That books go out of print is right; it is just. But the survival of some and the apparent death of others is a mysterious business to me. In my home and in my store, I can see that space is finite, and that room needs to be made for the hundreds of new titles being published every week.  But I can’t see the purpose of books that mean something, often little,  for only a short time, or the books that mean nothing at all.  Too many of them feature pictures of wet cats, and exist purely  to spite readers.

Or so it seems. But every reader of every stripe has an out-of-print favorite, something that we’re individually sure should be widely available and widely celebrated.   To mark the one-year anniversary of his outstanding literary webzine, The Second Pass, editor John Williams asked a whole bunch of reading folks to wax on about their favorite OP titles.  Among them: contributions from me, and from the infinitely more cultured, like Mr. Levi Stahl. Do check it out.