The sensuous pleasure of musty read

In late afternoon, old wood and books surround Larry Burgess in his Victorian home, tucked within a five-acre grove of Washington navel oranges in Redlands. From the next room sounds the heartbeat of a grandfather clock made in 1920 of Honduran mahogany. Sunlight spills upon the wooden floor, golden oak, reaching toward birch shelves on the far wall.

Tenderly, he holds a venerable book with maroon binding, a collection of poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Easier than he suspects, he finds the page he seeks. Burgess, director of the A.K. Smiley Public Library and its museum, the Lincoln Memorial Shrine, says he favors Robinson in melancholy moments or when he feels particularly betrayed by the political machinations of life.

Aloud, he reads a piece titled “Richard Cory.”

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

“Good morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich -- yes, richer than a king

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

A sinking, breathless pause, the ticking clock, sunlight billowing like slow liquid upon the floor. Such power in words and silence. And in the reading, says Burgess, of old books.

It would be a far different experience, he says, to read those same words from a newly printed paperback with shiny cover. The pleasure given by an old book is, in part, tactile, the feeling of, in some cases, leather binding and venerable paper, he says, but it is more than that. The mere presence of old books creates a different atmosphere, rich and warm, timeless, perhaps. And what could be better on a winter’s day than an old book in hand, the sound of rain and a grand house built in 1890?

His collection -- he’s never counted his books -- is as diverse as he is, ranging from fiction to local history to the photographs of Herb Ritts to his great interest in biographies, in particular, Abraham Lincoln. As diverse as the cushions in the room, one which quotes Thoreau: “The heavens are as deep as aspirations are high.” The other which simply states: “One martini, two martini, three martini, floor.”

While he loves old books, there is a television in the room. If he’s not reading a biography of Lincoln or Kalakua, the last king of Hawaii, he may be watching “The Osbournes.” “I do have digressions,” he says. “It’s not all a life of the mind.” And when it comes to Shakespeare or poetry, he does better to read aloud while walking upon old boards of the house, where he lives with wife Charlotte. “I’m very careful that the doors are locked,” he says, “and that my wife is not home and no one else is around.” He returns often to his books, which are more like friends. Recently, he picked up a copy of Mark Twain’s “The Gilded Age,” a tale of scoundrels and broken promises and snake oil.

“It was written in 1873,” he says, “but it speaks to the world in 2003.” His love of word and book began early. “I still have a copy of the first book I coherently was able to understand,” he says. “It’s about a cat trying to eat a mouse, and the mouse outwits the cat.” Then there was Althea Snyder, the next-door neighbor of his childhood who always wore dresses, her hair in a bun, black shoes with thick heels. She would invite “Master Burgess” to her home and offer him Kool-Aid and cookies, then read to him, with a very pronounced cadence, from “Light for Little Ones,” published in 1880.

One story in particular, describing the dangers of pipe smoking, created images that have stayed with him: a burning haystack; dead, charred animals. Upon her death in the mid-1990s, Snyder’s nephew visited Burgess, now 57, and brought him the book, which she had willed to him.

Such books, some of them torn with writing in the margins, some embracing secrets, also are the passion of Peter Hay, co-owner with wife Dorthea Atwater of Book Alley and Book Alley Too in Pasadena.

“I’m fascinated by what can fall out of an old book,” says Hay. “An old newspaper clipping, or a bookmark.”

He purchased a book a couple of years ago about the history of a New England town. Inside, he discovered a bit of history more telling than the book itself: a letter handwritten by a slave owner complaining of a slave who had run away.

Since opening his first store in 1992, Hay typically focuses his search on books of interest to his customers, but every now and then he chances upon one for himself. The book may not be rare or valuable, but it feels good in his hands, and it speaks to him.

For Burgess, his favorite time for being among his books is late afternoon, when sunlight skims the tops of orange trees and enters the room, and the only sound is the ticking of a clock.

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Where to find used books

Around every corner: from the Internet to yard sales to auctions to library sales to used/rare bookstores or your aunt’s attic, treasures abound when it comes to old or rare books.

They can be priceless: Among the offerings at the recent 36th California International Antiquarian Book Fair in San Francisco:

* Fine first edition of “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien in original first-issue dust jacket. $85,000. From Heritage Book Shop Inc., Los Angeles.

* First edition, first printing of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” signed and inscribed, “To Uels from Ernest Hemingway.” $25,000. From Legends Fine & Rare Books, Pomona.

Or a dime a dozen: At Acres of Books, 240 Long Beach Blvd. in Long Beach, the largest used bookstore in California, you can get Hemingway in paperback for $2. Hardbacks are available for as little as $1.