proust, Dostoevski, George Eliot, Thurber, Marques, Ellison, Baldwin, Bacon, Gibbon- - scribble, scribble. Put back together the life you sought, the life you led. Put Humpty Dumpty back together again. In the end, it comes to this: Repair a book, repair a life. These hospital patients could have gone on, could go on, without your attention. They could dry and crumble and disappear, and who would care? The hardest things to repair are the ones we value the most. Sometimes one has a choice to repair or not to repair: The friendship, the heart, the book. I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

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