Book Patrol

ABC's of Book Collecting: Author's Binding

michael@bookpatrol.net (Michael Lieberman) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:31:00 +0000

AUTHOR’S BINDING

Copies to be presented by authors to their friends or to public figures were, from the earliest times, occasionally bound to their order; normally in a superior manner, but by no means always recognisable as such. (morocco was a common style for this purpose in the 17th and 18th centuries and vellum, gilt, in the 16th.) In the absence, therefore, of an inscription or other evidence, the statement that a leather-bound book is in an author’s binding will usually be made – and should always be received – with caution, still more so the assumption (commonly made) that such a book must be the dedication copy.

Howard Nixon once said that he had never seen a letter from an author presenting his book to the dedicatee that did not plead illness, an impending journey, or just the desire to see it in his patron’s hands as quickly as possible, as an excuse for enclosing it unbound. During the age of publisher’s cloth, an author might occasionally have a dozen or more copies put up in a special style, or a different colour, for presentation to his or her friends: Lewis Carroll, Ouida and Mrs Henry Wood provide a number of examples. But since the authenticated instances of this are rare, it is usually safer to presume that such bindings were a publisher’s variant for the gift market (see gift binding) until the author’s connexion has been proved.

Previous ABC's of Book Collecting posts

Carter, John & Nicolas Barker
ABC's of Book Collecting. 8th Edition
New Castle, Delaware : Oak Knoll Press, 2004

Buy a copy

Thanks to Oak Knoll Press for permission to reprint

NYPL Goes Underground

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Mattoon) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:21:00 +0000

The Velvet Underground with Nico (far left) and Andy Warhol (left).

Nearly 45 years after their formation, The Velvet Underground, the most influential band to emerge from the New York City rock scene of the 60's, is reuniting at the city's public library. On December 8 three of the group's surviving members, singer-songwriter-guitarist Lou Reed, drummer Maureen Tucker, and bassist Doug Yule will come together for a question and answer session, and appropriately, to promote a new book celebrating the band's history.

LEIGH, Michael. The Velvet Underground.

NY: Macfadden, [1963].

While the library might seem an unlikely place for the reunion of an experimental rock group, The Velvets have always been a bookish band. They chose their name from a mass market paperback documenting the 60's sexual subculture of The Big Apple. A filmmaker friend of Reed's reportedly found a copy of the tome on the street, and the subject matter resonated with the songwriter who had already penned a tune called "Venus In Furs," inspired by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's book of the same name.

KUGELBERG, Johan. The Velvet Underground: New York Art.
NY: Rizzoli, 2009.

In a further indication of The Velvets' love of the written word, the Library event is timed to coincide with the release of a new book detailing the band's history. The Velvet Underground: New York Art is short on text, but according to Raw Magazine: "[contains] more full-color images than a strong acid trip." The book's publisher, Rizzoli, promises: "an astonishing assembly of rare objects and artworks...from never-before-seen photographs of the band's first live show in New York to Andy Warhol's cover and poster designs, Lou Reed's hand written music and lyrics, underground press clippings and controversial reviews, flyers, handbills, and posters."

Since tickets for New York Public Library's evening with The Velvets sold out as soon as they hit the library's website, most of us hungering for a walk on the wild side will have to be content with the heroin-like rush delivered by those beautiful images from Rizzoli. That printed satellite of love will have to supply enough white heat and white light for our pale blue eyes to make up for the fact that we're left waiting for the man.

European Rare Book Seller Exhibits at Book Fair In Dubai

stephen@bookpatrol.net (Stephen J. Gertz) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:54:00 +0000

Booth at the 2009 Sharjah International Book Fair
in Dubai, November 11-21, 2009

Antiquariaat Forum, an ILAB, Netherlands-based dealer of rare books, prints, maps, manuscripts and drawings, is the only rare book dealer exhibiting at the Sharjah World Book Fair in Dubai.

According to Corstiaan S, Hesselink, Antiquariat Forum’s owner, affluent collectors, universities, libraries, and museums in the region are open to spending large sums to acquire rare, antiquarian books. 

Hesselink brought only a small selection of books, wisely keyed to regional interests. A volume on falconry from the 16th century, priced at €165,000, has already attracted several serious buyers, according to Hesselink. Another first and only edition rare book on falconry by Francois de Saincte Aulaire (b. 1551), a grand falconer of France, is priced €60,000. 

 "Rare books fetch a fancy premium. The price of this hunting manuscript written in 1570 is €165,000. This is a book about hunting with falcons and reflects the importance of falconry in 16th century Middle East and Europe," said Hesselink.

He also has a 600-year-old Arabic economics book on free markets. "This is one of the earliest manuscripts on free market economies and its price is $12,600.

  "We also have an original reproduction of an important atlas of Europe originally made in Amsterdam in the 17th century. It is priced at €75,000. One volume is entirely about Arabia and Asia and its original is kept in the Austrian National Library of Vienna."

Antiquariat Forum also has a collection of twenty early photographs of Mecca. "These are really rare photographs of Mecca when photography was in its infancy. The price is $126,300."

The Sharjah International Book Fair is a 10 day annual event showcasing the books of more than 750 publishers from close to 42 nations, with an average of 400,000 visitors attending each year. and with sales and trade connections estimated at $28 million. Considered the area’s biggest public event, the aim of Sharjah International Book Fair is to generate the reading habit amongst the region's people. It runs through November 21, 2009.
 
Full story from Emirates Business 24/7.

Old Books Fresh Eggs

michael@bookpatrol.net (Michael Lieberman) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:48:00 +0000

Between Muddy Gap and the Lander, Wyoming lies Sweetwater Station home of the Mad Dog and the Pilgrim Booksellers.

Population of Sweetwater Station: 5
Inventory of Mad Dog and the Pilgrim: 75,000

In addition to the books Lynda “Mad Dog” German and Polly “The Pilgrim” Hinds operate an "eccentric working farm" featuring two dogs ; four cats; 62 chickens; 26 sheep; two llamas; one milk goat; four pea fowl, and two ducks.

The roadside sign above is the only advertising they do for as German says “People who like books will find you.”

Rone Tempest profiles Mad Dog and the Pilgrim at New West Missoula

Photo by Brad Christensen of Wyofile.

Mr. Rhythm Gets His Groove Back

stephen@bookpatrol.net (Stephen J. Gertz) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:30:00 +0000

Andre Williams, aka Mr. Rhythm, whose talkin’ R&B dance-dittys, Bacon Fat, Greasy Chicken, Pass the Biscuits Please, Ribs n' Tips, and the immortal Jail Bait hit the charts during the mid-late 1950s but whose career later hit the skids, followed by a descent into an alcohol and drugs-fueled skid-row life, has got his mojo workin’ once again with his first literary effort.

Sweets and Other Stories is a fictional narrative that takes readers on a wild, edgy ride from Chicago to Houston, New Orleans, and New York City, as a teenage girl finds herself in a family way, without, alas, a family. Forced to fend for herself, she is taken under the wing of a local pimp who entices her into prostitution.

The narrative that follows is a free-for-all through the shadow world of pimps and their women, corrupt funeral directors, gangs and drug running, with sidebar anecdotes that are guaranteed to appall, alarm and astonish. Extreme entries remain unedited, and none of Williams' raw-drawl storytelling style has been tampered with in this unusual and startling fiction debut. The text ends with lyrics to songs that Williams, now 73, has recently composed.

“When I first peered into this book and saw the words ‘Sweets got in the cab and asked the driver to take her to a good fortune teller,’ I was mesmerized, drawn in by what I knew to be a rare new voice in American fiction...The stories he has written deserve to survive as well. They most certainly deserve to be read, as the rewards they offer are many and fine.” - Nick Tosches, from his Foreword.

Can you deal with Sweets and Other Stories by Andre Williams?

After his R&B salutes to cholesterol, down home cookin', and the young and illegal, Andre Williams went on to co-write Stevie Wonder’s first song, Thank You For Loving Me; wrote Shake a Tail Feather for The Five Du-Tones (later recorded by Ike and Tina Turner); supervised two albums by The Contours; and managed Edwin Starr.

Sweets and Other Stories, written by Williams as an exercise in rehab, is released by Kicks Books, a division of Kicks Magazine, both ventures part of Miriam Linna and Billy Miller’s Brooklyn-based vintage as vantage-point, fringe-to-front-and-center pop-culture empire that exploded on the scene in the mid-1980s with Norton Records, their label (named in honor of Brooklyn’s favorite son and Ralph Kramden’s best friend) devoted to promoting primitive, retro rock'n'roll; rockabilly; garage punk; garage rock; lounge music; and early R&B. Linna, former drummer for The Cramps, one of the seminal groups to emerge in NYC’s punk scene of the ‘Seventies, is also, as if she doesn’t have enough to do to keep herself off the streets and out of trouble, one of the nation’s most respected dealers of vintage paperbacks.

You don’t have to be on Route 66 to get your kicks. Kicks Books’ Sweets and Other Stories by Andre Williams can be ordered directly from the publisher.

Now, for those who are unfamiliar with the down-low-juke-joint-talkin'-song-stylings of Andre "Mr. Rhythm" Williams, Book Patrol is pleased to present this brief retrospective:

“Legitimate Contender For World’s Most Expensive Book” (Not)

stephen@bookpatrol.net (Stephen J. Gertz) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:30:00 +0000

“Legitimate Contender For World’s Most Expensive Book” ?
(Twelfth edition)

“Hiya kids, hiya, hiya, hiya!”

Froggy, the croaking - and long-croaked - gremlin, has risen from the graveyard of 50s television to pluck his magic twanger once more and bedevil a hapless victim. This time, a deluded "rare book dealer" is his prey.

Who’s the poor sap? Why it’s Milliondollarauctions123, aka Ebay’s most egregious example of sub-amateur rare bookseller, who declares, after stating his headline above:

“Far more important than $30.8 million Codex Leicester.”

A page from daVinci's Codex Leicester

The book in question? Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Influence of Seapower Upon History 1660-1783. What’s the asking price?

$21,000,000. No joke, folks. Oh, and that’s just the reserve. Good thing there's no buyer's premium. Time for Ebay to change its name to Oybay.

Milliondollardunce weaves one of the most astounding tales of rare book baloney we’ve seen in quite some time. A lot of helium was used to pump up this book.

“The sale of this book for over $30.8 million would deservedly break the record price paid by Bill Gates for the Codex Leicester. This book is far more historically significant than the Codex and is worthy of the the new price record. Historically, The Influence of Seapower Upon History was the successor to the Declaration of Independence and the Monroe Doctrine in the saga of human liberty. If no higher provenanced copy of this book exists, the offered volume is actually priceless.

“If America had not risen to the challenge of competing ideologies at the dawning of the 20th century, freedom as we know it today probably would not exist. Rising totalitarian empires almost certainly would have toppled an America that had chosen, instead, to be an isolated fortress nation. Through a century in which over 250,000,000 people were killed by their own totalitarian governments, The Influence of Seapower Upon History was the philosophical and strategic text that preserved life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“In the 1940's, Mahan's prescient advocacy of a larger navy would narrowly avert global tyranny. The survival of liberty and democracy to this present day is attributable, in part, to the book now offered. Unless a more historic copy of this book exists, the offered volume ranks among the top documentary treasures in humanity's passage to universal human rights, suffrage, and liberty.

“Internet search results of this book generally devolve into pejorative statements about American ‘imperialism,’ while avoiding the context of the genocidal 20th century. The following keyword searches restore that key context in humanity's long dark passage to democratic peace: (Seller is not associated with any website.) R.J. Rummel, democide, photographs democide, Unit 731, 1848 Communist Manifesto, AHA Bemis address, 1919 War Plan Orange, 1919 political parties established, 1921 Washington Naval Conference, Russian Revolution 1917, totalitarianism, personality cult, political economy”

Are you sold? Wait.

There are presently four-hundred and seventy-two - 472! - copies of this “rare book” noted by OCLC in institutions worldwide, a fact unreported by Milliondollardufus.

Here’s an oh, by-the-way that Milliondollardingbat neglects to include in his 21-gun cannonade catalog salute: the basic and essential bibliographical fact, Boston: Little, Brown, 1918.

But this copy, according to Milliondollardunderhead, has magnificently marvelous, mama mia! provenance: “War Department Library, Library Office Chief of Staff, Pentagon Library, Army Library, Department of Defense Library.” It is suggested that it might, just might have been touched by Gen. George C. Marshall.

The Influence of Seapower Upon History 1660-1783 was, indeed, an important and influential book but this copy could have been signed and licked by every four-star general and rear admiral 1918-1945 and it still wouldn’t be worth more than $20,000 at auction - on a good day full of sunshine and fairie dust when everyone has lost their mind, know it but don't care. It's an ex-library copy, jeez, a pariah to collectors, particularly as it is an ex-library copy of a later edition - the twelfth - not the first edition of 1890.

OCLC/WorldCat notes 352 copies of the first edition in institutional collections worldwide.

A copy of the first edition recently sold at auction for £150 ($252).

The OCLC info you have to pay for to access. The auction price is available to all on the Net.

That anyone of sano mentis could declare this book to be of greater import than the Codex - the collection of manuscript leaves on scientific subjects written by Leonardo da Vinci - calls into question current standards of mental competence.

Milliondollarauction123 qualifies for his own personal entry in the DSM-IV; the man’s just plain kwazy!

But, when you’ve been plucked by Froggy’s magic twanger, anything is possible. You are compelled to behave like a fool.

So, don’t delay. This Ebay auction closes on November 19th. Current bids: None.

___________

The ABAA chat-board has wound up the chatter-teeth toy on this story. The consensus is that, should milliondollarauctions123 ever decide to join the American Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, his initial membership fee should be set at $21,000,000.

Scotland's Library Highlights Highland's Historic Homicides

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Mattoon) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:01:00 +0000

Victorian Artist James Hamilton's Romantic Depiction of The Massacre of Glencoe

The National Library of Scotland has chosen as the centerpiece of an exhibit of "nine cultural treasures" one of the most infamous documents in the country's history: the 1692 government order commanding the notorious Massacre of Glencoe. The chilling contents of this death warrant stand as a horrific example of state sanctioned murder.

The Official Order For The Massacre (see full text below.)

In August of 1691 the English crown ordered the chiefs of all Scottish clans to take an oath of allegiance to William III by year's end. This proclamation reflected the desire of the monarchs from the House Of Orange-Nassau to crush the recently deposed Stuart rulers. The unfortunate Alasdair, Chief of Clan MacDonald of Glencoe, swore his fealty to William just over a week into the new year of 1692. (Bureaucrats, later revealed to be part of the murder plot, deliberately delayed the efforts of the clan leader, known as informally as MacIain, to meet the deadline.) This trifling delay allowed a scheming Secretary of State to make an example of the MacDonald clan by ordering that all "under seventy" die by the sword, and "these miscreants be cutt off root and branch."

Robert Campbell of Glenlyon

The man charged with executing the murderous order was Captain Robert Campbell, 5th Laird of Glenlyon. Campbell was a wastrel: a bankrupt, drunken gambler who had lost his fortune to unwise investment and endless extravagance. His last remaining holdings had been looted by soldiers belonging to the MacDonald of Glencoe clan in 1689. This forced the desperate Laird, now 59, to seek humiliating employment as a foot soldier for the Earl of Argyll. As a result, there was no love lost between clans MacDonald and Campbell.

The bitter cold Winter of 1691-92 found Major Campbell's regiment, most probably by design, billeted on land belonging to his enemy, MacIain. The Clan MacDonald Chief extended traditional Highland hospitality to The Earl Of Argyll's soldiers, despite the history of bad blood between himself and their commanding officer. For at least two weeks Campbell and his men depleted the precious Winter food supply of their hosts, and drank and toasted to their good health. Captain Campbell bunked in MacIain's own home, and even proposed arranged marriages between young members of the two clans, ostensibly to end their ongoing feud.

A Vicorian Portrait of A Member Of Clan MacDonald By Artist R.R. McIan

Campbell's conduct was revealed as a ruse upon receipt of the soon-to-be infamous order from his superior officer, Major Duncanson. Campbell and Duncanson spent the evening of February 12, 1692 dining and playing cards with their unsuspecting hosts, even making plans for a festive meal the following evening. But at 5am on February 13 the killing began. The hospitable MacIain was stabbed to death before he could arise from his bed and alert his family to the soldier's treachery. In all, 38 members of clan MacDonald were slain as they attempted to escape from their former guests. Another 40 family members, mostly women and children, died from exposure to the Winter's cold as they fled the dwellings they had generously shared with those who now cruelly set them ablaze.

Glencoe's Winter Landscape

Hair-raising accounts by survivors of the cowardly killings soon prompted a government inquiry into the crime. But despite the fact that Scots law included a special provision for the severest of penalties to be imposed on perpetrators of "murders under trust," no one was ever brought to justice for the Massacre of Glencoe. The event remained a rallying point for those who wished to restore the rule of the Stuart kings well into the next century. In the Victorian era the deaths at Glencoe were romanticized in art and literature, most notably in Sir Walter Scott's story, The Highland Widow. In the 1930's the unforgiving landscape, and equally harsh history, of the glen inspired T.S. Eliot's poem, Rannoch, by Glencoe:

Here the crow starves, here the patient stag
Breeds for the rifle. Between the soft moor
And the soft sky, scarcely room
To leap or soar. Substance crumbles, in the thin air
Moon cold or moon hot. The road winds in
Listlessness of ancient war,
Langour of broken steel,
Clamour of confused wrong, apt
In silence. Memory is strong
Beyond the bone, Pride snapped,
Shadow of pride is long, in the pass
No concurrence of bone.

The document authorizing the murder of an entire clan, guilty only of being convenient victims for a government bent on consolidating control, will be on exhibit at the National Library of Scotland until early January, in low light conditions and with flash photography banned. In a perfect world, such careful preservation of a document detailing the depravity of the power mad might prevent the repetition of such evil events. But our world is sadly far from perfect.

Here is the full text of the document:

You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the McDonalds of Glenco, and put all to the sword under seventy. You are to have special care that old Fox and his sons doe upon no account escape your hands, you are to secure all the avenues that no man escape. This you are to putt in execution at fyve of the clock precisely: and by that time, or very shortly after it, I'll strive to be att you with a stronger party: if I doe not come to you att fyve, you are not to tarry for me, but to fall on. This is by the Kings speciall command, for the good & safety of the Country, that these micreants be cutt off root and branch. See that this be putt in execution without feud or favour, else you may expect to be dealt with as one not true to King nor Government, nor a man fitt to carry Commissione in the Kings service. Expecting you will not faill in fulfilling hereof, as you love your selfe, I subscribe these with my hand at Balicholis Feb: 12, 1692

For their Majesties service

To Captain Robert Campbell
of Glenlyon
(signed) R. Duncanson

Book Patrol's Top Books about Books for 2009

michael@bookpatrol.net (Michael Lieberman) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:31:00 +0000

Welcome to Book Patrol's inaugural list of our favorite books about books of the year. The list is in no particular order; for all of them are worth a read, and as you will see, in the year the e-book took off, books about books were very much alive.

The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control

by Ted Striphas. Columbia University Press

This is a book for both the student of deep book history and for the casual book culture enthusiast. Striphas shows us how despite the enormous pressures currently facing the book it continues to play a vital role in our culture. The book is packed with tidbits of biblio history; who knew that the bookshop and it's shelving habits were the precursor to supermarket design, and also offers much on the long relationship between books and technology, from barcodes to Oprah (it is after all a television show), to online bookselling and now the rush of e-books. The cover illustration is the icing on the cake.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett. Riverhead Books

As Ken Sanders, the 'detective' and self professed 'biblodick' of the book more aptly calls it 'The Man Who Loved "To Steal" Books Too Much'. It provides a good account of the potential dark side of biblomania for the thief, John Gilkey, is as sick and delusional as they come.

Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry. Simon & Schuster

Noted author and Academy Award winner Larry McMurtry is also a bookseller. For as long as he has been writing he has been buying and selling books. In Books: A Memoir McMurtry shares his life in and around books. The book is packed with great insights into the book trade. McMurtry claims to have handled over a million books in his bookselling life which can only lead to some great stories. "One reason I've hung on to book selling is that it's progressive-the opposite of writing, pretty much" says McMurtry. The learning curve is always vertical.

Howard's End on the Landing by Susan Hill. Profile Books

Noted author Susan Hill went looking for a book in her library. While searching she came across numerous others that sparked memories of having read them or a desire to read them. The experience was intense enough for Hill to swear off buying and books for a year to spend time with the books that surrounded her. "A book which is left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to to burst into new life."

Shotgun on My Chest: Memoirs of a Lewis & Clark Book Collector
by Roger Wendlick. 12-Gauge Press

This book is an inside look at blue-collar bibliomania at its best. Wendlick, a construction worker in Portland, OR, amassed one of, if not the best, collection of Lewis & Clark material ever assembled. Shotgun on My Chest documents this journey and gives you a front row seat to Wendlick's epic quest.

The Case for Books : Past, Present, and Future by Robert Darnton. PublicAffairs

Here in one place reside the greatest hits from one of the world's leading book minds. Darton, who is currently the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library, has been at the forefront of 'the history of the book' movement since its inception. It includes many of his essays that have appeared in the New York Review of Books over the years. The man loves books and understands technology.

Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements
by Dwight Garner. HarperCollins

A look at the last 100 years of book advertising in print. Interesting to see how many of the century's best books were framed and presented. A timely book in the sense that print advertising as a marketing tool for a book is become more and more endangered as newspaper and magazines continue to disappear at a record clip. In another 100 years one might not ever remember that there once existed print advertisements for books.

The Lowest Entry-Level Job In Hollywood, Part Two

stephen@bookpatrol.net (Stephen J. Gertz) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:30:00 +0000

I Should Have Stayed Home by Horace McCoy. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938.

I Should Have Stayed Home is one of the great, if largely unknown, Hollywood novels. Written by Horace McCoy (1897-1955), author of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1933), it is the tale of young Ralph Carson, a wanna-be from Georgia who comes to Hollywood to be discovered. The title of the book sums up the results of his effort. It’s a message that should be plastered on all Hollywood city limit signs, in L.A. bus depots, train stations and airports.

Ralph and his girl, Mona, another hopeful, wind up working as extras, a job generally considered to be the lowest entry level job in Hollywood. They are clearly, and definitively, losers, and they know it.

Nobody working studio labor considered themselves losers. Nobody doing studio labor considered it a stepping stone to greater, “above-the-line,” Hollywood glory. It was a job, hard physical work, that fed families or fueled young, single life, and nothing to be ashamed of.

The youngest guys, though, pretty much figured it as something to do until something else came along, and it was understood, with no little degree of anxiety, that if you were still doing it after three years, you’d be doing it for thirty and wind up a broken, prematurely old man; evidence abounded. I certainly felt that way, and the word “loser” would often pop into my head like a neon sign flashing on and off into a darkened room in a film-noir while the depressed protagonist, me, lay in bed, anxiously pondering a future I could not see.

Some of the guys whose youth was fading would show up for work at 6AM with booze breath.

Leon did, from time to time.

I committed myself to read his poetry and I was in his home. Now he brings out his notebooks. The gun is on the table. I’m on the spot.

I painfully suspect what I’m about to read and my dread blossoms as I begin.

“They don’t know me, don’t know me at all. They step on me, day by day, they want to grind me down but I won't let them! I’m a sensitive man among small animals who don’t care. Nobody cares! No. Body. Cares. Sometimes I want to kill them all, these puny excuses for humanity, who bite and bite and bite and are still hungry. I feel too much, my cells are screaming. They want me to swim in their shit but I’ll show them all!”

You get the idea: the inked ravings of a very disturbed individual. Who has a loaded gun on the table and is anxious for my review. In those days, I was making a habit of hanging out with disturbed individuals; they made me feel a lot better about myself. But now I may die as the result of my self-help therapy.

"So, what'ya think?"

“Well, it’s intense. Vibrant. Alive. You have a gift for getting your thoughts down on paper and the discipline to do so. It’s bit rough, though.”

“What’ya mean, ‘rough’?”

“Uh, well, you need to work on it, smooth out the writing a little, maybe tone down the venom.”

“I like the venom.”

“What can I say? You’re the poet! Go with your instinct.”

“Good advice. Thanks. I really appreciate it. Let’s shoot something.”

“What about the police?” I casually asked in an anxious fit of good sense.

“Don’t worry. They know me.”

Of course.

We went into his yard and dinged some cans. I got out of there as soon as I could. Too much poetry for one night.

Reckless Hollywood by Haynes Lubou (pseud.). Amour Press, 1932

Reckless Hollywood (1932), by the pseudonymous Haynes Lubou, is another Hollywood novel involving extras. “This is a rather sordid and explicit romantic novel about the life of a Hollywood extra, Petty Love...The story follows Love as she discovers the reality of life for a Hollywood extra - next day’s work is contingent upon sleeping with the the assistant director tonight”* (Slide).

No such problem for studio laborers!

Yet around this time I started dating the eldest daughter of a popular film and television comedian of the 1940s-50s. The manly-guy thing was a turn-on for her. She loved that I was a manual laborer. Even more, she enjoyed the fact that I was a filthy mess after work and never wanted me to shower before we got messy together. Apparently, there's b.o. and then there's B.O.

Like Petty Love, I was a pawn of Hollywood tyranny: I wanted to get out of the studio labor racket but it excited my Hollywood scion, and I was trapped in a sordid and explicit struggle between ambition and desire! I suspect, however, that I enjoyed it more than Petty Love.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the weirdest, strangest, bizarre-est Hollywood novel ever penned. It ain’t in Slide’s essential reference, The Hollywood Novel, that’s for sure. The reason it is unknown is that it was originally written as a clandestine erotic manuscript and not openly published until 1969 by a pornographer in a cheap n’ cheesily produced edition.

Hollywood in India by A. de Granamour (Paul Hugo Little).
City of Industry: Collectors Publications (Marvin Miller), 1969

Hollywood in India by A. de Granamour (Paul Hugo Little) is a mammoth, 695-page magnum opus de porn originally written, c. early 1940s, in multi-parts for a private collector. Within, an Indian rajah kidnaps a gaggle of Hollywood’s hottest female stars of the 1930s and 1940s and turns them into his sex-slaves. In the original manuscript, the stars were explicitly identified. In the above volume, its only open edition, their last names were dropped at the suggestion of the dealer who sold the publisher the original manuscript and wisely counseled restraint; many of these ladies were still alive, old, and likely to be more litigious than lascivious.

As a result, it’s fairly easy to ID the slaves in this sub-continental sadist's Delhi dungeon: Paulette Goddard, Evelyn Keyes, Mary Astor, Miriam Hopkins, Ella Raines, Ann Dvorak, etc., including one movie star who would later gain notoriety for her sadistic treatment of her daughter. Yes, there’s something rather piquant, just, and delightfully satisfying about Joan Crawford getting a taste of the lash.

The thrill of dead-end manual labor at the studio was wearing thin. It was time to move on. I had worked with the propmakers, the studio carpenters responsible for constructing virtually everything at the studios not involving masonry, and become friendly with one of the foremen. He was kind to cue me when work was available, I went down to Local 44, I.A.T.S.E., registered, and got a permit to work until I earned my thirty days.

Earthquake, Universal's salute to the entertaining aspects of plate tectonics in a serious snit, was being released very soon, and we were in overdrive to get the speaker systems ready for delivery to the selected theaters across the country that would feature the Sensurround effect of feeling a real trembler while sitting in your seat. We propmakers were responsible for the building the cabinetry for the speakers and electronics.

The Sensurround speaker systems were, essentially, sub-sub woofers the size of double-doored industrial refrigerators. The effect was genuine; these babies shook your bones. After assembly, each speaker had to be tested.

The specs for optimum experience had the viewer dead-center, around four to five feet in front of the speakers. It was pretty intense. But there's intensity and then there's Intensity, and when the intense are intensely seeking intensity, are in their early 'twenties, and just happen to work at a place that is reinventing movie intensity, very intense opportunities come their way.

And so, taking turns, a few of us decided to see just what would happen if we stood directly in front of one of these things, two feet, when it was cranked up to test.

Medina's ears bled. Leon's nose bled. Terry threw up. I, on the other hand, experienced a deep massage - I'm talkin' mitochondria-deep massage - that very soon, within seconds, turned into a mosh-pit party for the sub-atomic particles I call my own. If you'd placed a skeleton in front of the speaker it would have danced a jig before crumbling to dust. I sensed a similar fate for myself and so got the hell out of the way and across the stage. And immediately to a bathroom. Constipation an issue? Get yourself one of these non-ingestible, family-size, insta-evacuation laxatives. That's how I spell relief.

There were 5000 members of Local 44. After four months with only twenty-one days of work, my crack team of financial advisors (my mother, my father) suggested that I seek alternative employment, and loathe though I was to respect their opinion, I shared it: single dollar bills were fleeing my bank account in fear of certain, solitary confinement if they stayed and none of ‘em wanted to be the last dollar remaining, forlorn and alone.

But I learned an enormous amount about carpentry and picked up basic and not so basic skills. I can, for instance, build you a house. As long as you don't have to live in it, the wind doesn't exceed 25 miles an hour, it never rains, and you don't need basic utilities. In short, the illusion of a house.

Fitting, because, at the time I began at the studio, I was an illusion of a man, seeking substance. Hollywood is not the go-to place to find substance but studio manual labor possesses weight, it is real, and there is never any doubt that you've earned your pay. There is no bullshit. I was proud of the way I handled myself and earned respect. And I have never slept better than when I would come home after a very hard, physical day on the backlot or on location and collapse into bed, exhausted, without any inner chatter whatsoever to oppress me.

A few years later, when I began to work on the inside as a development executive and, later, story editor, I found that my head was still in Local 724, Studio Labor. At least once a day, I'd have the strong impulse to slap some ass in a suit upside the head to keep the BS off of me, and assert, "What we have here is a failure to communicate." These guys think they're tough. Pleeeze...

Part One.
_____________

* Reckless Hollywood is a rather startling novel in one specific sense. It is the first novel to make explicit references to homosexuality in Hollywood. Even more shocking at the time, the book acknowledges a certain star's need for frequent abortions.

I Should Have Stayed Home image courtesy Kobek.

Comedian Patrick Borelli looks at that bottom of the book design barrel

michael@bookpatrol.net (Michael Lieberman) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:13:00 +0000

On Nov. 18th comedian Patrick Borelli will be at the UCB Theatre in New York to perform “You Should Judge a Book By Its Cover” where Borelli looks at 30 of the wackiest book covers that he has encountered.

Part of the show includes a video interview with Steven Heller, Rodrigo Corral and Chip Kidd, three of today's leading book designers. In this clip from the video the three designers briefly discuss the importance of book design then delve into some of Borelli's picks. Deservedly, the much talked about, Cooking With Pooh, leads off the discussion.

Thanks to The Second Pass for the lead

The Lowest Entry-Level Job in Hollywood

stephen@bookpatrol.net (Stephen J. Gertz) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:30:00 +0000

A portion of the backlot at Universal City Studios,
my home for eighteen months

I was 23 years old, at loose ends, per usual, had hammed it up in Junior High School plays, my mother had been a showgirl during the 1940s, I looked okay and I lived in Los Angeles. Clearly, the cinema was aching for my presence.

I huddled with the General Manager of Universal Studios, a friend of one of my father’s cousins by marriage, to plot a career-launch strategy. After grilling me on what I thought about the symbolism in Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and perusing my very short, unfocused resume, he had an eureka! moment and found the perfect job for me.

Next morning at 6AM I showed up for my first day as a member of Local 724 Studio Utility and Labor Employees of the Laborers International Union of North America.

Actually, it was not my first day in the union. It was my first day as a potential member of Local 724. You had to accrue thirty days of work to qualify for membership and I could work only when every single member of the union was working and extra help was needed; it could, conceivably, have taken over a year for me to get my thirty days.

But it was 1974, and production at the studio was in overdrive, the backlot busy, every soundstage a hot set almost every day. Weekly TV series production took up the bulk of the action but film production was beginning to return from the dead. Jaws was in production; excitement was in the air - and tension: Bruce, the damned animatronic shark, kept drowning in test waters. I earned my card in thirty-seven days.

First day on the job, I’m handed a broom. I am not by nature a braggart but I firmly assert that I was the best sweeper of sound stages the history of the motion picture industry. I was a human Zamboni, hustling that broom over the stage floor until the shine blinded, not a single dust mote to be found, and you could ice skate on it. I was so good, in fact, that I immediately got into trouble.I finished in three hours, very proud of myself, and went to the foreman. Like Oliver Twist, I begged, “please, sir, can I have some more?” figuring a ticker-tape parade was in my future as reward for a job well-done and ready for more with super-duper can-do! attitude.

Uh, no.

I was gently chewed out (had I not had my connection I would have been thoroughly masticated, digested, and excreted) for making him look bad: He’d booked me for a full eight hours to sweep the stage.

A few days later, I was attached to the Greensmen and raked. And raked. Knocked that gig out in two hours. Again, I screwed up: who knew it took six hours to perform a nickel’s worth of work?

Having risked the future of international labor by my actions, I was, naturally, promoted, or, rather, moved into other labor that guaranteed that I would be fully occupied for my entire shift. I didn’t realize that sweeping stages was the cushy job for old-timers and spoiled kids with connections. The plumbers, the masons, the painters, the greensmen, the propmakers all needed laborers. My new assignments, at least in the beginning, were tests: “So, you think you’re a hustling hot golden shit? Try THIS!”

I ate it all up. I loved swinging a sledgehammer.

These were the blue-collar machismo years, when I was doing everything I could to escape being a nice Jewish boy, build my physique and physical confidence, and bolt from the class I was born into and my parents’ expectations. Always a bookworm, it was time to balance the books.

Early afterward, at 6:04 AM, I was cradling a sixty-pound jackhammer in my arms, working it sideways into one of the exterior walls of a stage; the source for a water leak needed to be found. By 6:10, it felt like I had scrambled eggs where my brain was supposed to be. By 9 I was a human milk shake. But the plumbing crew liked me, and I learned a lot.

I learned that where a water leak manifests itself can be a mile away from its source. By the time I was through, two days and thoroughly puréed internal organs later, I had jackhammered a seven foot gash, under the lead plumber’s guidance, into the side of the stage, three and a half feet parallel to the ground, to expose a section of suspected pipe. I learned that the source of this leak was probably in Pennsylvania and laughing at me.

It had heavily rained all night. Soundstage roof-leak alert. A large crew is mustered to attack the problem and we have to climb to the roof to begin work, which is to spread ourselves, shoulder to shoulder, across the length of the roof and gently, in four-inch steps with feet close together, walk across the roof, through the puddles, like we’re crime-scene investigators searching for evidence in field brush, checking for air bubbles underfoot, indicative of a breech in the roofing material. See bubbles, call out to the “pusher,” the labor crew captain, “leak here!” and he comes over and slaps a glop of roofing tar onto the spot.

•••

You can pour through Anthony Slide’s essential reference, The Hollywood Novel (1995), and not find a single volume with a studio laborer as protagonist or supporting character. That's because we were invisible. Until we weren’t.

The Universal City Studio Tour, which began in 1964 as a rinky-dink tram ride around the lot, had begun to morph into its present state as theme park. New attractions were being built: the Collapsing Bridge (originally, The Safest Bridge in History, until I began to work on it); the Ice Tunnel, and other, now quaint in their simplicity, rides. The tour trams were now actually moving around amongst working outdoor sets on the backlot.

One morning we were told that we'd now have to keep our shirts on: The sight of sweaty, dirty, shirtless sides of beef in action was upsetting the tourists. I suspected it had more to do with executive concerns about family-image than anything else, and I was not alone in flouting the new rule - we were in the middle of a heat wave and as far as I was concerned, clothing was optional. I recall leading my comrades in toil in ad hoc work-chants of the “tote that barge, lift that bale” ilk, punctuated with deep grunts and sweat-swipes, all designed to delight, entertain, and, hopefully, appall the tourists, who we disdained. Costumed characters in a studio tableau we were not, and refused to become.

We worked for a living and, as often as not, felt like members of a voluntary chain-gang. Cool Hand Luke was fresh in our minds, and “What we have here is a failure to communicate” became our mantra regarding the Universal Studios Great Shirt Wars of 1974. The shirts stayed off - until the suits in the Black Tower buttoned-up and clamped down.

•••

I’m with a paint crew, who are on a closed stage spray-lacquering the grey canvas skin on a full-scale size nose-section of the Hindenburg which will be used for the movie of the same name with, alas, the same disastrous fate. I’m wearing a mask to avoid inhaling the toxic cloud that has filled the stage. Most of the paint crew is not, the better to enjoy the inebriating effects of the lacquer, dissolving neurons be damned.

This is the happiest stage I’ve yet to work in but, then again, I’ve never worked with guys so thoroughly, merrily zonked yet upright.

Speaking of nose-sections, soon afterward the eucalyptus trees running along a stretch of the the backlot’s border like a bucolic colonnade needed to be pruned. We donned harnesses, were handed chain saws, and, on ladders, climbed into the trees as far as we could; we had to jungle-gym the rest of the way into the higher limbs where we’d secure ourselves, hanging from ropes twenty to thirty feet in the air as we pruned, the severed branches falling to the ground.

After five days, pruning completed, we descended from the trees, Lucy-like, to reclaim our lives as upright primates, which then involved sawing up the piles of felled limbs into manageable pieces and loading them into trucks to be carted away.

I had to deal with a large, deeply bowed branch. These cannot be sawn top-down; the chain saw will get trapped in the cut like the keystone in an arch, and jam-up. So, you had to carefully saw from the bottom, easing up as you reached the top of the cut so that the chain saw would not swing up into your face when you sawed-through.

Three-quarters into the cut, I hit a knot and threw in a little extra muscle to get through it. Too much muscle. The saw ripped through the knot, zipped through the rest of the limb, and kicked back into my face, full-force.

Chain saws in 1974 did not yet have safety triggers that instantly braked the chain to a complete stop when released. And so the saw, chain-drive still engaged, left an Abstract-Expressionist study in crimson upon my visage, my nose completely bisected, and the only thing preventing the saw tip from turning my left eye into bacon bits was the bridge of my wire-rimmed glasses which, thankfully caught the chain, prevented further damage, and went flying. Though my eye was saved, the saw had chewed up the upper edge and inner curve of its socket. I took twenty-seven stitches there and sixty-two to sew up my nose, a chunk of which had almost torn off, and ten very tense days elapsed before it was clear that circulation was adequate and the piece of proboscis in question would not slough-off, dead, leaving me to play character parts for the rest of my career.

For, by now, I was studying acting with Jeff Corey, the respected actor's-actor whose career had been ruined in the 50s by the Blacklist and who had, by need, become a legendary acting coach. I met Jeff Corey through Vincente Minnelli. I met Vincent Minnelli through Hector Arce. I met Hector Arce through my mother. I met my mother...

She was a friend of his. Hector was working with the director on his autobiography and kindly, without my knowledge, set the meeting up. Mr. Minnelli was extremely kind and gracious, his Beverly Hills home was elegant, and he got me outta there as soon as politeness and obligation allowed.

Now, I’m wearing a metal plate over my nose to protect it while awaiting fate’s outcome, and this, according to Jeff, lends a certain man-of-mystery-and-danger to my otherwise undistinguished performances in class. To the students at Otis Art Institute, where I’m concurrently posing for nude studies at night to earn extra money, with my curly hair and beard I’m like some kind of wounded Greek warrior, which I find amusing because who I really resemble is Lee Marvin, in his other role in Cat Ballou, as mean gun-for-hire Ted Strawn, the man in black with steel prosthetic nose, here sans black or anything else.

Jack Nicholson had been a student of Jeff’s and Jeff liked to tell this story: He had been unimpressed with what Nicholson was doing in class, and told him so.

“There’s no poetry!” he said.

“Well, Jeff, maybe you just can’t see the poetry in me.”

I knew there was poetry in me, too, somewhere but neither I, nor anyone else, could see it. I was doing my best to not let it show.

Later, assigned to the cement crew, I'm a hod-carrier, ferrying fresh cement in a wheelbarrow from the mixer to the work site, dumping it, and repeating countless times before lunch.

Next, back with the Greensmen, who, impressed by my tireless and goofy industry with a rake, asked for my services. Another guy and I dug two four-foot-by-six trenches in one of the sylvan corners of the lot, where a Viet Nam-themed episode of whatever was going to be filmed, I think for a flashback scene in The Rockford Files featuring a wacked-out veteran, wacked-out vets prime fodder in those days for dramatic exploitation. The Greensmen dressed the trenches as bamboo-spiked tiger-pits, threw a sheet of worn astroturf over it, spray-painted the mat Jungle Green, threw leaves over it, and that was that. I assisted the Greensmen at the nursery, where we harnessed full-size palm trees in chains, then had the crane operator hoist and carry them across the lot to the set to complete the illusion of Southeast Asia in Southern California.

May Kovar, Jr., c. 1971

I got to know one of the studio truck drivers. Lee was married to May Kovar, Jr., a leopard trainer whose mother, May Kovar, “The Most Fearless Woman Alive,” performed a big cat act with Ringling Brothers circus, had survived the Ringling’s horrific big-top tent conflagration at Hartford, CT in 1944 but died a grisly death in 1950 when one of her cats leapt at her, caught her head in its jaws, and snapped her neck like a twig.

They befriended me, and soon, on my days off, I was feeding the big cats and shoveling manure for their little family circus - their three young kids were precocious aerialists - in exchange for trapeze lessons: Never know when that skill will come in handy; as an eternal boy scout my motto is Be Prepared. I'm still waiting for the opportunity but at this point I hope it never comes. “He flies through the air with the greatest unease, the foolish old man on the flying trapeze.” I don’t think so.

One of the performers they worked with had a breakaway swaypole act where he climbed atop a forty- foot white pole, and, while performing gymnastics, swayed back and forth in graceful parabolas to the audience’s gleeful astonishment. Then the big tease: As if a horrible accident had occurred, the pole would suddenly snap in half to the horror of spectators, who expected pole-guy to splat at the end of the pole’s 180-degree pendulous arc, but were relieved when - a miracle! - his head missed the ground platform by six inches, he survived, got off, and danced away to wild applause. He was retiring. Would I be interested in buying the rig? He’d teach me the act and make me a good deal on it.

No, thanks.

•••

Leon, a hard working, red pony-tailed and goatee’d fellow laborer, sensed that I had more upstairs than most of our working colleagues and wouldn’t give him the business when he told me that he wrote poetry. He wanted me to stop by after our shift, read it, and tell him what I thought about it. I, apparently, had foolishly let the poetry in me show.

He rented a little house in the low-rent district of Studio City, and worked while waiting for his father to die, when Leon would inherit the ramshackle hotel on the outskirts of Palm Springs that his father squandered every cent upon, and live a life of leisure.

I enter Leon’s place. There’s a revolver on the coffee table. I pick it up.

“Careful, it’s loaded,” he casually informs me.

“Why are you keeping a loaded pistol out on the table?”

“You never know.”

Great. I’m with a guy who keeps a loaded gun on his living room table and he wants me to critique his poetry.
____

End of Part One. Part Two.
____________
____________

Swaypole image courtesy Jean Monti - Hochseitartist.
Image of May Kovar, Jr. courtesy of The Circus Blog.

These Bookbags Have Got You Covered

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Mattoon) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:01:00 +0000

File this item under: "Librarian Chic." Stylish Parisians have declared there's nothing more on-trend than carrying a collectible edition of a favorite book. Or at least its cover. One of France's most fashion forward designers, Olympia Le-Tan, has just debuted her premiere line of exclusive handbags under the title: You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover.

Designer Olympia Le-Tan Rings In Her New Handbag Line

The Book (left) and The Bag It Inspired (center).

The collection reproduces the covers of 21 tomes in canvas, embroidered felt applique, and silk thread. The meticulously handmade pieces are assembled over a book-sized brass framework to create clutches sure to capture the fancy of even the fussiest fashionista bibliophile. The books selected for the debut line include English, American, and French novels such as 1984, Lord Jim, The Catcher In The Rye, The Pearl, The Pure and the Impure, and Le Rouge et Le Noir. Actress Chloe Sevigny requested a bag based on Moby Dick and Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton commissioned a special order to commemorate Auntie Mame.

Naturally, one of the bags is especially dear to the book loving designer's heart: "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is my favorite book and my favorite bag." Le-Tan says the line was inspired by book jackets from the 1940's and 1950's, which she first saw in the library of her father, Pierre Le-Tan. In addition to being an avid book collector, Mr. Le-Tan is also the author of numerous picture books for children, and a renowned illustrator whose work has appeared in Vogue, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazaar, Town & Country, and The New York Times Magazine, as well as on the cover of The New Yorker.

Designer Le-Tan will produce only 16 copies of each title in her line. The rarity of these first editions is reflected in their wallet-draining price tags: each clutch retails for a cool $1500. One can only hope that the buyers who can spring for the bags might also shell out for the books that inspired them. And maybe even get past the covers.

Church Releases Video of Halloween Book Burning

michael@bookpatrol.net (Michael Lieberman) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:00:00 +0000

WARNING - The following video is hysterical.

Well, here we have it. The planned pyre of blasphemy planned for Halloween by the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina appears to have been reduced to a kitchen-sized garbage can filled with torn up books and CD's.

Evidently the church has deemed this event a success. For on the sidebar of their website there is already mention of a 2010 book burning event.

Here is the video in its entirety as released by the church. Note: It is a huge WMV file.

Previously on Book Patrol:
A Halloween Book Burning: Only God's Word Will Survive
About That Halloween Book Burning

Thanks to Josh Glasstetter of Right Wing Watch for the heads up on the video and for uploading a manageable clip. Here's his post Worst. Book Burning. Ever

Will the Real N.R. De Mexico Please Stand Up?

stephen@bookpatrol.net (Stephen J. Gertz) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:32:00 +0000

Madman on a Drum (Cavalcade Books, 1944)

In 1944, a noir suspense novel, a paperback original, was issued by a small paperback publisher out of New York. Madman on a Drum would be the first full-length book written by one N.R. De Mexico. In 1951, De Mexico wrote a book that would put his name into the Congressional Record, front and center in a debate about the negative effect of paperback literature on American culture. That book, Marijuana Girl, would become Exhibit A in Rep. Ezekiel C. Gathings' Congressional Sub-Committee's mini-crusade against drug use in popular literature.

Marijuana Girl (Uni Books 19, 1951)

Who was this N. R. De Mexico and why should we care?

Until recently, the true identity of this author was uncertain. In my book, Dope Menace: The Sensational World of Drug Paperbacks 1900-1975, I credit Marijuana Girl to either pulp writer Dallas McCord Reyblds or Lawrence Taylor Show, based upon the most reliable info available at the time. In an unrelated footnote, however, I mention "Bob De Mexico" in relation to another book, note the similarity to "N.R. De Mexico," but, as I could not at that time firmly connect the two as one and the same person, I erred on the side of caution and resisted the temptation to do so.

"Bob de Mexico" had been firmly identified as Robert Bragg by sexual folklorist Gershon Legman in his introduction to Patrick J. Kearney's The Private Case (1981), the definitive bibliography of the British Library's collection of erotica. In Legman's monograph Bawdy Monologues and Rhymed Recitations (1976) Robert Bragg is noted as N.R. De Mexico.

"The most extreme statement of this kind is a recitation called variously "A Girl's Prayer," "The Yeomanette," and other titles, first recorded in the scarce erotic miscellany, Cleopatra's Scrapbook ('Blue Grass, Kentucky' [Wheeling, W.Va.?] 1928: copy, Kinsey Library) p. 53. This begins romantically, "Put your arms around me, darling," and so forth, each stanza becoming more and more passionate, though never omitting the "darling" — in deference to the presumed female character of the speaker — until it ends in a blaze of castratory (vagina dentata) passion, after the orgasm: "Break it off and let it stay!" Other texts of this recitation are longer and much heightened in their eroticism, in one case by a man known to me. The pornography and "fantasy"-fiction writer, N. R. de Mexico (Robert Bragg, who is not the man just referred to, and who was born in New Jersey), was accustomed to deliver this piece at mixed parties. Although he did not change the already-supercharged text, he would attempt to heighten still further its tone of female erotic acceptance and passion by reciting, or rather crooning it, in a special dialect accent" (page 111).

The Bragg-N.R. De Mexico connection was recently cemented for all time when a fellow named Fender Tucker, one of the yeoman, blue-collar fan-bibliographers who've taken it upon themselves to do the messy and difficult work of investigating the world of vintage paperbacks to bring to light the stories behind these books and their authors (and without whom I would not be able to do my work in the field) ran with the question.

Fender Tucker found Robert Bragg's son, corresponded with him, and definitively nailed Bragg as N.R. De Mexico.

Private Chauffeur (Intimate Novels #15, 1952)

Writing it up for Paperback Parade (Gryphon Books), Brooklyn-based novelist and vintage paperback dealer Gary Lovisi's magazine for paperback collectors, Tucker wrote:

"According to his son, Kim, 'the pen name N.R. de Mexico means 'N' for nee (born), 'R' for Robert of Mexico. I think the Mexico was a gag because at one point he had taught himself to speak Spanish well enough for him to translate for some additional income. During the war he worked for military intelligence. In the years just after WWII he was an editor for an architectural magazine, and only began writing novels after that period'" (Paperback Parade #69, pp 95-97).

Robert Campbell Bragg (1918-1954), aka Bob De Mexico and N. R. De Mexico, holds a very special - if obscure - place in American letters. From the late 1930s through the early 1940s he wrote clandestine erotic manuscripts for a wealthy private collector in Oklahoma. A bohemian in the literary and art scene of Greenwich Village, he did so as one of Anais Nin's circle of friends enlisted by her to crank out erotica for this collector. Legman was the intermediary.

I've written about this collector and the writers who supplied him with erotic manuscripts elsewhere in a Part One and Part Two feature. I'm pleased to finally be able to report that the mystery of "Who is N.R. De Maxico" is solved, case closed.

__________

Books by Robert Campbell Bragg: Madman on a Drum (1944), a noir suspense thriller; Color TV, Now or Later?: A Comparative Survey and Analysis of the Several Color Systems and Their Impact on the Industry (1950); Marijuana Girl (1951); Strange Pursuit (1951); Designs (1951), a book about crime, gambling, prostitution; and Private Chauffeur (1952), an aviation thriller.

Images of Madman on a Drum and Private Chauffuer courtesy of Fender Tucker, who has reissued the novels of "N.R. De Mexico" through his Ramble House imprint.

Dig This Hipster Decor From A Library's Store

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Mattoon) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:01:00 +0000

Have you always wanted a crazy, copacetic crib but your pad screams strictly squaresville? Are you a cool cat or a hot chick with style galore but not much bread in store? Well you're in luck. Indiana's Elkhart Public Library is having a furniture sale.

Normally a library is about the last place you'd expect to find retro-cool, Mid-Century Modern furniture but this one is the exception. The Elkhart Public Library moved into a modernist building in March of 1963, and the original furnishings included Herman Miller and Jens Risom desks, credenzas, tables and chairs, and Eames fiberglass chairs. Some of the library's furnishings have been in storage for years, while others have remained in use. Beginning November 16, 2009 bids will be accepted in an online auction for hundreds of these interior design icons of the fabulous 50's. Such minimalist chic furnishings are now coveted by interior designers, and sought after by collectors.

The Elkhart Library's website offers a complete listing of all the items to go on the block. The most amazing lot up for grabs has to be the 174 (!) fiberglass Eames Auditorium Stack Chairs. There are also 16 other Eames Shell Chairs for sale, making this a truly astonishing collection of items from perhaps the most influential interior designer of the post World War II era.

Charles Eames designed his organically-shaped, one-piece chair seat in response to a 1948 international competition for low cost furniture designs sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art. His was the competition's winning entry, which guaranteed a contract for production through retailer Herman Miller. The original Eames shell prototype was a stamped metal bucket seat, but ultimately the commercial product became the first mass-produced molded plastic chair. The Eames shell chairs were made from a revolutionary material: fiberglass-reinforced polyester. The process of making a shell chair was so unique that Charles Eames and his wife and designer partner, Ray, made a short film about it in 1970. The 9-minute video shows an amazing attention to detail and displays remarkable craftsmanship. And the jazzy music score swings right along:

The Winter 1950-51 issue of Everyday Art Quarterly waxed poetic about the chair that made the most of modern industrial technology: "The new Eames plastic chair is a dream fulfilled--a dream made possible because of recent technological developments in the field of plastics. The plastic is practically indestructible--it is warm to the touch, mar proof, and unbelievably light in weight. Its soft luster gives it a feeling of warmth and translucency that lends an almost magical quality to the play of light through the flowing unbroken surfaces of the shell." That's enough to make even Benjamin Braddock reconsider a career in chemical compounds.

So all you hep cats out there -- scare up some scratch, and bid early, bid often, bid high at the Elkhart Library auction to win a piece of that supermurgitroid Mid-Century Modern pie. It really is too much, and you're sure to dig it the most, baby.

How To Read An Expensive Rare Book (A Cautionary Tale)

stephen@bookpatrol.net (Stephen J. Gertz) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:48:00 +0000

One word: Carefully.

No, two words: Very carefully.

Upon receipt of the three-hundred year old rare book you just paid $22,000 for (but haven't yet sent the check), inspect it with delicacy. Examine the hinges (inner joints) by gently - and only partially - opening the upper board and then the lower board. Please do not wildly open the book as if it’s the Yellow Pages and you’re frantic to find a plumber.

Hinges and joints firm, as advertised by the dealer, with only three small distressed spots along the upper hinge? Excellent!

Now, what better way to celebrate your new acquisition than by sitting down in your sumptuous club chair by the fireplace, pouring yourself a glass of sherry, and reading it?

Not if you’re going to open the book as if you were butterflying a shrimp, strain the joints and hinges, and have the upper hinge crack because even though you’ve been collecting for years and have built a valuable collection, the smart pills have yet to kick in.

Don’t compound the situation by doing “a little home repair” with Elmer’s glue because you’re too embarrassed to tell the dealer what happened. Later, after ruing your amateur-hour repair, please don’t suggest to the seller that they should have known, after three-hundred years and who knows how many times the book had been opened, that the jig was up for this baby, the eleventh hour had come and gone, the clock struck twelve just at the moment you opened the book, and the Fates had conspired against you but that the dealer should have interceded on your behalf.

By a cheap copy for reading purposes; a paperback is just fine.

As long as it’s not a rare paperback.

A sixty year old paperback in mint condition is an astonishment; these books were never meant to last, much less be collected. If you discover a mint copy of a desired rare title and buy it, do this: Nothing. Sharp edges, firm corners, no creasing of any kind, tight wrappers, and no, repeat no, evidence of a crease line along the spine indicating that the book had been opened - this is what paperback collectors crave. If you break one of these laws the $200 mint-condition paperback nosedives in value.

There is only way to read a scarce paperback and that is by the peek-a-boo method: Open the paperback no more than one half inch. Trying to read text close to the inner margins is insanely difficult by this method, so just fuggetaboutit and buy a $10 “reading copy,” another name for “scholar’s copy.” Both euphemisms define a book that is a mess, in such miserable condition that it could only appeal to a starving scholar who needs it for research purposes and couldn’t care less about collectable value.

In fairness to our hapless collector, is there a rare book dealer who hasn’t, at least once, injured one of their books? No, it comes with the territory; it happens to the best of us. It usually occurs early in one’s career, with lack of experience.

But experience is not an insurance policy. Not too long ago, I was cataloging a book and opened the rear board to check out a bookseller’s ticket on the rear paste-down endpaper. The hinge was iffy so I was super-careful. Fool that I was, I exhaled just as I parted the rear board from the text block, oh, say, and inch and a half, and the entire hinge gave up the ghost, completely separated the binding from the gatherings, and I was left with a leather-bound amputee in my right hand while my stomach sank to my shins.

I would have preferred the source informing me that the hinge was in its death-throes, ready to gasp its last breath, and just waiting for the Grim Reaper to gently tap it on the shoulder but “rear hinge tender” as delicately lyric yet loud warning was perfectly acceptable for cataloging purposes.

I know how to do simple, elementary binding repair but I know my limitations. This was a candidate for orthopedic surgery. The book was immediately ambulanced to the hospital where a brilliant bindologist performed a miraculous, near-invisible hinge repair.

Oh, what a thrill to inform your employer that the “completely untouched,” thus rare, $30,000 specimen of an already rare book, has now lost value before it’s even paid for!

Bookchase: A board game for the book set

michael@bookpatrol.net (Michael Lieberman) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:27:00 +0000

Remember your Trivial Pursuit days? Waiting patiently for your chance to answer a question from the Arts & Literature category. Or those times when you made up your own rules and just read the questions from that category.

Enter Bookchase. It's billed as the world's first board game about books.

Here's how it works:

The first one to collect six books, one from each category, and get home wins! Of course there are hazards along the way like dropping your books in the bath.

You can collect books by answering questions, visiting the library or landing on various other lucky spots on the board.

The six categories are: Children & Fun, Crime & Thrillers, Plays & Poetry, Fantasy & Sci-Fi, Travel Adventure, Classics & Modern.

Bookchase also includes a set of tiny book jacket labels so you can personalize your books and 6 bookshelves.

There are also plans for users to submit questions for future editions where one can then print out and add to the game.

And for those who are wondering if they have enough literary savvy to compete, no worries. "Who's qualified to play? Anyone! Never read a book - you could still win. Read all the best books in the world - you could still lose."

The game retails for £29.95.

Hard to believe this one has been around for a couple of years and this is the first I've heard.

Thanks to Lux Mentis for the lead

Old School Daze Book Jackets Updated, Now Hip n' Cool

stephen@bookpatrol.net (Stephen J. Gertz) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:31:00 +0000

Book City Jackets' Artist Series 2, group

Remember those plain Kraft brown paper dust jackets from grammar and junior high school? (Your memory may have to stretch back to the 1950s-1960s).

Book City Jackets' Standards grouping: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Favorite

We used to have fun doodling on them, drawing, writing notes, declarations of everlasting love, paeans to rotten teachers, doggerel, and all manner of personal expression.

Book City Jackets "Fiction"

They, alas, fell by the wayside, along with the mimeograph machine, replaced by DJs with school logo and branded characters. Glossy-coated, they were impossible to write on or customize.

Customize to protect and serve!

Book City Jackets, founded in 2008 by Emma Gaines-Ross and Jeremy Schwartz and based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has stepped into Mr. Peabody’s Way-Back Machine and returned with updated versions of the classic paper bag book cover. The covers are off-set printed on recycled kraft paper and “fold-to-fit” almost any book.

By Nishat Akhtar. Artists Series 2

Book City Jackets’ goal is to turn books into a new kind of affordable art that can be displayed on bookshelves and coffee tables, in cafes and classrooms, on planes and trains. In short, any place where people bring their books.

By Cheeming Boey. Artist Series 2

Book City Jackets began with simple designs but this year introduced Artist Series 1 &2.

By Michael C. Hsiung. Artists Series 2

"Whale Whisperer" by Eveline Tarunadjaja. Artist Series 1

"Tiger" by Morgan Blair. Artist Series 1

"King Birds" by Matt Caputo. Artist Series 1

Book City Jackets has limited distribution through boutique retail shops (list here) but can also be ordered through Amazon.

The Food Librarian's Got A Bundt (Or 30) In The Oven

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Mattoon) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:01:00 +0000

As much as we here at Book Patrol love the written word, let's face it: man does not live by books alone. So thank goodness for The Food Librarian and her bountiful, beautiful baking blog. Mary (No last name. This woman has a unique talent to rival Voltaire, Homer, or Saki. She don't need no stinkin' last name.) is a librarian somewhere in the greater Los Angeles area. Like her literary namesake, Mary Poppins, our Mary knows that just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. The medicine in this case being a lot of nice plugs for libraries.

Mary began her blog, The Food Librarian, in May 2007. Her first step? Checking out Baking Illustrated by the Editors of Cooks Illustrated Magazine from the library where she works. Her blog details the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of a beginning baker. Here are just a few reasons to check out this blog:

Mary's a beginner, so sometimes she fails. But she always 'fesses up to it. Like the time she used baking soda instead of baking powder and her blueberry muffins tasted like "pieces of salty metal." And all of the blueberries in those less-than-sweet treats sank to the bottom, resulting in "smurf-butt muffins." So Mary's "baked bads" fed her friend "Mr. Trashcan." Fiascoes like this reassure a reader that even the best baker brings out the occasional bad batch. But baking bibliophiles forge on, determined to create comestibles as memorable as Proust's madeleines.

Mary thoughtfully includes links to Worldcat in her blog, so you can easily find out if the cookbooks that inspire her are available at your local library. Naturally, she always credits the original source of her recipes, making this blog a great source for tried and tested baking books.

Mary understands the value of her library's decades-deep collection of periodicals and newspapers. Sunset Magazine serves up such sweet souvenirs of the swinging 60's as Fuyu Persimmon Bundt Cake and Broiled Nectarine Halves. And when Mary wanted to bake a chronologically correct creation for the season premiere of Mad Men, she turned to the September 5, 1963 edition of The New York Times. A batch of Dutch Cinnamon Apple Cakes to do Betty Draper proud was the rich result of her research. Though as Mary sagely remarks: "I doubt Don Draper would eat these...because there is no alcohol or cigarettes in them."

To make the more tedious aspects of baking palatable, Mary suggests that her readers find out if their libraries provide "downloadable audio books." She confesses she "wouldn't have made it this far in [her] bundt making without Michael Connelly." And generously adds that: "If he were real, I'd give Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch a bundt."

Mary shares her baked goods to her library co-workers, so she doesn't wind up with type 2 diabetes. She knows that librarians and baked goods go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Haven't you ever noticed those ubiquitous "Book And Bake Sales?"

Mary understands the importance of holidays. Now you might be thinking: "Most people bake for the holidays, why does Mary stand out?" Well, how are you planning to celebrate National Bundt Day? Mary's marking that red letter day in style. She's baking "30 Bundts in 30 Days." With a little help from Sir Mix-A-Lot, Mary's telling the world: "I Like Big Bundts." The Food Librarian will be cooking up a luscious cake in a teflon-coated, donut-shaped pan every single day from October 15, 2009 until the actual big bundt day, November 15. Mary's whipping up so many sweets that she's sharing the wealth with "neighboring libraries" to avoid sending her colleagues into sugar shock.

Mary's blog includes mouth-watering photos of each of her consummate confections. And like every good librarian, Mary is nothing if not thorough. She always posts a cross section shot of a single serving of her latest creation, along with a wide shot of the whole megillah. Warning: Don't start reading The Food Librarian blog if you're on one of those "I might as well be dead" low fat/low sugar diets. Or even if you're just a wee bit hungry. You might just find yourself unable to resist the temptation to tie on an apron.

Mary's bundt-a-thon has been featured in American Libraries, and her blog has been served up to readers of Information Outlook, the journal of the Special Libraries Association. (Do you think there's any chance Mary might send a bundt to a fellow librarian/blogger who writes a post about her Big Bundt Bake-Off? Just wondering...)

Late (coffee) breaking development: The big bundts on The Food Librarian blog inspired two terrific bakers at MY library, Irma and Sybil, to make the Fuyu Persimmon Bundt Cake. (And muchas gracias for bringing in those fresh persimmons from your Dad's tree, Dennis.) Yummy! Thanks a bundt for the great recipe, Mary. No need to send that cake my way after all.

Photos by Mary, The Food Librarian.

When Did Walt Disney Write A Christmas Carol?

stephen@bookpatrol.net (Stephen J. Gertz) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:30:00 +0000

Disney's A Christmas Carol

Walt Disney has gotten a bad rap.

We now know that “The Great Homogenizer,” who, as master of The House that Mouse Built, rose to fame by smoothing out the difficult and potentially offensive edges to any story he came into contact with lest anyone's sensibilities be injured, led a double life.

Recent advances in forensic bibliography, as reported in the recent issue of the Journal of Dubious Literary Scholarship, have definitively proven that Walt Disney was an honest-to-gosh litterateur.

Walt Disney's Mary Poppins

Long thought to be a mere animator (though he, in reality, didn’t do much, if any, of the animation in his films) and mouse wrangler, it turns out that Disney was, in fact, the author of many classic works of fiction.

The beloved novelist combats writer's block

When not riding his home choo-choo train, he wrote, under the pseudonyms “Charles Dickens,” “P.L. Travers,” "Jules Verne,” “Carlo Collodi,” and "Hans Christian Andersen," the cherished literary standards, A Christmas Carol, Mary Poppins, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Pinocchio, and The Little Mermaid.

Walt Disney's Pinocchio

Who knew?

As the author of the JODLS article, John Beresford Tiptin-Leaf, explains, many copies of each of these books in their first editions have been found (through spectrograpic analysis and candling) to possess very faint line-drawings of mouse ears in the margins. It is thought that Disney frantically doodled his identity in these copies in a desperate effort to confess his secret scribblings to future scholars without tipping-off the contemporary general public.

Walt Disney, real name of the author of The Little Mermaid

Tiptin-Leaf, after completing his internal examination of the books, asserts, based upon his close examination of their fore-edges, that Disney had a peculiar habit, born, evidently, of his interest in animation, to thumb-flip the leaves of his books in an effort to make the words on the page come alive. Surely, if all novelists performed this simple trick to infuse life into their prose the incidence of literary narcolepsy would dramatically decline.

Walt Disney's classic adventure 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

It is only now, long after his death, that he is finally being given credit under his own name for his novels.

_______

It takes a lot of nerve and huge ego to appropriate another writer's work as one's own. It is fitting, then, that the next potential project from the studio should be based upon one of the man's as yet unadapted-to-animation novels, Walt Disney's Moby Dick.

Now in development: Walt Disney's On the Origin of Species.

For 2012: Walt Disney's Finnegan's Wake.

Upcoming: Walt Disney's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.

Coming soon to a theater near you: Walt Disney's The Bible.

Michael Suarez, New Director of UV’s Rare Book School, Wows With Lecture on Plate-Subscription Books

stephen@bookpatrol.net (Stephen J. Gertz) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:30:00 +0000

William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles

Michael Suarez, S.J., new Director of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, presented the Fifth Annual Kenneth Karmiole Lecture on the History of the Book Trade at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles on Saturday, November 7th to an enraptured audience.

One of the Reading Rooms at the Clark Library

His subject, Learned Book Illustrations, their Patrons, and the Vagaries of the Trade in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England, might, in the wrong hands, have held the potential to desiccate cortexes. But Michael Suarez, a Jesuit priest who received his doctorate in English Literature from Oxford University, has held research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, is no ordinary lecturer.

No ordinary lecture room: The lavishly decorated salon at the Clark
Library where the Kenneth Karmiole Lectures occur. It is a testament
to the superlative lecture performance of Michael Suarez
that all eyes were upon him and not upon the ceiling.

The most passionate and enthusiastic speaker I have ever had the pleasure to listen to, Professor Suarez (or Father Suarez, or Michael - he’s very casual about the titles he possesses) demonstrated complete mastery of his subject during his talk, which, miraculously (as a Jesuit priest he gets an extra helping hand unavailable to most), was delivered without text or notes of any kind.

It was a breathtaking performance.

“From the mid-seventeenth century, English antiquaries, cartographers, classicists, and scientists increasingly sought to produce large folios with elaborate illustrations. But how to pay for the enormous production costs of such works?

“Engravings by the leading practitioners of the day—whether depicting the beauties of the great cathedrals, the epic glories of classical antiquity, or the finer points of natural history—required significant investments in both men and materials.

This lecture...considers the commercial and cultural expedients that self-publishing authors, learned societies, and projecting booksellers developed to finance their books, many of exceeding beauty and genuine importance. Examining these ‘books for looking’ produced for cultural elites and chiefly underwritten by their intended readerships, we encounter narratives of fiscal irresponsibility, signal innovation, shameless advertising, remarkable networking, outright deception, outstanding loyalty, and brazen vanity” (Hannah P. Clark, from her lecture summary).

Oh, brother, do we ever.

Modern direct-marketers have nothing over these author-publisher-booksellers, who, armed with a list of likely prospects amongst the peerage and the rich, shamelessly appealed to the vanity and ego of their marks, er, patrons, to con them into sponsoring, through subscription, the production of each plate within these massive folio showpiece volumes. In exchange, the sponsor-subscriber would have their coat of arms engraved into the plate with a florid dedication extolling the virtues of the sponsor. The cost for this personal ad, as it were, was £5, a sum worth $1,176 today. Each plate-subscriber received a "free" copy of the book.

The publisher-authors were subscription-sales sharks who really knew how to put the bite on prospects.

If the book was reprinted, the publisher hit the original plate sponsors up for a £3 “renewal” fee. If the original subscriber objected, he would be informed that another sponsor for the particular plate that the original subscriber thought he “owned” would be solicited. If the original patron still refused, the plate would be re-sponsored, and the original patron’s armorial device and dedication to the original plate would be replaced with that the new sponsor's.

Or, another publisher would issue a different edition of the same book, use the same engraved plates from the earlier volume, and re-sell sponsorship-subscriptions.

Plate from The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro. Translated, adorn'd
with Sculpture, and illustrated with Annotations, by John Ogilby.
London: Thomas Warren for the Author, 1654. The armorial device and
dedication have been cropped from this image. Plate re-printed for
Tonson's edition of 1697, with a new subscriber.

The most famous example of this practice is John Ogilby’s 1654 translation of Virgil. For this edition, Ogilby commissioned 101 engraved plates (!), found 101 subscribers to pay for them, and did very well.

An engraving from The Works of Virgil: Containing his Pastorals,
Georgics, and Aeneis. Translated into English Verse by Mr. Dryden ….
London: Printed for Jacob Tonson, 1697. Reprint of the engraving
found in Ogilby's 1654 edition. Note the sponsor's armorial device
and the dedication to the sponsor at lower edge
of plate, replaceable, if necessary.

In 1697, printer Jacob Tonson issued his own edition of Virgil. Translated by John Dryden, Tonson used the exact same, sumptuous plates that had been executed by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) for Ogilby but found new subscribers for them. In some cases, he arranged for the new patron’s face to replace a character’s in the plate, thereby dramatically increasing added-value to vanity already over-valued by these members of the Restoration glitteratti seeking to advertise their wonderfulness to one and all, particularly their friends.

No family armorial coat of arms? No problem. Through royal contacts, arrangements would be made for a coat of arms to be officially issued. The publishing slick didn't miss a trick in the quest for great whales, their skills with a harpoon rivaling Queequeg's.

As there were many author-publishers with plate-book subscriptions to hawk but only a limited number of people in England with the wherewithal to afford such extravagance on vanity, the same people would invariably be called upon to cough-up cash. And, as with today's incessant telephone marketing calls, complaints were common.

Michael Suarez’s resume is deep and rich. One thing you will not find in his official bio is the fact that he was formerly a prison chaplain who played a major role in quelling a prison riot. According to Stephen Tabor (Michael does not advertise this incident), Curator of Early Printed Books at the Huntington Library, during the melee Suarez very gently, almost imperceptibly, hugged the ringleader from behind and with soft voice and delicate physical prompting led him away.

His lecture blew me away.

A gentle and charming intellectual giant, Michael Suarez, S.J. won the 2008 Foley Poetry Contest with his poem, Going. He thinks religious poetry should embrace humor.

I think we should embrace Michael Suarez.

Ohio Library Uncovers "The Secret At Shadow Ranch"

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Mattoon) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:01:00 +0000

KEENE, Carolyn [Mildred Wirt Benson]. The Secret At Shadow Ranch.
NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1931.

The staff of the Toledo Lucas County Library is shedding some light on the shadowy side of super sleuth Nancy Drew. The library has purchased the painting created as cover art for the first edition of Carolyn Keene's The Secret At Shadow Ranch. Paintings used for the early Nancy Drew Mystery Stories book covers, by Russell H. Tandy, are exceedingly scarce. The vast majority of Tandy's original artwork was destroyed in a 1962 fire at his home.

Tandy's painting will be added to the library's Robert L. and Posy Huebner Collection. The gallery houses 130 "significant works of original art by illustrators of children’s literature," with a special emphasis on works with a historic connection to Ohio. The trustees of the collection had long sought to add work created for the Nancy Drew mysteries to the collection, as the first writer behind series's pseudonymous author "Carolyn Keene" was a native of the Buckeye State, Millie Benson.

Nancy Eames, the library's youth services coordinator said the staff had given up on ever obtaining a Tandy portrait of the famed girl detective, when a local history manager for the library stumbled across a listing for the Shadow Ranch painting in an online auction. Donor funds covered the $9,500 sale price, according to the Toledo Blade.

KEENE, Carolyn [Mildred Wirt Benson]. The Secret of the Old Clock.
NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1930

The illustrations for the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories reflect the evolution of the titian-haired sleuth over her nearly 80 year career. Tandy's conception of Nancy Drew reveals his background as a fashion illustrator. In addition to designing book covers, Tandy's art was featured in advertising campaigns for Jantzen bathing suits, and on the covers of Butterick Patterns. Not surprisingly, the 1930's Nancy is a soigne sophisticate sporting smart suits, silk scarves, and stylish chapeaux. (She bears an uncanny resemblance to screen goddess Carole Lombard.) The Shadow Ranch cover is first to depict a hatless Nancy engaging in outdoorsy activities. But note that her riding togs are classic Chanel chic.

Carole Lombard finds a murder victim in Virtue (1932)

The Toledo Lucas County Library will exhibit their prize painting until the end of 2009, at which time it will be sent to Oberlin College for minor restoration. (Some of the paint is flaking off the letters in the title, and there is a small hole in the canvas.) After eight stress-filled decades as a shamus, even the unflappable Miss Drew can do with a touch-up.

__________

Collage Of Russell H. Tandy's Art From Jennifer Fisher At: Nancy Drew Sleuth Unofficial Website

ABC's of Book Collecting: Auctions

michael@bookpatrol.net (Michael Lieberman) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:45:00 +0000

AUCTIONS

Sales of books by auction go back to the middle ages, although their enhancement by printed catalogues dates from the second half of the 17th century. Traditionally, auctioneers undertake to conduct the sale, charging consigners a percentage of the prices realised for their pains.
In the 1980s British and American houses began to follow European practice by levying a premium (a percentage of the prices realised) from the purchaser, as well as the consigner. Auctions conducted on the internet, notably on eBay, have their own conventions and risks.

The subject may conveniently be divided into four sections; (1) Catalogues, (2) Bidding, (3) Prices, (4) Terminology.

(1) The description of books, MSS., fine bindings, etc., in sale catalogues varies widely in fullness, precision and authority. It was once the case that the dressiest catalogues, unquestionably, were those of the Continental houses, with Paris perhaps the most lavish. But in recent times Sotheby’s and Christie ’s have vied with each other in elaborating, especially for sales of importance or specialised interest, their conscientiously precise, but previously rather tight-lipped, descriptive formula; this is happily preserved in the elegant but nononsense catalogues of Bonham’s and Bloomsbury Book Auctions in London, or Swann’s in New York. By contrast, the catalogues of most (but not now all) provincial auctioneers, who are normally selling books as part of a mixed property, are often notably uninformative, especially as to the contents of lots in bundles; and although legal warranty for the accuracy of descriptions of the lots offered is carefully restricted throughout the auction business as a whole, it is naturally a livelier issue in sales for which the catalogue makes no pretence to expertness. Yet the collector who contemplates bidding at an auction without professional advice would do well first to ponder, not only the estimate of its likely cost, now a regular feature of the catalogue description, but also the conditions of sale printed in every auction catalogue, which vary from firm to firm, and sometimes from sale to sale by the same firm; and then to remember that the return of any lot not actually incomplete or seriously misdescribed will be a matter of grace, not of right.

The better auction houses, course, take care to describe their offerings accurately, since ‘returns’ are just as much of a nuisance to them as to the buyer (but see below, not subject to return). Despite occasional lapses, their cataloguers do their best to keep abreast of bibliographical research. And the annotation of important lots is often of a thorough and scholarly character. In the description of fine early bindings, for example, Sotheby’s catalogues, thanks to the experienced connoisseurship of the Hobsons, père et fils, have achieved an authority shared by very few booksellers; and the same might be said of the firm’s cataloguing of manuscript material over the last forty years. Indeed, catalogues of famous libraries sold at auction have taken their place as indispensable reference books on the shelves, not only of booksellers and collectors, but also of scholars and librarians.

(2) Yet bidding at auction – any auction – is subject to many hazards besides the one well known in old wives’ tales: that of innocent bystanders who nod without thinking and have a white elephant knocked down to them. This risk, if no other, can be avoided by entrusting one’s bid to the auctioneer, who will execute it in confidence, but also, of course, without assuming any additional warranty or exercising any such special discretion as is implicit in the employment of an agent. There is the psychological risk: that one may be carried away by competitive fever. There is the economic fallacy: that any book bought at auction must be a bargain – a fallacy based on the supposition that all prices at auction sales are as it were wholesale, and that by buying in the rooms one cuts out the middleman (i.e. the bookseller).

There is the risk of failure to realise that, while a bookseller guarantees his offerings, the rule in the auction room is caveat emptor. For once the hammer has fallen, the lot is yours; and if you find, when you get your books home, that one has been re-cased, another is not the first issue, while a third is not as fine a copy as you had imagined from a too brief examination before the sale, you will remember too late that the onus of satisfying yourself on these points has throughout been understood to be yours and not the auctioneer’s. Veteran collectors can, and sometimes do, bid for themselves without burning their fingers. They have examined their lots with care, they know what each book is worth (and also what they may have to pay, which is often not at all the same thing), and they are ready to pit their knowledge and sale-room tactics against those of the booksellers. Perhaps they simply enjoy an exhilarating session in the rooms. But they are still in a small minority; for most experienced collectors have concluded that they are more likely to get the lots they want, and get them at reasonable prices, if they entrust their bids to a chosen bookseller. Many collectors and institutional librarians employ a regular agent for their auction business in each city. If not, in selecting their agent for a particular sale or a particular lot they will probably have regard not only to their agent’s knowledge and judgment, but also (especially in the more specialised fields) to the advantage of eliminating a likely competitor thereby.

The normal commission charged by booksellers for executing bids at auction is ten per cent, which may seem expensive for a well-known and bibliographically uncomplicated book of high but stable market value – one, that is, which does not involve much expert examination or much expert estimation of price. But over a series of transactions ‘on commission’ the bookseller will probably engage a great deal more professional skill and spend a great deal more time in his customer’s interest than is adequately repaid by his ten per cent. This of course is payable only on successful bids; yet for the lots on which he is outbid he will have provided equally full service – in advice as to the probable price, in collation and appraisal of the material, in attendance (often with wearisome waiting between lots) at the sale and in the highly skilled business of the actual bidding. The novice collector does well to recognise that in a bookshop there is a strong bond of common interest across the counter, but that in the sale-room everyone’s hand (except the auctioneer’s) is against him. If he is a man of spirit, he may relish the encounter, hoping to beat the professionals at their own game and prepared to take a few knocks in the process. Yet if he is also a man of sense, he will only do so after careful reconnaissance, and then with his eyes wide open.

(3) Prices in the auction room, as listed in the annual records, can be misleading unless they are carefully interpreted. For a reasonably common book – one, that is, of which a copy or two turns up at auction every year – the records provide a general idea of the level or trend of prices; and when, as often, these seem to fluctuate wildly, it must be remembered that one copy may have been in brilliant condition and the next one a cripple – a crucial difference which the abbreviated
style of these records cannot be expected to make clear. For rarer books the occasional entries will, of course, provide some idea of the ruling price; but the more infrequent they are, the greater the need to consider the usually invisible factors – condition (as always), but also, was this an important sale, when prices tend to be high? Or did the copy come up at the fag end of a miscellaneous one, when even booksellers tend to he weary and uninterested? Were there perhaps two keen collectors after the same lot, and therefore two exceptionally high commissions given? Or was this, by contrast, the purchase of a prudent bookseller buying for stock? Was there some point about the book, unmentioned in the sale catalogue (the source of the entry), which would account by its presence for a high price or by its absence for a low one?

It is also, of course, necessary to take into account the economic climate at the date when the price was reached. Many a book which brought a booming price in the Roxburghe sale in 1812, during the inflation of the Napoleonic wars, fell off in the twenties, and heber’s sale in the mid-thirties reflected an even severer depression. To take some more recent examples, prices were very high in certain categories (e.g. 18th century literature, the Romantics, modern first editions) during the 1920s. Prices across the board were low during the early and middle 1930s. Prices in many departments have risen steadily (e.g. science and medicine, colour-plate bird and flower books, modern literary manuscripts and correspondence) during the past fifty years, although they have stabilised somewhat recently. Moreover, an American considering a price record in sterling does well to remember that the sterling-dollar rate has fluctuated, often abruptly.

In short, the auction records have to be used with caution even for their main purpose, which is to give prices. As for the bibliographical information provided, at least by the English annual, it should be treated with even greater caution; for it is abbreviated (not always intelligibly) from notes in the auctioneers’ catalogues, which are themselves drawn from all sorts of sources – and have occasionally been known to include the happy excursions into bibliographical theory and the optimistic estimates of rarity which some collectors pencil on the flyleaves of their favourite books. Even the most responsible auctioneers, it will be recalled, are very careful to limit their assumption of warranty; and their cataloguers, however expert, are almost always working against time. For a further qualification applicable to English saleroom prices before 1927 (and even since) see rings. For details of the annual records see american book-prices current, book auction records and book prices current.

(4) In conclusion, a few miscellaneous notes on the terminology of the saleroom, which has its own jargon. The ownership of substantial or important properties sold at auction is usually advertised. But the majority of sales in the principal London and New York rooms are made up of various properties, and a good many of these are apt to be anonymous. This cloaking of ownership, which conceals a book’s immediate provenance, is sometimes due to the modesty of the consigner (e.g. ‘The Property of a Nobleman Resident Abroad’, ‘The Property of a Lady’ or – the last word in this direction – ‘The Property of a Deceased Estate’), or the disinclination of a well known collector to be identified with the books he is discarding. More often it is simply that the property is neither large enough nor important enough (or the consigner newsworthy enough) to rate a separate heading.

A proportion of these anonymous properties, however, may come from booksellers’ stocks, generally identified as other properties: one may have bought a library containing a mass of books outside his field; another has had certain books in stock for a long time and is tired of offering them unsuccessfully; or another judges that some particular book will fetch a better price at auction than he could get for it in his shop. This may wish to reach a wider public than his own catalogue list; that may have his eye on a collector who prefers buying at auction to buying from a bookseller. Then it must be realised that with few exceptions there will be a reserve on a lot, below which it may not be sold. The reserve figure has to be agreed between vendor and auctioneer, as has its relation to the estimate. In both, the auctioneer requires a degree of flexibility, exercised on the rostrum if he judges that a promising bidder is at or beyond his mark. (It is illegal in England to put a reserve on a lot and then bid it up oneself or employ an agent to do so.) Lots which fail to reach the reserve are knocked down as such, and are said to be bought in; and the owner will pay the auctioneer’s commission, usually on a reduced scale. The last unsuccessful bidder on a lot at auction is known as the under-bidder or the runner-up.

Previous ABC's of Book Collecting posts

Carter, John & Nicolas Barker
ABC's of Book Collecting. 8th Edition
New Castle, Delaware : Oak Knoll Press, 2004

Buy a copy

Thanks to Oak Knoll Press for permission to reprint

Seattle Hotel Adds Books to Room Service

michael@bookpatrol.net (Michael Lieberman) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:17:00 +0000

Photo: John Lok/Seattle Times

The Sorrento Hotel is celebrating it's 100th birthday. This Seattle landmark opened its doors in 1909, just in time for the 4 million or so visitors who descended on Seattle for the storied Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Their first registered guest was President William Taft. In the early years the hotel also hosted numerous readings and literary events.

As part of the anniversary festivities the hotel has created a series of events called "Night School at the Sorrento." One of the events is '12 Books.'

Here's the deal:

In partnership with Elliot Bay Book Company and University Book Store, the Sorrento Hotel is establishing a small bookstore in the Sorrento lobby. Hotel guests will be able to order books as a room service option. Selections reflect a sampling of books that are being published or written in or about the Northwest. Content of the selections will touch on hotels, public/private space, and authors that collaborate with the Sorrento to host readings, symposiums, and various literary happenings.

It's a great concept. An independent boutique hotel teaming up with their local independent bookstore/s to offer guests choice regional literary fare.

For those of you in and around Seattle, the launch party for '12 Books' is set for Thursday, November 12 and features Bruce Benderson, Seattle novelist Matt Briggs, musician/journalist John Roderick and Matthew Stadler.

Michael Upchurch has more about 'Night School' at the Seattle Times

World Record Price For 1477 Printing of Ptolemy’s Map of the World

stephen@bookpatrol.net (Stephen J. Gertz) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:37:00 +0000

A copy of the extremely scarce and considered unobtainable 1477 Bologna printing of Ptolemy’s world map fetched a record price of 210,000 Euros ($312,000) plus premium at Reiss & Sohn auctions in Konigstein, Germany last week.

The map shows the whole hitherto known part of the world and is the first copperplate engraved map of the world. Its estimated price was 25,000 Euros.

The map is from the 1477 first printed edition of the Ptolemy Geographia with maps (and the first printed book to employ copperplate engravings) and the rarest of the incunabula atlases. Only twenty-six copies from the original printing of five hundred have been traced. Of all the early Ptolemy geographies, the Bologna edition was the only one never to be reprinted or reissued.

This, the first printed atlas of the world, was hastily prepared in 1477 in Bologna, Italy. The maps are thought to have been engraved by famed manuscript illuminator Taddeo Crivelli, who had learned this art only a few years earlier. Being inexperienced as an engraver, Crivelli made several errors in the map, including spelling mistakes. Crude line work, and letters and words in mirror (such as the name of the wind Vulturnus) make this Renaissance print all the more fascinating.

For some unknown reason the original map's frame was cut off at both sides of the Equator. Later in its printing history corrections and minor alterations were made, and the original blank sea areas were decorated with billowing lines.

This copy of the map was, evidently, excised from the atlas at a very early date.

Théâtre des Cités du Monde (Civitates orbis terrarum)

The highest price at the Reiss & Sohn sale was achieved for a hand-colored copy of the French edition of Braun & Hogenberg's Civitates orbis terrarum which sold for 230,000 Euros ($342.000) plus premium.

This great city atlas, the most famous of all town books, edited by Georg Braun and largely engraved by Franz Hogenberg, eventually contained 546 prospects, bird-eye views and map views of cities from all over the world. Braun (1541-1622), a cleric of Cologne, was the principal editor of the work, and was greatly assisted in his project by the close, and continued interest of Abraham Ortelius, whose Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of 1570 was, as a systematic and comprehensive collection of maps of uniform style, the first true atlas.

The Civitates was, indeed, intended as a companion to the Theatrum, as indicated by the similarity in the titles and by contemporary references regarding the complementary nature of two works. Nevertheless, the Civitates proved to be more popular in approach, no doubt because the novelty of a collection of city plans and views represented a more hazardous commercial undertaking than a world atlas, for which there had been a number of successful precedents.

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Ptolemaeus, Claudius. Geographia. Bologna: Dominicus Lapis, 23 June 1462 [1477].
Braun, Georg. Théâtre des Cités du Monde. N.p., n.d. [Bruxelles 1574, volume one].