You’ve probably been wondering what the tidy rare-book librarians at the National Library of France — that storied caretaker of French literature — have been up to these past couple years. It so happens that they’ve been huddled among the dark shelves of their naughtiest stacks, digging through dusty boxes of pulp pornography, detective stories, light erotica, a Dutch magazine called Suck and “authentic novels of flagellation from the early 20th century.”

Rest assured that these efforts of France’s finest have gone to a good cause. The long-forgotten volumes that emerged from that excavation were quickly funneled through the occasionally deviant filter of none other than Richard Prince, the artist who for decades has been compiling and reworking the artifacts and autographs of what he calls “anything Beat, hippie or punk,” along with everything else that has struck his eclectic fancy over the years. It’s a peculiar way to make a living, and one that more than a few of us wish we’d thought of. His process is to head over to Christie’s and buy, say, an 1899 copy of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” with “the only known dust jacket gracing its boards,” then take a photograph of it. Last step: hang that photo in a gallery and become famous.

That’s not all. He’s been known to package these rare books inside new, custom bindings, then place them on a shelf in his living room. The result? Art. And sometimes, he buys the original painting that was used for the cover art of a midcentury dime novel that few people have read, then frames it next to a copy of that same dime novel. The result of that effort? Also art.