by Jon Lackman | 7 April 2009 | Books
From the recently published book Meyer Schapiro Abroad: Letters to Lillian and Travel Notebooks, edited by Daniel Esterman:
Barcelona, 21 July 1927
… I know that after 1000 monographs have exhausted a million details, their blurred image will make a fine picture for the few people who are taken by such things. May they be taken by other things.
The professional habit becomes so strong that vanity is reinforced each moment by the simple success of its preoccupations. The humility of unpaid, unsung scholarship is a foolish tale: I am overwhelmed by the libraries of the world which surely contain 10,000,000 monographs—& the books, stores & quais, & the pages rotting in warehouses—which no search for proposed truth or man’s happiness designed, but the professional practice of printing, broadcasting personal details. What businessman has the circulation of a poor thesis? the discussion, the review, the endless citation & recollection of his existence in footnotes & polemics? These may have happy results—give us telephones or a more just view of man’s character. But disinterestedness is not their prime distinction …
