extremes in book selling

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

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

s - a - m

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

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

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

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

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

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.