J.D. Salinger (1948-1965)
How do you mourn a writer who died this week, but, for all intents and purposes, died 45 years ago?

She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.

          - A Perfect Day for Bananafish
This second paragraph, from J.D. Salinger's first and finest published story, may be the most succinct statement he ever made on his own career. He was a writer who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. To him, the enormous fame he achieved was an irritating by-product of his work and he resented it.

Although he lived to be 91, his exposed life, was quite brief: 17 years, from 1948 (with the publication of the short story quoted above in The New Yorker,) to 1965, when The New Yorker devoted almost its entire issue to a 25,000 word short story, "Hapworth 16, 1924."

It is difficult for those of us who enjoy books and literature to understand why an author would be repulsed by the attention his work receives. Salinger went so far as to insist his agent burn his fan mail.

There is a presumed contract between people who create art and the public that consumes it that there is some sort of quid pro quo going on. There is an expectation that the creator of the art owes us something more than their art; that there's a wink-wink which we think entitles us to a certain amount of voyeurism. Voyeurs, alas, are people who have neatly worked it out for themselves that somehow such contracts only require their own signature.

Salinger's decision to retreat behind a cloak of almost total privacy seems quite prescient. We now live in a world that is filled with people who cannot agree to sign that other half of the contract fast enough, a world of celebrities who seem to be famous merely for their public lives. (Three words: Kate Gosselin's hairdo. One word: Brangelina.)

In "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," the central character of the story, Seymour Glass, is ascending a hotel elevator dressed in a robe and sandals, having just returned from the pool. A woman gets on the elevator.

"I see you're looking at my feet," he said to her when the car was in motion.

"I beg your pardon?" said the woman.

"I said I see you're looking at my feet."

"I beg your pardon. I happened to be looking at the floor."

"If you want to look at my feet, say so," said the young man. "But don't be a God-damned sneak about it."

"Let me out here, please," the woman said quickly to the girl operating the car.

The car doors opened and the woman got out without looking back.

"I have two normal feet and I can't see the slightest God damned reason why anybody should stare at them," said the young man.
 And thus, a posthumous lesson in privacy. J.D. Salinger's life was about his words and his work. It was never about his feet. And let's quit being such God-damned sneaks about it.
A Perfect Day for Bananafish, J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories, The New Yorker
Read 'em if you got 'em
tankbooks.gif
For reasons one should probably file under "It Sounded Like a Good Idea at the Time," a British company called Tank Books is publishing books in the same type of packaging reserved previously for cigarettes.  Flip top box, cellophane wrapper, 'n everything.

The works represented include Joseph Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness," Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych" and "Father Sergius," as well as Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."

For collectors who want them all, there's even a metal carton.

"Try one and you'll be hooked," says the website.

It should be noted that there are no scientific studies on the dangers of second-hand reading.

Cigarettes, book packaging, cigarette packaging
Library Architecture at Yale
From 1926 to 2008, the Yale University Library published the biannual Yale University Library Gazette, which featured a nice but variable assortment of articles on Yale collections and libraries. In 2009, the Gazette was superceded by a new journal series published annually by the Library, Yale Library Studies. Each volume in the series will focus on a particular aspect of the Yale libraries; the first, just released, collects eight essays on Yale library architecture, edited by Geoffrey Little and with an introduction by University Librarian Alice Prochaska.

Since the press releases cannot radiate immodest praise, I will step in and radiate some myself. Wow! The book is a triumph. The Gazette's weak points were a lack of cohesion and fairly modest production quality; it had a limited appeal to anyone without serious devotion to the Yale Library. This certainly cannot be said for the new series, judging by this volume. Robert A.M. Stern, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, contributes the main essay, a superb overall history of the Yale Library's buildings. Other essays focus on particular libraries or renovation projects, all thoroughly researched, extensively color-illustrated, and footnoted. They seem less like a collection of journal articles than a unified history, and the finished product comes as close to being a page-turner as any collection of academic essays I've read.

The Yale Library is fortunate to serve both as a world-class research library and as a series of welcoming, bookish spaces that continue to encourage students. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who has ever enjoyed the YUL in either capacity, or to anyone interested in the history of library architecture writ large. Having read this all too quickly in one sitting, I will be eagerly awaiting the 2010 volume of Yale Library Studies, as I imagine many will. Unlike the Gazette, this is a series people will want to collect.
Leif leaves leaves
These are, given the boundaries of second-hand journalism, the facts about Irving Leif , 62, of Jersey City, New Jersey.  

On January 17th, 2010, Mr. Leif had $14 to his name.  He lived in an apartment in Jersey City, New Jersey, which cost him $1,892.00 per month. Therefore, the possibility of eviction for Mr. Leif had become somewhat of a given.

What is also certain is that he owned a fairly impressive collection of books.  3,000 volumes. It took him 40 years to collect, and among its treasures was the most complete set of the Mother Earth pamphlets published by the early 20th-century anarchist, Emma Goldman.

Mr. Leif had been living off a family trust fund, but Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme had consumed all that, except for, it is assumed, the $14.00.

Among Ms. Goldman's many observations about the human condition, her most precise, and one which Mr. Leif may have assumed as his own personal rationale in amassing a book collection beyond his means, was, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
News from the Lilly

This summer, as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Lilly Library of Indiana University, Bloomington, the Library will present a short course on "Reference Sources for Rare Books."  This class, which will meet in the Ellison Room of the Library from Monday, July 12, through Friday, July 16, will be taught by Joel Silver, Associate Director and Curator of Books. The course will present a systematic introduction to approximately 350 printed and electronic reference sources for rare books, with emphasis on sources in the fields of early printed books; British and American literature; historical Americana; voyages and travels; maps and atlases; science and medicine; and the book arts.

book exhibit, indiana university, joel silver, lilly library, rare book course, shakespeare folio
Robert B. Parker

The Dean of American Crime writers, the prolific Massachusetts novelist Robert B. Parker, died unexpectedly at his home in Cambridge today, reportedly at his desk, presumably working on another Spenser novel; he was 77, and one of the really great ones.

Bob Parker was about as squared-away an author as I have ever had the privilege to interview. I will have to check my files, but I am guessing we got together no fewer that eight times over a twenty year period to talk about his latest release, which more often than not was a Spenser novel, but on one occasion, I remember, we met to discuss the Jesse Stone series he had just introduced, another time to talk about his female detective, Sunny Randall, and yet another get-together to talk about Poodle Spring, an unfinished Raymond Chandler novel he had completed. 

Robert B. Parker, Spenser
MLK Day

Some years ago, when I was working as an archivist at Drew University in Madison, NJ, I had the honor of tracking down something really wonderful. Of course, archivists, librarians, and book dealers are always locating wonderful things, but this was truly special. It was the original audio of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "American Dream" speech, which he gave at Drew on Feb. 5, 1964. 

A history professor had called the University Archives to ask about the audio; rumors had circulated for years that such a recording existed. There was an unofficial audio archivist -- a nonagenarian who had been on campus for 40+ years recording every lecture or event he could get to. But our Archives, like many Archives, was an accumulation of 150 years worth of stuff without one fully funded archivist. By whatever stroke of luck, after determining the date of the historic event using the student newspaper, that audio archivist and I unearthed the reel-to-reel. He transferred it to audio tape. The story was written up in the local paper, and the university celebrated a proud moment in its history. 

Coincidentally, a graduate student who worked with me in the Drew Archives is now an archivist working on a very important civil rights collection. Archives from Atlanta, the Cradle of the Civil Rights Movement is a Council on Library and Information Resources funded collaboration between Emory University and the Auburn Avenue Research Library to process and make available the records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Atlanta Chapter of the NAACP, and the personal papers of Andrew J. Young. 

The Auburn Avenue Research Library is hosting a number of events that will be of interest to collectors of African Americana, specifically the program on Feb. 6: Save Our African American Treasures: A National Collections Initiative of Discovery and Preservation.

african american, archives, auburn avenue research library, audio archives, civil rights, collecting, dream speech, drew university, emory university, madison nj, martin luther king jr.
Bibliography Week in New York

Only in New York is something so totally bookish like Bibliography Week possible, certainly on the scale of this event, which is mounted each year during the last week of January when the major national organizations devoted to book history have their annual meetings in the Big Apple, and get together at a number of related events, many of which are free and open to the public. (Image at right: Broadway Under Snow, by Rudolph Ruzicka, The Grolier Club, 1915.)

The week kicks off on Tuesday, January 26, with the Sixteenth Annual Bibliography Week Lecture, to be given this year by Michael Suarez, SJ, noted book historian and recently appointed director of Rare Book School, at Columbia University. His talk, scheduled for 6 p.m. in the Faculty Room of Low Library (116th St. at Broadway), is titled "Learned Virtuosity, Virtuously Displayed: Cultural Elits and Deep Purses in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Illustrated Books."

A talk at the Grolier Club (47 East 60th St.) on Wednesday, January 27 by Milton McC. Gatch titled "Bibliotheca Parisina 1791: A Tale of Two Cities, or An Auction in Revolutionary Times," 2 p.m., is free, and public. A reception later that evening to mark the opening of an exhibition at the Grolier, "Mary Webb: Neglected Genius," featuring materials from the collection of Mary Crawford, is for members, but the show is open the public from January 12 to March 12.

Thursday, January 28: In Brooklyn, the latest works of book artists will be on display at the Open Salon, 37 Greenpoint Avenue, 4th floor, hours 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The shop, founded in 1999, describes itself as an "artist-run, non-profit, consensus-governed, artist and bookmakers organization located in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Geenpoint." Sounds like fun, and very definitely worth checking out.

On Friday, January 29, again at the Grolier Club, the Bibliographical Society of America holds its annual meeting, with papers being presented by new scholars. Eric Holzenberg, director of the Grolier Club, will speak on "The Bibliophile as Bibliographer." The event is open to the public.

Saturday, January 30: The annual meeting of the American Printing History Association, to be held at the New York Public Library (Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street), 2 p.m. For those who have never visited the Center for the Book Arts (28 West 27th St., 3rd floor), a Winter Open House is on from 2 to 5 p.m. Demonstrations, tours, exhibits are on tap. All in all, a great week for bibliophiles, and a nice warm-up for those planning to attend the 43rd annual California International Book Fair in Los Angeles, Feb. 12-14.

Bibliography Week, Grolier Club, American Printing History Association, Bibliographical Society of ;America, California International Antiquarian Book Fair, Center for the Book Arts
TLS Books of the Year
TLS.gif
The Times Literary Supplement, published monthly in the UK, comes out in late November with its Books of the Year edition.  I don't subscribe to the publication because I enjoy eating so much and the U.S. subscription price of $189 would mean several meals per year would probably have to be exchanged for some form of protein originally intended for cats.

But a friend of mine was kind enough to share his copy with me. (Thank you, Gary!)

In it, 57 authors of world-renown are asked to write about some of their favorite reading experiences of the preceding year.  Among the 57 writers this year were Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt, Margaret Drabble, Nadine Gordimer, Seamus Heaney, etc.  Opening this annual issue is akin to a circus car arriving in your mailbox that opens up and, instead of clowns, deposits some of the greatest writers into your living room all in a tumble where they proceed to hold a grand salon.

A consistent theme runs through many of the entries: everyone seems a bit pea-green with envy over Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.  They complain about its intelligence, the hype, about the Man Booker Prize - but everyone eventually manages to get over themselves and it seems to have been cited most often by this august group of 57, who have the good manners to refrain from wishing they'd written it themselves.

Another favorite seems to be The Letters of Samuel Beckett, 1929-1940.  (There are three more volumes to come.)

Julian Barnes devotes his two paragraphs to a gracious salute to John Updike, who died in 2009.  Barnes feels that Updike's final works, My Father's Tears and Endpoint were grotesquely misunderstood. "Death afforded him no courtesy, and the stories received several reviews of impudent stupidity."  He reminds us all of Updike's Herculean contribution to letters by noting that Everyman has published Updike's final reworking of the Rabbit quartet as Rabbit Angstrom and calls it "the greatest American novel of the second half of the twentieth century.

Reading the TLS Books of the Year edition is not for the faint of heart, because whatever books you've read this year suddenly seem like Miss Piggly Wiggly.

Marjorie Perloff would like you to try out a 700-page bilingual edition of The Poetry of Rilke, translated by Edward Snow. David Wooten urges you to pick up the 13 lb. (yes, 13 lb.) The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. Also be prepared to thank Michael Hofman for suggesting a novel from 1970 (Metropole), which has just been translated into English from the Finnish.

The TLS year-end summary may be the most satisfying and the most challenging of the "Best Books of the Year" genre.  It will inspire you to stretch your reading habits; to read harder. It's the literary equivalent of feeling compelled to go to the gym. I am perfectly willing to have these 57 writers serve as my personal coaches. I look so much better sitting on a sofa than I do on the treadmill.
2009, Best Books, Books of the Year, TImes Literary Supplement, TLS
Things Fall Apart; or, Earthquake Update
Last Saturday, an earthquake hit Eureka, California, home to two independent booksellers. Eureka Books, co-owned by Scott Brown, former editor of Fine Books & Collections, is faring well after the 6.5 magnitude quake. On Sunday, they updated their Facebook status with the following report: "Everything is back to normal at Eureka Books, and we even have an earthquake display in our window, as an offering to the earthquake gods. Booklegger down the street was closed today for cleanup but will be back in business tomorrow."

eureka+books+earthquake.jpg


Pictured above is the interior of Eureka Books after last week's quake, photo by Amy Stewart. This picture was tweeted with the following caption: "The bookcases that were not bolted to the wall came down at the store--fortunately not many." More photos by Stewart are posted on Mashable.

Social media (as you call tell from all the links) played a significant role in disseminating images of the quake quickly. Scott Brown also points out, "It's funny in this digital age that bookstores are the iconic images of this quake." The LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle both featured bookshops in their coverage of the earthquake, and the local TV station ran a piece focusing on Booklegger.

Why the focus on books? A bibliophile's answer: books are the pillars of civilization, when they fall down, we take notice.
amy stewart, booklegger, bookseller, california, earthquake, eureka books, scott brown, social media