exhibition – The Endless Bookshelf

November commonplace book

recent reading :

— Mark Valentine. The Prospero Machine and other stories. Tartarus Press, [2026].

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pictures from an exhibition :

Original autograph manuscript of Histoire d’O, from the Ludlow Santo Domingo Library

— 50 Shades of Modern. Exhibition at the Houghton Library, Harvard, through 8 January 2027 (weekdays). Curated by Leslie Morris.

From the curator’s statement :

Seeking to provoke both “wow, what an amazing object” and “wow, I didn’t know Houghton collected stuff like that,” 50 Shades of Modern showcases just a few of the thousands of acquisitions Houghton’s Modern Books and Manuscripts Department has made over the past 20 years. Dating from 1800 to the present, these items show the continuities of institutional collecting ; initiatives supporting new directions in teaching and research ; and the generosity of the many donors who have helped make the collection what it is.

This is a good small exhibition, eight display cases of considerable density, and wall mounts of some choice visuals (original and reproductions). The range of materials is fascinating (and provocative as intended), from the Gothic mode of fiction and the creole poetry of Mauritius and the first novels by African Americans to the archives of Gore Vidal and Elizabeth Wurtzel (author of Prozac Nation) and the original autograph manuscript of Histoire d’O (!) and a sharp artefact of the German counterculture. The exhibition labels are succinct and well written and suggest connections across time and space.

If you are in the Boston area, this exhibition will reward a visit.

How I spent my summer vacation / 2026

I. A few postcards from my recent trip to Geneva with the A.I.B.

— H.B. de Saussure, Cyanomètre, ca. 1788. Bibliothèque de Genève.

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A glimpse of the Villa Diodati, on the other side of the fence from the Parc Byron, Cologny (Geneva in the distance).

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Gérard de Nerval. Autograph manuscript poem, [Fantaisie], after 1842. The last quatrain. [Private collection.]

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The approach to the Château d’Oron.

Some of the library shelves at the Château d’Oron : a large room filled with late eighteenth-century popular literature and other books, all in impeccable original condition.

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The original book-fool.

Von buechern hab ich grossen hort
Verstand doch drynn gar wenig wort

— Sebastian Brant. Das Narrenschiff. Basel, 1494. Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire, Fribourg.

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Glimpses from the exhibition, Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse. Enquête su un roman-monde, curated by François Rosset [at the Fondation Jan Michalski, Montricher, through mid-February, 2027].

— Jan Potocki. Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse. St. Petersburg, 1805. One of three surviving copies of the first printing (the first decameron of the book).

— Jan Potocki. Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse. Manuscript page (from the version of 1810).

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H.B. de Saussure, Voyages, dans les, Alpes, 1779. Plate VIII, the view from the summit of the glacier. [Private collection.]

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Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire, Lausanne. [The library of the twenty-first century, still under construction.]

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Inscribed

— Ernst Jünger. Auf den Marmorklippen. Inscribed to Martin Bodmer, 25 September 1939. Fondation Martin Bodmer. [Snapshot under minimal light.]

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precocious children

La Musicienne, Musée d’art et d’histoire, Neuchâtel. One of three surviving programmable automata constructed by Pierre Jaquet-Droz and his son between 1768 and 1774. These were exhibited at the Spanish court and elsewhere in Europe as sales tools for the firm’s watches and clocks. The museum curator who maintains and operates stands behind l’Écrivain (the writer). The uncanny valley starts here.

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One the great delights of the trip was to see the original autograph manuscripts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Reveries du promeneur solitaire in the Rosseau archives at the Bibliothèque de Neuchâtel, together with some of his autograph notes written on playing cards. Not one of my pictures, however, is in proper focus. Alas.

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II. The earlier part of my vacation was spent in an undisclosed location, writing, and walking.

the view from the desk

the view from one morning’s walk.

My nearest neighbors were a family of grey foxes : a vixen and at least four kits, and sometimes the dog-fox, too (I could never get everyone into a single frame).

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early october – mailbag & commonplace book

early october mailbag at the Endless Bookshelf

— Ingrid Burrington. Networks of New York. An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure. 2026 Edition. [vi], 136, [2] pp. [Brooklyn : printed in Minneapolis by Shapco Printing, for the author, 2026].
The 2016 edition was the Endless Bookshelf best book of the year, praised for challenging the reader to see the familiar anew and providing the necessary tools. “Urban internet infrastructure has metastasized over the past decade and here are the tools for observation, diagnosis, and resistance.

— Chad Oness. A Private Matter. Ten Essays by C. Mikal Oness. Text printed in blue and black. [Photographs and afterword by Griffin Gonzalez]. [Portland] : Manually printed and bound at No Reply, 2026. Edition of 130 copies on Arches Johannot and Zerkall Ingres papers. Cloth spine, patterned paper boards.
“printing books by hand is not all fun and games”

Perhaps not, but this book is a delight to hold in the hand and I look forward to reading the text.

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Michael Swanwick, master of concision and the unexpected turn, is scattering the leaves of another autumnal tale all the month of October, “Autumn’s End”. It’s worth taking a walk in the woods with him.

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Photographer Henry Wessel at the Grolier Club

Jack Gray’s exhibition of books and original prints by American photographer Henry Wessel (1941-2018) is on view at the Grolier Club in New York City, through 14 November.
(above : San Francisco, 1993 ; incongruous detail)

N.B. : no relation.

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a few steps away

part of a very fresh sulfur shelf, from this morning’s walk

recent reading :

‘But ruin is particular, tragedy local.’
— Larry McMurtry. Sacagawea’s Nickname. Essays on the American West. New York Review Books, [2001].
These essays are great stuff : facts, attitudes, opinions, clearly stated. The closing paragraphs of “The West without Chili” are deft and funny and true. {For some reason I kept seeing the title as Sacagawea’s Necklace.]
— —. Roads. Driving America’s great Highways. Simon & Schuster [2000].
Exhausting, though McMurtry reaches a fascinating space at the end of the book.

september : Copenhagen, recent reading, &c

It’s September again, and the annual congress of the Association internationale de bibliophile (A.I.B.) will be held in Copenhagen 7-14 September. I am looking forward to the gathering, in particular the chance to see the Arnamagnæan manuscripts at the university of Copenhagen. And the surprises to be encountered in a city I’ve never before visited.

Watercolor of Greenland winter scene, ca. 1860, from an album presented to Danish King Frederik VII

Watercolor scenes of Greenland, ca. 1860, from an album presented to Danish King Frederik VII [in the King’s Reference Library].

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On the island near the Opera House, Copenhagen.

view of the Opera House from the Amaliaborg Palace

View of the Opera House from the Amalienborg Palace.

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Arne Jacobsen and Flemming Lassen. The House of the Future. [Copenhagen, 1929]. Drawing at the Royal Library in the Skatte / Treasures exhibition

The House of the Future. [Copenhagen, 1929]. Drawing by Arne Jacobsen and Flemming Lassen, at the Royal Library in the Skatte / Treasures exhibition.

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the view from the hill, easy nature at Louisiana, Denmark

The view from the hill, at Louisiana (Sweden on the distant shore).
/ file under : easy nature

Alexander Calder at Louisiana, Denmark

Alexander Calder at Louisiana.

Richard Serra at Louisiana, Denmark

Richard Serra at Louisiana.

A.I.B. Copenhagen : book fair in Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek

A.I.B. Copenhagen : book fair in Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek this morning

A.I.B. Copenhagen : book fair in Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotheket

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current reading :

— 66 [Sixty-six] Manuscripts from the Arnamagnæan Collection. Edited by Matthew James Driscoll [and] Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir. Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, [2015].
Illustrated commentary and discussion of selected manuscripts collected by Icelander Árni Magnússon in the late seventeenth and earliest eighteenth century : the wellspring of Icelandic literature, and of mediaeval Danish and Icelandic history and culture.

— Christopher Moore. Anima Rising. A Novel. William Morrow, [2025].

recent reading :

— Michael Innes. Appleby on Ararat (1941). Penguin Books, [1961].

— Michael Innes. Appleby at Allington [1968]. Penguin Books, [1970].
It was, Appleby reflected uncharitably, the successful Englishman’s chosen route to going soft.

Billy Budd Symposium : 9 October 2024

In conjunction with the Grolier Club exhibition “Melville’s Billy Budd at 100”, a symposium will be held on Wednesday evening 9 October, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., at the Grolier Club, 47 east 60th street, in New York City. RSVP required (hybrid event with separate registration for virtual attendance, see link).

A panel of prominent Melvillians will address Melville’s masterpiece, each of them commenting on the centennial exhibition and its implications. This will be followed by a discussion on such topics as textual history, biographical context during Melville’s years of writing his “prose and poem concoction”, the text’s cultural journey in the 20th and 21st centuries, and its adaptations into theater, opera, film, and the visual arts, as well as areas for potential future exploration. The symposium will be moderated by Richard Brodhead, who taught English and American literature at Yale for 32 years before becoming president of Duke University. Brodhead’s writings on Melville include Hawthorne, Melville and the Novel, The School of Hawthorne, and New Essays on Moby Dick. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and chaired the Academy’s 2013 commission on the humanities. The speakers will be John Bryant, David Greven, and Grolier members G. Thomas Tanselle and Henry Wessells.

Dr. Bryant, Professor Emeritus of English at Hofstra University, is a leading Melville scholar. Founding editor of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies and director of the Melville Electronic Library, he received the Distinguished Editor Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals in 2015. He has contributed several books and numerous essays on Melville, American literature, and scholarly editing, including Melville and Repose (Oxford) and The Fluid Text (Michigan). He is currently working on the last volume of his three-volume biography, Herman Melville: A Half Known Life (Wiley). Dr. Greven is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. His books include All the Devils Are Here: American Romanticism and Literary Influence (The University of Virginia Press, 2024), and a study of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Intimate Violence (Oxford University Press, 2017). Tom Tanselle, a Past President of the Grolier Club, is a bibliographical scholar who for many years was the vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and an adjunct professor of English at Columbia University. He was also one of the three primary editors of the fifteen-volume Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville, and he has published many other books. Henry Wessells is a writer and antiquarian bookseller in New York. He is the author of A Conversation larger than the Universe (2018), a catalogue accompanying his Grolier Club exhibition of the same name, The Private Life of Books (2020), and A Melville Census, John Marr & Timoleon (in press, forthcoming 2025).

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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dateline : Paris

The Endless Bookshelf will be filing occasional despatches from Paris during annual congrès of the Association internationale de bibliophilie (AIB), and may lapse into French on occasion

the reader

[from an earlier visit, the mural of the reader, by Ferdinand Humbert, in the Petit Palais]

— Charles Dantzig. Encyclopédie capricieuse du tout et du rien. Grasset, [2009].

And, soon after arriving in a rooftop apartment in the 4e, well, yes, of course I opened this book, to this page (252), in the Listes des personnes [list of persons]