Books, Books, Books! Science, Science, Science!

The Personal Libraries Library has recently acquired many books from the Robert Smithson Personal Library that are focused on science. One line of inquiry in Smithson's artwork was the transformation, entropy and detritus of geological elements. The images above and below are from Geology: Our Changing Earth through the Ages by Jerome Wyckoff.


"Cross section of a volcanic region shows how igneous activity in the crust produces various landscape forms- volcano, lava flows, dikes and sills, laccoliths, geysers and hot springs, and fumaroles." (Golden Press, 1967: 43)


The Library now has a set of books on rocks, minerals and crystals. They include: Crystals and Crystal Growing by Alan Holden & Phylis Singer, Field Book of Common Rocks and Minerals by Frederic Brewster Loomis, and Crystals, Diamonds, and Transistors by L.W. Marrison.


Two additional new books are Harry Asher's Experiments in Seeing and Flaubert's Bibliomania, a short tale about a man obsessed with books:

He saved all his money, all his goods, all his emotions for books. He had been a monk and for books he had abandoned God. Later he sacrificed for them that which men hold dearest after their God: money. Then he gave to books that which people treasure next to money: his soul. (The Rodale Press, 1954: 15)

Recent Library Acquisitions and Maria Mitchell's Observatory

The past month has been busy here at the Library. Multiple new members (welcome!) have lead to many new books! They include the beauties pictured above and below from the Robert Smithson Personal Library. They span from literary criticism such as Bernard Benstock's Joyce-Again's Wake to the metaphysical study in Witchcraft Today by Gerald Gardner, as well as Victor Von Hagen's The Aztec: Man and Tribe. Some of these books were also donated by a private donor from her own personal library. The Library thanks you!


Other acquisitions include Richard Burgin's Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges and Flaubert's Dictionary of Accepted Ideas. In Flaubert's amazing, satirical Dictionary, you can find the following (New Directions, 1954: 16):

ASTRONOMY. Delightful science. Of use only to sailors. In speaking of it, make fun of astrology.
ATHEISTS. 'A nation of atheists cannot survive.'
AUTHORS. One should 'know a few,' never mind their names.


Flaubert's seamless segue from Borges to Mitchell leads me to recount my pilgrimage, of sorts, to the Maria Mitchell Observatory at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. The first building of Vassar, Mitchell lived and taught in the Observatory for many years. In fact, she slept in a cot in the classroom itself! The Observatory still stands, yet now contains multiple offices and a library resides in the observatory dome. The PLL finds this a particularly poetic library location due to Mitchell being a librarian herself.

New acquisitions to the Mitchell Library include Madame de Stael's Corinne and Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Both are 19th century feminist texts that point to Mitchell's suffragist roots.

New Acquistitions to the Robert Smithson Personal Library!

The Personal Libraries Library has been busy acquiring books for the Robert Smithson Personal Library. These new acquisitions include: t zero by Italo Calvino, Dreamtigers by Jorge Luis Borges, Four Essays on Philosophy by Mao Tse-Tung, H.G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon, and Language as Symbolic Action by Kenneth Burke.

t zero, a collection of short stories that contemplate the creation and evolution of the universe (a sequel to Cosmicomics), has an amazing short story that was most likely of interest to Smithson named Crystals. It follows Qfwfq (the main character of these stories) as it commutes from New Jersey to New York through prisms, crystals, lava & magma. The journey is not only a lesson in entropy but also stretches the boundaries of time:

"It could have been different, I know,- Qfwfq remarked,- you're telling me: I believed so firmly in that world of crystal that was supposed to come forth that I can't resign myself to living still in this world, amorphous and crumbling and gummy, which has been our lot, instead. I run all the time like everybody else, I take the train each morning (I live in New Jersey) to slip into the cluster of prisms I see emerging beyond the Hudson, with its sharp cusps; I spend my days there, going up and down the horizontal and vertical axes that crisscross that compact solid, or along the obligatory routes that graze its sides and its edges." (t zero, Italo Calvino, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich:1967, pp. 28-29)

Crystals is reflected (whether directly or coincidentally) in Robert Smithson's own writing, most specifically in his 1967 work, A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey, when discussing the landscape that he was viewing, recording and monumentalizing:

'That zero panorama seemed to contain ruins in reverse, that is - all the new construction that would eventually be built. This is the opposite of the "romantic ruin" because the buildings don't fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built. This anti-romantic mise-en-scene suggests the discredited idea of time and many other "out of date" things. But the suburbs exist without a rational past and without the "big events" of history.' (Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Jack Flam ed., University of California Press: 1996, p. 72)

Members can check-out these new acquisitions by contacting the PLL at personallibraries{at}gmail{dot}com. Also look out for even more new books that are forthcoming!

The First Books to be Checked Out!

The PLL is ecstatic to announce that the first books have been checked out of the library by members (besides the Librarian herself.) Both books are from the Robert Smithson Personal Library Collection: Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and Borges' The Book of Imaginary Beings.

The Second PLL Collection: Robert Smithson!

The Personal Libraries Library is happy to announce the beginning of its second collection: the Robert Smithson Personal Library.

The Library was recently reminded (thanks Lacey!) that the personal library of Robert Smithson was catalogued shortly after his death. The catalogue, compiled by Valentin Tatransky, can be found in Robert Smithson, organized by Eugenie Tsai with Cornelia Butler (The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.) This catalogue is not comprehensive in itself, but is quite extensive. Some books from Smithson's personal library are also currently in the Library's librarian's personal library and have seamlessly become the beginning of the Robert Smithson Personal Library. These include Gunter Grass' The Tin Drum, Jorge Luis Borges' Ficciones and Labyrinths, as well as Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea and Bachelard's The Poetics of Space. Due to this fortuitous overlap, the catalogue set forth by Tatransky, and the Library's interest in Smithson, he seemed like the perfect second collection.



Interestingly enough, there was not only cross-over in Smithson's and the librarian's libraries, but also that of Maria Mitchell! Emerson's Essays and The Marble Faun can be found in the Maria Mitchell- and Robert Smithson Personal Library. Please note the multiple book cards.


Please peruse the Robert Smithson Personal Library Catalogue to see the Library's holdings. Also, check the Robert Smithson Wish List if you want to donate a book, or find a book and care to alert the Library. Contact the Library at personallibraries{at}gmail{dot}com