On Those Who Sin Against Books

From Edmund Lester Pearson, a now unknown writer, via the Paris Review, a story of what happens in the next world to people who misuse books in this world. For example:

We hurried on to a crowd of men bent nearly double over desks. They were pale and emaciated, which my guide told me was due to the fact that they had nothing to eat but paper.

“They are bibliomaniacs,” he exclaimed, “collectors of unopened copies, seekers after misprints, measurers by the millimetre of the height of books. They are kept busy here reading the Seaside novels in paper covers. Next to them are the bibliographers—compilers of lists and counters of fly leaves. They cared more for a list of books than for books themselves, and they searched out unimportant errors in books and rejoiced mightily when they found one. Exactitude was their god, so here we let them split hairs with a razor and dissect the legs of fleas.”

My thanks to the amazingly useful Prufrock for the link.