Piles of books on the study tables, too many to get round with the duster. Piles of books on all the other table in the house, that you have to move every time you need to lay the table. A pile on the bedside table to the left of the bed, and another on the floor beside the bed. Some more on the right.
Books piled up in the spaces between others stacked on the book-shelves. Not really manageable the pile on the sofa in all its multiplicity of shape and content. Finding the essay on The Order of Things, bought last Saturday, is no easy matter. On the chest in the entrance hall, belonging to some great-grandmother or other and relic of tens of removals, a veritable forest of piles has grown up. Forgotten uncut books swallowed up who knows where. This is my home.
This in all the houses where books,that indispensable prop of life, are cherished. Look at the piles, gaze fascinated at those so high that they seem to mock the law of gravity. Translate this fantastic image into a real object. Ptolomeo act one. Dedicated to he who, first, collected with intelligent passion everything that had ever been written, with no censure, no fear.