On Nov. 18, the National Book Foundation awarded its annual book awards. T.J. Stiles won in the non-fiction category for his lengthy book, "The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt." Much ado has been made of the fact that Stiles took his moment in the spotlight to thank the actual 'book-makers' (editors, designers, etc.) and librarians behind the book. Bravo! (Full disclosure: Stiles did extensive research at the Drew University Archives' Gibbons collection that I was processing at the time.)

So before I thank the specific people who have helped to bring my book into existence, I want to thank the editorial assistants, copywriters, marketing managers, copy editors, graphic designers, production managers and managing editors. I want to thank the indexers, publicists, receptionists, and sales people. I want to thank the mail room guys, warehouse staff, bookstore clerks, and independent-bookstore owners. I want to thank the book reviewers, academic scholars, MFA students, librarians--especially the librarians--agents, and the unsung archivists. I suspect that the advent of the e-book is fooling some people into believing that none of these people are necessary anymore, or perhaps that they do not even exist. But if they cease to exist, then e-books will only be worth the paper they're not printed on.

For information on the other winners and honorees (including Colum McCann, Gore Vidal, and Dave Eggers), or to watch the entire speech, visit the National Book Award website.

The idea of the "classic," particularly how a book is elevated to that status, has always fascinated me. I even wrote my master's thesis on the many cheap reprint editions of "classics" in the twentieth century: Modern Library, Everyman's Library, Penguin Classics, Puffin Classics, Perennial Classics, Loeb Classical, Oxford's World's Classics, Signet Classics, S&S Classic Editions, Verso Classics, Vintage Classics, Washington Square Enriched Classics, Bantam Classics, Barnes & Noble Classics, Cameo Classics, Harvard Classics, Library of America - to name some on my bookshelves. (I will spare you any further description of my thesis.)

So it piques my interest that the New York Review of Books is celebrating the tenth anniversary of its NYRB Classics series this month. There was an event in New York earlier this month, but the event in London next week couldn't suit me better. Darn it, why wasn't this one held in New York?

From the NYRB e-newsletter:

Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009, 6:30 p.m.
The Gallery at Foyles
113-119 Charing Cross Road
London, UK
020 7437 5660

What is a classic? When does a great book become a classic and who decides? Over the past ten years, the NYRB Classics series has explored the boundaries of this enduring but problematic term. Mary Beard, Geoff Dyer, Adam Thirlwell, and the NYRB Classics series editor Edwin Frank will discuss these questions.

Tickets: Free, email events@foyles.co.uk to reserve a place.

I'm sure this event will be lively, as the canon and the classics are heady topics for literary types. If any readers are in London and can attend, we'd love a report.

p.s. NYRB is having an anniversary sale on its classics line through November.

It is an axiom in book collecting that the market value of an object is not necessarily determined by what one person is willing to pay for the privilege of ownership, but by the lengths to which a determined underbidder is willing to compete for the prize in open bidding. This dynamic was in persuasive evidence last night a few miles north of West Palm Beach in Stuart, Florida, at an auction organized to benefit the Hibiscus Children's Center, a local charity dedicated to the needs of abused and neglected youngsters.

Billed the Little Auction That Could in respectful tribute to Watty Piper's classic children's tale of infinite possibilities, The Little Engine That Could, the premise was centered around asking various celebrities to inscribe copies of books that had meaning in their lives. More than 80 people responded, and it was decided to offer the books for sale in two venues, online at eBay for 70 of the items in a contest that continues through Nov. 25, and last night in open competition at the historic Lyric Theater before an audience of 400 people for 14 others.

A total of $34,000 was raised last night, the most coveted item being Pop-up White House, a nicely engineered piece of movable art with illustrations by local artist Chuck Fischer--and signed by President Barack Obama; this neat little item, a unique curiosity if ever there was one, was hammered down at $6,500.  Equally robust was the $4,500 paid for a copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes signed by the renowned animal authority Jane Goodall--her specialty is chimpanzees, naturally--the $2,900 for a copy of Horatio Alger, Jr.'s Struggling Upward signed by Maya Angelou, and the $2,600 bid for the copy of Harry Potter (Book 7), inscribed by the author, J. K. Rowling.

It was a great program, about as capably conceived, organized, and executed as anything comparable I have ever been associated with, and the credit for that certainly goes out to every member of the crackerjack staff of volunteers, but primarily to the guiding spirit, the co-chair of the event, Karla Preissman, who came up with the concept two years ago, and contacted every celebrity individually to participatee. A brilliant move on her part was to arrange for a tastefully mounted exhibition of the books at the Elliott Museum in Stuart, which my wife and I had a chance to visit yesterday before the evening's festivities.

It was an unannounced visit there earlier in the week by a person who has chosen to remain anonymous that led to the preemptive bid of $850,000--that is not a typo, it is $850,000--for a copy of Jean de Brunhoff's The Travels of Babar co-signed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and his mother, the former First Lady, Barbara Bush.

The benefactor was said to be passionate about the goals of the Hibiscus Center, and found this a worthy way of supporting it. In one fell swoop--before the first bid went up last night--the Little Auction That Could became the Little Auction That Most Assuredly Did, all of it made possible by the enduring magic of books. An unqualified plus was the opportunity I had to speak on the program with Carl Hiaasen; the man is a fabulous speaker, and a real hoot.

In our June issue, Ian McKay wrote a short piece on the Peyraud Collection, auctioned by Bloomsbury earlier this year. This fascinating collection-including Samuel Johnson, Jane Austen, and Fanny Burney, etc.-was formed by the late librarian Paula Peyraud. (Pictured here is the three-volume first edition of Burney's Evelina in contemporary calf with gilt tooling.)

 

Interested readers can now take note of a more extensive report on the Peyraud collection, written by Maureen E. Mulvihill, a scholar and writer with the Princeton Research Forum. In her essay, "Literary Property Changing Hands: The Peyraud Collection," Dr. Mulvihill takes an in-depth, post-auction view at the lots and their bidders. She also enlightens readers about Peyraud, book-collecting's "dark lady." A selection of fine images from the original sale catalogue accompanies the text.

 

Dr. Mulvihill's report was recently published in the journal Eighteenth-Century Studies, Autumn 2009, vol. 23, no. 1 (2009). You can download a PDF version here:

http://www.ilab.org/download.php?object=documentation&id=81

The U.S. Senate must have used its collective library voice on Nov. 6 when it confirmed New York Public Library Director David Ferriero as the 10th Archivist of the United States. Few media outlets have covered the story but a detailed press release highlighting his experience is making its way around cyberspace.

It seems returning war booty is a trend. The New York Times ran an article yesterday about a two-volume Bible that vanished from a library in Vienna during Kristallnacht. The sixteenth-century book is now on its way home, 71 years later.

Indulge me, please, as I make a connection between the recent victory in the World Series of the New York Yankees--their 27th championship--and what so many futurists perceive to be the imminence of a paperless society, and what, by extension, all that portends for the traditional book as we know it. It's a stretch, I agree, but an amusing concept to consider all the same.

If you were paying attention this past Friday, there was a ticker-tape parade through Lower Manhattan, and unlike so many other New Englanders who chose to tune out--I have been a Red Sox fan for more than half-a-century--I tuned in. Yes, I wanted to see the MVP, Hideki Matsui, riding in the lead float, I even wanted to see that amiable turncoat, Johnny Damon (I am actually very fond of the man), rejoicing in the triumph with his ebullient teammates. But what I wanted to see most of all was how New York City was going to handle the matter of the ticker tape at a time when there is no ticker tape.

The reason for that, you see, is quite simply that there are no more stock tickers, there haven't been any for about thirty years or so, the only ones that survive are now museum pieces, and the only ticker tape available these days is a custom-order curiosity that sells online for $40 a spool. But there was a parade in Lower Manhattan through the Canyon of Heroes on Friday, all right--the 205th such celebration since the whole tradition got started on October, 29, 1886, that one to salute the newly dedicated Statue of Liberty--and there was plenty of paper filling the air. What it was, according to press accounts, was a half-ton of confetti packed in 400 bags and trucked in by a group known as the Downtown Alliance to be distributed among employees in the financial district who now get their stock quotations from computers.

When the confetti ran out, according to a piece in the New York Post, some dull-witted revelers began tossing rolls of toilet paper, which is fine enough, I suppose, as long as its unspooled and not likely to cause a concussion if it hits someone on the street, but not so bright were the financial records and other confidential office materials that went out the windows along with it. Among the fifty tons of debris collected by sanitation workers were pay stubs and trust fund balance sheets. Some of the documents came from the Liberty Street financial firm A.L. Sarroff, including client accounts, with Social Security numbers and detailed banking data. "They're records that should have been shredded," said firm founder Alan Sarroff. "An overzealous employee threw them out the window. He was reprimanded."

So--a half-ton of confetti, and fifty tons of office paper, a ticker tape parade doth make. There's still plenty of cellulose, in other words, to fill the void, and a good deal of it, apparently, remains necessary to the conducting of business. And the future of the parade itself? Like the traditional book that so many of us prefer, it's in no immediate jeopardy of falling out of favor either. Why? Simple enough, in both instances, because people like it. All you need to mount a procession through in the city that never sleeps is a legitimate hero to honor. Good luck on that score; if you're going to toss out the office records in jubilation, though, make sure you shred them first.

Have you seen the newest Levi's commercials yet? They've used Walt Whitman's poem "Pioneers! O Pioneers!." You can see the ads here and here.

Seattle, one of America's Most Literate Cities has been hard hit on the literary front of late. Yes, the home of Amazon.com, Sherman Alexie, and once home to Thomas Pynchon (he worked at Boeing for awhile), is not doing well very much at all.

First off, the Seattle Public Library system. Due to budget falls, SPL has plans to cut hours, in a big way. The Seattle Times has more to the story, but here it is in a nutshell:

Since 2000, according to the library, library usage has roared from 4.5 million in-person and virtual visitors to 13.2 million. So, to respond to this need? The library budgetary cut backs by way of a 23% reduction in library hours. Ouch.

Secondly, the Elliott Bay Book Company, touted nationwide as one of the top independent bookstores in the United States is having difficulties. Financial troubles again are cited but the owner is considering moving away from Pioneer Square (a tourist Mecca in the Emerald City) or closing it entirely. This is a store that has readings by folks like Tim O'Brien, Peter Matthiessen, Jim Harrison, and oodles more of the world's best authors.  Seattle will simply no longer be "America's Most Literate City" without it.

And now, gay-friendly Bailey/Coy Books is closing. A stories independent bookshop in Seattle's trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood is cleaning out its bookshelves. It opened in 1982. It's closing the end of November. The Seattle Times, again, has the sad tale.

Seattle, America's Most Literate City, not so much anymore.

The papers of two major American writers have found homes in the past month. In October, the Houghton Library at Harvard announced that it had acquired the John Updike archive, described as "a vast collection of manuscripts, correspondence, books, photographs, artwork and other papers." A small portion of Updike's papers had been given to the university in 1970, and for decades Updike kept up his close association with the Harvard library, depositing manuscripts, files, even golf scorecards. According to the library's press release, cataloging the new material is now one of the library's "highest priorities." Updike died in January of this year.

 

Today the New York Public Library announced that it also acquired the papers of one of the twentieth century's most esteemed authors: E. Annie Proulx. According to the press release, the collection "spans much of Proulx's life, from her university days through her journalism career and to the present. It includes 4,200 pages of short stories, essays, poems and screenplays; 145 pages of preparatory notes and research and three original notebooks with holograph draft ideas; more than 1,060 pages of holograph diary; more than 10,200 pages of typescript, much of it with holograph revisions and corrections, 2,100 galley proofs, and 1,855 pages of other related materials. Correspondence, including email totals more than 4,500 pages." To which I can only reply, wow, she printed her emails? Good news for literary and book history scholars. The collection becomes part of the incredible Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at NYPL.