Wednesday, July 11, 2007
(3:27 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
My Life as a Powell's Addict
Sometimes when I go to Powell's, I'm not so much shopping as taking mental inventory of what I would buy if I came into money or if I was moving away from Chicago. Most of these are items that have been present for several years, so there is no sense of urgency (as there was when I learned from a friend that they had Benjamin's complete letters, an item I was pretty sure would be snatched up). Here's my tentative list, so that my enemies can go buy these items out of spite:- Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (3 vols., nice hardcover)
- Troeltsch, Social Teachings of the Churches (2 vols., in two or three different editions -- none of which are going anywhere as far as I can tell)
- Barth, Protestant Theology in the 19th Century (a paperback version of this recently sold, but they still have a reasonably-priced hardcover)
- Brunner, Man in Revolt (nice hardcover, some pencil underlining)
- Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (they have a one-volume edition, but I'd like the more traditional two-volume hardcover, which they also have)
- Husserl -- all kinds of stuff. They have more Husserl than you can even begin to imagine.
- French novels -- they have literally everything, in French, for like $2 each. My need for a particular Zola novel at any given time is usually pretty low, so I never take advantage of this, but I could easily establish an entire library in one fell swoop.
Second biggest mistake: not checking the foreign-language basement area often enough. One time when I went down there, they had gotten a lot of stuff from a university library sale, including the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe -- the fabled MEGA!!! More attentive customers had already picked it clean. Basically all that was left was Engels stuff, and not even Anti-Dühring or Origin of the Family. How naive of me to think I could just lightheartedly wander down there and come back with the German text of the 1844 manuscripts (which would actually be useful to me for various reasons).
I'm sure one day they'll get all of Freud, and by the time I get there, all that will be left is endless discussion of anal-erotism.
