Henry Wessells – Page 5 – The Endless Bookshelf

recent reading : late september 2024

— Kasper van Ommen. “The Einstein of the sixteenth century”, in : Books That Made History. 26 Books from Leiden That Changed the World. Edited by Kasper van Ommen and Geert Verhoeven. [Translated by Claire and Mike Wilkinson]. Brill, 2022.
Excellent essay on J. J. Scaliger (1540-1609), polyglot scholar of classical and near eastern languages, whose Opus de emendatione temporum (1598) integrated astronomy and history from Jewish, Babylonian, Persian and Egyptian sources as well as Greek and Roman works ; “he also incorporated the latest astronomical understandings of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) and Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)”. Scaliger came to Leiden University with his library in 1593; it soon grew, and has been kept there ever since. Your correspondent is the lowest amateur polyglot in the presence of such erudition; there were some remarkable books on view during a visit last week (including a presentation inscribed from Brahe to Scaliger).
A summary note on Scaliger’s career by van Ommen on the University website (Dutch for ‘grouch’ is brompot), Josephus Scaliger : famous scholar and grouch

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— Janwillem van de Wetering. Hard Rain [1986]. Soho paperback, [1997].
Had to pick this one up again, an old favorite by an old friend, for a re-read now that I have been to Amsterdam, and have walked and bicycled along the canals and into the Amsterdamse Bos. It was a Depression-era landscaping project around the Olympic rowing basin of 1928 and is now a mature city forest and a green lung in the midst of a densely populated zone.

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— Heather Swan. Where the Grass Still Signs. Stories of Insects and Interconnection. Pennsylvania State University Press, [2024].
Memoir and travelogue on insects and landscapes from the rural midwest to Colombia and Ecuador, richly illustrated with works by contemporary artists. Seen in the window of Architectura & Natura, an inviting bookshop on Leliegracht in Amsterdam.

— Christian de Pange. Le Bréviare du Quintivir. Une enquête bibliographique en Franche-Comté. [Lusove: Imprimerie de Bacchus] Pour la Société des Bibliophiles Francois, 2022.
Bibliographical account of a private social club in Vesoul in rural France at the turn of the nineteenth century, and their festive book, printed circa 1813 for the five members. The bibliographer has traced three copies to the present day; a fourth copy was last seen in 1896. Edition of 100 copies, from the author.

— Choosing Vincent. From family collection to Van Gogh Museum. Lisa Smith and Hans Luijten (eds.). Van Gogh Museum / Thoth Publishers, [2023].

— Emile Schriver and Heide Warncke. 18 highlights from Ets Haim, the oldest Jewish library in the world. Walburg Pers, [2016].
Illustrated selection of books and manuscripts from the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam (founded 1616).

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— Avram Davidson and Grania Davis. A Goat for Azazel. [Afterword by Michael Swanwick]. Dragonstairs Press, forthcoming 5 September 2024. Edition of 80 copies, stitched in mourning lacework paper wrappers, signed by Swanwick.
Reproduces the text of a proposal for an Eszterhazy “ghost novel” (circa 1993 or 1994), with a note by Michael Swanwick, whose friendship back then encouraged my researches and the formation of the Avram Davidson website.

— Nancy Isenberg. White Trash. The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. [With a new preface to the paperback edition]. Penguin, [2017].
The persistence of early modern English hierarchies and economic structures from the earliest beginnings of the enterprise. Dispossession, servitude, and the upward concentration of wealth.

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dateline : Amsterdam

afternoon sun in Amsterdam, Leidseplein

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The Endless Bookshelf will be filing despatches from Amsterdam and environs during the week of the A.I.B congress (words and images dropped in here as found).

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things are symbols of themselves / semiotics of Amsterdam

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vegan potato truffle cappuccino

[surprise innovation offered during the medley of the Daalder experience, vegan mode]

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Vondelpark

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Watcher at the edge of the cow pasture, in the Amsterdamse Bos.

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Herengracht

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‘Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres’

The earliest surviving manuscript of Caesar’s De bello gallico (On the Gallic War), ca. ninth century CE, at the Allard Pierson collection, University of Amsterdam.

At the other end of the table, a stack of more than 80 ‘feuilles volantes’ (1916-28) of Kaváfis (Cavafy), scattered leaves of his self-published Poems.

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Breestraat, Leiden

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color in the Rijksmuseum library

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— H. N. Werkman. Hot Printing. [Groningen, ca. 1936]. One of three known copies of a portfolio of prints and poems.

At the Koninglijke Bibliotheek = KB, nationale bibliotheek :

Onze wereld is gebouwd met woorden en gevormd door mensen

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— Vincent van Gogh. Trois romans.

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At the Ritman Library, Keizersgracht 123, Amsterdam.

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Compagnieszaal, West-Indisch Huis, Amsterdam (this is the room where New Amsterdam was planned)

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rainbow at Schiphol

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In Memoriam : Tony Saunders

Tony Saunders
21 September 1961 – 11 July 2024

My friend Tony Saunders, artist, musician, and social worker, died in New York City earlier this summer. I wrote a note to be read at private memorial gathering :

Tony was my friend from the moment we met in sophomore year, to the tunes of Brian Eno’s Another green world and the Velvet Underground. If we had some similar high school background stuff, he was very much the City Mouse to my Country Mouse. He encouraged me to question myself, and Princeton, about how I was seeking to educate myself. This (and the music) were early, spontaneous gifts to me. If our paths crossed and diverged and crossed again, our friendship was constant, and regularly renewing. He was a brave person who looked at himself and chose sobriety, and his life was enriched by that choice. He kept making his art, in a variety of media, and on his terms, not following some temporary fashion. And he found a way to integrate his art into a later career as a social worker. He was very articulate about the playful presence of his approach. Not long after Tony died, MJ and I saw the Eno documentary, and both of us said, how much T would have appreciated that; but in truth he had already lived many of Eno’s insights into art and process. He was a great friend and we are lucky to know him and to remember him.

In 2016 Tony recorded a statement for his friend Michael Schickele that is worth looking for : https://matthewschickele.bandcamp.com/track/tony

late September mail bag

It feels like the end of summer here in Montclair, with the hop cones turning, and the tables at the farmers’ market asprawl with the last of the bulbous heirloom tomatoes and an abundance of pawpaws. And some interesting books in the the mail recently :

— Peter Bell. Two Weird Tales. Zagava, 2024. Collects “On the Apparitions at Gray’s Court”, a ghost story and haunted house in York, and “Labyrinth”, an uncanny tale set in one of the northern dales.

— John Crowley. Le Parlement des Fées. Traduit de l’américain par Doug Headline. 2 vols., Paris : Rivages / Fantasy, [1994, 1995]. The French edition of Little, Big (the pseudonym of the translator is a jest, for he is the son of crime novelist J. P. Manchette, hard-boiled trail blazer in the Gallimard Série noire, whose surname translates as : headline).

— Mark Valentine. The Thunderstorm Collectors. Tartarus Press, [2024]. Collection of twenty-nine essays and vignettes, including pieces on Arthur Machen, A. J. A. Symons, M. R. James, and lesser known figures from the “curious alleys and byways” of literature and folklore.

— David R. Gillham. Shadows of Berlin. Sourcebooks Landmark, [2022].

Postcard from Armadillocon 46

A fun trip down to Austin to see old friends, attend Armadillocon, make new friends, eat good vegan food, and, as usual, look at books. (This is one of those postcards that gets mailed after leaving the place.) I hadn’t been to Austin or Armadillocon for several years, so it was good to be back. A curator friend recommended a vegan sushi place Nori. I headed there after our meeting and was impressed by the Katana-ya (deep-fried nori roll with avocado, cucumber, kanpyo, shoga, surimi mix; topped with wasabi mayo, unagi, ponzu green salad, jalapeño, red onion, and cilantro). The convention was in the same hotel as before, an odd, anonymous late 1970s exurban architectural mode that could have been at the edge of Anywhere, USA. Inside, though, it was all Armadillocon, a small friendly convention with a good mix of panels and readings (even sometimes forcing one to make hard choices).

One of the reasons I went was to show up at the Howard Waldrop celebration, a panel moderated by Scott A. Cupp and also including Sanford Allen, Robert Taylor, and Don Webb: all friends who knew Howard for decades. I hadn’t been able to attend the Waldrop Memorial in June; I was glad to attend this gathering. Towards the end of the allotted hour (the anecdotes and yarns could have gone on for hours), when the floor was open for comments, I stood up and said something like this:

My name is Henry Wessells and I’m from New Jersey, where we also esteem Howard Waldrop. He excelled at integrating incompatible ideas into improbable fictions that suddenly reveal truths about life, literature, and America; and the stories equally suddenly show themselves to be inevitable and essential parts of American literature. If “The Ugly Chickens” is often mentioned as Howard’s best known story, for me his masterpiece is “Heart of Whitenesse”, where the ambitious conceit is executed with perfect skill. Not a word out of place, and the madcap humor is controlled in the service of the tale.
I have it from a reliable source that as an angler Howard practiced catch and release, and thus understood the impossibility of clinging to things. And so we now mark his departure; the stories, and the ideas, remain.

I went to several interesting panels and readings by a variety of writers. And of course there were many pleasant conversations along the way. I came back with a few books:

— Christopher Brown. Field Notes. September 2024. [Austin, 7 September 2024]. Gift of the author, inscribed, one of the first copies out of the box. Two essays, two reading lists, and twelve photos. Newsletter for advance orders to his new book.
——. A Natural History of Empty Lots. Timber Press, [September 2024]. Advance copy, inscribed.

—. Live to Build a Better World. Despair, Survival, and Hope in Science Fiction’s Response to Environmental Change. [Introduction by Jeremy Brett]. Texas A&M University Libraries, 2021. Illustrated catalogue for the exhibition at the Cushing Memorial Library (January to June 2021). An interesting selection of mostly twenty-first century books and films, with the earliest titles being The Lorax (1971), by Dr. Seuss, Brunner’s The Sheep Look up and Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest (both 1972), and Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower (1993).

— Avram Davidson. The Avram Davidson Treasury. Tor, [1998]. Book club edition which I hadn’t known existed. The copyright page is altered, the dust jacket carries no price and has a number slug on the back panel, and the black boards are smooth.

— Delilah S. Dawson. Bloom. Titan, [2023].

— Joe R. Lansdale. Things Get Ugly. The Best Crime Stories of Joe R. Lansdale. [Introduction by S. A. Cosby]. Tachyon, [2023].

— Josh Rountree. Death Aesthetic. Underwood, [2024].
——. The Legend of Charlie Fish. Tachyon, [2023].

— John Varley. The Persistence of Vision. [Introduction by Algis Budrys] [1978]. Dell [Quantum Paperback], [1979]. Varley was the first Armadillocon guest of honor.

— Howard Waldrop. Howard Who?. Stories [1986]. Peapod Classics. [Small Beer Press, third printing, 30 March 2024] [replacement copy].

A Melville Census. John Marr & Timoleon

A Melville Census. John Marr & Timoleon. With a note by Henry Wessells.

Edition of 52 copies, designed and printed by hand by Jerry Kelly.

Published 8 January 2025. Sold out (updated 6 March 2025).

This is just what it sounds like : a report on the location of all known copies of Herman Melville’s John Marr (1888) and Timoleon (1891), the two last books of poems (each printed in editions of 25 copies), with a note about Maurice Sendak, Bill Reese, and others. Of the 52 copies printed, 26 lettered copies were reserved for presentation (one copy for the author, printed on blue paper, can be glimpsed at left above). Bibliographical details here.

Postcard from Onion creek

YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERE YESTERDAY.

Went out for an early morning walk for a little time away from the air conditioned hotel. Down to Onion creek, a greenbelt park in the floodplain, crossed by two pipelines buried under a cut across the steep sedimentary banks. It is a heavily used park, with some folks living out of their cars along the access road. Along the creek there are signs of deer, dogs, dog walkers, egrets wading or in flight, fishermen (one midstream in waders, and the chairs set up for absent anglers), tree climbers, and above all the waters: all through the trails and scrub there are signs of past flooding, water-tossed logs, a mulch of branches, twigs, and man-made detritus large and small.

SEDIMENTARY GEOLOGY OF ONION CREEK

I came upon two forest giants, bald cypress trees on opposite banks of the creek that must have been — even a century ago — too big to extract. A knotted rope dangled from the giant of the north bank, the ladder of some ascended sentinel of the creek.

Climb on up, the view is unequalled.

commonplace book : early September 2024

Your correspondent will be attending Armadillocon in Austin this weekend (6-9 September). I will be at the Howard Waldrop memorial on Saturday afternoon, and at other events. Say hello if you see me.

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Tartarus Press have announced publication of a fifth collection of essays by Mark Valentine, The Thunderstorm Collectors, 29 recent pieces, some previously unpublished, on authors of the supernatural, book collecting, and some lesser-known byways of English life and letters. I look forward to seeing it.

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“Melville’s Billy Budd at 100”, a new exhibition, opens next week at the Grolier Club in New York City. It will be worth a look.

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A singular interview with Christopher Brown

Mossback

I have known Chris Brown for many years, first through reading his essays in the pages of The New York Review of Science Fiction and other publications, and then in person at Readercon and in a few larger cities. We share an interest in the ragged edges of the planet and in science fiction, and we’ve walked together to one or two of the green worlds you can find just a few steps from the usual paths. His novel Tropic of Kansas was an Endless Bookshelf Book of the Year, “dark, nimble, hilarious, deeply alarming, truly American”, and he was a good person to talk to when I was writing A Conversation larger than the Universe. His Field Notes newsletters are always interesting and fun. Disqualified by such ties of friendship from writing a review of A Natural History of Empty Lots, a book that grew from his years of walking and thinking around in his neighborhood, I asked him the only question that needs asking, and his answer in this singular interview (from A Natural History) is elegant and definitive.

Henry Wessells : Have you ever seen a chupacabra ?

Christopher Brown : Almost a decade after I went on the Bigfoot watch, I had a close encounter with a chupacabra. It was May 2015, on the Sunday night before Memorial Day. We were in Marfa, Texas, where we had taken our visiting friends, Henry Wessells and Mary Jo Duffy, native Philadelphians who live in New Jersey and work in New York. After dinner on our last night, we headed east on Highway 90 to check out the Marfa Lights. It was around 9 p.m. The radio was tuned to the local public radio station, which was playing its “Space Music” show-ambient instrumentals that suited the mood. About two-thirds into the nine-mile drive, a ghostly creature crossed our path, walking right across the road, rather slowly.

Slow enough that we got a long look as it passed through the beams of our headlights. Four-legged, definitely not a deer, a figure of ethereal white. Bigger than a dog, different than a coyote — even though that’s probably what it was. They say most chupacabra sightings are really just coyotes with mange. We all saw it, were similarly baffled, and agreed that it was both something that had a rational explanation that the brevity and circumstances of our sighting would not let us figure out, and that we also had just experienced an encounter that had an authentically paranormal frisson. It was definitely a chupacabra, we understood, as we also understood that a chupacabra is simply a creature you encounter that does not follow the taxonomic indicators of its species, looking so strange, in the moment you see it, as to provide you an experience of the alien and a welcome excuse to make up your own legend.

Tree Portal

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Chris Brown’s new book, A Natural History of Empty Lots

— Christopher Brown. A Natural History of Empty Lots. Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places, forthcoming 17 September 2024 from Timber Press.

link : https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/christopher-brown/a-natural-history-of-empty-lots/9781643263366/?lens=timber-press

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From Elfland to private property

There are two Elflands for me, the one that I can walk to, and the other one.

I prefer the Elfland that I can walk to. To paraphrase Wittgenstein and turn him upside down, Elfland is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and no longer know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and you know your way about.

One follows a path that escaped notice when walking in the other direction. One, two, three steps, into the forest, up the hill, across a creek, or simply from sunlight to shade, and the border has been crossed. One breathes more easily, even if climbing a steep hill, and the main concerns are to look and listen. For others, I am sure the sense of smell is involved, but I have to rely on memory and other cues. I do remember, once, deep in the forest of Big Sur, the rich moist fragrance of the sequoias and all the leafwrack washing over me. The green of the moss, the play of leaf and shadow. One is there, for a few minutes, a sense of expectation but there is no goal, alertness the only aim.

There are even maintained trails in Elfland, perhaps not so new, but steps and other buffers to erosion are sometimes seen along the way. The track of a buck in the center of the path, a rain dappled pad of a coyote in sand, and further up, fresher scat, also in the center of the path.

To walk and climb is enough. If the hill is steep, the switchbacks are frequent. A moment’s pause along the way, and that peculiar striated nut-like brown shape is in fact a compact slug. One moves on, up and up, turn and turn again.

This morning’s walk to Elfland was a sudden glimpse of a path between trees on the return leg of an amble at low tide. I walked and climbed for fifteen minutes, up a trail to a sudden and well-tended wooden staircase and that most American sign, Private Property No Trespassing.

It does kinda change the moment. When I was a child, we were taught to sing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”, but not even at the Quaker woodland camp were we taught the verse about the relief office or this one:

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land,

This morning, constrained by time and tide, I did not walk up the staircase out of Elfland and into a different adventure (I can usually talk my way into and out of all sorts of places). So I turned back, and walked down through Elfland on a beautiful forest hillside, and returned to the fields we know.

There, at the other fork in the path, I turned and climbed up a broader path to trespass into a large levelled clearing in the high woods, an oval 150 paces in length overlooking the sound, a building site that never happened, perhaps, but now an informal dump or something. The other end of the American dream.