i don’t know when, exactly, but somewhere around 6am (i think) the middle 2 of a 5-shelf bookcase collapsed, sending a couple of hundred books and old magazines spewing aannd sprawling all across the floor, that now-cleared floor of which i was so proud earlier this week, for having purchased another set of shelves and shelved a couple of hundred magazines that were previously piled on the floor. those shelves are fine, i think. it is the old, more beautiful set of shelves that crapped out. i think i know why, too. i re-arranged the inner shelves and i remember thinking that i had not fully pressed the little metal wedge things into the holes. somehting about the fit just did not seem right, and htis mini disaster proves i should have trusted my instincts.

i say it is an Alkanian event because the French composer Charles Alkan allegedly died whilst reaching for a copy of the Talmud. the copy of the Talmud was, as the story goes, on the top shelf, and when the elderly Alkan pulled it from the shelf it caused the full bookcase to come crashing down on him, crushing the old man to death. the moral of the story being: never put heavy books on the top shelves!

the story is apocryphal, but it is harmless, and as has been noted by others: the story’s veracity notwithstanding, he yarn did Alkan a service, for without it it is unlikely that anyone would have heard of Alkan at all.

mhy understanding of the cunard is that it was a result of a mis-translation. i thought it was a mis-translation of a passage in a letter from Isidor Philip to Ferrucio Busoni, in which Philip told Busoni that Alkan had died “surrounded by his books”. somehow this got translated to say that Alkan was “crushed by his books”, and perhaps some other reference to the Talmud contributed to some construance through which Alkan’s death was blamed on bad shelving.

i think what happened with my inner shelves was the pegs were not all the way in, or they werre impossible to get all the way in… the first set failed, which put too much weight on the 2nd set, and the books dropped like turds onto the floor, waking up myself and, most likely, the downstairs neighbor. oof.