“Dad, you know why I like books about knights and princesses and fantasy things? Because they make me feel like I want to go to those places even though I know they’re not real. I like that feeling. Do you know what I mean?”
I do, sweetie. I know exactly what you mean.
New book (apparently only out in the UK) on Samuel Beckett’s early years as a college lecturer based on student’s donated notebook:
Beckett believed himself to be a poor lecturer; he felt, as he put it, that he could not teach others what he did not know himself. But his students saw things differently. Rachel Burrows, who considered that she had benefited a great deal from his lectures, wished to correct Beckett’s disparaging self-image, so she donated her little notebook to her former university. It may have taken 30 years for it to emerge from the Trinity Library archives, but at last we can see the genesis of what would turn out to be one of the most extraordinary literary expressions of the 20th century.
No stateside release date that I could find.
Okay, seriously. I mentioned last week that I was being offered a lot more books than normal and I wondered if perhaps this was an indication of the weakening economy. But it’s now official. I’ve bought / been offered more books over the last two weeks than I have over the preceeding two months. And this week isn’t even over. Someone’s coming on with a couple boxes this afternoon. And tomorrow I make a house call out in the valley. People are looking to liquidate, I think.
On a related note, Jason Kottke points to several other economic indicators including sushi, lipstick, and Jay-Z. Strangely, bookseller was unmentioned.
“Do you have any old books with clasps on them?”
“You mean that would be attached to the covers and used to close the book?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Does it matter what the book is?”
“No, I collect books with interesting clasps.”
“Actually, I do. I have this lovely 19th Century Bavarian prayer book.”
“Oh, that is nice. I’ve never seen one quite like this. This should be fine.”
“Great, should I write that up, or would you like to look around a bit more?”
“Oh wait.”
“What?”
“This is a Catholic prayer book.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. Thank you though.”
!?!?
I wasn’t so much offended as I was confused. Question: Can a clasp be “Catholic”?
This prescient question comes courtesy of a Chicago Tribune piece, The future of books resides in their past:
What is amazing and inspiring about books is just that: their very physicality, the sheer thinginess of them, the fact that you can hold a book in your hands, thump a couple of knuckles on the cover, riffle the pages. You can use books as doorstops or paperweights or place mats. […] Yet in an age in which computers are as common as cockroaches, in which the Internet is king, in which seemingly every crumb of information is being sucked up and digitized in a busy blur, does the book — the tangible kind, not the virtual version — have a future?
Sadly, the article doesn’t do a very good job of answering this question. But in his recent post In Defense of Amazon: Their New POD Strategy as Opportunity, Michael @ Book Patrol explains how the book can continue to be vital in a digital age. Here, he’s addressing the challenges posed to booksellers and publishers by Amazon’s print-on-demand technologies, but the logic applies equally to the entire bookselling landscape (e-books, Google Books, etc.):
Publishers and authors can still produce books that will differ from the Amazon edition and be desired in the marketplace. The Amazon POD editions will be the mass market paperbacks of the new publishing era. There will remain a healthy market for other editions. The publishers can capitalize on this by offering their own editions that might include extra material much like the movie studios do with their DVD releases. An extra short story, an extra poem, interviews with the author, signed copies, manuscript pages etc.; the possibilities are endless. Not everyone wants their book the next day nor do they want a cheaply produced version. Quality still counts and many will still pay for it.
This is not a wake up call as some of said this is more of a last call. The rules of bookselling and publishing have changed drastically and the publishers that can respond in new innovative ways will be the ones that prosper.
The Telegraph UK on home libraries:
[A]ccording to a new report - The Changing Face of British Homes, compiled by insurers Legal & General - more people would like a library or reading room in their home than either a home cinema, gym or music studio. In the survey of 4,000 people, 15 per cent said they would like a library compared to 13 per cent wanting a gym, 9 per cent a music studio and just 8 per cent a home cinema.
Not mentioned? 40% just want a bigger bathroom.
Last month, colleague Ken Lopez and I handled a rare and important archive of original collages and photographs by/from Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs. Jed Birmingham, who writes the Bibliographic Bunker column for the WSB site RealityStudio, asked if I would answer some questions about the collection and other related topics. The interview has been posted today and can be read here.
[BTW - Jed is writing some of the best essays book collecting anywhere. Though ostensibly about Burroughs, his analysis of market forces, collector considerations and the art and science of book collecting could easily be applied to any collection. They are also a great resource for Beat history - including insightful backgrounds on the little magazines that surrounded the movement. If you collect books or are simply interested in the Beats, it’s all well-worth your time.]
is an image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. It bridges the gap between a diverse user community and the limited resources of libraries by means of sample imaging and extensive rather than intensive cataloguing.
Just the highlights could keep one occupied for days.
Scene from market life with butchers.
SCENE: The shop. A woman has brought in three nineteenth-century books. Two are poor-condition reprints of classic works. One is a handsome reprint of a decidedly minor poet. Some nice plates, but otherwise unremarkable.
ME: I’m afraid these just aren’t in good enough condition. This one is nice, though. I can pay $15.00 for it.
“Really!??! The guy in Pacific Grove offered me fifty dollars.”
[NOTE: P.G. is one town over from my shop. There are no bookshops there.]
ME: Sorry, I can’t pay fifty bucks for all three books, let alone one. Thanks for bringing them in.
“No, he offered me fifty dollars EACH.”
ME: Each!?
“Each.”
ME: Well, you should go and take that money right now. That is A LOT more than these books are worth. I’m guessing that’s a better deal than you’ll find anywhere else.
“Really?”
ME: Absolutely. Just out of curiosity, who offered you that?
“I’m not telling YOU!”
[EXEUNT]
Too bad. If there’s a guy nearby who’ll pay that much for books like that, I have a bunch he should take a look at.
I recently came across two innovative sites which suggest how internet narratives are being influenced by the form of the traditional “book.”
DQ Books is a collection of four “books,” each with a different theme. The interface allows you to “flip” through them as one would with a “real” book. Each tells a kind of story, and the soundtracks are evocative and edgy.
Never Been’s wordless narrative reminds me of the work of Mitsumasa Anno. It’s in the form of a “scroll” and though it took me a couple minutes to get the hang of how to “read” the story, once I finished I “re-read” the tale several times through. Worth the effort.
On the other end of the spectrum, Penguin Press’ project We Tell Stories (”Six Authors. Six Stories. Six Weeks.”) demonstrates how online fiction can break completely free of the codex’s influence. One story unfolds on a Google Map. Another pits two competing versions of events on two separate blogs. Others involve reader participation. But none make the innovation the center of attention. For all, story and writing remain the most important elements.
Publisher Faber & Faber have a fantastic Flickr photostream. Highlights include images of scarce catalogs and ephemera, archive and publicity shots of their authors, and a cover gallery from their 20th Century Classics series.
From the UK Guardian this rather damning portrait:
For much of the 19th century this was the home of Sir Thomas Phillipps, 1st baronet, whom the world called a bibliomaniac, though his term for himself went still further. Vello-mania, he called his condition, because it ran as much to the purchase and hoarding of documents as it did to books. In the tower he installed a succession of printers, employed to translate his manuscripts into more permanent versions; most left before long, complaining they hadn’t been paid. In the house he stored the fruits of his acquisitional forays at home and abroad: a process already out of hand when he was at Oxford, and rampant forever after. Mostly bought with money he had not got: bills were left unpaid for years - at least one unfortunate bookseller went bankrupt because of it.
(The comments at the end are worth reading as well.)
The Accidental Bookseller is a weblog of Hélène Lefébure who lives in the UK and posts strips based on her life, including many from her job at a bookstore. Sharp and clever.
Meanwhile, Bookhunter is an entire graphic novel now available online that is perhaps more exciting but distinctly less, well, accurate. But how can you not love a comic book that contains the following: “I’ve dated dozens of Caxtons in the lab. We can just check its rubrication against the BAL entry.”
[The latter via my friend Chris. Thanks!]
The University of Otago has an informative online exhibition, STRAIGHT JACKETS: The Art of the Book Jacket –
This exhibition offers an overview of the early history of the book jacket. It also highlights the design and artistic aspects of book jacket production, and importantly, raises the viewer’s consciousness on what is now considered an integral component of the book. It is no longer ephemeral; long live the book jacket.
Fun and catchy nerdster tune from a band from New Zealand. Via So Many Books, a new blog to me, which immediately hits my bookmarks if for no other reason than they have an uncommonly comprehensive blogroll and a refreshingly clean design.
Here’s the noir great, suggesting his publisher vary the standard protection clause that typically appears on a book’s copyright page, in this case his fifth Marlow novel The Little Sister:
The people and events in this book are not entirely fictional. Some of the events happened, although not in this precise time or place, and certain of the characters were suggested by real persons, both living and dead. The author regrets any resemblance to reality that may be found in the pages of his books, and he particularly regrets that he has on occasion made use of the names of real localities. He admits with shame that there actually is a place called Hollywood and a place called Los Angeles. It has streets and he has named some of them. It has a police department and he has referred to it. Los Angeles County has a District Attorney and said District Attorney has an office. To all of these matters the author has alluded. How careless of him! He should have called Los Angeles Smogville. He should have called its police department its Ministry of Corrections.
From Jacket Copy.
The legal sparring involving the cache — apparently discovered in a file cabinet decades after they were written — was settled in January but no one will say where the trove of documents is now.
[…]
Stephens Mitchell, who died in 1983, directed much of the archive to the University of Georgia’s rare books library, and his estate asked a Fulton County judge to determine who owns the documents.
On Jan. 22, the parties reached an agreement but court papers don’t reveal the whereabouts of the documents and neither will the lawyers involved.
