He has twenty copies
of his and his daughter’s
first book in a box in
the storage room. There
is an error in the table
of contents, which was
discovered after pub-
lication. Neither he nor
his daughter liked the
looks of the hardcover
copy and decided that a
corrected version in paper-
back would be better.
He can’t burn them for
two reasons: one, there
is the matter of the
horrible image of book
burnings and what that
has meant even though
this would not be for
censorship reasons and
two, the hardcover is
made of material that
would pollute the en-
vironment and so there
they sit — the twenty,
lonesome, forlorn,
imperfect, rejected
copies. They feel like
family. Every once in
a while, he goes down
and pats the box on
the back while shield-
ing his nose from the
flying dust.