Books are what I do : Write (very slowly), Read (rapidly or at leisure), Re-read (for pleasure or reference), Buy and Sell (my livelihood), Catalogue and Describe (ditto), Edit, Publish, Review (for The New York Review of Science Fiction and others), Recommend or Give away, Receive, and — unavoidably and repeatedly — Lift (whether singly or in boxes). I concede a fondness for private eye novels, equalled by my interest in the quirky, erudite, or obscure, and surpassed only by my love of the literature of the fantastic.
— Henry Wessells
10 March 10
links
libraries & friendship
Your correspondent will be travelling the next two days, for libraries and for friendship. Field reports will be posted as circumstances permit ; the marginal glosses will be filed incessantly.
Shreds ; or, Miscellaneous Topics :
Beyond Understanding
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay . . .
Among the books that linger on that shelf marked Books to Be Read Someday is Finnegans Wake, but this might be the year to do so. As Pierre Assouline remarks at la république des livres, “ Et elle devient un enchantement lorsqu’on la lit tout en écoutant la voix de James Joyce lisant son texte . . . On comprend encore moins mais ça n’en est que plus envoûtant. ”
Patrick Pearse and the Easter Rising
The only known surviving example of the flag of the Irish Republic proclaimed by Patrick Pearse, the hand-made tricolor flown over the G.P.O. in Dublin in the Easter Rising, 1916, will be sold in New York on Thursday 18 March. Details here.
Hand-Made
An interesting blog by Jessica Pigza, of the Rare Book Division of the New York
Public Library. I liked her discussion of The Week-End Book by the Meynells.
http://nypl.org/blog_series/hand-made
Recent Reading
Grootka by Jon A. Jackson (1990 ; Dell, 1992) [RR].
6 March 10
‘ The Blue Star ’ ; or the ice-cold jewel
— Fletcher Pratt. The Blue Star . [pp.
223-423 in :] Witches
Three , Twayne Publishers, 1952. Ballantine Books paperback,
1969.
The Blue Star is one of the favorite books of the Endless
Bookshelf, for the perennially rewarding complexities and turns of its
narrative, generally, and for three specific
reasons :
1. the frame story is overt and itself a fantasy in the club story mode, and Lalette Asterhax, the principal character, is explicitly aware of the existence of the frame story at a key point in the narrative crisis
2. the secondary world is complex and fully functional (with revolutionary politics and conflicting theologies)
3. and it is a fantasy novel about the renunciation of magical powers.
Lalette Asterhax, descendant of a witch-family in this matrilineal society, escapes one immediate peril for a succession of misfortunes when she and Rodvard Bergelin become lovers. Rodvard “ Yes-and-No ” is an idealistic member of the the revolutionary band the Sons of the New Day who seek to overthrow the entrenched interests governing Dossola. As Lalette’s lover, he bears the eponymous blue star, “ the ice-cold jewel ” that grants him the ability to discern the true thoughts of others and thus makes him a precious asset for the revolution. Lalette is separated from him for much of the novel ; poverty, unctuous deception, and the undesired attentions of other men all play a part in her ordeals. The lovers are re-united, their decision is irreversible.
The languages and names — Tritulaccan, Mancherei, Otrug, Kjermanash, Kazmerga, for example — play well upon the ear and tongue, and Pratt evolved an interesting means of denoting the private thoughts of specific characters : short parenthetical intrusions into the narrative line, the most powerful of these are literal flashes of lightning. Pratt’s novel is rich in ambiguities ; but the novel admits no sequel :
For an enchanted moment they stood so. Then Rodvard’s hands went to his neck, and with a swift motion, he drew out the Blue Star, over his head and holding it in his hand, glanced at the stream and then at Lalette.
“ Yes, ” she said. It made only a small splash where it struck the water.
Your correspondent’s copy of The Blue Star is atypical, for it is Pratt’s novel extracted from a dampstained wreck of the original Twayne Triplet publication and bound by hand in blue-purple cloth. I have a complete copy of the orginal in the attic ; the other two tales in the volume are Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber and There Shall Be No Darkness by James Blish. A Ballantine paperback edition was published in 1969 :
The chapter in Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers by L. Sprague de Camp (1976) places Pratt in the literature of the fantastic and gives a good sense of how the two writers collaborated. I have written elsewhere about Pratt’s other novel, The Well of the Unicorn (1948). This present note is a suitable occasion to post a digital version of “ Fletcher Pratt, Military & Naval Historian ”, originally published in AB Bookman’s Weekly for 30 June 1997.
Looking through my folder (and the string of notations of page numbers on the endpapers of The Blue Star and The Well of the Unicorn ), I see that I have not entirely exhausted my interest in Fletcher Pratt. One small sample below (from a photocopy of a clipping from the Asbury Park Evening Press, 30 January 1956) :
The house, known as the Ispsy-Wipsy Institute, was sold after Pratt’s death, and burned down in the early 1960s — “ . . . the right way to go, a clean way. It was a holiday sort of house. Now it’ll never be desecrated by humdrum living. ” Stone pillars and old holly bushes remain at the entrance drive. Not too long ago, I visited the town and the wartime naval battery, now Hartshorne Woods Park.
Tumblin’ Dice
— Ricky Jay. Dice. Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck . Photography and afterword by Rosamond Purcell. The Quantuck Lane Press, [2003]. Delightful, erudite, and startling : a great short essay about ordinary objects, with dazzling photographs of celluloid dice in various stages of autolysis by that connoisseur of decay, Rosamond Purcell. A gift of the author, Dice claims a permanent place on the shelf alongside such titles as Thrift Store and Dream Books and The Smell of Telescopes . The photograph below links to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, where some of the dice are are displayed.
3-4 March 10
Hand Made Books
— Sarah Horowitz. Alpha Botanica . Wiesedruck, 2007. Two botanical alphabets (Roman and Hebrew) by the artist, edition of 45 copies, hand bound by Claudia Cohen.
— Claudia Cohen. Counting . Heavenly Monkey Editions, 2009. Numbers and counting, with stamps “ designed for the Dutch Post Office by Jan van Krimpen, type designer, typographer & calligrapher extraordinaire. The stamps on the title page are all his. The remaining stamps, as well as the ornaments . . . all relate to van Krimpen’s interlaced calligraphic flourishes ” (from the colophon). Edition of 20 copies, hand bound by Claudia Cohen in old German Buntepapier.
Recent reading :
— Philip Babcock Gove. The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction. A History of Its Criticism and a Guide for Its Study, with an Annotated Check List of 215 Imaginary Voyages from 1700 to 1800 . (1941 ; Octagon Books, 1975).
Interesting and wide-ranging polyglot study of the imaginary voyage in fiction, not only Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels but also the hundreds of other books in this mode. Some useful reflections on how terminology shapes thinking. “ Genres in fiction are far from rigid anyway; their usefulness as conventions often depends upon their flexibility . . . . But definitions are rigid, and those who wish to form a definition of a genre should not forget that such a definition is only a temporary and arbitrary means to an end. ” The review of the critical literature identifies nuances and categories within the mode ; and the discussion of robinsonades in particular traces a long-established tradition of critical interest in the imaginary voyage. [There are a few other points I will note tomorrow. HW]
Straight from the Printer
— Michael Zinman. Hard Times . Annals of Collecting 2. Privately printed, 2010. Detail of cover below :
Shy Bird
— Charles Eilers. “ It’s a Shy Bird : The Life and Times of the U.S. Copyright Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom ”. Long Beach, California, 2009. Detailed and scrupulously referenced account of the printing and publication history of the copies of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (note definite article) printed by George H. Doran to secure U.S. copyright in 1926, with a thorough review of the different bindings and whereabouts of known copies. Eilers quotes extensively from the correspondence between T.E. Lawrence, Doran, Richard Savage (Lawrence’s agent), and others. Revealing of the degree of control which Lawrence exercised over the distribution of his text during his lifetime. And how, despite Lawrence’s insistence that the “ spoiled proofs ” of the English edition used to set the U.S. copyright edition be returned to him, they ended up with Bruce Rogers, who commissioned and published the translation of the Odyssey that would occupy Lawrence for the next several years. I look forward to seeing the essay reach its final form in a bibliographical or scholarly journal.
26 February 10 — Snowed In
Cleaning Up New York : ‘ Dirt will always win in the end ’
— Bob Rosenthal. Cleaning Up New York . Cover by Rochelle Kraut. Angel Hair Books, [1976]. This is one of the great neglected books of the 1970s, a classic short essay that has long been a favorite of the Endless Bookshelf. Since before its inception, in fact, when the Anonymous Other worked in Allen Ginsberg’s office with the genial Rosenthal, who was then the poet’s secretary and is now director of the Allen Ginsberg Estate. It’s brilliant and playful ; and chapter 9, ‘ Hints ’, is eminently practical, too. Until the book is brought back into print, you may read a digital version here but the original edition is an artefact worth seeking.
The house is just cleaned, it stands in its full kinetic potential [. . .] the moment is blinding and all of its aspects are glowing. The clean house is exciting. [. . .] The clean house is a jumping off point.
Snow 3 : Silence, in an open field
Shelves ; or, Michael Swanwick’s Snow Day
Detail of the free shelves at Walk A Crooked Mile Books, located in an old train station in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, from a photograph by Michael Swanwick.
Recent Reading
— Nona Caspers. Heavier than Air . University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. Collection of eleven stories, two original to the book. This is a book that stuck with me, a gathering of distinct voices, ranging from childhood to senility and each deftly brought to dance upon the page. The stories move from the upper midwest to the Bay area in their geography, but the core concerns are dark, agricultural childhoods of the midwest and an impulse toward the city. “ Country Girls ” and “ Mr Hellerman’s Vacation ” are especially memorable. When reading Heavier than Air , which articulates the mute and dreadful terrors that well up in small town adolescence and threaten to drown innate talents, I thought more than once of Walter Kirnís first collection of stories, My Hard Bargain , and, simultaneously, the rural Catholic strictness of the first portion of Tom Disch’s novel, On Wings of Song. For Caspers, childhood is dangerous, literally, and the tragedy of “ Wide Like an Eagle’s Wings ” is real and horrifying and addressed directly and unflinchingly. Heavier than Air was published as winner of the Grace Paley Prize in short fiction. A paperback edition was issued in 2008. Caspers is also author of Little Book of Days (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2009).
— Ernest Hilbert. Aim Your Arrows at the Sun . LATR Editions, [2009]. Collection of 16 recent poems, including the unsettling and ambiguous ‘ Gettysburg ’. One of the poem’s questions :
What does it feel like : so many deaths,
Knowing you killers are your friends ?
19 February 10
Re-reading
— Avram Davidson. The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy . Philadelphia : Owlswick Press, [1990]. The precursor of this collection, The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy (1975) is what got me started reading Davidson, and everything that ensued. That paperback has long fallen to pieces. Every once in a while I will pull the Owlswick edition from the shelf, and the taste the magic of his sentences and paragraphs.
‘ zurück zum Buch ’
“ ich will zurück gehen, ich will zurück zum Buch ”
Momus
Nick Currie interviewed on style and culture, “ Japan : Kamingespräch mit Momus ” in de:bug http://de-bug.de/mag/7198.html
Recent reading :
— Fredric Brown. ETAOIN SHRDLU. Edition of 40 copies,
cast, printed, and bound by Ivy Derderian at Wolfe Editions, 2009. Brown’s
classic
story of typographical errors, “ giving pseudolife to inanimate
objects ”,
and the resourcefulness of a hard-drinking retired small-town typesetter.
There are additional layers
of irony now that the computer
has displaced
the linotype machine and the handpress, particularly the insistence on
setting from “ perfect copy, carefully edited ”.
A fun and well-made object, a book that feels great in the hand and is
adorned with suitable pulp-magazine ads and engravings from The Linotype
Bulletin , 1923. The
printer notes in the colophon, : “ Casting
was done on a recalcitrant Type 2 Intertype Model C which learned absolutely
nothing
from this project. ”
Shreds ; or, Miscellaneous Topics :
“ The Truth about giving Readers Free Access to the Books in a Public Lending Library ” at the Princeton rare books blog (picture above), details here.
“ A Pencil or a Meat Cleaver : Raymond Carver and His Editors ” is the title of a talk to be given by Carver biographer Carol Sklenicka at the Lilly Library on 31 March, details here.
Hard Times , a selection of begging placards from the collection of Michael Zinman, and the second in his ‘Annals of Collecting ’(designed by your correspondent), is now in press.
George Steiner reviews a compendium of the letters of Céline in the TLS that reached the Endless Bookshelf yesterday (usually about a week behind, thanks). One sentence of the reviewer struck me : “ Céline’s comments are like reasoned hallucinations. ” And one passage from Céline himself explicates all : “ Je n’oublie rien. Mon délire part de là. ”
Mandrakes, medieval cosmographies, medical texts, and world maps are on view in Migrations of the Mind, an exhibition at the Getty of manuscripts from the Schoenberg Collection.
“ Aber Hände sind schon ein komplizierter Organismus, ein Delta, in dem viel fernherkommendes Leben zusammenfließt, um sich in den großen Strom der Tat zu ergießen. ”
— Rilke, p. 33, Auguste Rodin . Insel-Verlag, 1924
Incunabula publisher Ron Drummond has posted an update on the eagerly subscription edition of Little, Big by John Crowley, with a preview of the title page (above) and the frontispiece by Peter Milton, here.
11 February 10
“ It is not a question of things, but of time ”
— Washington Matthews. “ Some Sacred Objects of the Navajo Rites ”, Archives of the International Folklore Association I (1898) : 227-247 ; p. 234, Washington Matthews. Studies of Navajo Culture, 1880-1894 (University of New Mexico Press, 1997).
Someone has said that a first-class museum would consist of a series of satisfactory labels with specimens attached. This saying might be rendered : “ The label is more important than the specimen. ” When I have finished reading this paper, you may admit that this is true in the case of the little museum which I have here to show : a basket, a fascicle of plant fibres, a few rudely painted sticks, some beads and feathers put together as if by children in their meaningless play, form the totality of the collection. You would scarcely pick these trifles up if you saw them lying in the gutter, yet when I have told you all I have to tell about them, I trust they may seem of greater importance, and that some among you would be as glad to possess them as I am. I might have added largely to this collection had I time to discourse about them, for I possess many more of their kind. It is not a question of things, but of time. I shall do scant justice to this little pile within an hour. An hour it will be to you, and a tiresome hour, no doubt, but you may pass it with greater patience when you learn that this hour’s monologue represents to me twelve years of hard and oft-baffled investigation. Such dry facts as I have to relate are not to be obtained by rushing up to the first Indian you meet, notebook in hand. But I have no time for further preliminary remarks, and must proceed at once to my descriptions.
This is a vivid definition of scholarship ; this passage has long been in my file of citations, now remembered. I am certain that I disagree with the notion of labels more important than specimens, but the description of the time and study required to elicit meaning is valid. “ The Beads of the Bavenda ” by Eugène Marais (noted in January 2007) is also relevant for a discussion of unglamorous things that carry great significance.
Rétrofuturs paperback covers
from a series by Stéphane Massa-Bidal http://cargocollective.com/retrofuturs/
— Frans Masereel. Das Werk (Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1928). The 58th of a series of 60 woodcuts (below). Also of note are the woodcuts prefiguring the fascination of King Kong with Faye Wray.
4 February 10
Imaginary books and libraries
Obvious, when one sees it : of course there must be a subject category for Imaginary books and libraries, and prime inhabitants of this country include A Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem, translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel (1979) ; the four elegant volumes of the Tragara Press edition of Frederick Rolfe’s “ Reviews of Unwritten Books ” edited and with notes by Donald Weeks (1985-8) ; and the Catalogue d’une très-riche mais peu nombreuse collection de livres provenant de la bibliothèque de feu Mr. le comte J.-N.-A. de Fortsas. Dont la vente se fera à Binche, le 10 août 1840, à onze heures du matin, en l’étude et par le ministère de Me. Mourlon, notaire, rue de l’Église, no. 9 (1840), catalogue of a collection of unique books, with a brief biographical sketch of the late owner, Jean Nepomucène Auguste Pichauld, comte de Fortsas, otherwise known as the Fortsas catalogue, a bibliographic prank of the first order — boooks and owner being entirely imaginary ! I shall look for a copy of Imaginary Books and Libraries. An essay in lighter vein by John Webster Spargo, published by the Caxton Club in 1952, and work my way among other titles in this field.
Your correspondent has no trace of jealousy and asks only, why is Another green world (2003) excluded from this select club ? (This question is directed toward librarians. Please note that the cognate classification, Literary forgeries and mystifications, holds no such appeal.)
This is a good time to remind readers of the Endless Bookshelf of the following elements of a successful library search :
“ Author, title, and the jewelly festival number — ”
Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners (Small
Beer Press, 2005), p. 227
The Man with the Knives by Ellen Kushner
Forthcoming on 3 May 2010 from Temporary Culture :
First publication of an original short story by Ellen Kushner, author of Swordspoint. A Melodrama of Manners (1987) and The Privilege of the Sword (2006). The book will include an original frontispiece illustration and decorations by World Fantasy Award winn ing artist Tom Canty. Details and ordering information here. The cover sketch above includes a detail of an anatomical plate from the 1579 Plantin Valverde-Vesalius.
Read with Horror and Enjoyment
— Lee Israel. Can You Ever Forgive Me ? Memoirs of a Literary Forger (Simon & Schuster, 2008). Appalling and congenial account of how biographer Israel turned to forgery, producing bogus letters by Louise Brooks, Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, and others, and then proceeded to steal from libraries before the deceit was uncovered. Gift of [GF] who predicted correctly that I would read it with horror, and also, perhaps, enjoyment.
(Re)-Reading
— Jedediah Berry. The Manual of Detection (Penguin paperback, 2010). Great cover that alludes to the key role of bicycles in this excellent detective novel, reviewed on the Endless Bookshelf on 4 Aug. 09.
— Virginia F. Townsend. Only Girls (Lee and Shepard, 1876).
Wander in the Archives
The Archives of the Endless Bookshelf have been swept and tidied and a guide has been prepared to assist wanderers. Index would be too strong a term : the headwords tend to be suggestive rather than directive. Start here. Have fun.
This creaking and constantly evolving website of the endless bookshelf : I expect that some entries will be brief, others will take the form of more elaborate essays, and eventually I will become adept at incorporating comments or interactivity. Right now you'll have to send links to me, dear readers. [HWW]
electronym : wessells
at aol dot com
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Henry
Wessells and individual contributors.
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