Laudator Temporis Acti

I sent a friend this picture of Aharon Dolgopolsky with the comment, "He should be reading a book, though, not staring at a computer screen." My friend replied:

Like Borges, I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library ("Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso/ Bajo la especie de una biblioteca"), but not this one, with books that look grievously ill-used, housed all higgledy-piggledy in ugly metal shelving. And yes, the plastic box in the centre is an offence to the eye (flat screens are at least book-like) and defeats our pictorial expectations, especially as the scholar seated to the left in profile is a trope; think of Ghirlandaio's and Jan van Eyck's St. Jerome in his Study. Actually, the shirtless Dolgopolsky with his long hair and balding pate does make a convincing Jerome, but it's the Jerome of the desert. This from Giovanni Bellini (Uffizi):

Or Lorenzo Lotto (Rome):

So your A Scholar's Lair is not far off the mark, though St Jerome in his Garage would do just as well. Lest pot-calling-the-kettle-black should occur to you, attached is a photograph of some of my books in storage: