Book Tours: Sarah Goldstein's Collection pt.2

August 25, 2023

Interviews

Literature

Nesha Ruther

Writer at Bond & Grace

While Sarah Goldtein’s book collection began with British and American authors, it did not stay there. She quickly fell in love with the French writers. This added another layer to her search for books, however, because translations can vary widely depending on the translator. “I’m semi-fluent in French, so I can open up different English editions of Madame Bovary, and having read so many different translations and having a passing knowledge of the language I can see where it differs,” she says. “It just leads you down these crazy paths trying to find certain things. It’s an adventure.”

Having exhausted the French, Sarah’s latest literary obsession are the lesser-known Russian writers, many of whom have been out of print in the US for decades. “My passion right now is Russian short stories. I have four books in my eBay cart right now that are the only English translations since the 1960s,” she says.

Like many other readers, Sarah’s introduction to Russian literature came in the form of Crime and Punishment. “I was impressed, but I didn’t want to get into the giant, existential crisis novels. So I read the short story “White Nights,” which to me is the greatest short story ever written, it's just absolutely perfect,” she says. She continued to read the giants, Anna Karenina, and War and Peace, and it was from there she discovered another favorite author, Ivan Turgenev. “He turned my world upside down. I think he’s absolutely the all time-great Russian author,” she says.

Turnegev led Sarah to the work of Ivan Bunin. “He’s fascinating because of the way he describes the landscape, even Tolstoy can’t match that level of vividness,” she says. “When you read Bunin he has a lyricism that just transports you. I feel so lucky I’ve found quality translations because you need a good translator to get exactly what he’s talking about. I don’t speak Russian and the English editions are not widely available in America so it’s definitely been a challenge to find physical copies of these books,” she admits. “If I was a normal person I could go on Kindle and get it for 99 cents, but I just can’t. I’m someone who needs that physical copy.”

Sarah’s need for a physical copy brings up an important point. With the rise of the internet, reading has changed its physical form, and for collectors, it verges on rendering their passions obsolete. “I will say Kindle has its merits,” she says. “I do have a Kindle and I use it occasionally if I’m looking for an extremely rare author. With Kindle, you can download the complete works of someone totally obscure and have their life’s work at your fingers.

‍

“But there’s something about holding a book in your hands, especially older editions. There’s something about knowing someone loved this book years ago and now you’re sitting here reading it. I inherited a lot of books from my grandmother who was a huge bibliophile. I have her collected Shakespeare, I have her Anna Karenina, there’s something really special in books that have been passed down and rediscovered,” Sarah says.

‍

On the subject of difficult-to-find books, it’s fitting that given Sarah’s love for Fitzgerald, a specific printing of The Great Gatsby would prove her biggest challenge and adventure. “I hate to bring it back to Gatsby, I promise I’ve read other books,” she says as she fishes around on her shelf. “But this is my holy grail and is the one I’ve searched the longest for.”

After a few moments, she pulls a large, plain, black book from the shelf. Unlike many of the others, it’s simple and unadorned. From the outside, it seems like nothing special. “This is a printed edition of the original handwritten manuscript. And it’s exciting to me because you can see his handwriting. You can see where he changes a comma or a dash or cuts a paragraph,” she says.

‍

Inside the book are large scanned images of Fitzgerald’s original manuscript, in all its scrawled and messy glory. “It was out of print, and the only editions I could find were hundreds and hundreds of dollars. I had checked it out of my library in college and had been on a quest to find it ever since. It took a solid five years of relentless Googling. And then one day, I found an affordable copy that had belonged to a library and was being sold online.” Sarah turns the book over, the library stamp still visible along the rim of the pages. “It’s not the prettiest book in the world but it’s the most important because it took me so long to find and it allows you to step inside [Fitzgerald’s] mind and see his thought process as he wrote the book.

‍

When Sarah loves a book and its author, she becomes obsessive, curating a collection that honors the process as much as the final product. Her favorite novel, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms occupies sacred space on her shelf. She even has an edition that includes the 36 unpublished endings Hemingway tested before finally completing the book. “They’re all good,” Sarah says of the many Hemingway drafts. “But that final ending scene is a dagger in the chest. Every time I read it, when I close the book I feel almost nauseous. I’m not even crying, I'm so overcome by what I’ve read. So, do I need another Hemingway edition? The answer is no, but I love seeing a writer’s thought process because it makes me feel like I’m standing there seeing what they’ve changed. It’s just absolutely incredible.”

Another favorite from Sarah’s collection is an illustrated edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. To the untrained eye, Lewis Carroll may seem out of place next to literary heavyweights like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Turgenev, but Sarah doesn’t see it that way. “I read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a child and I enjoyed it. But the reason I collect it is because I read it for a British Literature class in college and was astounded by the wordplay. Caroll is almost like Nabokov, in how he plays with sentences and syntax. I absolutely flipped for it, it was like reading a completely different book than I did as a child.”

With the wide world of literature in front of you, it can be intimidating for aspiring collectors to know where to start. In the same way young writers are told to write what they know, Sarah recommends collecting what you know. “Start with the books that you know are your favorites. It doesn’t need to be heavy literature, it doesn’t have to be crazy intellectual. My collection began with books that I have a genuine passion for, not thinking about how it’s going to look on a shelf.”

“My biggest advice would be don’t start out by going for books as decor, but on the same side of that coin, once you find a book you’re passionate about, by all means, buy the ridiculously pretty [editions]. My best advice is to go with your interests before you think about the aesthetics of it, and once you have a solid sense of what you’re looking for, then you can get into the pretty stuff.”

While each collector has a unique style and method, Sarah’s remains distinctly her own. From battered paperbacks to rare first-editions, her book collection is a reflection of herself: knowledgeable, eclectic, and most importantly, fun.

‍

"As a woman working in the book industry, it's a genuine pleasure to come across a treasure like Bond & Grace. A publishing house run by women is not something you find every day in our world and the editions they put out more than do justice to this mantle. Their books are thoughtful, scholarly, and absolutely stunning to behold. I consider them to be investment pieces, to be passed down from one generation to the next."--Sarah on her experience with Bond & Grace