In my personal library is Larry Woiwode’s (pronounced WHY-woody) 1975 novel “Beyond the Bedroom Wall,” a three-generation family chronicle set mostly in North Dakota. Novelist John Gardner in his review of the book wrote that “nothing more beautiful and moving has been written in years.” Renowned literary critic Jonathan Yardley ranked it as one of the best American novels of the 20th century.
On a nearby shelf is Frances Gray Patton’s novel “Good Morning, Miss Dove,” her 1954 bestseller centered on a strict but influential small-town schoolteacher in mid-century America. For her eloquent prose here and elsewhere, Patton was nicknamed “The Jane Austen of the South.”
“Oliver Wiswell” by historical novelist Kenneth Roberts stands on this same shelf. Published in 1940, this thick book stirred up a pot of controversy by presenting readers with a Tory hero who sided with the British during the American Revolution. Critic and biographer Carl Van Doren reviewed “Oliver Wiswell” and noted that it “is an extremely American book.“ He continued: ”It is richer than most Revolutionary novels for the reason that it reveals the two kinds of American patriotism which were contending for the mastery of the country.”
Different as these novels are in nearly every way possible, they do share one commonality. All three books are currently out of print.
Boneyard Books
"Vanitas Still Life With Books," 1633, by an unknown Dutch painter. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. (Public Domain)
“Boneyard books” is what I call these novels and other titles in my collection that are no longer available from publishers. Some can still be found in secondhand bookshops, at library sales, or tracked down through online sellers of used books. Others can be read as e-books at places like Gutenberg or Google books, which we should count as one of technology’s blessings.
Publishers let books go out of print for a number of reasons. Sales and revenues are naturally a big factor. After all, publishing is a business, and the bottom line is making a profit. Today’s skyrocketing costs of items like paper and warehouse space add to the expense of keeping a physical book, one you can hold in your hand, in print.
In addition, old books must make way for the new. Penguin Random House, for instance, publishes an astonishing 85,000 titles per year, with 15,000 in print format and 70,000 in digital. Add in other such outfits and the army of authors who self-publish their work, and you have close to 3 million books published annually in the United States alone.
In some cases, publishers don’t always bid a permanent goodbye to a book. A case in point is F. Washington Jarvis’s “With Love and Prayers.” It is a compilation of addresses delivered to students at Boston’s Roxbury Latin School, and offers the kind of excellent counsel that today’s young people sorely need. “With Love and Prayers” technically remains in print, but its publisher, Godine, has listed the book as being out of stock for many months now.
Time and Culture
A dumpster filled with discarded books from an old bookstore in West Cornwall, Conn. (Alexanderstock23/Shutterstock)
Publishers will also cart off other books to the burying ground when new information makes them irrelevant, except perhaps as curiosities. History and science textbooks, restaurant and travel guides, atlases, and technical manuals are typically victims in this arena, always in need of constant updating or replacement.
In addition, books may be either heavily revised or removed altogether from publishers’ lists because of shifts within a culture. “My Book House,” for instance, provides an excellent example of such trends at work. Written by Olive Beaupré Miller and first published in volumes in the 1920s, this beautiful set of children’s books advances from nursery rhymes to history and biography, all aimed at elementary school-aged children. Probably because of its lack of racial diversity in its art and stories, “My Book House” ceased publication in the 1970s, though it may still be obtained from secondhand booksellers and in an online electronic format.
And though McGraw Hill publishes the “Open Court Reading” program, the books today are quite different from the 1960s set on my shelves, which I used with my children when homeschooling. The language in these older volumes is more formal than in the newer books, and the number of classic tales, stories, and histories are greatly reduced. In this case, the series remains “in print,” but the resemblance is largely in name only.
Once It’s Gone, It’s Gone
Many years ago, a teenage couple showed up in the secondhand bookshop I owned in Waynesville, North Carolina, hoping to sell a family Bible for a large sum of money. This book, which had originally belonged, if I remember correctly, to the boy’s great-grandmother, was one of those giant volumes with space allotted in the front for recording a family history, gilded pages, and an embossed cover. When he opened the book, a lock of dark hair bound up by a time-stained white ribbon fell from its pages to our feet.
A 19th-century family Bible with birth and marriage records. (Cropped image by Theobird/CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)
When this young man asked me what I’d pay him for it, I explained that Bibles were usually mass-produced, meaning there were far too many of them in existence to make them worth much as rare books. “Then I guess I’ll just go sell it in Asheville,” he said, and he and his girlfriend departed. I suspect that the gas on that 25-mile drive probably cost him as much as someone would give him for the book.
I’ve long wished that I’d told what a mistake he was making, that he would be giving up a treasured piece of family history for a few bucks, that once he’d sold it for a paltry sum, that Bible was gone forever.
Those Are Friends Who Sit on Our Shelves
"[Still Life With Books]," 1870s–80s, attributed to William Notman. Albumen silver print from glass negative. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. (Public Domain)
So, I’ll make up for that misstep right now. If you’re doing a spring cleaning, or if you’re part of the decluttering and minimalism movement, go ahead and get rid of those clothes you never wear, those boxes of papers and bills collecting dust in the basement, those broken toys and appliances scattered throughout your house.
But think twice before you take a beloved book to Goodwill or The Salvation Army. For one thing, if that book is out of print, by holding onto it you can regard yourself as a preservationist, an archivist of culture. You can share it with a child, a grandchild, or a friend, and so pass along something good and valuable from the past.
Equally important, think of what that artifact means to you. It may be tattered and worn, it may be a jelly-stained storybook from your childhood, or some beaten-up treasure box of thought and inspiration, but the bond that exists between you and that special book is irreplaceable. In many cases, as all bibliophiles know, those books are more than objects. They are friends who have offered us smiles, brought us to tears, and given us counsel and comfort in times of hardship.
Get rid of these out-of-print old friends, and you may lose them and a piece of your heart forever.
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Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust On Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies Make The Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.
!["[Still Life With Books]," 1870s–80s, attributed to William Notman. Albumen silver print from glass negative. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. (Public Domain)](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F05%2F03%2Fid5643210-DP139567.jpg&w=1200&q=75)
