Brief Thought About Lawrence

Somewhere in my late adolescence I stumbled upon a copy of T. E. Lawrence’s memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It said on the title page it was a first edition and the used book dealer who was offering it said it would be a great first aquisition for an aspiring book collector. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a book collector (and indeed would instead become a book accumulator, a horse of a very different color), but ever since the movie I was a big fan of Lawrence. Turned out this “American first” was somewhere in the vicinity of common as dirt and was worth considerably less than the not too much I paid for it. I learned a lot about book dealers, I learned a little about the Near East in the First World War, and I learned a bit more about Lawrence. Lovely writer. Dark, compelling…

I see Lawrence was born on this day in 1888.

And I have to admit, it still is the movie that haunts…