Bookforum FEB/MAR 2007

[Ya Sam]

>nice piece on edward mendellson
>


Mendelson trolls eBay once a week to see if any Audenalia surfaces, which he 
says happens fairly often, and this light sleuthing satisfies his collecting 
bug for the present. But he has made other acquisitions over the years that 
lend his shelves distinction. There are first editions of all of Thomas 
Pynchon's novels (one of Mendelson's first scholarly publications was an 
essay on The Crying of Lot 49); eight bound volumes of T. S. Eliot's 
journal, The Criterion, a gift from a friend; and a charming set of Virginia 
Woolf's works, published by Hogarth just before she went out of copyright, 
and apparently not to be had for cheap. "I had to eat spaghetti for a 
while," Mendelson recalled fondly of the period marking that purchase. Woolf 
remains a major figure in his intellectual life; three of the novels he 
examines in his 2006 book The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels 
Have to Say About the Stages of Life are hers. Stacked at the top of the 
shelves around the living room are dozens of small books with distinctive 
red bindings familiar to anyone who has read A Room with a View. "I 
collected Baedeker guidebooks for years," Mendelson said, "until I managed 
to cure myself by writing an essay about Baedeker guidebooks. That stopped 
the collecting impulse. I'd taken them over by writing about them."

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