I live in Washington, D.C., and
where I'm from is a bit of tricky question to answer. My father was a U.S.
foreign service officer - a diplomat - who was stationed in Latin America for
most of his career. I was born in the Dominican Republic, and moved around the
States a lot when our family finally came home. I've lived longest in various
towns in Virginia, and so I proudly call myself an (adopted) Virginian.
What do you study at University?
For my undergraduate degree, I
studied Latin American and Spanish literature at St. Louis University's Madrid
campus in Spain, where I became interested in the Spanish Civil War. I
continued that interest through two M.A. programs - one in English literature
and the second in Spanish and Latin American theatre - and into my English
Ph.D. program at Northeastern University, in Boston. I'm currently writing my
dissertation on foreign women writers and photographers and the Spanish Civil
War.
Please introduce us to your book collection. What areas do
you collect in?
I collect books about the Spanish Civil War. As I
accumulated my books, I sought to provide contextualizing academic scholarship
as well as comparative, primary accounts of the Spanish Civil War across
several genres. I have a special interest in Spanish Civil War books by and
about women. The focus on foreign women in all their roles (as poets, as
journalists, as photographers, as administrators, as nurses) is unique as most
approaches would keep these testimonies separate. The main drive behind the
collection is to preserve materials that would otherwise be destroyed or
forgotten, and to create and curate a collection of Spanish Civil War materials
from unexpected, non-traditional lines of inquiry such as visual studies or
women's studies.
In my
collection, many of the materials from women are the original editions, because
these books went through only one printing. If I wanted a copy of the novel or
memoir, there was only one copy to acquire. Over the years, I adjusted the
purpose of my collection to reflect various neglected strands of Spanish Civil
War studies that suited my academic interests: writing by women, visual studies
(such as posters, photographs, and propaganda), and eyewitness life writing
more generally.
Recently, I've become interested in Spanish Civil War
ephemera - like pamphlets published in the 1930s - contemporary interpretations
of the war, like an historical/military board game entitled España 1936 that my father bought me for
a Christmas present one year.
How many books are in your collection?
166 items, including the pamphlets
- and it's growing all the time!
What was the first book you bought for your collection?
I can't quite remember the first book. It was probably Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell or A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War
by Paul Preston, for the summer class I was taking on the history and
literature of the Spanish Civil War, purchased used at the campus bookstore. I know
I still have those copies.
I do remember being an undergraduate
in Madrid and seeking out Aránzazu Usandizaga's critical work Escritoras al frente: Intelectuales
extranjeras en la Guerra Civil (Writers
to the Front: Foreign Intellectuals in the Civil War). I knew that it would
be difficult to find materials about foreign women writers in the Spanish Civil
War at all, because these writers
were barely featured in most academic articles or books that I could find.
From that experience, I knew I
should make a special effort while actually in Spain to track down books by and
about these women. So, on my travels through Spain, I got in the habit of going
into any bookshops I saw and asking the bookseller for their section on the
Spanish Civil War.
How about the most recent book?
Earlier this year, University of
Ottawa Press put out two recently recovered works about the Spanish Civil War
by two Canadian writers - This Time a
Better Earth by Ted Allan (ed. Bart Vautour) and Hugh Garner's Best Stories by Hugh Garner (ed. Emily Robins
Sharpe). I purchased these two books in addition to The Odyssey of the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War by Peter Carroll.
And your favorite book in your collection?
Oh, I have many favorites! One
that stands out is Women's Voices from the
Spanish Civil War, an anthology of autobiographical accounts and excerpts
edited by Sally Alexander and Jim Fyrth. When I bought it used, it was the most
money I had spent on a book - about $65, I think. It's recently been
republished in paperback at a more affordable graduate student price. For me,
purchasing this book meant that I was serious about studying the Spanish Civil
War and women's writing...serious enough to need this book on hand instead of repeatedly
checking out the library copy, serious enough to not go to the movies for a
couple of months to afford it. And I love the movies.
Another favorite, because of its
rarity, is my original
1937 copy of Death in the Making,
without a dust jacket. This is Robert Capa's tribute to Gerda Taro, a photographer
killed during the Spanish Civil War. Capa is one of the twentieth century's
great war photographers; this volume of Capa and Taro photographs had one
printing. This photo-book is the most valuable item in my collection. It's such
a heartfelt tribute to Taro and to the cause of the Spanish Republic.
Best bargain you've found?
While it's not quite a bargain
since I did spend a good chunk of change, I acquired 70+ items from a rare
bookseller on Amazon by reaching out to her directly and wanting to purchase all of her Spanish Civil War materials
if she'd negotiate on the price. Part of that acquisition were 43 original pamphlets from 1936-1940,
all dealing with Spanish Civil War. Primarily targeted at American audiences,
these pamphlets are in English and cover a wide range of topics related to the
war - from the Italian involvement in Spain to American nurses' accounts of
their volunteer work in the war.
These pamphlets (and the rest of the volumes) were collected
by the late Sanford Soren, who donated his Spanish Civil War collection of
pamphlets and books to his local library of Willingboro, New Jersey. I do not
know much more about Soren or why he collected these materials. A brief search
of open Internet sources revealed that Soren was an attorney and died at the
age of 40 in 1972. The bookseller had bought Soren's collection at an auction,
after the Willingboro Public Library discarded it en masse. Although the
bookseller had sold some individual items, I managed to buy the collection more
or less intact.
After a week of negotiating and arranging delivery, the
collection arrived! The bookseller told me that she felt sorry for Soren,
having so carefully acquired and maintained this collection to have it
unceremoniously shrugged off, and that she knew I'd honor him by taking good
care of it and appreciating it...which was how she convinced herself to reduce
the price for me. It felt like a coup to discover so many original items from
the early-to-mid twentieth century in such great condition, and I'm glad I was
bold enough to reach out to negotiate.
How about The One that Got Away?
I must have pushed such a painful
occurrence out of my memory, as nothing comes directly to mind!
Because I'm not really concerned
with acquiring specific objects or editions (and because the Spanish Civil War
tends to be less in demand than other topics), books tend to stay put for me.
That being said, in Madrid there
was a vendor who would sell reprints of old posters and photographs from the
1930s-50s of Spain, especially of the civil war. He never sold in the same
place, and I only came across him twice. The first time, he had a black and
white reprint of a militiawoman that I loved on sight - her hair was askew and
she had her rifle on her shoulder with a devil-may-care confidence - but I
didn't have the cash on hand to buy it from him. The next time I saw the
vendor, some months later, he told me he had sold out of that reprint and it
would be awhile before he made more. And I didn't see him, or that particular
photograph, again.
What would be the Holy Grail for your collection?
I have a quick answer for this
one! In the early 1990s, the Spanish Cultural Ministry put on an exhibition of
Hungarian-born Kati Horna's Spanish Civil War photography at the University of
Salamanca. The exhibition book, Kati
Horna: fotografías de la guerra civil española (1937-1938),
is one of my most-sought after pieces. Very few copies of the exhibition book
were made, and it is out of print. If you have it, I will snatch it from your
hands and run away.
Who is your favorite bookseller / bookstore?
Well, I love browsing the
Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America website and typing in "Spanish
Civil War" to see what's out there or what has been found. Whenever I travel to
a new place, I try to search out the used bookstores, as I find that used and
rare bookstores are such lovely idiosyncratic places for discovering treasures.
During my high school years in
Williamsburg, VA, Mermaid Books on Prince George St. definitely encouraged my
love for rare and unusual books. I also like to browse the site for Bolerium
Books in San Francisco - "Fighting Commodity Fetishism with Commodity
Fetishism" is one of their postcards they sent me with a book I bought.
What would you collect if you didn't collect books?
I honestly don't know. Books are
fundamental to my being and how I interact with the world and with history.
I guess I would choose a similar historical
genre of a daily object that people found fundamentally necessary for expressing
their creativity and their engagement with the world - like antiquarian maps or
Quaker spindles.
(Nominations for Bright Young Collectors (including self-nominations) are welcome at nathan@finebooksmagazine.com)
Offerings will include:
