To have or not to have, that is the question. The problem with having is obvious when looking around at the many shelves for books and CDs and the filing cabinet for DVDs that line the walls and fill floor space at home. It’s especially an issue for city people whose apartment space is at a premium and who lack basements or attics or a spare room to hold their hoard.
I was out of town for a couple of weeks recently, and I had my subscriptions, too. The permanent smorgasbord of streaming services, whether of movies or music, is a diabolical temptation. Curiosity is easy to satisfy—at least within the wide limits of what’s available. Moreover, a month’s subscription to the Criterion Channel costs less than the purchase of any one Criterion Collection disk, while offering access to hundreds of classics.
There’s an element of duty in a critic’s personal library, the preservation of what may prove useful for work, but it’s not the prime motive for compiling one . Collecting is an act of love; even though it risks fetish-like attachments to the objects in question, its essence is found not in the objects themselves but in the pleasure that they provide, by delivering movies, music, literature—by providing the experience of art.
First, even the most bountiful streaming services give with one hand while taking with the other. For example, the Criterion Channel, the gold standard for cinephilic offerings, both announces a new batch of films arriving on the first day of the following month and thoughtfully warns subscribers of what’s leaving on the last day of the current one.