I love this part from George Perec’s essay “Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books”. The phrases “an indiviudal bureaucracy” & “good-natured anarchy” will always stick with me.
Opposed to this apologia for a sympathetic disorder is the small-minded temptation towards an individual bureaucracy one thing for each place and each place for its one thing, and vice versa. Between these two tensions, one which sets a premium on letting things be, on a good-natured anarchy,…