Book*gasm

A mountain of books

2011-09-28T06:24:00.000-07:00

A mountain of books fell on me. Not literary, thankfully. But it certainly feels like that's what happened. One minute, it seemed, I was going with the flow and the next I have hundreds more books in my house and not many are leaving. WTF!!!! Okay, I found a few new place to dig for books. Not telling where until I am done mining them myself but they are close-by and untapped. I actually found a Hunter S Thompson book at one of the places! At the other place I found an ARC of JOHN KEROUAC's first novel. That's worth some loot!

At the same time, I feel a bond with every small press and unknown publisher out there who made great books that no one has ever heard of or read. The marketplace that is American can be a cruel bitch, heartless and downright cold. Audiences are fickle and uneducated. Writers are decades or centuries ahead of their "fans", if they are lucky to have fans.

And so it goes. A book runner, a scout, doesn't have the luxury of sentiment though. He looks for a book that will pay for his rent or his addiction. My addiction is the hunt, the moment of discovery, the pursuit. I don't NEED books. I desire them though. Greatly desire them. On days when it's raining though, I linger inside and climb my mountains. Reaching the peaks, I wonder how much higher I can build them!

i sent my fictional accounts elsewhere

2011-09-27T06:27:00.000-07:00

Orange Backpack
OB

to my humbly captive audience

2011-08-25T06:16:00.000-07:00

over the past few years I have been bubbling an idea around in my head to write about an individual who was a book scout (married and stay-at-home dad) who makes some particularly foolish decisions that lead him and his family into harms way. International intrigue, spy networks, that sort of rot.

i wanted to figure out if having an using a real blog in a fictional enterprise is kosher. It seems to be so -

we are on.

My own "book fetish" as it were was only unleashed in 2001 when I spent the summer working at a recycling center outside of Philadelphia a few days a week. I was paid very minimally - except that I was also allowed to take donated books as part of my "pay". I gained a lot of weight that summer. No, I didn't get fat but the farmhouse where I was living at the time began to fill up with books. A lot of books. Dozens at a time. Paperbacks, mostly. The classics and oddballs. I was amazed what people dumped at the Center. Books that Auntie Em or Ralphie Boy had their closets, or attics, or basements -

I watched in horror as others at the Center ripped off the covers of Hard Bounds and toss the pages in with old newspaper for pulping. It was like they were killing defenseless animals. Of course, some of the books were mildewed, soiled, highlighted, water logged. BUT STILL! On principle alone I started to "save" books. I vowed to find homes for them somewhere. Used bookstores. Then a few years later, online.

the reason I asked....

2011-08-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

...is because I am working on a novel with some real-world elements in it and I wanted some idea of how do prepare for the possibility that people reading the novel would then click onto the real sites and blogs

would it generate interest in things that I (or the main character) find interesting?

wondering...

2011-07-21T03:45:00.001-07:00

in a book of fiction, is it acceptable to use real blogs or website addresses?

Michael Dirda's column

2011-06-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

Dirda's Reading Room. My wife sent me a link to this column since Michael Dirda has stated pretty much my exact sentiments on the subject of "e-readers" in the piece. His phrase is "Screens are, by their nature, ephemeral, transient, insubstantial". I would add "impermanent" to the phrase as well. Unlike an actual book - there is still the problem of batteries and charging. Besides, since because a gadget exist does not mean that it's place in our society is guaranteed or known. Time, and not pundits, will tell.

Paul Foreman & Thorp Springs Press (more!)

2011-06-09T06:08:00.000-07:00

I first wrote about Paul Foreman and Thorp Springs Press in August 2010 when I had first came across the Press and started to collect some books published by TS. Since then I contacted the University of Texas which has collected material by the Press in their special collections department. The University was not interested in acquiring anything else by Thorp Springs even though I thought the association copies I had were valuable. Well, they are to someone I am certain.

I contacted Len Fulton and that conversation led nowhere. Then I happened across a copy of The Grassman on Paperbackbookswap.com - a signed copy - Len Fulton's novel - signed by Len - printer's error copy (one of the chapters is upside down)

Then in January 2011, I noticed that someone had made a comment on my August 2010 posting about Foreman and TS Press, and it was from Paul Foreman himself! I didn't read the message till well after it was posted and the mailing address for Foreman in Texas seems to have been a dead end. Paul, if you are out there still - I did write you!

A few weeks ago I bid on a lot of anthologies on ebay pertaining to California poets. I didn't notice in the description that one of the anthologies was The San Francisco Bark which was published by - you guessed it - Thorp Springs Press in April 1972 while the Press was still located in Berkeley, CA. It contains poems by Josephine Miles, Arthur Sze, Paul Foreman himself, Margaret Cesa, and a number of poets who I have never heard of.

So, now I have FIVE books published by Thorp Springs Press. My collection rivals the University of Texas!

extremes in book selling

2011-05-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

it isn't just books themselves, or their authors, or their publishers. It's the environment in which a book is sold. "the bookstore". So, over the weekend I was at what has to be the extremes of bookselling. In Central PA, I went to a brand new used bookstore called 'The Wise Owl' and then about 12 hours later I stumbled into its polar opposite : The Bookspace in Philadelphia.

Each in their own way were totally fucked up. I know that "purists" will hissy-fit me for saying this but these experiences only reenforce my comfortable and established pattern of on-line book shopping. Not because I dislike the pursuit, I LOVE the pursuit!, but because I am not as much in love with the stupidity of people who say they love books and then treat them like pieces of furniture or like puppies in a post-apocalyptic film, unwanted and left for dead or left as food.

Take your pick : each of these places have no real interest in books as knowledge but perhaps maybe as objects, at least in one of them. The other is located in a gritty old brick factory in Fishtown section of Philadelphia which looks like someone dumped 50,000 books from a helicopter through the roof and wherever they landed is their "spot". Okay, It might have de-evolved into that but the place that I witnessed was a mass of dust covered items (which happen to be called books for the sake of conversation that are inconveniently in the way of a really cool party space. So, maybe the books are a cover. A dodge. A write-off.

I needed to wash my hands after leaving there. They were covered in soot. The building reeked of stale beer. There were bags and bags of trash all around the building. Nice touch for those brave individuals willing to risk the adventure of finding ANYTHING at the Bookspace. It's a great place to haggle or to learn the art of haggling since none of the books are priced and all transactions are arrived at through something like a Vulcan mind-meld.

My wife and I did find two books but - we promptly had to find something with a sink with running water and soap. Grungy is actually an understatement in this instance. It's a good thing we weren't wearing white clothes.

Juxtapose that with a bookstore that might have 300 books in it. A used bookstore that is starting out and has, maybe, 300 books in it. Of course, they are all overpriced since they have to pay the rent in this ill-conceived business model. But it looks like a book boutique. A place where someone can go and find a book for that third bedroom in their house, something in pink. I hope that they succeed but will not at all be surprised if they don't. You can't start a bookstore with so few books that the normal book scout is in and out of your shop in less than 5 minutes. You want them to linger. You want them to browse. If one were interested in boutique - like book accessories, they can find them in this place; but most serious book hounds are not coming into a new shop that is a USED BOOKSTORE and be interested in clutter - they are there for the books. What don't you get about that? They are there to BUY books, so it might be a good idea to have some! No, more than "some". It might be a good idea to have invested in a lot of books. Front-end your commitment by opening your store with floor to ceiling books instead of finely placing them around the room on beautiful (and completely useless) furniture soas to show off how they might "make" the room. Ok, right, I am out of here. I bought one overpriced book - but I don't do it twice.

I love the concept of bookstores - I am not a fan of e-books in the slightest but good LORD, anyone entertaining opening a bookstore ought to remember that it is a BOOK store. People will come (or not) based on what is in your store. Unless, you know, it's a front for the coolest meeting space in the city which can pretend to "deal with books" but only in the most minimal possible way!

new quote to live by

2011-01-02T06:56:00.000-08:00

"if books are becoming obsolete, I am an obsoletist"

s - a - m

that said, I have a different opinion ....

2010-12-15T05:19:00.000-08:00

about Jack Matthews.

I don't know if it is formed by the fact that the book he sought and value are not ones that I do or would, or that his tone is one that feels aloft, but having read a number of books by Jack Matthews on the subject of book collecting and searchings I no longer am terribly interested in the man or his opinions.

I am sure that it's due to reading more than one of his books however that has not been the case with my reading of Michael Dirda or Nicholas Basbanes. SO - it's mostly Matthews and his own writing, or writing style, or his subject matter. He's an Ohioan. His focus is as much about "frontier history" as about Modern Firsts. My focus is on different subject matters and particularly about chapbooks. Modern Chapbooks, if you will. Toothpaste Press, Perishable Press Limited, and the scores of other small presses and publishers who flourished and then disappeared. What remains is the work, and it's primarily a record of the last 60 years or so. The mimeographic revolution period. From the late 1940s through the present.

His focus is much older and more established. Old leather bound history of the Ohio river, letters from the 1870s. That ilk which is important to some but not to me. I respect what he has done but I don't feel that he respects what collectors today do. We don't use catalogues - we have the Internet to research. We might not comb estate sales or sit in the auction chair but that doesn't mean our collecting techniques are inferior. Perhaps there is a generation gap between the Jack Matthews of the world and the stevenallenmays of the world. Perhaps that is the issue in a nutshell.

passing it along

2010-09-24T04:22:00.000-07:00

One of the things that has most interested me through the process of book gathering, collecting, and reading is the info and insight being provided by the various authors. They are "passing along" their knowledge about other writers; writers less well known - forgotten - out of print - but not gone. Definitely not gone. The mere mention of these forgotten souls triggers interest in readers like me to find out more about them.

Michael Dirda, the book reviewer for the Washington Post, for example, presented Dawn Powell, Alfred Bester, and others as though they were delicacies of a by-gone time.

The book collector and author Jack Matthews, a professor at Ohio University, wrote about Ralph Hodgson. Hodgson lived in Ohio at the end of his life and at the time of the publication of Matthew's Memoirs of a Bookman (1990) was scarcely recalled. Nowadays his many books of poetry and editorial work is in greater demand. One wonders if the essay in Matthew's book contributed to the revival in interest in Hodgson's body of work.

Thirdly, Paul Oliver who blogs at The Devil's Accountant provides the same level of discovery as the afore mentioned writers. Oliver dusts off lost classics as well as publishers who work needs greater attention.

Collectively they and many others help to "pass along" their expertise to the future. As it should be. As it needs to be.

my conflicted "affair" with Richard Brautigan

2010-09-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

I am not certain what word deems the proper relationship between a reader and an author, especially one where the reader has changed his affections toward the author numerous times, as they say in the midwest, "if you don't like the weather, wait an hour or two."

My first awareness of the name Richard Brautigan came from a copy of Revenge of the Lawn that my father owned. Okay, my Dad is someone I would never refer to as "hip", so his owning a copy of this book threw me for a loop. Still does as I think of it. I ventured into the marsh that is Brautigan on my own, by way of his association with the Beats. But "association" is a funny word when it comes to the Beats. For example, many people squeeze Bukowski in with the Beats. My response has always been, "really? how?" Guilt by association runs wide and deep with the Beats and while it's true that Richard lived in San Francisco and was photographed with lump sums of Beat generation literati, does that really make him one?

Even here I can't give him a pass. I got and read and tried to figure out (if I was missing something or if he was a fraud) ALL his books of poetry. All the ones that were left in print by 1970 when my sixteen year old awareness was piqued by Kerouac and Ginsberg and Burroughs. As the years passed, I collected and then sold off all my copies of Brautigan's work. More than once. I thought him insightful then I felt like I had been conned. I praised his genius and then couldn't remember a single phrase of his prose or a single line of his poetry, or I simply hated his titles without any poetry on the page. To say that I had an "off-again, on-again" relationship with Richard Brautigan is to be very generous to the word "relationship".

If a definition of "the Beats" simply included the core of friends who met each other at Columbia and had the New Vision, then Brautigan ain't Beat at all. But that definition isn't fair, and so I would say that Richard was a parallel Beat. A neutron around the clusters of the atom comprised by Jack and Allen and Old Bill Lee. As recently as 1999, I owned nothing by Brautigan although I continued to find copies of his work easily enough. Copies floating through the used book world and then once the Internet began to sprout, there as well. On Alibris, on any number of websites, and then of course on Amazon. I became a seller of Brautigan instead of a collector of him.

Then, as fate would have it, I got involved with a lady named Kate. Kate's mother has a friend named Kathy and Kathy told me the story of how Richard Brautigan has sent her a letter in response to a note that she had sent him. The letter was postmarked a day or two AFTER Richard had killed himself. So, it was like he typed out this reply letter, put it in the mail, came home and killed himself.

Now Brautigan was a lot closer to me; I could almost see his ghost when I held the letter addressed to my soon-to-be Mother-in-law's friend. Then Katy and I took over the daily operation of Plan B Press in 2003 (I co-founded the Press in 1998), and we decided to publish a short fiction contest. The second year of the contest, I decided to try and tie the contest to the 50th year anniversary of the writing and performing of HOWL for the first time. We had a "Beat themed" short fiction contest and the winner of the contest was Corey Mesler for his piece entitled "Following Richard Brautigan".

Curses all around as I know find myself gathering copies of his books again, along with reading Terence Malley's 1972 Richard Brautigan critique which was part of the Writers of the 70's series and becoming frustrated that so much of his work was not included in this volume as it had not been written yet! Then, of course, Corey Mesler was able to complete his book and have a publisher bring out the full Following Richard Brautigan with a thanks by the author to me specifically for my/Plan B Press's assistance along the way toward the completion of the novel. Of course, I buy a copy of it and am hooked. To Mesler's novel, and to Brautigan's work. Dang it. If only I could find a copy of "Plant this Book".

Steps by ruth weiss

2010-08-24T13:48:00.000-07:00

I saw this copy flittering on ebay. Wait, I thought, I know ruth weiss. This must be an early book (it was her first - published in 1958). I bought the book and wrote to ruth weiss. Once the book arrived, I looked it over and wrote the seller to see where HE got it. The seller is in San Francisco where ruth lived for a number of years. He informed me that the copy came from the basement/garage of a local SF poet and political activist. Most of the material which the seller acquired had not seen the light of day in 40 years and that the seller was surprised by the response on Ebay to this store of stuff.

The result of my letter to ruth was a phone call today. ruth told me that there were only 50 copies made of her first book and that the address listed on the back of the book, 1116 Ellis St., San Francisco was adjoining attic apartments that ruth and her first husband, Mel Weitsman, shared. She also told me, since I had asked, about the production of this first book. It was typed out using two typewriters. Mimeographed at a different location. The blue tape binding was stolen - shhhhhhh! - from a local stationary shop.

Very rare chapbook by a 82-year old survivor, a poet who continues to make her voice heard.

- now that

2010-08-22T06:02:00.000-07:00

Once I sorted out the numerous conflicts within the 2 printings/editions, I decided to follow a tact that I had stumbled on earlier - which is to contact the seller and get whatever backstory there may be. Here's what I learned about the copy of Texas Liveoak that sparked my interest; the seller wrote, "I got this item at the friends of the Abilene Public Library book sale here in Abilene, Texas. The Library often hosts Texas authors for readings and book signings. I assume that this may have come from one of those or as a donation from a patron. It is always a huge sale."

The second printing was printed in Mexico and sold in Austin, Texas at Foreman's Brazos Bookshop. In 1979, Foreman opened the Brazos Bookshop which carried mostly small press publications. In Austin, he continued his involvement in the small press community, staging poetry readings, organizing workshops, and speaking about his work as a writer and small press publisher.

After publishing nearly 100 books and journals, Foreman closed the Brazos Book Shop, and Thorp Springs Press ceased operations during the early 1990s. So - it seems that the second printing had to have been made AFTER 1979.

According to an article I had read, Foreman's greatest success as a publisher was in bringing out Len Fulton's 1974 novel, The Grassman: a novel. Interestingly, there is a poem in Texas Liveoak dedicated to Fulton entitled "The Grassman". Small wonder then that Foreman would sign a copy of his collection for Len Fulton.

The association copy came from a seller in California which is where Len Fulton still lives.

now this -

2010-08-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

As much as I had given this blog early on is as little as I have given to it since. At the heart of it is a self exploration, a blog as diary as developing essay as book idea as......

for myself and whomever might wander in - in the months since I gave this more attention I took my somewhat limited attention to a parallel blog dealing with chapbooks. In that blog I began to examine the book as object but also to explore the history of the author and publisher, and illustrator, and the copy itself as far as I could. That began with a chapbook I still haven't written about published by a shadowy organization called Vigilance Society. The more I learned, the less I knew.

I began to think about the publishers, and additionally, about the copy of the book that I held in my hand. If a book is published in a run of 1500 copies in 1970, for example, where did the individual copy go - what was the journey of that copy? Who originally bought it or received it?

This all led to my own response to a book of poetry by a fellow named Paul Foreman who founded Thorp Springs Press in Berkeley, CA back in 1971. The book was entitled Texas Liveoak. The copy I first found online was a "second printing" of the book. It was inscribed and signed to a couple in Texas where Paul had returned in 1978. I started to research the book and its author and quickly discovered that the University of Texas held the papers of Foreman and Thorp Springs Press in their permanent collection. In the notes on the webpage for the collection on the University of Texas library website, I learned that Foreman had published Len Fulton who went on to become a publisher of some note himself for Dustbooks and his International Directory of Small Presses, etc.

While learning more about Foreman and his press, I looked on Amazon to see how many other copies of Texas Liveoak might be in circulation and saw that someone was selling a collectible copy inscribed and signed to "a small press publisher". I wrote the seller and asked whom that person might be, and he wrote back that it was Len Fulton. I promptly bought this copy of the book. I now had an association copy of the book and more importantly, I had a first edition of the book. The difference between the first and second printings of the book were remarkable. So much so that I believe the second should have been assigned the wording second edition.

The cover images were completely different.

The second "printing" was printed in Mexico. The publishers address was different. The title page was different. The cover image was different. It was a different BOOK, why was it being called "second printing"? Because the poems had not changed? But they changed things inside the book - I was confused. The FIRST edition was published in the US, had a Berkeley, CA address, had a different cover image and an additional image on the back cover. It also had a dedication page, had differently colored cover stock - I mean, how different can one book get?

gasm

2010-08-05T10:29:00.000-07:00

it's been entirely too

the trouble with multiple faces is dressing them each day

more books that I could throw a brick at

clutter my wife doesn't love me for

lag time is terrible

2010-05-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

i have too many platforms going at once

sorry

too long between time

2009-12-17T05:03:00.000-08:00

not that I haven't acquired any books, nor sold any, but I haven't written anything. Sorry, have been a terrible blogster.

I recently found a copy of Modern Book Collecting by Robert Wilson. Published in 1980, this book has been considered an informed resource in the world of book collecting. While I found some information in the book worthwhile, overall it was very dated. The well respected Wilson had no inkling of the world that collectors in the 21st century would be facing. His forty years of experience in the "way it was" doesn't really help those of us in the cyberland of the way things ARE.

Wilson was a dealer as well as a collector and bibliographer. His perspective is different from one who collects, and doesn't own a respected downtown book salon (Wilson owned the Phoenix Book Shop in New York City). Some of his tales are comparable to those of John Baxter and others - being in the right place at the right time, having relationships with certain authors that are rewarded handsomely down the road, knowing the value of a particular author's work or the possible value in the future (yadda yadda), but his methodology has been compromised by the Internet - by Amazon - by ABE. Auctions are not the preferred way to option books, unless one is well heeled and well connected to a world of elitist collectors and international jet sets most of us would not ever get entrance into to begin with.

Wilson dismisses flea markets, library sales, used bookstores, etc. as meritless pursues for items that are merely "fools gold", yet to counter this claim, I just found a SIGNED copy of Throat Sprockets (a book that I greatly admire even though it's disturbing) by Tim Lucas in a used bookstore for a buck. In perfect condition!

I also found my biggest find to date, the 1936 Dawn Powell first edition Turn, Magic Wheel at a secondhand shop for a dollar as well. My guess is that the intended "vicitms" of his book are beginners, who the books was written to help anyway. I am somewhere between rookie and expert. I have had the luck too, which any collector has, for again "being in the right place at the right time." I will agree with Robert Wilson that it's important to collect things that interest you. That much we can agree on.

Booking Pleasures by Jack Matthews, published by Ohio University Press in 1996 is a companion to the Wilson book but views things from the author/collector's perspective as an academic as well as a collector of regional material. His stories are more telling as they are more homespun, more regional in nature, and the author's inclination to gather material for its own sake rather than Wilson's dealer mentality. Matthews never mentions turning a profit nor even selling his finds. That's at least half of Wilson's game. Booking Pleasure is a good read. They both are, really.

it's hard to not be obsessed about it

2009-09-03T05:07:00.000-07:00

Books, I mean. Not "reading devises", I will never own one of those. But books themselves. Ink on paper. Leading in many directions of thought at the same time. Acquiring, preserving, handling, caring. The whole thing. Not only that but following arguments and discussions in print.

For example, what was Annie Dillard's problem with Alain Robbe-Grillet? In her 1982 book Living By Fiction she rails about Robbe-Grillet and his "novels". She does not find anything redeeming about his work. This is well before her own first novel was to appear, her 1992 book The Living. I read her 1989 book The Writing Life in which she is discussing things and writing fiction.....she is preparing for her novel. It's interesting to see this all being worked out on paper in various books. And yet, she really had a distinct dislike for the books by Robbe-Grillet which I don't get. Had she ever met Alain Robbe-Grillet? Was it personal or professional dislike?

That one might not be solved anytime soon. I can't give it too much attention as my family is preparing to move out of our 2 bedroom apt. into a 2 bedroom house with a little tree-filled back yard. Everything is being packed up - and by everything I mean our meager furniture and kitchen items and our 4,000 books.

Thomas Jefferson's library

2009-08-23T17:36:00.000-07:00

There was a link I tried to place here for a piece from the Smithsonian website concerning a project to research and locate copies of all the books that had been in the library of President Thomas Jefferson that was sold to the Congress, and perished in the library fire of 1851. However, that link disappeared and so - oops.

a frugal experiment

2009-08-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

so, I am writing here primarily for myself and whoever else happens to click through but all the same I wanted to record somewhere my new frugal experiment as it pertains to book acquiring. For the next block of time - undefined - I am refraining from sending any cash on books. That doesn't mean that I am not acquiring them, nor am I stealing them. I am just not buying them.

this started about a week ago - I just wanted to see how it would go. How, you may ask, can you get books for FREE? Well, the local library actually has several milk cartons near the elevator in the front lobby where books are left FREE for the taking, and I am often surprised by the books donated to the library that they don't want or are left by patrons. I have taken home and sold at least $200.00 worth of such books in the year that we have lived here. It's pretty startling.

I also take advantage of book exchanges at coffeehouses. For instance, I exchanged some dull paperbacks yesterday for a 1938 coffee table book called "Adventures of America : 1857-1900" from the archives of the Harper's Weekly, a "hardbound" (although it feels pretty soft to me) The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson in One Volume, plus two British paperbacks of novels that I was not familiar with either the title or the author. For me, a successful trip to get cookies for my kids and a refill of coffee for myself.

Then there is Bookmooch and PaperbackSwap. Yes, anyone who has been to these sites can respond that I have to pay for postage if someone wants to "mooch" a book from me, true. But I can also request books from others that they pay postage for as well, and some of those I have also sold for a profit online. Or bulked up my own collection. In fact, I have added twenty books over the past week without paying any cash. While at the same time donating or selling off another twenty-three books for a net LOSS of three books (always a consideration when your spouse counts the books as often as mine does) - okay, I am half kidding.

and so it goes....

interesting book

2009-07-26T13:27:00.000-07:00

went into Alexandria, VA late last week with my kidlets and went into a second-hand shop that I used to frequent, and found a number of books that I thought were pretty cool and one that was (for me at least) downright interesting. It was a hardbound first edition of Peter Gay's Weimar Culture: the outsider as insider.

The copy appears to have been signed by the author but it is also so underlined and annotated that it's really difficult to see through the notations, but - I have always been interested in Bauhaus and the Weimar Republic so, I got the book and it is extremely informative and well written and I will be keeping the copy after finishing just because.

the previous owner, I have to say, was a boob - but....

talk about being "book obsessed"...

2009-07-24T04:53:00.000-07:00

no, i am a little bad about books but this guy has 35,000 books in his house and he doesn't have a bookstore or a cyber store. HE is obsessed. I am merely consumed.

hard enough to keep up with oneself

2009-07-21T05:16:00.000-07:00

life is busy, complicated (when one has kids), and stressful (when looking for new diggs)

so, I forget what all I have going on - like the number of blogs I am polluting the internet with. Here's one that has been overlooked lately. This is not to suggest that I have not lessened my obsession with books. Hardly that. It's been remarkable how many books find their way into my clutches.

chapbooks, older books, odd material.

let me plunge back into my horde and give you some examples:

altering books

2009-06-05T04:32:00.000-07:00

here is a classic book altering environment - note the wall of books behind this lady? I certainly have.

it isn't just the "finding"

2009-06-02T06:08:00.000-07:00

For me, at least, the journey goes well beyond locating a book. It's also the condition, the binding, the flyleaf (if the book is of a certain age), the publisher information, points, marginalia, autographs, etc. It's the totality of the thing that is a book. The "thing" of it that no e-book could hope to duplicate. Case in point, here as evidence....who really thinks about the binding of a book? Well, bookbinders, certainly and collectors. But the average buyer or reader is only interested in whether the binding is good - or not. Our legacy, our civilization in fact, has everything to do with preservation of that which came before. So, exhibit A : bookbinding : a craft that must not disappear:

I applaud those who do this work, it's often thankless and it's definitely time-consuming YET it's essential that the craft be handed down from master to student, for as long as we make and read books (pray that be forever!)

compared to Paris....

2009-06-01T03:47:00.000-07:00

the backstory

2009-05-12T04:08:00.000-07:00

you go into a used bookstore or a second hand shop, or a Goodwill location, and you poke about for books and you find some, lets say, and then you begin to ask yourself:

why were these books brought in?
why were they abandoned? whose books were they?
what's the history of them?

I have done this many times, found small volumes of poetry by the same publisher, or with the same name inside each, or the same first name and a different last name...a woman who started gathering books before she married, and then continued after with her new last name. Of course, I have to create the backstory. Other than an owner's name or publisher info, there is often nothing coherent to tie the books together. No marginalia. No underlining (that makes sense to the casual observer)

Recently, the poet Ann Michael sent me a packet of books that she had in her house. Mostly chapbooks, in fact. Most from a publishing concern she was involved with in the mid-1980's LiMbo bar&grill books which was then headquartered in Melrose Park, PA. The packet included some of the earliest bar&grill books as well as others by co-founder David Dunn of Brooklyn, NY who died 1999.

Fortunately for me, there was a letter from Ann that explained a good deal of "the backstory" so I didn't have to create my own. All the same, it's also nice to speculate how the books might have been connected and how.

The chapbooks themselves become artifacts as well as memorials. Not only did David Dunn pass in 1999 but the publisher of the 2001 chapbook of some of David's poems, Songs to be Hummed While Sleeping, Paul Dilsaver of The Academic & Arts Press also has since died. I had never heard of his Press until now, and now they are as dust in the wind.

There was one book that was not a chapbook, the 2006 collection of David Dunn's work called the lock of the land which was published by Kings Estate Press of St. Augustine, FL. It's a fine book with proceeds of each sale going to the American Diabetes Association. It was illustrated by Wayne Hogan.

bloody wonderful

2009-04-17T05:10:00.000-07:00

I was about to say that I was NOT swayed by others when it comes to books, but that isn't true. I have read many of Michael Dirda's books in the hope of discovering someone I had never heard of before, nor read. Through Dirda I found Dawn Powell and countless others. But I was surprised to hear R L Stine on the radio recently talk about the author Sebastian Barry's book A Long Long Way.

My grandfather had served in World War I, and while I never met him (he died seven years before I was born), his memory and his service in France is part of the family lore. So, I promptly got a copy of Barry's book on Amazon for $1.99 and have been slowly reading it since. It's a beautifully written and simply awful book. "Simply awful" in the vivid descriptions of the horrors of the trenches and the brutality of war. It's a stunning book. I absolutely recommend it. But it's not a fast read, it's too painful for that. If you absorb it, you can't help but put it down and wince at the imagery and senselessness of it all.

Fantastic book.

complaint

2009-04-07T04:37:00.000-07:00

Went to a quite successful used bookstore in Manassas, VA over the weekend and took in their great operation and wonderful selection. I won't name the bookstore as I have an issue with the method by which they have chosen to affix the price to their book. The sticker they affix to the front cover of the books comes off with pieces of the paperback front cover. This is not good. The pricing sticker is fine on hardbound books but on paperbacks? Not so much. Either bits of the cover disappear with the removal or a sticky residue remain on the cover, needing additional cleaning.

sucks....

but as I said, the selection was good and if one were to google "used bookstores" and "Manassas", they might quickly conclude that I am writing about McKay's.

A stop in Brooklyn, and more

2009-03-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I drove my family to Brooklyn to visit the Godparents of our children, and while we were there I stopped into Atlantic Book Shop on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn. I wasn't there long, but long enough to find some extremely interesting and rare items.

Chief among the finds was a 1970 Unicorn Press chapbook by Robert Hershon, which according to the man behind the cash register (who may also have been the owner) was a book by his father. The chapbook is entitled "Atlantic Avenue" and the store is now located on Atlantic Avenue although it seems to have moved there recently from Greenwich Village.

Not that I know that, never been into the store before. It's a great space. Of course, I was looking for specific things and found a number of them. I also found an inscribed & signed copy of Jim Bishop's 1975 book of poetry published by Contraband Books, Mother Tongue. As well as The High Tower by frances horovitz, printed in Great Britain by New Departures; High Wire Man by Julian Long, published by the University of North Texas Press poetry series (my 3rd chapbook in their series); a mass market edition of Anne Dillard's 1975 Tickets for a Prayer Wheel; Reed Whittemore's 1959 The Self-Made Man. Overall, I was quite pleased with my stop there. Of course I had to run down several blocks afterwards to catch up with my family as they had walked to see the Statue of Liberty in the harbor.

Then a few days later, on Jack Kerouac's birthday in fact, I received from Finland a wonderful copy of Kerouac's Lonesome Traveller printed in Great Britain by Mayflower Books Ltd. (1968)

poetry books arriving in the mail

2009-02-19T05:36:00.000-08:00

Since Christmas I have received 4 poetry books of note in the mail. I usually frown on getting books online since you don't know, really, what you are getting until it arrives and you open the packaging. So, it's either perpetually Christmas time or it's another sad April Fool's joke that I have paid for.

In these cases, I have been lucky to have received 4 additional Christmas presents inside of practical jokes. The first is Left Hand by Margaret Cesa. This book appears to have been self-published in 1974, with illustrations throughout by Nancie Gunkleman. The copy I got was signed by Margaret Cesa in 1974. There is no publication history nor name of Press, nor contact info listed anywhere in the book. Its pages are unnumbered. Nice clean copy.

I got this book as well as the next two through ebay, which as many people know, is on a downward spiral. I "won" an early Copper Canyon letterpress chapbook, signed, by Richard Shelton. 12" X 5 1/2". Beautifully made Tree Swenson. I had another early Copper Canyon book - Soie Sauvage by Olga Broumas - which was published in 1979. It looks more "professional" than the Shelton chapbook published three years later. Odd, that.....

I got A Kind of Glory published in 1982. It reminds me of chapbooks created by Toothpaste Press and the Perishable Press Limited. Handmade paper, letterpress text. Uniquely made books. However, this little story had a strange twist in it; the seller initially sent me the wrong book. I was sent James Laughlin (with Vanessa Jackson) book The House of Light, published by The Grenfell Press, New York, in 1986. This book is astounding in its production. I had not heard of Grenfell Press before but this is an incredible book that I was only too happy to receive, even by accident. I was able to keep this book in addition to receiving the Shelton chapbook. Fantastic.

But one can not expect too many "happy accidents" to come. Indeed, shortly afterwards I "won" a signed Theodore Weiss collection of poetry which was returned to the seller in an mangled condition by the USPS. While I was refunded fully, I wonder what the rate increases actually PAY FOR since improved service is not evident. And postal employees are generally an unhappy bunch. Just grinds my socks that they increase rates while volume declines and service fails. If the USPS was a stand-alone company, it would likely be forced under.

The final book I received was Pieces of Sissy Lee by Kathryn Burkett. This coffee-table sized self-published book is a hodge podge of art book styles and broken poetics. Glossy cover. Unnumbered pages. Visually interesting.

out and about

2009-02-09T04:28:00.000-08:00

I went out this past Saturday and did some booking, unloading more than I came home with (which is, in fact, the idea) and I was able to find Clotheslines, a nice Harry Abrams produced HB with DJ, fine first edition, edited by Stan Tymorek. It's a collection of poetry & art dealing with the subject of clothing. Very good indeed.

Then on the CBS Sunday Morning program, they had a piece about books in the city of Paris and spoke with John Baxter who is, among other things, author of A Pound of Paper. I really like this book and the writing style of Mr. Baxter. I looked for the piece online and it isn't anywhere, yet. The reporter, stationed in Paris, was discussing the nature of the printed word in the city of lights and featured a gentleman who is more than a bit of a bibliomaniac. His apartment in Paris was floor to ceiling books, I can't imagine he is lucky with the ladies - there wouldn't be room for them in his apartment.

The piece also showed a book scout in action in Paris and mentioned the number of used book experts who have shops in Paris, I am thinking of moving to Paris (okay, maybe just visit)

jan 26 2009

2009-01-26T15:06:00.000-08:00

catching up with myself

2009-01-23T05:03:00.000-08:00

My wife and I went to Robin's Bookstore in Philadelphia right after Christmas 2008. We did so to gather up our chapbooks from their shelves as they are closing as a bookstore after 73 years and also to see what treasures we might find lingering as the bookstore winds down and discounts deepen along the way. My wife, Katy, found "a thin sliver of nothing" as I call them, a tiny chapbook, actually a booklet (all of 4 pages). It had been in the basement (catacombs) of Robins since the late 1970's. "Playing the Game" was printed at Moore College in Philadelphia back in 1976. It was a single poet by John De Witt and was designed by Keith Newhouse. The publisher is listed as Cold Chair Books.

As it happened, I decided to write about this booklet on one of my other blogs, chap*books, and before doing so I wanted to do a bit of research on this "thin sliver". I asked around and discovered that John De Witt could be teaching at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, which I checked and can confirm, and that De Witt had been working with a Bill Walton (not the basketball player) at Moore College as Cold Chair Books. De Witt listed the handful of chapbooks that Cold Chair had produced including a chapbook that I discovered on a bookshelf at the Free Library of Philadelphia, Alexandra Grilikhes' City Poems. I must say that I was tempted to steal the chapbook. I was a good citizen though and returned it before it's due date.

Among the other treasures we found that day were a Git Ott chapbook, a piece of short fiction published by Meridian Writers Coop, a story by Francis Davis who has gone on to write several books on jazz, as well as chapbooks that may not have seen the light of day in 3 decades. Bookstores can be large Xs on the treasure map of discovery for book collectors, and scouts (of course). Bookstores have their basements the way old movie theaters had their vaults, their secret films - their own unknown treasures. So, maybe there is an upside to Robins ending it's long run as a functioning bookstore in Philadelphia. The material in their basement will bubble up to the surface again.

At the same time, I feel for Larry Robin who had to make the painful decision to change course and bring things to closure. I worked with Larry earlier this decade and I know the struggles he endured to keep his independent bookstore afloat in a city where the corporate bookstores had muscled their way in. In the end, it was Amazon and online booksellers that did him in. A cautionary tale for the times.

article in NY Times

2008-12-30T04:55:00.000-08:00

I was read some articles from the New York Times online when I clicked onto this piece by David Streitfeld. It seems to dovetail with this blog a bit. I am not at all saying that people should only buy books online. I believe that a book scout or collector can only really do their job by physically handling their "prey", if you will.

But I also understand why someone sitting at home with a computer and internet access can click a few times and have a book in their mailbox a few days later. It depends on what the customer needs and wants. If he/she wants to go to a bookstore, they will. If they want a specific book at the cheapest possible price, then that's what they will do as well. The age of the general bookstore might be over. A bookstore needs to specialize. The internet has changed the rules, all the rules, of commerce in a bit less than a decade. It's the reality of the situation.

We ought not wring our hands in woe but figure out how to use technology to enhance not only our book buying endeavors but also the logic behind publishing (for those of us who are more than book collectors, but also PUBLISHERS)

There's a glut of stuff out there now. Anyone with a computer and the proper software and a printer can make their own book......the question then becomes, 'but should they?'

There are infinitely more books than time to read them all. Most people spend more time in front of their flat screen TVs or in front of their computers than reading a book anymore and yet each year there are more and more titles coming out. GLUT!

Who can read them all? Who can afford to buy them all? People can't. They buy what interests them. Each person has a niche of interests that booksellers can't possibly know so they shotgun blast us with a bit of everything when we don't necessarily want a bit of everything. If I primarily read poetry and postmodern fiction, for example, don't bother telling me about the new biography of a former President of the United States - because I DON'T CARE. I didn't decide to publish that thing, you (mr. publisher) did, so you have to figure out how to promote and sell it to a society overwhelmed with information and entertainment options. Maybe publishers should have cut back on the number of titles they released each year a long time ago, but as a publisher I understand the logic involved in more and more books being published every year. It's just that the bell curve of books in print and the bell curve of reduced attention span have collided somewhere along the Information Superhighway and no one is calling for the paramedics.

a little hurrah

2008-12-22T05:47:00.000-08:00

Part of the reason I write this blog and share my "booking adventures" is to connect with others who are equally involved in the various and wide net called THE BOOK TRADE. If one were willing to put name on it. Part of the gasm here is the pursuit. The find. Another part is the sale, for those who are more book scout than collector. I am a bit of both. I find to sell, and I find to collect. When I found the first edition of Dawn Powell's Turn, Magic Wheel I was terribly excited to find the book but after researching it, decided to post it for sale since it was also fairly rare. It netted me $300.00 - I would say it was worth it.

Within the last few weeks I found these two books and decided to post them for sale as well and they both sold. Hurrah, but as with any explorer, telling of the find is as exciting as reaping the rewards of the sale. I found both in second hand stores, not "Good Will" stores but in good will stores (my generic name for non-used bookstores). Stores associated with non-profit, community based missions. Stores where the person who deals with books isn't terribly knowledgeable about the "what" that they are dealing with. Of course, there's a lot of crap being donated to these places as there are at used bookstores. But the hunt is what draws me to these places and that's where the action is (at least in Northern VA where I am currently living)

I went into the first in Alexandria, VA a few weeks ago while waiting for a bookstore to open and found a number of interesting books as well as the booklet by L I Brezhnev I earlier wrote about. I am not a fan of Rod McKuen, I want to make that perfectly clear, but as I was down on all fours looking at the bottom shelf of bookcases in the corner of the largest of the rooms in this store, I found a first edition of Listen to the Warm by McKuen......signed by the poet on the inside front of the book. I hesitated about a half second and then put in the middle of the stack of books that I was buying. I ended up paying 81 cents for the book. It sold for almost $30.00!

A few days later, I was in a different store in Fairfax and got only two hardbound first editions (hey I was keeping my kids busy and only had a buck with me) and one of those books was Trujillo: The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator by Robert Crassweller. It was in perfect condition. Quirky. Odd subject matter. Hadn't thought about these islands in any political way. Then I remembered Poppa Doc/Baby Doc...oh yeah, there have been dictators in paradise. This book sold for $15.00

a little pre-Christmas present I won't bother dropping in my 401k (falling, falling into the abyss of Wall Street like down a rabbit hole with Alice)

I deal in books, ink is in my veins

2008-12-17T05:48:00.000-08:00

I deal in books.

Hundreds, no thousands – no, tens of thousands have past through my hands in this life so far. As a kid, I would ride down a staircase on our family Encyclopedias. In Junior High, for a year, I was a library assistant. I grew a library in my room at home, then as I moved from apartment to apartment across the country that library would grow and shrink, as though moving with the tides of being American, and living on the run.

Later still I tore hardbound books apart, pulping the contents and tossing the covers into a cardbound crusher while working at a recycling center. It felt like tearing the heads of live animals. In some ways, it was even worse.

I also am a writer, a publisher, a collage artist and book artist which generally means that I alter existing books or reconfigure text and make new books – I have been involved in the life cycle of books needing only to buy a share of stock in a forestry company to produces timber to be made into paper, and then to invest in at least one machine which pulps ruined books and material on the other end, leading to recycled paper and yet another life.

I have collected books, sold them online, found them in odd and ordinary locations and donated them to libraries. I have, so I am told, scribbled in them – cut them apart – underlined them, highlighted them and written marginalia in some. Both as a child and currently.

I smell them. One can detect the books that lingered in used bookstores or attics or were housed in rooms where people smoked.

There is nothing more exciting than finding not only a rare book but a book that had been owned by a famous person, with notes by that person in the book. Perhaps none of this is unique in and of itself; after all there are bookstore owners and scouts, and collectors and hobbyists, and dealers and printers, and artists and sculptors who use books in any manner of appearance and reason. But often these individuals are keenly interested in on aspect of books above others. Whereas, I am interested in all of it.

The dimensions of a book printed by a long forgotten company of a novel by an author who only had two books out, and none are in print any longer, and the cover was letter pressed and the cover artist is now famous for his magazine work – or as in the case of ( Frank Cugat who did original cover of Great Gatsby) did only that one cover.

And paper, of course one needs to know about paper. Thickness, how the pages have yellowed or browned or been splotched with coffee or used to calculate a math problem, or anything – no, everything. Everything one can imagine has been done with them; the book, the binding, the cover, the pages, the spine, the gutters, the margins; the works.

Bookstores seen as communist fronts, as bedlams of corruption, or promoters of revolutions. Writers as wizards of language or demons using ink. Leading throughout human history to the eventual and periodic burning of books, or humans, or both since ideas are powerful and books tend to contain mass quantities of ideas.

“The Mason Room was peaceful, as it always is at midnight. In a few
minutes I heard the books’ voices: a low, steady, unsuppressible hum.
I’d heard it many time before. I’ve always had a finely tuned ear for
a library’s accumulations of echo and desire. Libraries are anything
but hushed”.
The Archivist
Martha Cooley
©1997

a little booklet from the propaganda wars

2008-12-15T03:10:00.000-08:00

I was out last weekend and "trowling" about for books, going to my various spots in search of the unusual, the rare - why else do people like me go booking? I found some older books and found this piece of pristine propaganda, a 1978 booklet filled with excerpts from L I Brezhnev, the supreme leader of the Soviet Union. I paid 50 cents for it.

It was published by Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow, USSR. One of the "mouthpieces" of Soviet propaganda as our own Radio Free Europe was/is. The excerpts are on the subjects of the nuclear arms race and the possibility of disarmament. This was 1978, as talks were continuing on the Nuclear Disarmament Treaty that would be signed a few years later. The cover art suggests an homage to El Lissitzky. However by 1978 I don't believe that the Soviet Union was embracing the art of Russian Constructivism. Everything had to be "social realism", how boring was that? 1978.....punk music had erupted by then. No trace of that in this booklet. Carter was in the White House. Weird times (aren't they all?)

54 pages. Text in English, publication information in Russian.

Books of obsolete knowledge

2008-11-25T06:01:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been finding a number of books about the Arab world, Middle East, Islamic culture, etc. in used bookstores. I have been gathering them as I feel that there is interest in the subjects and that Americans need to do a bit of research in order to form a better world-view. The book that I found most ironic was the one published in 2000 with the title "Iraq: Old Land, New Nation in Conflict" by William Spencer, published by Twenty-First Century Books (a division of the Millbrook Press, Brookfield, CONN.)

Looking through this book is like reading a book on typewriters published in the late 1990's, as that technology was being phased out. There are no American companies making typewriters. I believe that the last company on the planet to make a typewriter was an Italian firm and they stopped making them near the millennium step-over. Looking through this book had that feel for me of holding obsolete knowledge. The country described in this book is not the country that exists today, and yet the history of the nation of Iraq is a valuable read to anyone interested in how it was that a Saddam Hussein could rise to power in the first place.

In that sense, this is a completely worthwhile book. I am reminded of a book I found several years ago on the subject of the Spanish American world, written in 1899, full of American propaganda and feel-good fluffed egos. I remember as I found that book and held it in my hands that Gore Vidal has said that we had lost our way as soon as we became an Empire, and that we Americans don't like to think of ourselves as having an Empire and that this Empire of ours began with the Spanish American war and the taking of Cuba, Philippines, and the rest. THAT book represented the end of our innocence and the beginning of our self-denial.

Reading Spencer's book also has that feel of "divine intervention" and the blessing of what is about to follow. America was right and justified....blah blah blah. Poor Iraq, if only they could be like us. That sort of nonsense. The fact that the British carved Persia into two unequal pieces after the first World War, the fact that the CIA overthrew neighboring Iran's government in a 1953 coup, the fact that Europe has been meddling in the affairs of these "tribal peoples" for HUNDREDS of years seems to be glossed over, airbrushed out, forgotten - buried under the last sandstorm....except to the people who live in Iraq and Iran and across the Middle East. To them we are the great hypocrite. Promoting democracy in name only while securing our control over their natural resources (OIL)

In THAT sense this book is almost an embarrassment. Almost. Of course, the Bush-Cheney years has brought a naked ignorance/arrogance to the Middle East that will take years to undo. I am sort of interested to read a book written in late 2008 about the West's dealings with Iraq and Iran sometime in, say, 2015 or so when that book will either be accurate or woefully wrong.

booking for its own sake

2008-11-19T07:14:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I got a reprieve from my wife and was allowed out into the world without my kids for a few hours. I went "booking". I unloaded some books, exchanged a few others, and picked up some more using store credit from one of the used bookstores that I frequent.

Among my "finds" was a 7 page poetry pamphlet published in 1985 by Orchises Press (Washington DC) of two poems by W H Auden, "The Platonic Blow and My Epitaph".

I find that second-hand shops are in some ways better than used bookstores to find unusual material since the folks at second hand shops are less knowledgeable than bookstore owners, typically, and their incentives are different.

I am reminded of the book Booking Pleasure by Jack Matthews and the explanations he had for some of the items he found and some of the reasons he collected what he had. It's a book that I will be re-investing in sometime soon. But for now, I am trying to ween myself a bit of my own stacks of books. And weeding through my own layers of printed material.

I have read many of the books by Tony Hillerman but since his death I have decided to try and finish reading the series featuring Joe Leaphorn. I have been collecting books by Zora Neale Hurston as well, with the intention of reading. Reading and collecting can go hand and hand, but not necessarily. Some people collect book as a form of investment. Reading the books are, often, an afterthought.

Kerouac as an innovator?

2008-11-06T13:21:00.000-08:00

Okay, I need to confess....I had a copy of this book when it first came out and it was when I was a lot younger and the idea of having tape recorded transcripts as part of a book was not something that I was "having" at the time. I was maybe 19 when the book came out and I had read a bit about Kerouac enough to know that this was a book that had not yet been published but was an underground hit. But I thought it was boring as hell so I gave it to someone along the trail of my life. It's been an interesting and long path now, and I happened across another copy of this book.

I have since read the "cut-up" novels by William Burroughs and the tape recorded "novels" transcribed by Paul Bowles. The main reason I am bringing this up is that Visions of Cody was written in 1951-52 and a bit over 15 years later Andy Warhol became known as a "novelist" for his A which was a book that was entirely composed of recorded conversations.

1952 was before Brion Gysin's "accidental" discovery of cut-ups by about 5 years as well. Nowadays, no one would think twice of using technology to create fiction. I am aware of a professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose "alter ego" is a computer-generated 'poet' and this person's poetry is being published in journals - unaware of the hoax, if that's what it is - yet for me at THAT time, I didn't think much of his experimentations. Hopefully I have grown since then.

an update from Jordanian poet, Islam Samhan

2008-11-03T06:24:00.001-08:00

from an email translated and sent to me late last week....some information removed to protect the poet and his friends.

"Dear Steven

first thank you very much for your concern. My trail will be on the coming Thursday. The judge will hear from those who accused me and some members from the Jordanian writers association who will present a creative reading on my poetry book.

Still I am receiving threats from islamists and the Friday prayers in some places in Amman described me as infidel what annoy me the mosque close to my house in xxxxxxxx convicted me and urged people to stand against infidels people like me.

Also, people who are close to the government advocate people to attack me.

I think running away is the safest solution.

With best wishes

Islam samhan
Amman Jordan"

where the books are

2008-10-28T06:24:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about Willie Sutton and his famous response to the question of why he robbed banks, "because that's where the money is" as I have been reading the extremely well researched and incredibly well written (albeit terribly depressing) A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq. The cautionary tale of a 27 year old Jordanian poet facing prison for something he wrote is important to work around in your head as you consider how many generations have, in fact, done a whole lot worse things than imprison authors and purge their books. In addition to book burnings, people themselves were put to the flame. It's one thing to want to kill an idea - it's quite another to rub out a people. An identity. A history.

There are no books that have survived the destruction of Carthage, nor Troy. The winners routinely destroy the written documents of the losers. The Nazis attempted to do it while in the midst of a war as did the Serbs, as did the Vandals.....the history of our human race is one of periodic self inflicted darkness as we snuff out the light of knowledge for the comfort of ignorance. But, really, is ignorance really comfortable? No, yet we humans have done it all the same. There are in this great country of ours, the United States of America, people who fervently believe that dinosaurs roamed the earth as recently as 4,000 years ago. How is that possible? Self-blinding to avoid self-doubt. And that is the great fear of a person like myself, that ignorant people will attempt to thrust us into a new dark age for their own delusional reasons. The followers of bin Laden and the followers of Sarah Palin. Extremism in the defense of one's fantasy is still WRONG.

It doesn't surprise me that there are occasion book burnings in the United States. How many books are challenged each year by citizens who want to control what others read in local libraries or at local schools? In a country that publishes thousands of books every year, how can we delude ourselves that we can - or even should control what our neighbor reads? If one wants to control what THEY read, that's find. There are ostriches among us, and that's fine. But when these ostriches try to prevent ME from reading something, they have crossed a line....and I will push back.

There are certain world-views that are unacceptable to me. One is being flaunted right now by the Vice Presidential candidate from the state of Alaska; a rather simplistic view. A wrongheaded view. A dangerously wrongheaded view in many respects since she could be an elbow away from nuclear codes and doomsday scenarios. Thinking people need to speak out against this simple minded 'black-and-white' view for the love of our country and for the well-being of our planet.

Books often contain something called "concepts" and concepts matter. Thought matters. That's how we became the race we have become. There are jihadists in this country as well, people determined to "fulfill God's plan" even if that means destroying the entire planet by their own hand to achieve this 'cause'. And time and again humans have shown themselves to be of weak minds often enough to burn down vast stores of books and knowledge. It needs to be remembered that Christians killed Hypatia, the last librarian of the priceless Alexandria library, and it was Christians who torched the library itself. Within a hundred years of the invention of the Gutenberg printing press, it was Christians who burned other Christians at the stake in Europe as well as copies of offensive books. It wasn't THAT long ago, despite how "enlightened" we imagine ourselves today.

Which meanders back to the the whole "where the books are" statement at the beginning of the this posting......libraries are targeted by combatants during wartime. Bookstores are also targets of violence. Booksellers are killed for what appears in their shops. In these curious times, we need to protect the right to read everything. To light one's mind against the forces of darkness and repression.

updates on the case of Islam Samhan

2008-10-24T10:14:00.000-07:00

I have been informed that he has been released - until his trial next Thursday in Amman. If convicted, he could spend two years in prison..... for writing verses "against the Koran". I am hoping to get a copy of this collection of poems myself and will let you know what I learn of his "offense".

This is not to say that America has a clean record when it comes to censorship and the press, because we suffer ourselves from swings to the extreme right and left. The extreme right most offended by comments like those of William Burroughs when he wrote that "everything is permitted". The extreme right does not believe that, nor do they want to allow others to practice that. Censorship is as old as the first told tales and is unfortunately still very much with us. In the West and in the "developing world."

The Press is never free. It is never without obstacles or roadblocks. Death threats and government suppression. This has been part of what authors and printers, and publishers have dealt with since Gutenberg's first press. It is necessary, therefore, that publishers rally around the cause of others and that authors likewise speak up for those targeted for violence and confinement. Or death. It is not unheard of - in ANY country - that writers are marked for death. Salmon Rushdie is not even the most recent case of this. Fortunately, he lives. But others have not fared as well. Men are killed for what comes off their pens. Men kill to cease the words from flowing. Fear drives this, and fear prevails far too often to count.

We must continue to speak and continue to allow thoughts to be revealed, if we agree with the speaker or not. In fact, moreso if we disagree. As a race we will not move forward toward an enlightened state as long as we destroy men and books we oppose. The freedom of expression needs to be dear to all of us. Everywhere. All the time.

more on the arrest of a Jordanian poet

2008-10-22T05:55:00.000-07:00

Activists protest indictment of poet

By Mohammad Ghazal

AMMAN - The Jordanian Writers Association (JWA) strongly criticised on Tuesday the indictment of poet Islam Samhan for allegedly insulting Islam after incorporating verses from the Holy Koran into his love poetry.

The writer was referred to the court by the Press and Publications Department (PPD) early this week for violating articles in the Press and Publications Law after he published his first poem collection “Grace Like a Shadow”.

“The prosecutor general of a magistrate’s court in Amman charged Islam Samhan with insulting Islam and the Koran as well as violating the Press and Publications Law,” Zeina Karadsheh, his lawyer, told Agence France- Presse.

But 27-year-old Samhan, who was arrested and detained on Sunday, denied the charges, saying that he did not mean to insult Islam or the holy book, according to the lawyer.

If convicted, Samhan faces up to three years in prison and a maximum fine of JD20,000, according to the news agency.

JWA President Soud Qbeilat voiced disappointment over the indictment of the young poet, who also works as a journalist at Al Arab Al Yawm newspaper.

“This is a strange decision and is a serious development. Such a measure is likely to suppress freedom and creativity,” the head of the some 650-member association told The Jordan Times in a telephone interview yesterday.

He noted that the language poets use is “metaphoric and has its unique characteristics. It is not like the ordinary Arabic that is used by ordinary people”.

“When there is no freedom, there is no creativity,” he said.

Qbeilat also protested a fatwa issued by the Kingdom’s mufti, the top religious authority, labelling Samhan as an infidel and describing the incorporation of Koranic verses in his poem collection as an act of blasphemy.

“They cannot charge Samhan on the basis on an opinion of a religious authority that is not specialised in poetry and literature. They should have consulted experts from the same domain. It is the first time that a religious authority interferes in interpreting the meanings of poetry. This will tarnish the image of Jordan,” Qbeilat added.

The JWA president said: “Our solidarity with Samhan is not that we agree or disagree with him. It is all about the freedom of expression.”

The Centre for Defending Freedom of Journalists also issued a statement Tuesday calling for the immediate release of Samhan.

Nabil Momani, director general of the PPD, said there was more than one reason behind the referral of Samhan to the prosecutor’s office.

The book was printed by an unlicensed press and thus the writer violated Article 35 of the Press and Publications Law, which stipulates that the writer or publisher of any book that is printed or published in the Kingdom should submit an advanced copy to the PPD, Momani said.

He added the case was referred to the legal authorities following a thorough examination by experts and specialists, who agreed there was a violation to Article 38 of the said law.

Article 38 stipulates that it is prohibited to publish any material that entails libel, slander or insult to any religion, in line with the Constitution.

The PPD chief said that the judiciary has the exclusive authority of imposing a ban or confiscating books under the 2006 Press and Publications Law, adding: “Our job is not to suppress freedoms, but when there is an infringement to the law, it is our duty to refer the case to the judiciary. We support Jordanian writers.”

“The issue is in the hands of the judiciary and we accept whatever ruling the court issues,” said Momani.

from the Jordan Times
Oct. 22, 2008

censorship rears its head

2008-10-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - The Jordanian prosecution says police
have arrested a local writer for incorporating verses from
the Quran, the Muslim holy book, into his love poetry.

A judicial official says that poet Islam Samhan published
his collection of poems, "Grace like a Shadow," which
allegedly insults the holy book, without the approval of
the Jordanian government.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he
was not authorized to speak to the media.

Samhan was charged Tuesday with harming the Islamic faith
and violating the press and publication law for combining
the sacred words of the Quran with sexual themes.

If convicted the poet could face up to three years in
jail.

so, where can I get a copy of this book? I more than a little curious to know how a poet can go to jail for writing something about Islam. Islam does not seem to be open to interpretation or alternative views, or criticism. Death to anyone who questions Allah? Um, okay that's very 11th century. But we are living in the 21st century now. If this religion is 'the true one' can it not be examined or explored? If not, why not?

and how can I get a copy of this book? Who published it? Have any copies made it out of Jordan? I am more than a little curious to know.

every cover tells a story

2008-10-17T05:09:00.000-07:00

I have never seen this cover for Burroughs' Junky before. It is from a copy that was available in Japan. It's the best cover for this book that I have ever seen. So, why are some cover images acceptable in the Far East (for example) but not in the good old US of A? Self-censorship, of course. Our old Puritan background averting our eyes and shuttering the thought. But does it, really? Does self-censorship work? Has the burning of the library in Alexandria by Christians retarded our evolutionary development? (It has, actually done that) But it hasn't ended our native curiosity.

Nor will it. Our race was thrown out of Eden for being curious. For questioning authority. For thinking for ourselves.

Every cover tells a story. Of course some publishers abuse the privilege of putting tits and ass on covers that have little to nothing to do with the content inside. That's a given, regrettably. Still, I would prefer to have this copy of Junky than the candy-ass safe covers that sold in the US and Britain. Unless maybe this is the British version.

Such prudes we are, sheesh.

reviving Dawn Powell

2008-10-14T06:16:00.000-07:00

Sometime back I was reading one of Michael Dirda's wonderful books on books and reading and found a passage about a neglected "genius" (his words, not mine) named Dawn Powell. Never heard of her work. But as it happened, I read about her a few years after the publishing company, Steerforth Press, released many of her novels. I got a number of her books through Amazon and ebay. I also found a wikipedia entry on her.

Time past, I went to a second-hand store I frequent in Alexandria, VA where I found some forgotten on the top of a tall bookcase. One was Dawn Powell's Turn, Magic Wheel published in 1936. It had a bookstore label inside from a bookstore in Paris, France. I wondered if that store withstood WWII. I wondered about things, grand or small often. My wife calls them "pot thoughts".

Anyway, her work is today considered to be as witty as Dorothy Parker's. It might interest you to track down some of her books and read them for yourself.

bibliomystery

2008-10-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I was out "booking" for a few hours without my little "helpers" (Julia & William) and I went into a used bookstore that I frequent and there on an end-cap were a number of books in this particular 'genre'. The genre is relatively recently named : bibiliomystery.

I was waiting for this, actually. I was waiting for someone to come up with this named genre. Whether it sticks or not is something else, of course.

As I reflect upon the origins of this "genre", It seems to my non-scientific mind that it started with The Name of the Rose. Certainly that book boosted the genre as shortly thereafter came The Club Dumas, The Dante Club, The Shadow of the Wind, People of the Book and the entire Cliff Janeway series by John Dunning.

Unfortunately, as with any other genre, there are the occasional charlatans, Larry Beinhart's The Librarian for example. The book misuses the title to suggest that there would be something in it about being an actual librarian....perhaps supposing actual research methods and discovery. Instead, it's a Clark Kent becoming Superman within a political thriller set-up novel. It's terrible. Misnamed garbage. Ugh.

Francis Cugat

2008-10-03T06:07:00.000-07:00

do you know the name Francis Cugat? Probably not, yet you know at least one piece of art that he created. The same way you know the Nike swoosh - but not the graphic art student who came up with the symbol for a grand total of $25.00!

Cugart's name could be a Trivial Pursuit question. His name is known to illustrators and people who do covers for books, but not the general public and quite likely not anyone who has read The Great Gatsby.

a few words about 'hobo arona'

2008-09-30T05:51:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, Plan B Press was invited to participate in the 215 festival that takes place in the autumn of each year in Philadelphia. We presented some poets who read their work, and in subsequent years we were invited to participate in the festival's book fair. While considering their invitation this year, I looked at the event link from last year (the book fair is called "Lovingly Bound" and has more than small publishers there) whereupon I saw one small concern there called hobo arona who take old discarded books and remakes them as notebooks, address books, or photo albums.

A couple of years ago my wife and I put together a book exactly like what hobo arona does as a journal for ourselves using as our cover an old math textbook. I was pleasantly surprised to see someone doing the same thing as a business. I applauded their effort and checked out their website, and then bought a couple of books. They arrived yesterday.

Awesome! The craftsmanship involved is exceptional. The books are hand-(re)made and each one is unique. Each also comes with a note on the history of the book and a little blurb about the construction process in the back. Definitely the sort of gift to give someone who has "everything".

Book arts / book artists

2008-09-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

over the past few years I have been exposed to, and become fans of "book artists". Tom Phillips really set the tone for this type of work with his groundbreaking book A Humument. His book came twenty some years after concrete poets began to reconfigure the page and the words on the page, and to reconsider the "canvas" that a book is in its physical nature. Phillips was responding to the experiments of William Burroughs and his "cut-up" techniques, taking them into a completely different visual direction.

I have never held in my hands a sculpted book by Stella Waitzkin, but I admire what she did - using the book as an object. In my own work I have created what I call a 'Liquid Library' which consists of books that have been altered or spray-painted, or sunk to the bottom of a fish tank. I have been working on the notion of "book as object: text as other". The concept that what we accept as "a book" need not be the only definition of that constitutes "a book".

Back in 2001, when the artist Katy Jean was discussing what I might do with the physical dimensions of my as of yet unpublished chapbook Spontaneous Chili one of the ideas was to put the table of contents in the center of the book in the form of a menu. The theme of a menu, rather, the presentation of the book as a form of a menu still hasn't been fully realized but it was an idea that lead in part to the cover image, and to the lay-out of the book in meal category listings, etc.

In 2003, Katy Jean came up with the idea of using vellum for the cover to our 'the Eternal NOW!' poetry series anthology and incorporating the image into the cover and end-pages so that the complete cover was two layers deep and could be changed by flipping open the cover.

But here I stop short to say that these steps were quite small compared to the work of Alisa Goldman and countless others who are doing much more in the way of appearance and presentation of a book. The Canadian artist Michael Snow has also done something remarkable, in my humble opinion, with his book Cover to Cover.

Books that need to be turned into films

2008-09-23T06:16:00.000-07:00

Tim Sandlin's first novel, Sex & Sunsets ought be made into a movie. It's better than the three books of his that have been turned into films. Yes, it's quirky but come on, in the Post-Twin Peaks world we live in, quirky is GOOD.

Hey filmmakers, get on the stick! Turn this book into a film already. Katie Holmes as Colette. Come on people, use your imagination! This book is dying to become a film!

books are like cigarettes in a prison

2008-09-21T05:23:00.000-07:00

Went "booking" yesterday and came back with a small load of stuff. Some interesting finds, like the 1930 The Collected Tales of Pierre Louys, illustrated by John Austen - a brilliantly done book published by Argus Books of Chicago. As well as The Tattooed Map by Barbara Hodgson (greatly influenced by the books of Nick Bantock) which was published by Chronicle Books in 1995. A fantastically visual book.

But the title of this entry has to do with the glut that is also out there. The glut of books. In the universe of publishing and booksellers, there is a principle of scarcity that is in play when a book is published. One wants to sell as many copies of a book as they can, of course, as that is part of the deal with printing to begin with. However, after a certain point in time, the book becomes something other : something else. It becomes a commodity. They become cigarettes in a prison, an item of exchange. The words means less that the "thing" of it. Books are traded, swapped out at coffeehouses or the like. Used bookstores exchange store credit for brought in books, and occasionally actual cash is exchanged in the transaction.

Book scouts make their living finding books that sellers want to have on their shelves for customers who request or demand them. The rarer the book, the greater the value. The more prized the find. However, quite often, there are some within this chain who are literally counting books as items in a bulk lot rather carefully examining individual books. To these persons, a book is nothing more than a "unit", they look at books the way bean-counters at the multinational corporations that primarily OWN the publishing industry at the present time do.

And there we come back to the glut. The publishers who, for whatever reason, overreached and printed THOUSANDS more copies than would ever sell. (like the Conrad Hilton book above) For example there are 543 copies of Be My Guest on Amazon alone. Multiple that number by the number of places in America where books might be found; used bookstores, libraries, thrift shops, the street.....and you quickly can appreciate the problem. The greater the number of books, the less valuable it is, the less its worth, the cheaper it is to get ahold of.

As a book seeker, I like books selling for $ .50 but as a publisher I want the books that I publish to retain their worth. It's a dilemma not easily resolved. Especially when say, an Oprah blesses a book that turns out to be a fraud, for example.

the political attack book

2008-09-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

I was rummaging through the boxes of books in a local thrift store and found a 1964 book entitled A Texan Looks at Lyndon: A Study in Illegitimate Power by J. Evertts Haley published by a press I never heard of before, The Palo Duro Press of Canyon, Texas. Well, this instantly smacked of presidential political attacks - it was published in an election year, coincidence? No chance!

and I am wondering what the earliest example of this sort of 'expose' during a campaign is. John Adams? Does anyone have a clue?

Nicholas Basbanes

2008-09-17T05:32:00.000-07:00

I was already a full-blown book junky when I was slowly going through the stacks at George Mason University library where I was doing "work/study" and I pulled off the shelf a copy of Among the Gently Mad by Nicholas Basbanes. Well, I went on to devour all his books. Some were a bit tedious but for the most part, these books were instantly digestible.

I got a lot out of the books, and realized that I was more than a mild collector of books. It was something of an obsession. Not that I would give my lunch money for an old book, nor throw out my kids toys to make room for more shelving but I definitely had a hankering for books. And I was learning as I went.

My trips to used bookstores goes back at least 20 years, to my time at Temple University. Even before, but it became more serious then. I would check out the books in the discount bin of "the-corporate-bookstore-in-the-mall". I remember seeing the film "Henry & June" and leaving the theater and marching right over the such a bookstore in the mall and grabbing a copy of the book, which was discounted 75%.

I began with a small shelf in my bedroom at my parent's house and then, once on my own, the cinder block and 2 x 4 shelving units. Only when moving to Philadelphia in 2002 with Katy Jean did I begin to become more serious about my mass of books. Of course, we moved into an apartment with bookshelves built into what had been closets throughout the place.

the conflict is as old as the hills

2008-09-16T04:56:00.000-07:00

I touched on this briefly in my first entry, and it will come up over and again through the course of this blog, the "conflict" between the written word and the use of image. It has been suggested that one reason why the ancient document which we call 'The Bible' begins as it does is that the period of Egyptian captivity led the Israelis more stridently to "the word" as opposed to the images that are the visual-base language we call hieroglyphics. It was a reaction against image as much as anything.

I won't wade too far into the academic merits of the arguments either way, other than to say that all letters in all alphabets have symbolic representational equivalence far older than the "letter" themselves. Far older and much more laden with meaning. We have forgotten a great deal in our current disposal society about the weight of the word, the importance of the Gutenberg press of moveable type. The importance of have metal type. Something solid.

"Reading" an image telling of a story is quite different from reading the words of a story. This requires a different set of skills, of abilities, and finds expression in our society in the phrase "auditory learner" and "visual learner".

beginning as one must

2008-09-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

........................as opposed to the other several blogs that I begun and fluttered away from, this one will be constantly updated as it is my one true obsession, BOOKS.

Through Plan B Press, I publish them.
Through Maybooks, I bring them in and sell them online. It also feeds my collection which in some ways differs from my library.

Unlike the Hebrew, I feel that image is more powerful than "the word". Children's books tend to have too many words in them. Tell your story without pesky words. Keep the word count at a minimum, as though you are writing haiku. There aren't enough picture books for adults. Nor pop-up books.

Books should never be found in landfills. Pulp them, if you must, but keep them out of landfills.

True to my current form, here is a picture of my daughter, Julia, mimicking dear old Dad's obsession. She reading a Curious George book. Never got into that series.

Not to be outdone, my youngest son, William, shows his prowess with the Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? book. Eric Carle's books are a big hit around our house.