Tuesday Spill: What Is All This Stuff?

What Is All This Stuff?

There’ve been plenty of times when I’ve invited first time visitors to our home to see my “old workroom” — it’s a very small space that served as a laundry room when we bought the house. I eventually moved the washer/dryer out and brought in a makeshift desk and all of the stuff I deemed necessary (at the time) for working. The room eventually became stuffed to the ceiling with “necessary” materials, ultimately forcing me to leave it as a workspace — there was no space left to work.

A few first time visitors, peeking into the old workroom have said, “What is all this stuff.” By now, I should have a ready answer, but I don’t. Mostly because I don’t know what it all is. I only know what some of it is. Above is a photo taken this morning of a very small part of a bookshelf that is probably the most organized section of the room. I can’t readily identify everything there. However, I do know that the shelf holds a number of “special” issues of The New Yorker. Among those: the last issue with a Mary Petty cover, the John Hersey “Hiroshima” issue, the issue containing Philip Roth’s first published New Yorker piece, issues containing early New Yorker pieces by J.D. Salinger, the first New Yorker issue edited by Tina Brown (still in the FedEx envelope delivered to contributors, pre-publication), issues containing the magazine’s obits for Harold Ross, Katharine White, E.B. White, Thurber, and William Shawn. There’s also Bob Gottlieb’s New York Times obit (for some reason I left the entire paper in its blue plastic wrapper, just as I found it on our lawn the morning it was delivered. I have a copy of the obit itself filed away in the “New Yorker Obits” binder). It’s good to know, without having to root through boxes, where all these issues are. As comforting as that is, I also like the idea of rediscovering materials I’d forgotten about.