An alarming, nearly floor-to-ceiling jumble of crumpled papers
January 18, 2019 8:39 PM   Subscribe

The Grolier Club, the nation’s oldest society of bibliophiles, just celebrated the centennial of its grand Manhattan home. Yes, there’s a secret staircase hidden in a bookshelf. No, do not use gloves in its library.
posted by Chrysostom (11 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
Yes hello when do I move in please
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:02 PM on January 18, 2019 [5 favorites]


The photos inspire a remarkable blend of awe and envy.

This is so cool. Elitist, but still.

Is this part of the source for Grossman's The Magicians?
At least, in the initial plot driver.

(Intentionally vague but please delete if too spoilery.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:27 PM on January 18, 2019


Worth it for the use of "bibliomaniac" alone.
posted by gwint at 8:37 AM on January 19, 2019


Worth it for the use of "bibliomaniac" alone.

Typical of this degraded age. In my youth, we called such persons "bibliomanes".
posted by kenko at 9:38 AM on January 19, 2019 [2 favorites]


But how does one join?
posted by lothar at 9:43 AM on January 19, 2019


But how does one join? I suspect a large component is to carefully select your ancestors.
posted by Pembquist at 9:51 AM on January 19, 2019 [3 favorites]


Phillipps was also, Mr. Holzenberg said, “a total failure as a human being”: irascible, cheap, scatterbrained, bad at Latin, rabidly anti-Catholic, horrible to his children, and so generally disagreeable that it was hard to get his book-loving friends to cooperate with him.

Bad at Latin!
posted by chavenet at 10:21 AM on January 19, 2019 [2 favorites]


But how does one join?

The Grolier Club is an old-fashioned club that requires nomination by a member and recommendations by other members.
posted by praemunire at 10:39 AM on January 19, 2019


Despite my radically-democratic-to-anarchist leanings, I love an old private club, and especially the kind of ephemera that silts up in them over the decades. I went to a wedding at the lovely, comfortably shabby Arts Club of Washington in '16, and just wandering boozily around came across a collection of caricatures by Clifford K. Berryman, an imposing bust of Lincoln by Henry K. Bush-Brown (which later in the evening was surrounded by empty glasses), and wall after wall of dusty photos of old DC writers, architects, painters, and poets. It's just off a busy, modern block of I Street, but time is clearly moving more slowly inside. It's full of the ghosts of the past.
posted by ryanshepard at 1:39 PM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


I’m on board with the no gloves concept.
posted by disclaimer at 1:42 PM on January 19, 2019




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