altering books

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

it isn't just the "finding"

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....

the backstory

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

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

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

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)