Why Do We Value the Desks of Dead Writers?

Toni Morrison’s library is up for auction. Theodor Adorno’s desk is on display in Frankfurt. Freud’s couch is a pilgrimage destination. Every year one can bid on a pen, lamp, typewriter, etc. of a famous dead author. Such items function as modern relics, their former owners as modern saints (even when the very authors who once owned them advocated skept…