A small, bi-coastal tragedy of our ‘Written World’

How I Couldn’t Buy a New Book for my German Pal’s Birthday

In Berlin, I’m fortunate — extremely so — to live near the city’s largest Antiquariat, or used-book store. Here, the visitor wanders through a labyrinth of shelf-lined aisles, rows of books, stacked to form ever-evolving passages and rooms, like an underground gold mine… But better lit.

Here, you might enjoy the strong friendship of the store’s chief manager. His name is Harald, and he sometimes lets customers follow him around; perhaps up into the store’s higher floors, where one can get “more lost” in his private warehouse of books (der Lager).

During the past year or so, my friend Harald had a birthday, when I really-really wanted to get him a cool present. Weirdly, perhaps, I wanted to get him a book.

Not just any book, however: For Harald, I felt compelled to buy a brand-new hardbound copy of “Die Macht der Schrift,” by a fellow German-American author, Martin Puchner. In English, the title of Puchner’s 2017 book is “The Written World,” and it deals with the long-running relationship between World History and World Literature — a beautiful history of text itself, and the singular texts that have somehow circled the globe….

This book’s disappearance from book shelves is a profound tragedy for me, as both a reader and book collector… It is, in my view, connected to the larger crisis of our global book marketplace…a problem we’ve watched develop over time….