A literally inflammatory post

An unhappy author on that home of unhappiness known as Facebook was complaining that critics seemed to want to burn a book of theirs a little while ago. I stayed out of that fray, but as an experienced book-burner, I cannot leave the topic alone. So let's inflame another bit of the digital interspace with some talk on that subject. And remember a choice Canonical villain along the way.

Do you treasure books? Post memes about your love of books? Can picture nothing better than your own shelves and shelves and shelves of books?

You need to burn a book.

Just once, not as a habit, not as an attempt to wipe a certain author's writings from the face of the planet -- just to free yourself from the possession of that demon and show it who's boss.

Now, I know, I know, it's hard. I didn't come to this place on the road easily, you understand. There were several steps on the road to burning my first book and the freedom it brought.

First came my aunt's antique store, where my dear aunt knew my love of books would make me work her warehouse bookroom with delight and stock her shelves with appropriately priced tomes. She and my grandpa would buy box after box of random books at estate sales for me to go through, looking for treasures. And we built up quite a stock. Only, my good grandfather, a welder before his retirement, knew tools better than anyone. But books? Their conditions, their potential collectability, that maybe once the rain got them, you didn't really want them? Not in his wheelhouse.

When the antique store years came to a close, and we were cleaning out before the final auction, I got good practice throwing old textbooks from a second story window into a dumpster. And that was just round one of that effort. And not the last time, I would be involved in book disposal. Charity booksales can only donate their remains to so many other charity booksales. There has to be a bottom at some point, an Island of Misfit Toys for books whose supply far, far, FAR outweighs their demand. But it's a little like that farm up north where certain pets go to . . .  

So during one cool autumn evening, when we found ourselves in possession of some of the utter dregs of bound literature and human verbosity, we were standing around a bonfire in the country anyway, and, oh, how wrong what was to come next felt. And yet, freeing, somehow.

It wouldn't be the last time. And there was a full novel of my own creation that no one will ever see. Now, I could easily claim I was re-enacting a scene from the Canon itself.

"In the first place, you must give back the manuscript."

She broke into a little ripple of laughter and walked to the fireplace. There was a calcined mass which she broke up with the poker. "Shall I give this back?"

Ah, the greatest unsung villain of the Canon, Isadora Klein. Gangster, book-burner, user of men. She somehow even managed to get Sherlock Holmes to act all racist and distract the world from her crimes. Don't think she didn't do that on purpose, y'all.

All London knew Douglas Maberly, that manuscript's author -- that's a book of his would have sold some copies! The manuscript might have eventually gone for millions. And yet, there were its ashes in that fireplace, gone forever as Isadora Klein freed herself from its power with a laugh.

I'd have liked to have met Isadora and spent an evening shooting the breeze. We might have had a thing or two to discuss.