Caroline, 49: A Tractarian Ghost Story
<p>MY WORK STUDY JOB in college was at the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library — a sweatier, dirtier job than one might imagine, with boxes and shelves heavier than their literary contents might suggest. There were the still-embargoed manuscript of Thomas Merton’s <em>Seven Storey Mountain</em>; pieces of wood from the boat in which Baron Corvo died; rooms and shelves of cuneiform tablets; boxes of parasols that belonged to dead Romanovs; immense scrapbooks of newspapers from the American Civil War; magical notebooks of Lafcadio Hearn; and books for miles. It was, like most times I have looked back on in my life, a moment when I was happier than I knew in its midst: massive slices of pizza on Broadway for $2.00 at lunch, reliable air conditioning, speedy payment for work, congenial and bookish colleagues, a circle of friends with whom to share it, an embarrassment of rich choices about how to spend one’s time.</p>
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