Bibliophagist

From an article entitled “Defining Americana” by the late Thomas R. Adams of the John Carter Brown Library in The Book Collector (Winter 2008), page 562, comes this classic illustration of how bibliophily does not always lend itself to neat academic categories:

My father [Randolph G. Adams] introduced me to the ambiguities of the term Americana when I was quite young. Soon after he went to the William L. Clements Library in 1923, Junius Beal, a Regent of the University of Michigan, member of the Committee of Management and a close personal friend of Clements, wanted to give the library a 1480 edition of Cicero’s Tusculanae Disputationes. My father demurred, saying it really wasn’t Americana. Beal replied, ‘Young man, make it Americana. That is what you are paid for.’ A passage on Atlantis solved the problem.

Conversely, Junius Beal may very well have missed his calling as an antiquarian bookseller.

The New York Times’ Education Life had an article on using rare books to teach undergraduates. The article hints at the those perennially paired  educational components of rare material — the first being of course the allure of the gee whiz (or what the more academically inclined might term a spark to the sympathetic imagination), the second being the amount of cultural information packed into the physical instantiation of the particular book. Both these strands obviously have relevance to the vendor of rare books, and of course the earlier we get ourselves lodged into the hearts and minds of undergradutates (where by “ourselves” I mean the sundry representatives of the rare book industrial complex), the better.

It is perhaps instructive to relate here that despite my checkered academic record I did manage to produce for my 18th century English literature survey class one creditable paper, a paper in which I explored the nature and rhetorical strategies of satire by comparing Swift’s send-up of astrology in the Bickerstaff papers with the texts and physical properties of contemporary London almanacs. In enthusiastic support of my task (undergraduates being relatively uncommon in the Rare Book Room) the folks in special collections helped me photocopy at least one Partridge almanac for the cause. (I cannot be more exact, as my memory of the particulars at this late date is suffused with something of a nostalgic haze — though I should note that when I say “helped me photocopy,” I was in fact employed by the Rare Book department as a student employee and that my highly-trained photocopy forays were duly accounted for in all appropriate departmental paperwork.)

In any event, with the kind assistance rendered by both the special collections staff and the hapless Mr. Partridge, the paper managed to capitalize on my pernicious habit of pursuing reading material peripheral to any given course in which I was enrolled, capitalize on it to the extent that this became one of the rare examples of a paper completed in the space of time allotted by the professor.  And it is of course worth noting that once I had limped to the end of my undergraduate career that I did not go on to pursue graduate studies in 18th century English literature but rather took the more academically slipshod route of buying and selling these basic ingredients to research.

And thus shines the beam of a little early exposure to rare books in a naughty world!

Somewhat souped-up print on demand has come to the University of Michigan library system. This has of course been in the works for a while, and I am not remotely qualified for (nor inclined toward) prognostication, so I will withhold predictions on the death of the book. Though it would be cool to hear from scholars who can provide me with instances where the original book or pamphlet is clearly preferable to the digital version.

(Of course, once Google offers an on-line/on-demand virtual Hinman collator I will begin to throw up my hands in dismay for real.)

Otherwise, we here at bibliophagist industries have marked the return of another school year with the publication of our twentieth catalogue, catchily entitled “Catalogue 20: American Pamphlets.” 372 items in wrappers, ranging across our usual array of hobby-horses. If you are not on the mailing list and would like one of the remaining copies, feel free to drop me a line. Supplies are limited — act now!

It appears that in some ways a bookseller’s packing room can take on the aspect of a library’s work of art.

I’m a little embarrassed that I’ve turned to my mother for hot news tips in the world of rare books, but I would like to point out that my folks are well-suited to be stringers for this particular story since they live in downstate Illinois and also since my mother the newshound reads everything in her local paper (including the legal notices, as the periodic doses of mild schadenfreude produced by the bankruptcy notices have a tonic effect). Anyway, my mom hepped me to the news that the rare book collection at the University of Illinois has been undone by a failing HVAC system. And it is a well-known and oft lamented fact that in times of high humidity a young spore’s thoughts naturally turn to romance.

My mom also pointed out a somewhat happier story regarding libraries and funding: a man who some years ago had been assisted with some genealogical research by a downstate public library has returned the favor by leaving the library $1.9 million.

An unnamed source in the rare book-industrial complex has brought three additional library blogs to my attention, each one worth adding to the blogroll. (I maintain my correspondent’s anonymity if only to assure my readers that The Bibliophagist shall guard the privacy of all who direct their correspondence, emails and billets doux to my care unless given explicit permission to blow your cover.)

The Beinecke Library maintains an on-line cabinet of curiosities, amply illustrated. Photographic collage from H.D., puzzle blocks, playing cards, and at least one reminder of the fitful diffusion of cultural capital across the porous borders of France and Belgium. (Georges Remi first launched the better-known boy journalist Tintin in a Belgian newspaper in 1929. Was this French counterpart intended to exploit contemporary popularity?)

Another literary figure who has elicited nearly as much respect as Tintin over the years is the illustrious Samuel Johnson. One cataloguer is going through the Hyde Collection of Johnson and Johnsoniana at the Houghton Library “one book at a time” and shares the results with the world.

(I note as an aside that Mary Hyde’s second husband, David, Viscount Eccles, was the source of the remark on the Brick Row Book Shop in San Francisco that has since served as something of a foundation document of this bookselling concern: “You see so many books here that everyone has forgotten.”)

Rounding out this trio is the Rare Book Blog at Princeton, a look at some fairly remarkable recent acquisitions and other library news. The blog includes a “vivid example of how the frugal decision of a bookbinder provides multiple evidence about the survival of texts” (with a fine image).

One great thing about the perhaps inherently easy-going rhetorical stance of online publications is that these blogs allow the less formal “cabinet of curiosity” format to return to the fore when writing about books and collections. It’s an old saw of collecting that the relationship between the reader (or collector) and the book as an object (rather than or perhaps in addition to the book as a text) is often what creates that gee-whiz frisson of possession or at least proximity. This is part of what creates value for books, value being a vexed question that unspools back at least as far as that noted darling of the bookseller set, Walter Benjamin.

(Bookseller and author Larry McMurtry in fact writes about book scouting in Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen [1999], where he admits that the pursuit does not lend itself to compelling literary treatment. And while there is sometimes a correlation between my emotional response to finding a particularly interesting rare book and the financial advantages of selling same, the satisfactions of unearthing, say, a presentation copy of The Deserted Bride in a jumbled book shop in Cambridge, Mass., are not necessarily the stuff of paperback thrillers, pace Arturo Perez-Reverte.)

The happily periphrastic entry on Harry Houdini (and the pizzas of Minnesota) is but one recent example of a blog being used to get an institution’s name and mission in front of the public, presumably for less than the cost of an exhibition or even a printed Friends of the Library newsletter. And given all the grumbling in the book trade about the graying of the customer base, perhaps the on-line venue is a relatively easy means of lowering the psychic barriers to entry in building a relationship between the a new generation of would-be collectors and the institutions that nurture the study of rare material. If nothing else, the blog form seems to invite a commentator to point up the relevance of historical material to current cultural preoccupations, a laudable goal.