Lucien ‘acquire, classify and surround yourself with more or less fifteen thousand volumes, still counting as they say at the British Library. Nor to publish Books on fire. History of the endless destruction of librariesfollowed in 2006 by La Great Digitization. Is there a thought after the paper? and finally A Brief History of All Books.
He would not have gone any further if, throughout his wanderings in the labyrinth of catalogs and shelves of the world, he had not heard a whisper, the same and increasingly loud, which turned out to be the monologue of The Library, one and indivisible, a sort of genius of the place, always wishing to tell its centuries-old life story to someone who would finally listen. This is how he can now bring back the memories, pride, anger and bursts of humor of the one he rightly considers to be the best friend of humankind.
Read an excerpt…
Audio presentation…
—
Born in 1944 in Gascony, Lucien Xavier Polastron has a background in classics and a dual career as a cultural reporter and writer (essayist). Specializing in architecture, book arts and natural philosophy, he has published sixteen authoritative works. His story of the endless destruction of libraries (Books on Fire, 2004 and 2009) made him known to the general public. My dust is the gold of time is the sequel. He also published Philosophia Naturalis with Klincksieck.
—
Table of contents
At the beginning
What is hard
The making of knowledge
Twenty standard-size sheets
Like a rider taps
Finesse and quality
Whatever the race
Not having fiber
The high law of their existence
How the monstrous jumble
Worthy crimes
So, over and over again
We clearly smell
Think / Classify / Think / Reclassify
The first proven catalog
When the great commotion
The most stubborn
Following him
Son of a rich financier
In the privacy of home
The microcosm of the file
What is now unthinkable
Treasure of lists
Photius
Nicholas V
Naudé
Hesse
Lists for Doucet
Queneau
The Norwegian and the others
The LILU
Of my first establishments
أم كل المكتبات
New parent library?
Greek pottery
So Julius Caesar
The poet Mani
Le藝文志yiwenzhi
“Pray, work and read!” »
Alkwin, Albinus known as Alcuin
This is how my collections
The extended priesthood
The abbey-school-scriptorium
A favorite
And Guillaume Budé, then?
I owe to Constantine I
From my novice establishments
Overall the XVe century
Everyone knows, I hope
It’s not just the Inquisition
Scholar and librarian, famous
First application
Back in power
The planners
All splendor
table of chapters and sections
Generally speaking
Of my ultimate establishments
Andrew Carnegie, too
The customary pomp
My millennia-old experience
The shape of a building
A double in the end
The intelligence of ancient places
Instead of sending him to prison
The all-ghost and beyond
Ghost and library
Even more livid
The whiter white
Beati pauperes in spiritu
Deportation
Censorship is an art
The face even more hideous
Apocalypse of Anastasia
And what existence is more to be pitied
Suddenly at the turn of the year
The fashionable disease
The State, therefore in France
So the Library?
Public millefeuille
Librarianship
Let her be a chicken
It is common to read
Disregard
Zero is the finite One
