Over the ages, thousands of books have been burned.  But how many of them have been smoked? 

We have long suffered from a lack of smokable books.  How often have you thought, "Man, it would be great to smoke right now, but all I have with me is this crummy book?"

Thankfully, Snoop Dogg, the rapper from California, has finally given us a book to address this problem: Rolling Words: A Smokable Songbook.  The book contains some of Snoop's (self-professed) greatest lyrics.  Each page of Rolling Words is printed on rolling paper.  Got the lyrics for "Gin and Juice" memorized?  Great, now you can rip those pages out and smoke up.  As an extra bonus, the spine has a built-in matchbook striking surface. Snoop's got you covered in case you forgot your matchbook (but remembered your match).

Rolling Words, a promotional vehicle for Snoop's new "Kingsize rolling papers" is bound, of course, in hemp. And it's a collector's item in the making. If you can stifle your urge to smoke it, that is.

But I could never do it justice, so I'll let Snoop Dogg talk about this one himself:

The Index on Censorship has announced that in celebration of their 40th Anniversary, their complete back catalog will be free and available to download for the next 40 days - now with 20 days to go.

For 40 years the Index has provided a platform for those whose freedom of expression has been threatened. The publication combines the eloquence of prominent writers (Harold Pinter, Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera) with active campaigning against free speech abuse.

The Index is also an amazing resource for collectors, chronicling banned books the world over: in the June 1972 issue there is news of 40 titles and 6 periodicals banned in Greece, such as Brecht's "Life of Galileo", printed alongside newspaper clippings in which the government denies such a 'black list'; a year later an article lists hundreds of books banned in Czechoslovakia; in the 90s the lists shift focus to South America, and the Middle East, for instance in Mohammed Abd al-Jubar's "Iraq: More Books Banned than Read" (April 1991). Sometimes the articles focus on censorship policy, sometimes they catalogue the specific books themselves, and sometimes they will focus on a single text, the strangest example coming from 1975, The White Book by Yugoslavian journalist Milivoje Pavlovic, consisting of 305 blank pages. "The author has announced that his 'work' is none other than an 'open, innocent book, silent before the flood of devalued words.'" It was printed in small numbers, a "bibliophile edition" and, perhaps, the sassiest artist's book to challenge the Yugoslavian government yet.

Listing endangered books is only one of the functions of the Index: sometimes it is the primary publisher of works. As a publisher of dissent, it holds a crucial place in completing the historical record. For instance, there is a poem by Saeed Soltampour published in 1982 that he had only recited in public: "On this shore of fear", a memorial to the poet and playwright executed only the previous year, and reminder of why the work of the Index is so important:

I chose defiance
The way of those poets of the past
The way of Eshghi, the way of Farrokhi.
So hear my voice
As it sings in the slaughter-house.

In the 1984 issue - was such an iconic year for free speech activists met with hysteria? resignation? a grim "I told you so"? - there is the first publication of Samuel Beckett's short play "Catastrophe", performed two years earlier in solidarity with Vaclav Havel. Immediately after comes Havel's response: "Mistake", the first work he wrote after his release from prison in 1983, published for the first time.

Not only are literary relations spread out across cultures in the pages of the Index, but across time, showing something of a selected reception history of English classcis. In the same 1984 issue, Milan Simecka (an amazing, often overlooked writer of the Velvet Revolution) writes "A Czech Winston Smith" : an autobiographical comparison between his own experiences and those of the protagonist of Orwell's 1984, where the writing on the wall for Simecka in the build up to his imprisonment matches Orwell nearly scene for scene: "The similarity with our everyday life comes as a physical shock, neither pleasant nor amusing."


The "inconspicuous red Penguin paperback" where Simecka comes to this conclusion has further significance in textual history: it is the copy given to him by his wife, Eva, who would produce the first Czech translation of the work. All within the space of one issue, there is a cultural context for the books we read, re-read, and collect, books that have meant different things to different people, in different degrees of distress.

Some would argue that censorship almost guarantees the survival of a book at this point, so often has it proven the case for prohibited books over the past 500 years. Fear of loss has certainly contributed to what we find worthy of preservation: from Petrarch's Sonnets and Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, to James Joyce's Ulysses, and on and on. The Index contributes much to that lineage: as a publisher of the unpublished, and as an index of books banned, burned, and begging to be saved, it's one of the most haunting bibliographies of the late 20th century.

Last year I vowed to get to the 'Shadow Show' earlier, and this year I did it. The so-called Shadow Show, or Manhattan Vintage Books & Ephemera Fair, run by Flamingo Eventz, happens downtown and has that great downtown accessibility to it. I vowed to get there at 9 a.m. on Saturday because last year I witnessed dealers from the ABAA show at the Armory loading bags of books from the Shadow Show into cabs on their way back uptown. So there is great stuff to be found, at prices that are affordable to even the newest, youngest collector.

I enjoyed chatting there with two of our recent 'Bright Young Things': Dan Whitmore of Whitmore Rare Books and Jonathan Smalter of Yesterday's Muse. My husband purchased a first edition John Muir from Jonathan's boothmate, another young bookseller, Elizabeth Svendsen of Walkabout Books. So it was a successful morning.

At noon, I returned to the NYABF at the Armory. On Friday, I had perused for five hours in a daze, but on Saturday I got a closer look at a few items that really piqued my interest. Adrian Harrington had a lovely four-volume set of Middlemarch that I really wanted to take home. Pickering & Chatto was offering an incredible limited edition of Til Vietnam, a collection of Danish poems and illustrations published in 1967, signed by Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. And the Kelmscott Bookshop booth, full of beautiful things, had a whimsical and wonderful Caliban Press book, Lecon des Livres pour Calyban...

I also met up with an old friend and a few new ones -- exactly why the New York book fairs are so much fun. Can't wait til next year.

Related articles

• NY Book Fair(s), Day 1 (finebooksmagazine.com)

What I like most about the New York Antiquarian Book Fair is putting faces to names I email, Facebook, and tweet to on a daily basis. And of course, each one of those people can show and tell you something interesting. I spent five hours on the floor yesterday, and though I left empty-handed, my eyes were overloaded by all the beautiful things to look at.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Paul Cohen of Cohen & Taliaferro, whose booth is graced by Giuseppe Rosaccio's Vniversale Descrittione di Tvtto it Mondo, the largest Italian world map published in the sixteenth century. Stop by, you can't miss it, and you shouldn't. I loved seeing the miniature books at Bromer Booksellers, the prison literature at Lorne Bair, and 'Wall of Vellum' at Philadelphia Rare Books & Mss. Co.

It's also nice to see on the shelves some symmetry with our magazine content. I saw a good handful of Larry McMurtry firsts (which would go well with our current issue). Or, for those of you who enjoyed our feature on nature writer Henry Beston (summer 2011), a signed first edition in its scarce jacket (and very fresh to the market) is on offer at Peter L. Stern for $8,500; Between the Covers has a later edition with an autograph signed letter from Beston for $5,000. Browsing the booth of Rabelais--whose specialty is books on food & drink--reminded me of our feature (spring 2011) on cocktail book collector Greg Boehm.

More anon...

Our series profiling the next generation of antiquarian booksellers continues today with Andrew Gaub of Bruce McKittrick Rare Books in Narberth, Pennsylvania:


NP: What is your role at Bruce McKittrick Rare Books?

AG: Like most small book businesses, I do a lot of everything: I catalog books, build the reference library, wrap packages, pay invoices, prepare for books fairs, visit clients, do research at local institutions, select beers to chill outside for a late night at the office... What I enjoy most is looking at books and buying books, and in that regard Bruce gives me considerable autonomy.

NP: How did you get started in rare books?

AG: After living in France for a year, I moved to Bloomington, Indiana in 2003 so my wife Lisa could begin her graduate work. I kept myself busy with a job at Borders, and there I met someone in the Master of Library Science program at Indiana University. He told me about his coursework and said that one of the M.L.S. tracks was rare books, which piqued my interest. I met with the director of the program Joel Silver, who told me that if I was serious about old books, I should study Latin and take all his courses; so I took all Joel's courses and studied intensive Latin for four semesters. As I was closing in on my degree, I saw an Exlibris posting for a bookseller's assistant in a firm outside of Philadelphia. I asked Joel if he knew anything the bookseller. He told me he knew Bruce McKittrick well and that if I wanted to continue to learn about old books, there was no one better to learn from in the trade. I applied in June, interviewed in July and began working with Bruce in August 2005.

NP: Favorite or most interesting book that you've handled?

AG: That's tough, so might I mention a few? I am very interested in fifteenth-century books, and we have handled a few unrecorded incunables. It's exciting to do the typographic work and date the book and assign it to a press. My first purchase at auction was a German folio of a Boccaccio tale printed in Metz in 1500 with 96 half-page woodcuts, in its original calf-backed wooden board binding. I will never forget that book. A few years ago I bought a short treatise on making paper with common milkweed. In it the author promises to send seeds to those who write him. Our copy had the original seeds that the author sent to an amateur scientist. Very cool. I suppose one of the books I am most pleased to have bought and sold was William Turner's The names of herbes (1548): the first modern botanical dictionary in English, John Evelyn's copy in seventeenth-century calf. A true rarity, and a hell of a book.

NP: What do you love about the book trade?

AG: Books are very intimate objects and are always telling us something. I find it amazing to see the number of ways the same book can be interpreted and reinterpreted by different dealers, curators, collectors, scholars. I am humbled to be a part of that chain that in many cases is centuries old.

NP: What do you collect personally?

AG: I love to buy books by and about booksellers, but I wouldn't call it a collection. As an undergrad I studied James Joyce extensively, even spending a month in Dublin at James Joyce Summer School in 2001. My university's library was quite good on Joyce, so I had nearly all the books about him charged to me. I began buying these titles so I didn't have to renew them or return them when recalled, and I still haven't stopped buying them. My Joyce collection continues to grow and now includes, besides all the criticism, early editions of his works, comic books, movie posters and LPs.

NP: Do you want to open your own shop someday?

AG: I don't think so. This is my seventh year with the firm, and I cannot imagine doing anything else. Bruce believes in books, and that is evident in the stock as well as in the reference library. It's an inspiring work environment.

NP: Thoughts on the future of the book trade?

AG: I'm a believer. One of the pleasures I have had in this business was lunch with great bookman Barney Rosenthal. He told me that when he started in the trade, all his seniors would lament about the good ol' days (I think his father even told him that all the great books had already been sold). But then he said, "These are the good ol' days". I believe it. The enthusiasm and abilities of our young colleagues are inspiring. Great books are still available, if now more dear. Barney got it right: These are the good ol' days.

 
Andrew will be at Booth D-8 during the 52nd Annual New York Antiquarian Book Fair. A catalog of the books he and Bruce will exhibit is available here.
 

Preparing for my visit to the New York Antiquarian Book Fair later this week, I've perused many booksellers' lists of 'what they're bringing' to the fair. (Other highlights, published in our spring issue, are here.) These are a few that caught my eye--of personal interest or just "intrinsically interesting."

From Lux Mentis, this (above) very recently published limited edition of Bartleby the Scrivener is incredibly cool. The artist, Wolfgang Buchta, describes his process: "In 2009 July, the graphic structure of the newspaper gave me the impulse to draw over it. Then I thought this background was the ideal way for Bartleby. After this decision, I wrote the text by hand. August-December 2009. Drawings on the newspaper, 70 pieces, used 57, January-May 2010. Mounted text and drawings together, June 2010. Gerie Reumiller did the scans and filtered the grey tone of the newspaper, 59 pieces, July 2010. Prepared for the computer to plate process, July 2010. Started printing the aluminum plates by hand on the lithopress, August-November 2010. Started preparing and printing the second color on stone, December-April 2011. Coloring the prints with watercolor, May-August 2011. Bound the first 10 copies in September 2011." $10,000

As a lover of all things Thoreau, I will certainly visit the booth of James Cummins to glimpse the first printing of the first and only issue of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's journal Aesthetic Papers from 1849, featuring Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government, the first appearance in print of his (now famous) lecture on civil disobedience. $22,000

Gordon Hollis is offering a collection of fourteen autograph letters and cards and photographs from former First Lady Jackie Kennedy to ballerina Margot Fonteyn -- a wonderful opportunity for a collector of dance! One of the photographs seen above. $25,000

At least two books from Blackwell's Rare Books made me covetous: this first edition (at left) of a novel I love, Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, an Austen family association copy, no less. $1,920. And the three-volume set of Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Sherston's Progress might find a buyer among all the new Downton Abbey fans (myself included). $3,120

Bookseller Kevin Kelly has a rare playbill broadside for one of Nicolo Paganini's final performances in Birmingham, 1832. The catalogue entry intrigues: "Among Paganini's notorious showmanship gimmicks was to break all but one string and play a piece, thus handicapped, with surprising dexterity. Such a performance is promised in the program here." $2,500

Happy browsing and shopping, all! I'll be walking the floor on Friday and much of Saturday--if you see me (with my lanyard/nametag), stop and say hello!

At the rare evening sale of the Kenneth Nebenzahl library at Christie's tonight, a full set of Edward Curtis' The North American Indian, on the very desirable Japan vellum, in exceptional condition took in $2.9 million, including buyer's premium. Hammered down by Francis Wahlgren, international head of books and manuscripts at Christie's, it seems to be a world record for the Curtis work. The estimate was $1 - $1.5 million (a complete set sold for $1.4 million seven years ago).

You can read more about the fascinating history of The North American Indian--and how it plunged its creator into debt and obscurity--in a feature we ran last year.

The New York branch of Heritage is holding a large auction tomorrow, loaded with great items from the medieval era to the present day.  If you've got some extra money to spend ahead of the New York Antiquarian Book Fair this weekend, here are a few items that caught this blogger's fancy in the auction catalog (which you can download here).

Lot 36120: The first book ever signed by Stephen King.  An advance proof of Carrie, King's first novel, with an endearing inscription to his friend and former college roommate "For Flip and Karen, two of the best there are - and I mean that - by the way, this is the first book I've signed in my life. It's kind of fun - All the best, no matter what - Stephen King."  You can jump into this auction with a $5,000 minimum.  Estimate: $10,000 and up.

Pages 40 - 47 of the catalog contain a fine selection of art books and periodicals.  Brandon Kennedy, who wrote the feature on Larry McMurtry in our current issue, marveled over the unique offerings in the recent newsletter from Heritage.  Kennedy draws our attention to forty issues of Derrière Le Miroir (Lot 36066) and fifty-eight issues of XXe Siècle (Lot 36066), noting "it might be awhile before such a large portion of art periodicals come around again."

If medieval artwork is more your game, then turn to pages 48 - 52 which contain some gorgeous examples of medieval illuminated leaves.

Much of the auction centers around the collection of James and Deborah Boyd, which was particularly strong in economics and the art of warfare.  Their collection contained such standouts as a first edition of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (Lot 36228 - Estimate: $80,000) and the extremely rare, 1926 privately printed edition of T. E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, estimated to go for over $40,000. (Lot 26256)

But one of my favorite books in the auction is Lot 35058: Gould's Birds of Europe in imperial folio, complete with the 448 beautiful color plates.  Gould's striking bird illustrations are only rivaled by Audubon himself.  The starting bid for this beauty is $50,000 with an estimate of $75,000 plus.

Remember that even if you aren't in New York you can get in on the action through Heritage's Live Auction feature on their website.

Graham Green said, "Some authors type their works, but I cannot do that. Writing is tied up with the hand, almost with a special nerve." You might argue that this is due to a deep, evolutionary need to see our abstract thoughts safely into the concrete world. Some call it a phenomenology of the hand. It might just be an even more basic need to reach for the shiny thing and to do something with it, like make a mark. 

The writing tools themselves add something to the relationship between mind and paper. Plath used a Schaeffer fountain pen, Nabokov a Montblanc (when he wasn't using pencil), Mark Twain a Conklin. Hemingway is connected with Montegrappa, Montblanc, Esterbrook, though he preferred pencil, and his weapon of choice is still debated by enthusiasts:

If not in Hemingway's hand, Esterbrook at least has its place in American history: Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson used them to sign bills into law. Whether in our hands or someone else's, pens have eased into the world much that we hold dear.

In February, Swann Auction Galleries announced plans for their latest department, "one that celebrates the objects that have written our story": Fine and Vintage Writing Instruments. Auctions will be held from September 2012 onward, under the direction of Rick Propas, proprietor of The PENguin. 

Rick was kind enough to agree to an interview, with a sneak peak, into some of the fountain pens Swann will be offering this autumn: