Recently in Book People Category

For the last couple of weeks, the booktryst blog has been running a series of moving tributes to a legendary California bookseller under the collective heading, "A Wake for the Still Alive: Peter B. Howard." People who either don't know Peter or who have never been to Serendipity Books might reasonably regard this as audacious at best, but since everything about Peter is completely honest and candid, it is very much in character. For a case in point, just take a look at his no-nonsense website. "If you're in Berkeley, California, feel free to come in and browse," he writes. "We are usually friendly."

POTUS, otherwise known as the President of the United States, is vacationing in Vineyard Haven on Nantucket Island and made his first public appearance today. Emerging from Blue Heron Farm at precisely 11:40 a.m., the President and his daughters, Sasha and Malia, made a bee-line by motorcade to a locally-renowned bookstore, Bunch of Grapes. His selections? Steinbeck's "The Red Pony," Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," and, for himself, Johnathan Franzen's "Freedom."

It is unclear how POTUS obtained the latter, since it is not scheduled to be officially published until August 31st. Perhaps a Congressional investigation will be required.<gr>

On the 4th of July in 2008, the bookstore, a village icon, was decimated by a fire.

This bookstore was also a favorite of Bill Clinton, for whom the bookstore was closed with whatever customers were inside unable to leave or any new customers permitted to enter by the Secret Service. We must presume that a similar protocol was observed today with the current POTUS.

Golden Legend Inc. of Beverly Hills, California, has just published a limited edition of John Ward and His Magnificent Collection, which looks at Ward as an educator, collector, and curator. Ward devoted his life to collecting rare music scores and original editions, all of which are now at Harvard.

From the book's introduction: "The purpose of John Ward and His Magnificent Collection, call it another festschrift, is to examine and celebrate John Ward's labors since his retirement. In these twenty five years, his second career continues the first and expands his work as a collector and curator of a vast and internationally important collection of original music and dance material for the Harvard University libraries."

Edited by bookseller Gordon Hollis, the 168-page book contains an introduction by Hollis and a transcription of an engaging interview between Hollis and Ward. It also contains chapters by noted antiquarian music dealers John and Jude Lubrano ("La Chasse et Le Professeur; or, Reminiscences of Four Decades on the Prowl"), Sir Curtis Price ("Origins of the King's Theatre Collection"), and Professor D.W. Krummel ("Lutebooks on the Loose"), among other curators and librarians.

The edition of 200 in hardcover costs $75 and may be ordered directly from Golden Legend. All profits will go to the Harvard Theatre Collection.

To read more about antiquarian music collecting, check out the feature written by Joel Silver from FB&C's May issue.  

Ralph Sipper, of Ralph Sipper Books in Santa Barbara, CA, has just launched his first (yes, you read that right) website. Welcome! Being an "old school" antiquarian bookseller for 40 years, Sipper finally agreed to bring his shop online. He said of the decision: "Old-fashioned as I am, and motivated by the enthusiasm of my daughter and son-in-law, I am moving onto the Information Super Highway in as positive way as I can muster."

His daughter, Cory, and her husband built the very attractive site. She said her father is "quite happy to have his website. Possibly, even excited. As long as it doesn't take time from handwriting and snail-mailing his business letters." Take a browse through the inventory, check out their Book of the Month, and read a fascinating interview Matthew Bruccoli did with Sipper for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, which is posted in PDF.

Ralph Sipper Books is an ABAA member that specializes in literary first editions and manuscripts.

One of the most extraordinary bibliophiles I have ever met, Irwin T. "Toby" Holtzman, passed away in Detroit this past week at 82, leaving behind his lovely wife Shirley, three children, three grandchildren, and a legacy of tenacious commitment to books and libraries that is unequaled in my experience. Truth be told, I never met anyone quite like Toby, and expect I will not again anytime soon. As a collector, his interests were generally centered on twentieth century and contemporary fiction. At the height of his activity, he collected the works of some 350 authors, and he did it with a remarkable degree of thoroughness. I first learned about Toby in the late 1980s when I was in the early stages of researching A Gentle Madness, and looking for suitable people to profile. When I told Peter Howard, the owner of Serendipity Books in Berkeley, Calif., the premise of my book--the title pretty much says it all--he suggested I spend some time in Detroit with Toby. "He has a native feeling for books that you really have to experience first hand to appreciate," Howard said.

What Peter was saying in a delicate way is that Toby, for want of a more precise description, had a certain intensity about him when it came to books. "Toby can definitely wear you down," he offered, and pretty much left it at that. When I asked Toby about this apparent single-mindedness of his, he offered no apologies, acknowledging that yes, he was an "in your face kind of guy" when it came to books, but that the cause was literature and reading, after all, and what could be more important than that. Indeed, when we first got together in August of 1991, he was already finding suitable homes for his books. Today, his various collections can be found in no fewer than fifteen major libraries around the world, his William Faulkner collection at the University of Michigan, his Russian writers collection at the Hoover Institution in California, his John Osborne collection at the British Library, his American Indian collection at the University of Illinois, his gift to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem of five thousand Israeli books, manuscripts, and inscribed copies, most notable among them.

As a collector of modern firsts, Toby always favored the living and the hopeful, and he took special pride in "discovering" new talent. To get a leg up on the competition, he regularly read the forecasts in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, and he took great pride in being able to say that fully 40 percent of the collectible books he had acquired were bought at their jacket prices. And as much as he loved his books, he had no separation anxiety whatsoever about parting with them--so long as they went to the right places. "You reach a point in your life where you begin to collect by subtraction, not addition," he said.

Following the publication of AGM fifteen years ago this month, Toby and I kept in touch. We ran into each other often, at the New York Book Fair, the California Book Fair, in the basement of the Strand Book Store, wherever book people gather. A few months ago, I gave a talk at the Clements Library in Ann Arbor, and we had dinner together with a group from the University of Michigan. It was great fun, and Toby gave me a photo of himself--the one pictured above--seated in a nifty "book chair" he had bought during a recent trip he had made to Italy with Shirley. Yes, that is my book he is holding. Pretty cool, I thought, and so typically Toby.

Totally in character, too, is the request Toby's family made this week of friends and colleagues following private funeral services in Michigan: "Please honor the memory of Toby Holtzman and the values of his life by supporting a library, buying books at your local bookstores and reading to your children and grandchildren."

What an epitaph. And what a bookman.

WASHINGTON -- I've got to hand it to new author Patrick McEnroe, a former Grand Slam doubles champion, Davis Cup coach, and engaging commentator on ESPN. He is a celebrity who understands that without ticket, book and gear-buying fans, he would have no career: The good life he enjoys is a direct result of what people buy and watch they watch on TV.