Book Patrol

Book Vandals and the Dust Jackets of Joe Orton

2009-11-04T07:11:00.000-08:00

Maury County, TN Library Director Elizabeth Potts shows one of several books
which have had “dirty” words marked through. Others have editorial comments added.

Library books attacked by censors and vandals have recently been in the news. This is not strictly news; library patrons with blue pens and scissors have been a bane of librarians for centuries.

Neatnik Censor Attacks Books Neatly

According to the Columbia, Tennessee Daily Herald, someone has been crossing out dirty words in books. Employees at the Maury County (TN) Library are not amused.

“It bothers me because nobody is holding a gun to their head making them read these books,” said Elizabeth Potts, director of the county library. “If they don’t like them, they should just return them.”

Curiously, the mark-outs are not the traditional scrawled scratch-throughs; thankfully, the censor was a neat-freak.

Books? Books? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Books!

How ‘bout that trio of thirteen and fourteen year olds in Brookfield, Mass. under investigation for spitting - spitting! - into library books (and engaging in curious acts with stuffed animals)?

The intelligence level of this unholy triad of adolescent idiots can be measured by the fact that they video'd themselves and posted the results - six videos! - on YouTube. Saliva in the Stacks/Hockin' Loogies In the Library - The Series has, fortunately, been removed from the website. Crude. Artless. Unimaginative. Next stop: America's Funniest Philistine Home Videos.

This is a far cry from The Wicked Cabin of Book Defacement, a section of Abraxa’s Garden of Sadistic Delights, dedicated to defacing the Bible:

“Defacing the Bible and other types of 'holy writ' now comes to be a fond past-time of mine. I like to fill books whose laws and teachings sought to repress my sexual fantasies with images that, instead, express them.”

(Imagery NSFW).

"Libraries might as well not exist; they’ve got endless shelves for rubbish and hardly any space for good books." Joe Orton, 1967

None of these acts compare, however, with the guerilla warfare book art created by British playwright Joe Orton and his mentor, partner, and eventual murderer, Kenneth Halliwell.

“Orton and Halliwell first came to the public attention not as writers but through an elaborate and extended prank played out at their local library, altering book covers and adding new blurbs to dust jackets. Incensed at the poor choice of books at Essex Road, their local library, they began stealing books. These were smuggled out, dust jackets altered, new blurbs written on inside flaps and then surreptitiously returned.

  “They had been suspected for some time and extra staff had been drafted to catch the culprits, but with no success. They were eventually caught by the careful detective work of Sydney Porrett, a senior clerk with Islington Council. A letter was sent to Halliwell asking him to remove an illegally parked car. Their typed reply matched typeface irregularities in the defaced books and the men were caught.

  “While never openly admitting the reasons for the prank, these acts of guerrilla artwork were an early indication of Orton’s desire to shock and provoke. His targets were the genteel middle classes, authority and defenders of ‘morality’, against whom much of Orton’s later written work would rail against.”

If you feel a compulsion to mess up library books, stifle it. But if you must, kindly do it with style.

Picturing the London Book Trade

2009-11-03T22:10:00.000-08:00

Bernard Shapero

"Bookdealing must be amongst the most wonderfully eccentric
professions on Earth" - Mike Tsang

Photographer Mike Tsang had recently returned to London from a demanding project in the Sudan when he popped in to visit his friend who was then manager of the Biblion bookshop in London. By the time he left the seeds for "The London Book Trade" project were planted. Tsang would go around town photographing booksellers in their domain with the end result being an exhibition at Biblion. When all was said and done Tsang had photographed most of the booksellers of note in London and the result is astonishing.

Henry Sotheran's, founded in 1761

On one hand, you get the feeling Tsang is documenting an endangered species; a visual record of a vanishing breed. Almost all are pictured alone. Yet, through the solitude, there is this subtle sense of power. The power of being surrounded by books and what they hold. This is the stuff everything is built on.

As we witness the monetary value of most books being sucked out by the online marketplace we can also can see an enhanced value being created by such technological pressure. The bookseller has become as much a guardian of our printed history as he is a proprietor.

Ed Maggs of Maggs Brothers

I had a chance to ask Mike Tsang a few questions regarding the project and his own book life.

Book Patrol: How did the project come about and what was your relationship to books before it started?

Mike Tsang: My friend Ben Houston was at the time the manager of Biblion, a shop in a prime Mayfair location renting shelf space to independent book dealers who wanted a different outlet for their stock or who otherwise couldn’t afford such a location themselves. I had just came back from photographing a difficult project in Sudan and popped in to see him on a whim – we got talking and he showed me around the gallery space Biblion also housed, for which he was also the curator. As I recall it was exhibiting some fantastic sculptures but the subject matter was quite unrelated to the world Biblion inhabits, and Ben convinced me that photographic portraits of rare and antiquarian bookdealers would be a fantastic project, and also an exhibition of these at the gallery would be the perfect blend of subject matter and setting.

I must admit that despite being an avid reader of literature since childhood, I had very little inkling of what bookdealing was or even what makes a rare book rare. At the time however I was looking for a personal project that could get me re-involved with my hometown of London after some time away, and this seemed an intriguing prospect with a ready-made outlet for my work.I started by shooting a few eminent local bookdealers that Ben arranged contact with and we both loved the portraits and direction of the project. The London book trade is by definition quite close and I then made contact with a lot of the portrait subjects by purely word of mouth from a previous subject who supported the project. Things progressed rapidly from there and I have now luckily photographed almost anyone worth taking a portrait of in the industry, something I feel very privileged to have done since as far as I know such a photographic collection has never been assembled before.

Robert Frew

BP: With so much attention being paid to the demise of the bookshop these days it is quite refreshing to see a glimpse of booksellers in their domain. As you visited the booksellers of London did you a get sense of the doom and gloom that seems to permeate the current media coverage of bookshops?

MT: It’s true that the book trade is suffering from challenging times. I made sure to ask each dealer I photographed how their business was going – a common answer was that the Internet age had eroded the dealer’s traditional advantage: knowledge of the rarity of a cook and thus an accurate estimate of the value of it. Now an average punter can look on Google very quickly to establish a rough price to ask from the dealer – so now knowledge has become more disseminated amongst the public instead being confined to learned professionals, reducing the dealer’s margins. Other factors such as the rise in high street rents, the fall in literary budgets, the competition from charity bookshops also come into play - these causes combined have led to the reduction in the number of independent book dealers in London by almost a third in the last decade alone. They have in various numbers taken proactive steps to take advantage of new technology – most have moved cataloguing online, concentrated on email marketing and gained access to a wider international customers through the Internet – one dealer was even in the process of setting up a YouTube channel!

And whilst some book dealers have closed their brick-and-mortar shops and moved to phone and email dealing only, all stressed the still-present need for personal contact with customers, whether that is in a five-story English townhouse in Mayfair or simply a coffee and a chat at the next book fair. As Sheila Markham, writer and lover of books in equal measure, told me: "Where is the thrill of the chase in much of today’s online book buying?” And I believe that is the reason the business will still survive. Like all industries, the book trade is subject to change, and although change with the times bookdealing must I hope that the tradition and romance involved in finding that perfect rarity and the perfect buyer to match will remain – although perhaps they will be matched over a YouTube channel and not a bookshop.

Pom Harrington of Peter Harrington Books

BP: What did you take away from the experience? Has your relationship to books changed?

MT: The biggest privilege I have had the pleasure of receiving is to have met some of the fascinating characters involved in the trade. Bookdealing must be amongst the most wonderfully eccentric professions on Earth, and a five-minute conversation with anyone involved can be worth 5 hours of entertainment with someone else. To have the opportunity to photograph them and document this trade as it embarks on an uncertain future, and in my very own hometown – it has been an immensely enjoyable project for me. As for my relationship with books – I have always loved them, but only ever to read and not to find or collect. I think now I appreciate that every book really tells two stories – the one written through the words inside, and the one written by the hands through which it has passed through.

"The London Book Trade" is on view at Biblion through the 7th of November. Tsang is also looking for potential venues in U.S.

More information and photos at Tsang's website and here.

Gerda Yourselves For Pleasure: Wegener Bared at NYC Rare Book Shop-Gallery

2009-11-03T00:30:00.000-08:00

Scène de Carnaval. ca. 1920s. [11" x 16 7/8"]

A fine selection of works by famed Art Deco book illustrator and painter Gerda Wegener is on exhibition at Leonard Fox Ltd, in the rare book dealer’s shop-gallery on Madison Avenue in New York City October 29 through November 25, 2009.

A small section of the exhibition.

Where to begin about Gerda Gottlieb Wegener Porta (1886-1940)? Many, this author included, were first introduced to the Danish artist through her spirited and playfully exquisite erotic imagery. But her initial success was as a fashion and contemporary scene illustrator for Vogue, La Vie Parisienne, Fantasio, and many other Parisian magazines; she covered the Parisian pleasure beat.

Mais Les Elements Ne Sont Plus Les Mémes. Fantasio, February, 1926.

Model and Painting. 1922. [11 1/4" x 8 7/8"]

Here’s where her story gets extremely interesting and why the contemporary mainstream had to gird themselves for the details of Gerda’s avant-garde personal life:

Night on the Town. 1925. [20" x 16"]

Cafe. ca. 1925.

In 1904, she married fellow Dane and artist Einar Wegener (1882-1931). In female guise, as "Lili," he became Gerda's favorite model. Einar Wegener eventually came out as a transsexual woman, and, in 1930, had the first publicly known sex reassignment surgery, taking the name Lili Elbe. Gerda Wegener supported Elbe throughout his/her transition. The king of Denmark declared the Wegener marriage null and void in October 1930. "Not to be" was his answer to the classic Danish dilemma.

After Lili's death in 1931, Gerda married Major Fernando Porta (born 1896), an Italian officer, aviator, and diplomat ten years her junior, and moved with him to Morocco, specifically Marrakech and Casablanca. She divorced Porta in 1936 and returned to Denmark in 1938. Her last exhibition was held in 1939 but by this time Gerda's work was, alas, largely out of fashion.

Not in the Fox exhibition: Three of the twelve watercolors in pochoir by
Wegener for Douze Sonnets Lascifs Pour accompagner la Suite
d'aquaelles Inituléeles Déclassements d'Eros. Erotopolis [Paris]:
A L'Enseigne du Faune [M. Duflou], 1925. (Pia 363). Wegener did not sign
her erotic artwork but it is easily identified as hers by the signature
"Domino" mask-symbol located at lower right or left of her work.

Amongst the books that Gerda Wegener illustrated, often in pochoir (as the original erotic works above) are:

"Le Livre des Vikings" by Charles Guyot (1920 ou 1924)
"Une Aventure d'Amour à Venise" by Giacomo Casanova. Le Livre du Bibliophile. Georges Briffaut. Collection Le Livre du Bibliophile. Paris. 1927.
"Les Contes" by La Fontaine (1928-1929).
"Contes de mon Père le Jars" & "Sur Talons rouges" by Eric Allatini (1929)
"Fortunio" by Théophile Gautier (1934)

___________

Exhibition images courtesy of Cecily at
Leonard Fox Ltd
790 Madison Avenue, Suite 505,
NYC, NY 10065.

Book Yourself Into The Library Hotel

2009-11-02T08:18:00.000-08:00

Entrance to the Library Hotel

Bibliophiles visiting New York City and in need of a space to check-into should check-out The Library Hotel, a beautiful luxury boutique hostelry conveniently located on Madison Avenue and 41st Street, also known as Library Way, just steps away from the majestic New York Public Library.

Each floor has six rooms and is laid out according to the ten categories of the Dewey Decimal System: Social Sciences, Literature, Languages, History, Math & Science, General Knowledge, Technology, Philosophy, the Arts, and Religion. Each of the sixty exquisitely appointed rooms have been individually adorned with a collection of art and books relevant to one distinctive topic within the category of the floor it belongs to.

The Reading Room

The third floor, for instance, is classified as Social Sciences with room 300,006 devoted to the Law; 300.005 devoted to Money; 300.004 World Culture; 300.003 Economics; 300.002 Political Science; and room 300.001 for Education, each room containing a small library of books concerning the room’s theme-subject.

So, if you really want a bad night’s sleep, spend your off-hours in Manhattan in the Library Hotel’s room 300.002, Economics.

Lobby

Need to recover after a night of tossing and turning in parallel play with the markets? No problem. Ask to be moved to the twelfth floor, Religion, where a higher power will tuck you in and say Amen after you’ve read about Ancient Religion (Mythology) in room 1200.006; or Native American creeds in room 1200.005; Germanic Religion in room 1200.004; New Age, 1200.003; African Religion, 1200.002; and Eastern Religion in room 1200.001.

Judeo-Christianity is, presumably, shoe-horned into Ancient Religion (Mythology), though I suspect certain members of the body politic would consider that an insult and loudly demonstrate their protest at the hotel’s entrance: where oh where can I find a Bible in this joint that isn’t on the same shelf as the Khorda Avesta, the book of common prayer in Zoroastrianism, or The Egyptian Book of the Dead?

The other floors are (going up!):

Fourth Floor: Language

400.006 Ancient Language
400.005 Middle Eastern Language
400.004 Asian Language
400.003 Germanic Language
400.002 Romance Language
400.001 Slavic Language

Fifth Floor: Math and Science

500.006 Astronomy
500.005 Dinosaurs
500.004 Botany
500.003 Zoology
500.002 Geology
500.001 Mathematics

Sixth Floor: Technology

600.006 Health & Beauty
600.005 Computers
600.004 Medicine
600.003 Management
600.002 Manufacturing
600.001 Advertising

Seventh Floor: The Arts

700.006 Fashion Design
700.005 Music
700.004 Photography
700.003 Performing Arts
700.002 Paintings
700.001 Architecture

Eighth Floor: Literature

800.006 Mystery
800.005 Fairy Tales
800.004 Dramatic Literature
800.003 Poetry
800.002 Classic Fiction
800.001 Erotic Literature

Ninth Floor: History

900.006 Biography
900.005 Geography & Travel
900.004 Asian History
900.003 Oceanography
900.002 Ancient History
900.001 20th Century History

Tenth Floor: General Knowledge

1000.006 New Media
1000.005 Journalism
1000.004 Museums
1000.003 Encyclopedic Works
1000.002 Almanacs
1000.001 Libraries

Eleventh Floor: Philosophy

1100.006 Love
1100.005 Paranormal
1100.004 Psychology
1100.003 Philosophy
1100.002 Ethics
1100.001 Logic

(I'm anxious to experience a good paranormal night's sleep, myself. Throw in a little Shopenhauer and enjoy a side of suicidal depression with your breakfast sausage n' eggs).

It’s a regular Tower of Babel at the Library Hotel, with languages touted as spoken there including Slovak, Czech, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Danish, French, German, Spanish, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Gujarati and English. It pains me to report that Phuthi, the Nguni Bantu language spoken in southern Lesotho and areas in South Africa adjacent to the same border, is not amongst the hotel’s tongues of choice. Take your clicking consonants elsewhere for a good night’s sleep.

The hotel has a Book Lover’s Deal offering bibliophiles 20% off room rates but it is unclear if and how one needs to offer proof of bibliophilia. Ink stains on fingertips? An optometrist's diagnosis of eye-strain? A bank statement as evidence that all your money has been funneled into book stores?
________

The Library Hotel
299 Madison Ave (41st Street)
New York, NY 10017

Sherman Alexie at Big Think

2009-11-01T12:37:00.000-08:00

Here is a 21 minute gem of an interview with Alexie at Big Think. From his literary influences to his place in both the current literary cannon and in the Native American Literature canon. From his thoughts on e-books and the printed book to readings and being a multi-genre writer and the role of drugs and alcohol in his life and writing.

A must see for any Alexie fan or really anyone interested in writing, reading and the state of the book world.

Here's the full transcript of the interview:

Sherman Alexie: My name is Sherman Alexie and I’m the bantamweight champion of the world. No, I’m a writer, poet, short story writer, novelist, screenwriter.

Question: How has it felt becoming a literary community “insider”?

Sherman Alexie: You young bastard, I’m doing okay. It is a strange dilemma because in some sense, you know, I was very native, very native identified, and I still am, but that’s almost become secondary. I’ve sort of joined the tribe of highly established literary writers. So, you know, I’m with the Jonathan Franzens of the world. You know, I know him a little bit, but that’s sort of my peer group now, rather than just sort of, you know, Indian world, literary world, I’m now in, you know, this sort of make-believe world of writers who supposedly hang out a lot, although none of us ever do. So I’m in a faux community of writers, highly successful, literary writers now.

Question: Has success changed your work?

Sherman Alexie: Oh, it’s all, I mean, I haven’t changed anything I’ve written based on all that stuff. So the perceptions of me may have changed, or my career, but I’m still writing the same stuff, it’s still pretty much about Spokane Indian males, you know, stumbling through life. So I think it’s because of the combination of skills I have, you know, I work in multi-genres, you know, I do stand-up comedy, I help make movies, I think all of that has contributed to it. I’m not just a novelist or not just a short story writer. So I think in this highly technological world with many diverse and diffuse influences, I think I’m able to hit a lot of aces.

Question: When you’re a writer, is doing anything besides writing selling out?

Sherman Alexie: Nobody who’s ever been poor would ever use the phrase “selling out.” You know, my influences in the multi-genre artists come from my Indian writing ancestors, the previous generation. When you’re talking James Welch, Simon Ortiz, Scott Momaday, Joy Harjo, Leslie Silko, Linda Hogan, Adrian C. Louis, all of these writers were multi-genre. They all wrote poetry and novels and short stories and non-fiction and dabbled in songwriting and filmmaking and documentary making. So my original influences were Native American, multi-genre artists.

Now, these days, the younger Native writers are not multi-genre, so it’s very interesting. I’m not sure what’s happening, why that has changed, but I grew up as a kid writer. Nobody ever told me I was supposed to be one thing, so just because I happened to become successful in a number of those genres, it wasn’t because I was pursuing them economically, it was because I saw the artistic possibilities in all of it. And I was taught those when I was a, you know, 19-year-old undergraduate.

Question: Why haven’t you joined academia?

Sherman Alexie: Yeah, I think I’m the least educated Indian writer out there. I’ve taught at the University of Washington, so, but I’m not a good teacher, so I think that probably disqualifies me. Yeah, I’m not in academia at all, in terms of a full-time career. I think it’s interesting, because I think, when you look at Native American literature, you’re going to find that it doesn’t really reflect the diversity of the ways in which the writers actually lived their lives. Nobody’s ever written, for instance, an academic farce, a Native American teacher at college farce, which is a time-honored and wonderful genre. You know, David Lodge made a whole career out of it, writing academic farces and, you know, every writer you can name has written it, but we haven’t done it. You know, where’s that novel about that Indian architect or that Indian lawyer. There’s a distinct lack of white-collar Native American literature, despite the fact that most of its most visible practitioners are white-collar themselves. So I think there’s an effort, somewhat of an insecurity to prove your Indian-ness by focusing almost entirely on a reservation-based identity.

Question: What’s the connection between your writing and your stand-up comedy?

Sherman Alexie: Well, I think it’s old-fashioned actually. You know, I think people think it’s something new, but the idea of being a storyteller, you know, for most of our existence was not related to books, it was about the ability to stand up in front of the fire and, you know, earn your supper. So I think it’s just something old and inspired in me, but I never really was the funny guy growing up. If you’d ask my siblings, they’d tell you I was the depressed guy in the basement, but they’re the funny ones. But it just, I got on stage and started talking and people laughed. At the beginning, I didn’t even necessarily know what was happening, but as the years have gone on, I realized that humor is pretty amazing in its ability to transcend differences, politically, ethnically, racially, geographically, economically. There’s something about it that really opens people up spiritually, I think, and they listen. They pay attention. And it’s also a great way to offend people.

I don’t know, we’ve all been to literary readings, you know, where we got theater, but so bored by the person up in front of us reading their work so dispassionately that it nearly turns us off their books. You know, there are writers who I’ve heard do their work that I can only hear their voice when I’m reading their books and it’s so disinterested in their own stuff and I just never wanted to do that. I wanted to make the mistake the other way, you know, I’m pleased when somebody’s offended, you know, by my large stage presence, because there’s still people who show up who get offended. I get up there and give a show and I’m improvising and, you know, talking about current events and what happened yesterday or what happened an hour ago, what happened five minutes before I walked into the place, you know, and giving people a glimpse of how my, you know, crazy mind works. And then they’ll come up after me and say, “Well, I’m really disappointed you didn’t read the story,” and you look at them and think, “Well, you can read the story, you know, what happened tonight will only happen once! You know, you were here for a one-time thing!” So I guess people are trapped in their perception of what a literary artist is supposed to be.

Question: Do you find narrative or poetry harder?

Sherman Alexie: You know, I write poems naturally. I’m writing them all the time. I think it’s more of a reflex talent than fiction is for me. Seems like I have to work harder to write fiction. That said, poems are much more demanding, you have fewer words, you can make fewer mistakes. You know, if you write a ten-line poem, you really can’t make any mistakes. If you do, the poem is terrible. But when you write a novel, you have all that space to mess up in and people are more forgiving. So I think poetry audiences are far more demanding than fiction audiences are.

Question: What do you consider your best work?

Sherman Alexie: Well, you know, writers generally come in two groups, those who love what they do and those who can’t stand what they do. I’m in the second group. I have a really difficult time looking back. Yeah, so I figure out of the thousands of pages I’ve published, there’s probably about 100 great pages. I think I worked on probably about a 2 percent greatness rate. So there’s probably 10 poems, 2 stories that are great and the rest of it is from anywhere from pretty good to, you know, total crap.

Question: Does the print book have a future?

Sherman Alexie: You know, the book is not played out. The idea of what a book can be is not played out in its form as it is, with paper and covers. And there are things that can be that digital will never touch, and that’s one of the things I wanted to do with this, and comparing it to a cassette tape, the old-fashioned way of making a mix tape, which, you know, I love burning CD’s, too, but there is something far more passionate and hands-on and hard work about making a mix tape on a cassette. It’s too easy to revise with a CD. And today’s technology makes it too easy to change immediately. You can cover your mistakes quicker. I think it allows you to have the sheen of perfection around yourself and with an old-fashioned book or an old-fashioned cassette tape, you can actually see all the flaws and imperfections and the bad choices. And I think there’s something we lose with technology when you talk about bad choices.

Question: Why do you consider e-books elitist?

Sherman Alexie: Well, they cost $300, number one. I don’t think anything that costs $300 can be called egalitarian. You know, how much of the world can afford a $300 reading device? 1 percent of 1 percent of 1 percent, it automatically qualifies for, you know, economically elite status.

But what’s really going on here, the reading public doesn’t really know about, and all they’re concerned about and all they’re defending is their reading convenience, which I completely understand. Whether it’s because of physical disabilities or because of personal preference, or just the newness of it, why they love a digital book. But they don’t understand the economic, corporate pressures going on in the publishing world. And what’s going to happen, and this is going to happen on the Internet, too. We like to pretend that the Internet is free, you know, we like to pretend it’s an open source culture, but as culture changes, as old corporate models of distributing information are changing, you know, I don’t know why people assume that corporations aren’t going to take over this medium as well, because they can.

And so what’s happening in the book world, the digital books, is that these e-book companies, you know, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, others that are rising, they just don’t seek to publish books, they’re going to end up seeking the books to be chosen to be published. So this economic model, the way it’s set up now, is going to favor a certain kind of book and publishers and being economically motivated companies are only going to be publishing those kinds of books. And the divide between pop culture, pop writing, and literary writing is just going to increase and increase and increase and it’s going to make it harder and harder and harder for first-time writers to get published in any form whatsoever where they’ll get attention.

Question: Does the Web help or hurt the connection between artist and audience?

Sherman Alexie: Who can find you? Who’s going to find anybody? Nobody’s really risen out of the Internet to become a major voice. They always end up getting a book published and then the book makes them a major voice, but nobody has. I mean, I’m trying to think, you know, I’m not Internet averse at all, I’m doing this. I mean, I love the Internet. But the fact is, is that it’s a giant, giant, unfiltered library which has its strengths and beauty, but it’s impossible to find people.

And, you know, what we end up doing anyway is I go to about five sites. You know, and I think most people probably do the same thing, you create this little small town inside the Internet and we end up in all these little, tiny separate communities. Joan Jett, an interview with Joan Jett, she said about the music industry, she said the thing that’s missing now is anticipation. She said that nobody gets in a big line outside of Tower Records any more waiting for that new Stones album to drop. And nobody stands in line outside a record store waiting to buy the tickets for The Who concert. There’s a real lack of community, you know, in the Internet experience when it comes to art. And you can’t tell me and it’s not true, that communicating strictly through the Internet forms community in the way that being together does. You’re missing all but one sense. You don’t smell people, you don’t really hear them, you don’t see them, and we’re animals, we’re creatures of senses, and the Internet deprives you of many of those.

And so I know there’s new art coming based on this technology and some if it’s happening and it’s exciting and interesting, but there’s nothing wrong with the old art. And I always worry and you see it with certain Internet folks, the way in which they’re completely willing to jettison their past in the pursuit of something new, and that’s what I’m worried about.

Question: What does it mean to be a “method author”?

Sherman Alexie: Well, in order to write about the emotional state of a character, I have to get as close as possible to being in that emotional state. So I have to get that sad, I have to get that happy, that crazed, that bizarre, that obsessed. You know, whatever one of my characters are going through, I have to find my way into it. You know, it’s just the way I do it.

Question: Can you give an example from your latest book?

Sherman Alexie: Well, there’s a story in this book [“War Dances”] called the “Ballad of Paul Nonetheless,” where he becomes so obsessed with pop music and so obsessed with his iPod, that he, you know, every thought he has becomes directly related to a song. So I went that far into it. I tried to talk only in song lyrics. You know, whenever anybody was talking to me, I drove my friends and family mad, because whenever they would talk to me, you know, I would say, “Well, that reminds me of this, you know, Rolling Stones song,” or whenever anybody said something accidentally that was a lyric or a title of a song, I would then sing the song. So it was crazy. But it got me seeing the way it was completely alienating my friends and family, really got me to a place where I could write that story about this really genial guy who’s actually very much an anti-hero.

Question: How did you know you had a drinking problem?

Sherman Alexie: Oh, a case of beer a day. You know, I could drink a fifth of tequila a day. You know, it becomes a drinking problem when it affects your relationships with people, when it affects your job or your school, your grade point average. You know, affects your, it’s a drinking problem when you’re sitting on your couch at home drinking the case of beer all by yourself, and then you pass out and grab the fifth of tequila when you wake up. So pretty obvious what my problem was.

Question: Does alcohol primarily help or hurt writers?

Sherman Alexie: Well, I wrote “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” and “The Business of Fancy Dancing” while drunk and drinking. So there’s certainly a lot to be said for my desperate years, my alcoholic years, my active alcoholic years is being the source of some pretty good work, for being the source of the two books that established and made my career. But the thing is, it’s unsustainable. You know, if you are using substances to fuel your creativity, you’re going to have a very, very short artistic life. You’re going to be a sprinter and by and large, I wanted to become a marathon runner. And I can only run the marathon if I’m sober.

You kill your brain. You kill your brain. You know, please try to find me, the successful drug user. You know, try to find me, the high-functioning alcoholic, you know, career person, and you could probably find in their work when they were drinking, when they weren’t. I bet you could look at the downfall of some amazing writers who wrote one or two great books and then just fell apart, I’m pretty sure that’s related to alcohol consumption. So, it’s unsustainable, you know, it’s sort of like the environment, you can only pour so much pollutants into it before the temperature changes dramatically. So I think drug and alcohol abuse is like the greenhouse affect for writers.

Question: As a Native American writer, do you feel special pressure to address alcoholism?

Sherman Alexie: Well, I mean, I’m an alcoholic, that’s what, you know, my family is filled with alcoholics. My tribe is filled with alcoholics. The whole race is filled with alcoholics. For those Indians who try to pretend it’s a stereotype, they’re in deep, deep denial. It’s an every day part of my life and as a writer, I use that to write about it. You know, partly for fictional purposes, and narrative purposes, but partly with the social hope that by writing about it, maybe it’ll help people get sober, and it has. I’ve heard from them. You know, the social function of art is very important to me. It’s not just for art’s sake. I have very specific ideas in mind about what it can do. I’ve seen it happen. So it is writing about alcohol that helps me stay sober. And I think reading about alcoholism helps other people stay sober.

Question: Have your kids affected your writing?

Sherman Alexie: I try to meet deadlines. I have, you know, more dependents, so it’s a very, very basic triangle needs. That bottom, you know, part of the triangle. But, well, they’re always surprising me. The kids are always surprising me with their insights into the world and of course because they’re my children, I pay more attention to what they’re saying than pretty much everybody else on the planet. I care more what my kids say on a daily basis than, you know, the smartest people on the planet. You know? And so I listen and their insights are really surprising and the way in which how unfiltered they are and their obsessions and passions, they don’t apologize for any of that. So I learn a lot from them, you know, it’s also aggravating and irritating and exhausting, the sacrifices you make and, you know, sometimes it feels like my whole life is a to-do list. But, you know, I think their passion for life really has re-inspired me.

Question: Do you want your children to read your work?

Sherman Alexie: No. I don’t, I mean, they’re autonomous. I certainly, if they want to read my stuff and talk about it later, that’ll be great. But until then, it was so funny though, I was profiled on the Lehrer News Hour recently and I was watching the rough cut of it and my son came down, my eight year old, and he was watching it on the TV with me and it was a five-minute piece about poetry and I read a couple poems and I read one very emotional one about my father’s death. And it was over and my son looked at me, he’s eight years old, he looked at me and he goes, “Dad, you’re pretty good!” So that was a great moment.

Question: Whom would you most like to meet?

Sherman Alexie: It’s funny, this popped into my head, so I’ll go with it, Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was banned from baseball in 1919 for allegedly fixing the World Series. Country boy, ended up being a great baseball player, one of the greatest of all time, I’d like to talk to him about that World Series, about the mysteries of human nature. Because, you know, you’re looking at the stats, I’m pretty sure he didn’t participate in the fix, but he knew about it, so I’d like to have a discussion of morality with Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Question: Who are your literary heroes?

Sherman Alexie: Well, there are just certain poems and novels and stories that resonate forever and ever. You know, poems I always return to, Emily Dickinson: “Because I could not stop for Death, that kindly stopped for me.” You know, Theodore Roethke: “I know a woman,” you know, “I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, when small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them.” James Wright: “Suddenly I realized that if I stepped outside my body, I would break into blossom.” And then, you know, the end of “Grapes of Wrath,” when Rose of Sharon breastfeeds, you know, her child has died, but she breastfeeds the starving man, that moment? So it’s always individual works. Even in life, I don’t have heroes. I believe in heroic ideas, because the creators of all those ideas are very human. And if you make heroes out of people, you will invariably be disappointed.

Question: Was there a particular work that moved you as a child?

Sherman Alexie: Oh, Ezra Jack Keats, “A Snowy Day,” the book. You know, the idea of multicultural literature is very new and so as a little Indian boy growing up on the reservation, there was nobody like me in the books, so you always had to extrapolate. But when I picked up A Snowy Day with that inner-city black kid, that child, walking through the, you know, snow covered, pretty quiet and lonely city, oh, I mean, when he was making snow angels and, you know, when he was getting in snowball fights and when he got home to his mother and it was cold and she put him in a hot bathtub and put him to sleep, the loneliness and the love in that book, oh, just gorgeous. So that picture resonates with me still.

The Good "Book Reverend"

2009-10-31T15:32:00.000-07:00

Reverend Martin Weskott

In 1987 President Ronald Regan made his now famous plea, "Tear Down This Wall," to Mikhail Gorbachev in front of the Berlin Wall. Nowhere in his speech did he say Tear Down This Wall and Throw All the Books Out.

Twenty-nine months later the wall was gone and with it went upwards of 100 million books published in East Germany that were simply thrown away.

Enter Reverend Martin Weskott. After seeing an image in the newspaper of thousands of books in the Leipzig garbage dump Weskott went to work. With a truck and a few friends he went down to the dump to save as many books as he could.

To date, Weskott has gathered over one million discarded books. Many he has sent to libraries around the world but about 50,000 of them live in the barn next to his church where after Sunday services parishoners and book hunters are allowed in to shop.

Here's the story and a video tour of the place via the AFP.

Books For Treats

2009-10-30T16:03:00.000-07:00

click to enlarge

Each Halloween Americans spend $950 million on candy; we buy 20 million pounds of candy corn alone. Beside the dress up and the pumpkins many of our kids experience their biggest sugar rush and crash of the year. And as fun as trick or treating is Halloween night often ends ugly for them and for us! The sugar meltdowns wipe out all the fun we had getting ready for the big night.

Well, there might be a better way.

Since Halloween 2001 Book for Treats has given away thousands of used books each year to kids in the San Jose, CA area. Their tagline reads "Give Brain Candy. Feed Kids' Minds, Not Their Cavities."

Books For Treats was founded by Rebecca Morgan, who amazingly enough does not have kids. Morgan; however, is deeply "concerned about literacy, childhood obesity and diabetes and wanted to make a difference to the children in my community.” And she has. The program has garnered support from the San Jose mayor, current and former city council members and the Diabetes Association.

So far only a few libraries around the country have picked up on this worthy concept and I hope more jump on board in the years ahead.

I know I'm sold and tomorrow night when you come to my door you will get a book and a piece of candy.

Comic by Greg Evans

A "Witch" So Rare It's Scary

2009-10-30T00:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, some water-stains; it's a maritime novel, what'd you expect?

This copy, apparently, skimmed the seas.

Some days I wake up lucky. I now have before me one of the great rarities in American literature, the true first edition of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Water Witch. Published no later than September 18, 1830, the London edition followed in October, and the Philadelphia edition in the the Spring of 1831.

Only sixteen copies of this, the Dresden edition, are known to exist: OCLC and KVK locate twelve copies in institutional collections worldwide, and ABPC records only four copies at auction within the last thirty-five years (one of which was a bound-up train-wreck).

This edition was printed by C.C. Meinhold and Sons in Dresden for the German bookseller who grandly styled himself as Walthersche Hofbuchhandlung, and then distributed to Cooper's translators and other publishers. Cooper, per his (draft) contract with Walther (at Dartmouth College Library), was given ten copies out of an unknown total print run which must surely have been exceedingly small.

"I do not know of any copies of the Dresden edition now existing" (Susan Fenimore Cooper, Letter dated October 4, 1886, to Rev. Richard Salter Storrs, D.D.).

The copy under notice is bound three volumes in one, in contemporary half-cloth over German marbled boards; a typical Dresden binding of the era.

The most romantic of Cooper's sea-tales (as a young man Cooper was a midshipman in the United States Navy), the novel occurs entirely in New York City, its environs, and on its waterways during the close of the seventeenth century. The chief character of this rousing drama is the charming and restless brigantine named the Water Witch, whose charming and restless owner and commander is known only as the "Skimmer of the Seas." The rakish brigand's romantic abduction of a local burgher's beautiful niece sets the story in motion.

Cooper's genius here was to use the late seventeenth-early nineteenth century popular plot device of European lady-kidnapped-by-oriental-pirates and adapt it to an American locale with American characters. Its popularity, like that of Cooper's novels and tales featuring Natty Bumpo, i.e. The Last of the Mohicans, rests on its faithful recreation of early America, with romance and adventure.

"Cooper's achievement, although uneven and the result of brilliant improvisation rather than a deeply considered artistry, was nevertheless sustained almost to the close of a hectic, crowded career. His worldwide fame attests to his powers of invention, for his novels have been popular principally for their variety of dramatic incidents, vivid depiction of romantic scenes and situations, and adventurous plots. But a more sophisticated view caused a revival of interest in the mid-20th century concentrating on Cooper's novels in their creation of tension between different loevels of society, between society and the individual, between the settlement and the wilderness, and between civil law and natural rights as these suggest issues of moral and mythic import" (OCAL).

"This was rather a drama of the coast than a tale of the sea; the movements of the vessels being confined entirely to the waters connected with the harbor of New York. If less brilliant than 'The Red Rover,' the spirit and interest which pervade 'The Water-Witch' are still very striking; there is an atmosphere of romance infused into the narrative, singularly different from the sober coloring of Puritan life in 'The Wish-ton-Wish.' It is strikingly picturesque also, more so than most works from the same pen. But on the other hand, there is less of high moral tone in the book than was usual with Mr. Cooper; it carries a carnival aspect about it; the shell was very gay and brilliant, the kernel was less nourishing than usual" (Susan Fenimore Cooper, Pages and Pictures from the Writings of James Fenimore Cooper, p.231).

Cooper (1789-1851) wrote the novel in Rome, during his travels abroad (1826-1833) as the nominal U.S. consul at Lyons.

It is a novel that cries out for adaptation to film.

As far as this scarce edition is concerned, the odds are that I'll never see another copy in my lifetime. Like I said, I woke up lucky this morning
________

[COOPER, James Fenimore]. The Water-Witch or The Skimmer of the Seas. A Tale by the Author of Pilot, Red Rover, etc., etc. etc. ... In Three Volumes. Dresden: Printed for Walther, 1830. Three octavo volumes. xii, 207, [1, blank]; [4], 292, [4]; 250, [2] pp. BAL 3845.

Glamorous Ghost Haunts Louisiana Library

2009-10-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it is the quiet that draws them in. Or the musty scent of aging leather bindings and brittle pages. Or maybe it's the all too rare reverence those who frequent them have for history and literature. Whatever their reasons, ghosts are especially fond of libraries. One librarian has documented haunted libraries in 44 of the 50 states, with most claiming more than one poltergeist-plagued public institution. Whether or not one swears by the mantra of the Cowardly Lion of Oz, ("I do believe in ghosts, I do believe in ghosts, I do, I do, I do, I doooo.") these fables of folio-fancying phantoms continue to fascinate. In celebration of Halloween, Book Patrol brings you the biography of a singularly seductive specter of the stacks.

Fittingly, this glamorous ghost haunts a Neo-Italianate mansion turned public library located on St. Charles Street in the Garden District of New Orleans. The Milton H. Latter Memorial Library is distinguished not only for its lavish architecture but also for its celebrity ghost. The celestial being who haunts the halls is thought to be a former owner of the stately manor, silent film star Marguerite Clark.

The diminutive Miss Clark stood only 4 feet, 10 inches tall and was blessed with a remarkably youthful appearance well into her thirties. She exuded an air of virginal purity and innocent charm. This led to a successful career playing the sweet ingenues in vogue as film heroines before the liberated flappers of the 1920's became all the rage. Her portrayal of Snow White (1916) inspired Walt Disney to base his first animated heroine on her performance. She also took on the literary roles of the Prince and Tom in Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper (1915) and again played dual roles as Little Eva St. Clair and Topsy in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1918). In her last film, Scrambled Wives (1921), she inadvisedly chose to play a collegiate party girl forced into a marriage of convenience to salvage her ruined reputation. Audiences did not accept the childlike star in such a racy role, and the film flopped. Acknowledging that her days as a leading lady were numbered, Marguerite Clark retired from the silver screen at the height of her fame in 1921.

Unlike Norma Desmond, Clark made a trauma-free transition from screen goddess to civilian. Her marriage to the son of a millionaire New Orleans lumber baron bought her a new life on easy street in The Big Easy. In addition to inherited wealth and social position, Clark's new husband, Harry Palmerston Williams, was said to possess "more charm than the law allowed." Williams was a carefree daredevil with a taste for danger. The only thing he loved more than speeding in a fast car was piloting one of the racing airplanes he designed with his business partner, aviation pioneer Jimmie "Speed King of the World" Wedell.

Mr. and Mrs. Williams were a golden couple who effortlessly became the toast of New Orleans society, hosting lavish parties in their palatial Garden District mansion. (The house boasted a ballroom occupying the entire third floor, as well as one of the city's first elevators.) Mrs. Williams was chosen to be the "Tsarina" of the first New Orleans Ball of Alexis in 1924. At this event she wore a gown worthy of an empress, priced at a record $5,000. Such an elaborate haute couture design would cost a customer a cool $63,000 dollars today.

Marguerite and Harry Williams enjoyed a happy marriage until tragedy struck in 1936. Harry Palmerston Williams finally paid the price for his lifelong addiction to adrenaline when the small plane he was piloting inexplicably crashed. Williams and his passenger were killed instantly. The widowed Marguerite stayed on in the Garden District mansion for three more years, but eventually could no longer endure the memories of her late husband which lingered there. She moved to New York City and died of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage and pneumonia in 1940. The charismatic couple are interred side by side in Metairie Cemetery.

According to many witnesses, however, Marguerite Clark Williams still watches over what was once her opulent estate. The mansion was donated to the New Orleans Public Library and opened as the Milton H. Latter Memorial Branch in 1948. Soon thereafter strange sightings of a "woman-child spirit" roaming the building after sunset were reported. Lights inexplicably flickered as this ethereal entity passed by, leaving in her wake downdrafts of chilly air scented with an exotic oriental perfume. Those who beheld the spirit at first thought the slight and graceful figure to be the ghost of a teen-aged girl. But the figure was later identified by a more careful observer as the dead ringer for the tiny silent movie queen.

Superstitious readers will be glad to know the ghost of the Latter Library is a friendly one. Not only do those who have seen the ghost maintain she radiates an appealing "lightness" but many also believe she protects the historic landmark from harm. While Hurricane Katrina caused extensive damage to many of the Garden District's neighboring estates, the library unaccountably emerged completely unscathed save for a few missing roof tiles.

The skeptical among us might attribute this good fortune to a meteorological oddity, but the Cowardly Lion would surely find it to be proof of the presence of a benevolent spirit. Do you believe in ghosts?

A Big Book. A VERY Big Book.

2009-10-29T06:02:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my book. Please, step inside.

Oh, to curl up in bed with a good book! But not this book.

Measuring more than 5 x 7 feet and weighing in at 133 pounds, Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom has been certified by Guinness World Records as the largest published book in the world. At this size, it may qualify for its own zip code.

Production of the book stretched image-processing systems to their limits. The life-size portraits of people and the panoramas convey some of the staggering sweep of the mountains and the ancient architecture in Bhutan, the last intact Himalayan kingdom.

The book's creator, Michael Hawley of MIT, challenged Acme Bookbinding of Charlestown, Mass, the world's oldest book bindery. "Every page in this book is a masterpiece," notes Paul Parisi, president of Acme. "We built the permanent binding it deserves." Acme invented a hand-built binding that combines the strengths of Western-style stitched books with Asian-style fanfolding.

The book features 112 pages of spectacular images and showcases the variety of digital, photographic and printing techniques that Hawley used. Copies are printed on-demand (imagine warehousing a print run!) using a roll of paper longer than a football field and more than a gallon of ink. It takes a full twenty-four hours to print.

Copies may be bought for a mere $30,000. Stick a mast on it and you can raft your way around the world, just like Thor Heyerdahl, Kon-Tiki-style.

Love the book but turn a page and we capsize. The damp-stains are really annoying.

O. Henry's Morphine Overdose, Pay-Scale, and Advice to Writers

2009-10-28T00:30:00.000-07:00

Recently, while on recon for Book Patrol, I discovered Fog in Santone, a short story by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862-1910) set in San Antonio Texas and loaded with morphine. In it, O. Henry limns the nexus of tuberculosis, desperate sufferers, and drug addiction amongst the sick and “sporting class" with lighthearted morbidity.

In contrast to Fog in Santone, At Arms With Morpheus takes place in turn-of the-century New York City boarding house. From clues in the narrative, it is the boarding house located off Madison Square where Porter lived.

In At Arms With Morpheus, which first appeared in the October, 1903 issue of Ainslee's Magazine under the pseudonym S.H. Peters and in book form in the posthumously published collection, Sixes and Sevens (1911), O. Henry, who was a registered druggist at age nineteen, tells a story about a morphine overdose. It appears to be the first literary treatment of a narcotic OD in American literature; it is certainly the first time that a drug overdose is played for laughs.

"’Oh, Billy, I'm going to take about four grains of quinine, if you don't mind -- I'm feeling all blue and shivery. Guess I'm taking cold.’

"’All right,’ I called back. ‘The bottle is on the second shelf. Take it in a spoonful of that elixir of eucalyptus. It knocks the bitter out.’

“After I came back we sat by the fire and got our briars going. In about eight minutes Tom sank back into a gentle collapse.

“I went straight to the medicine cabinet and looked.

"’You unmitigated hayseed!’ I growled. ‘See what money will do for a man's brains!’

“There stood the morphine bottle with the stopple out, just as Tom had left it.”

And from there, Billy narrates the amusing trials of keeping the dimwitted, wealthy Southern gent, Tom, alive with the help of citrate of caffeine, coffee, walking him around, and keeping him awake. The amateur therapy hasn’t changed much in a hundred years.

Now, another literary gem is added to the corpus of drug literature in English.

* * *

On April 4, 1909, an interview with O. Henry appeared in the New York Times that provides insight in the writing profession and the author’s working habits. Current writers may rush to the needle when they learn what O. Henry earned and how facile a writer he was.

"After drifting about the country I finally came to New York about eight years ago. I have Gilman Hall, now one of the editors of Everybody's Magazine, to thank for this fortunate step. Mr. Hall, then the editor of Ainslee's Magazine, wrote me saying that if I would come to New York he would agree to take $1,200 worth of stories annually at the rate of $100 a story. This was at a time when my name had no market value.Yes, since I came to New York my prices have gone up. I now get $750 for a story that I would have been glad to get $75 for in my Pittsburgh days.

[We pause here to contemplate in a swoon the fact that $750 in 1911 is worth approximately $16,000 in 2009, an opium pipe-dream for most writers of any era].

"Editors are just like other merchants--they want to buy at lowest prices. A few years ago I was selling stories to a certain magazine at the rate of 5 cents a word. I thought there was a chance that I might get more, so I boldly asked the editor for 10 cents a word. 'All right,' said he, 'I'll pay it.' He was just waiting to be asked.

[Who knew that's all it took to get a pay raise? Readers who write or edit may now ROTFL].

"I’ll give you the whole secret of short story writing. Here it is. Rule I: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule II. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself you’ll never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

"I get a story thoroughly in mind before I sit down at my writing table. Then I write it out quickly; and, without revising it mail it to the editor. In this way I am able to judge my stories as the public judges them. I've seen stories in print that I wouldn't recognize as my own.

[Submitting first drafts that are accepted as is. Holy mackerel!]

"Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk wtth people, and feel the rush and throb of real life--that's the stimulant for a story writer.”

Amen.
_________

O. Henry. Sixes and Sevens. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page, and Company, 1911. BAL 16298.

A Library for Astro Boy and Cultural Cat Girl

2009-10-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

Japanese androids Astro Boy and All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku will find a home in the stacks, along with Totoro, Pikachu, and many other famous graphic novel characters, upon completion of the proposed Tokyo International Manga Library at Meiji University. Slated to open in 2015, the huge library and archive is expected to house two million graphic novels, animation cels, illustrations, video games, and cartoon artifacts.

Library spokesman Susumi Shibao sees the collection as the first "solid archive for serious study"of the Japanese art forms of anime and manga. Shibao hopes to help scholars worldwide publish academic research on Asian graphic novels and their animated film adaptations. He believes manga has been "taken lightly" in the past and is ripe for a major reappraisal: "We want to [encourage] academic studies on manga as part of Japanese culture."

To give those scholars eager to investigate the collection a taste of what's forthcoming, the school will open the Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subculture on Halloween of 2009. This smaller library is named in honor of an illustrious alumnus of Meiji University.

Yoshihiro Yonezawa was Japan's most famous critic of manga and anime, as well as an avid collector of and advocate for dōjinshi.

This self-published subgenre of manga is more experimental and controversial in nature than mass market graphic novels. Dōjinshi creators frequently base their materials on other creators' works and publish only a few copies of each volume to avoid copyright litigation. This makes dōjinshi a scarce and coveted commodity. Yonezawa amassed the world's premiere collection of dōjinshi before his untimely death from lung cancer at age 53, and left over 140,000 rare volumes to his alma mater.

Serious study of manga and anime may be the goal of Meiji University, but the fun and entertainment that graphic novels provide to millions of rabid fans worldwide can't be overlooked. Fifty-seven years after his debut, Astro Boy is making a reappearance in movie theatres in 2009. And this Halloween tribute to Cultural Cat Girl is a testament to the undying devotion of her most avid readers.

Maintaining the balance between the fun of popular culture and the goals of serious researchers might require the help of a couple super-powered androids, too.

I Sing the Blue Jeans Electric: Walt Whitman for Levi's

2009-10-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

"Hi, Walt Whitman for Levi's. A fustian cloth, rough-hewn, enduring, yeoman, riveted,
the fabric of America. These are my pants.
Boot-cut. Perfect fit. Get into them, O shapeless, unformed youth!"

American poet, Walt Whitman, has been drafted by advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy of Portland to lead the battle cry, i.e. shill, for the American economy in general and Levi’s jeans in particular in an effort to get the demographic of the young into the venerable working-man’s pants that Whitman likely wore.

“America’s poet was an optimist at a time when it as easier to be a pessimist. He lived through the civil war, one of the darkest periods in American history, and drew strength from the struggle. He saw the potential for greatness that lies in each of us, to flourish in our personal search and build our brave vision of this country. Please accept his words as a small ray of hope.”

So reads the blurb on the website that Levi’s has devoted to the campaign.

While the prospect of young men in his pants is likely pleasing to the spirit of Whitman, I wonder whether he is pleased by the tone of the television campaign.

Whitman’s poetry can be edgy but the edge is always softened by the old-soul calmness and gentleness of his voice in print. Here, the voice-over talent and direction projects a stridency absent on the page, the quiet. primal yearning of the poet transformed into a an urgent, shout-out poetry-slam, flag-waving hipster performance that I suspect would make Whitman wince.

Whitman’s actual voice can be heard on an early wax-cylinder recording reading four lines from his poem, America, used in the Levi’s commercial below:

The voice is old and rough but the gentleness remains.

Contrast that to the voice heard in another commercial in the campaign, a sort of Burning Man incantation of Whitman’s O Pioneers!:

While I’m sure that Whitman would appreciate the pagan-nature/wild-child aspect that is projected, I suspect he might be a bit creeped-out by the hints of the ominous that are manifest in the television ads. And the let-your-freak-flag fly interpretation of Whitman could not be more superficial.

They Laughed When I Sat Down To Read Piano 300

2009-10-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

On March 8, 2000, the National Museum of American History opened Piano 300 in the Smithsonian Institution's International Gallery in Washington D.C.

Celebrating the tricentennial of the piano’s introduction in Florence by Bartolomeo Cristofori, this outstanding exhibition was seen by more than 330,000 visitors from around the world during its twenty-month run.

I’m a sucker for great exhibition catalogs, and that which accompanied Piano 300 is one of the most interesting and visually rewarding that I’ve seen in quite awhile. It is, arguably, be the best, most concise volume about the instrument there is with chapters that include: Early Stages; The Rise of the Public Perfomer; Pianos at Home; Americans Take the Lead; The Afro-American Legacy; Tin Pan Alley; etc.

If you love music in general and the piano in particular Piano 300: Celebrating Three Centuries of People and Pianos is a must-have. Perfectly pitched, there's not a flat in word or image. If, like me, you enjoy exhibition (and trade) catalogs, this will make an excellent addition to your collection.

Piano, 1926 By: Daizaburo Nakamura, 1926 (Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art)

Not just a lavishly illustrated souvenir of the exhibition with over 250 photographs, many in full color, the catalog provides an excellent technical and social history of the instrument highlighting the innovative craftsmen, manufacturers, entrepreneurs, teachers, performers, and composers who helped make the piano the most popular musical instrument of modern times.

Giraffe Piano, 1809-1811. Maker: André Stein, Vienna.

Sewing Table Piano in open and closed positions. Unknown Austrian or German maker, 1820-1840.

Square Piano, 1850. Maker: Chickering, Boston.

Whole Lotta Piano Goin' On: Liberace at Baldwin grand piano, 1980s; and his love-children,
Jerry Lee Lewis, 1950s, and Elton John, 1980s.

The catalog is becoming rare. At this time there are only eleven copies being offered throughout the world, at prices from $1 (yes, from a penny-seller) in poor condition to $138 for a mint condition copy.

I have only one quibble; there is no mention of advertising copywriter John Caples' enormously successful and now classic print ad for the U.S. School of Music, which played a huge role in popularizing the piano as an instrument for the average home that anyone could learn to play:

Advertisement written in 1926 by John Caples of agency Ruthrauff & Ryan. Full text here.

_______

Hoover, Cynthia Adams. Patrick Rucker. Edwin M. Good. Piano 300: Celebrating Three Centuries of People and Pianos. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American History and NAMM-International Music Products Association, 2001. 80 pages. Photo-illustrated wrappers.

FTC Alert: Piano 300 co-writer and former curator of the Smithsonian's piano collection, Patrick Rucker, is a life-long friend of this author yet he didn't even have the courtesy to offer me swag, payola, or gratuities of any nature in exchange for writing about this book.

Publisher's Clearing House Presents: No Garden-Variety Library

2009-10-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

Next time you impatiently yank an over-sized envelope emblazoned with the words: "You May Have Already Won 10 Million Dollars!!!" out of your junk-filled mailbox, take a moment to say: "Thanks." Without Publisher's Clearing House, the New York Botanical Garden might not have

a library.

The Botanical Garden's LuEsther T. Mertz Library is named for its largest benefactor, the genius behind the concept of the mass market mailing of multiple magazine subscription offers. Founded in 1953 by former librarian Mertz, her husband, and their daughter, Publisher's Clearing House became the largest and most profitable magazine circulation agency in the world. (And this even before the savvy stealing of the sweepstakes stunt from Reader's Digest in 1967.) But despite being one of the few librarians ever to end up a multimillionaire, LuEsther Mertz never forgot her former profession. Her charitable trust benefits the New York Botanical Garden's many programs, including the unique library that bears her name.

The library houses one of the world's foremost collections of materials on botany and horticulture. Cataloged items number over one million, including books, journals, seed and nursery catalogs, original works of art, photographs, and architectural plans. The holdings cover the literature, art, science, history, and lore of the plant kingdom from the 12th century to the present day.

Many of the rare books that are housed in the library will be on view for the first time in an exhibit that opened on October 17. 2009: Ex Libris: Treasures From The LuEsther T. Mertz Library. Over the centuries, such sensuous subjects as flowers, fruits, fungi, and herbs have inspired generations of bookmakers, artists, and illustrators to create the sumptuous works of art now delightfully on display.

The Ex Libris exhibit will continue through January 10, 2010 at the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx. For those unable to savor a sample of the Big Apple's produce, a checklist for the exhibit, including images worthy of a state fair prize, is available. Visiting the library that owes its bountiful harvest to Publisher's Clearing House will no doubt prove more fruitful than subscribing to two dozen magazines and hoping for a bouquet from the Prize Patrol.

Resubscribe or Else!

2009-10-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

click to enlarge

This little gem was laid into an issue of George Hitchcock's seminal kayak literary magazine. From 1964-1984 the magazine, along with kayak press, was one of the premier literary magazines in the country. Though the focus leaned toward surrealist, imagist, and political poetry Hitchcock published early books by Raymond Carver, Charles Simic, Philip Levine, W.S. Merwin and James Tate.

Hitchcock was also well known for his rejection slips which would often include an old woodcut or image he found along with the bad news.

Above is one of his subscription renewal notices. It reads:

Your subscription expires with this issue:
to avoid emotional complications, please
remit $5.00 for the next year (3 issues)

for the staff

Majorie Simon [one of the magazine's editors]

For more on Hitchcock:

In 2003 Story Line Press published One-Man Boat: The George Hitchcock Reader which features a section on kayak.

The Ex-Gay Cry Censorship: No One Wants Their Books

2009-10-23T00:43:00.000-07:00

The headline of the story on FOX News is a doozy: "Gay Reversal Advocates Say School Libraries Banning Their 'Ex-Gay' Books."

A Chicago-based group, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX), is suing the Montgomery County, MD school district for their purported "exclusion of "ex-gay" information in its sexual orientation health curriculum."

PFOX (I am assuming no relation to FOX) says "there's an entire community of people across the world who say that their sexual orientation changed from gay to straight. But they're not getting their message out, the group says, because libraries across the country refuse to carry literature that describes these experiences or any studies that support them."

In addition to Montgomery County, Maryland PFOX offered to donate a cache of "ex-gay" books to Arlington and Fairfax Counties in Virginia and they e-mailed all publicly funded universities nationwide that have a GLBTQ center.

The response was unified. On "our offer to donate ex-gay books and brochures, we were rejected by all," says PFOX Executive Director Regina Griggs.

Their attempt to get the American Library Association (ALA) to make a statement during Banned Books Week also failed.

Why such resistance? Aren't we all for a "Fair and Balanced" (pardon me for using the FOX News tagline) approach? Of course we are.

The problem is:

"All of the leading medical, therapeutic, psychiatric and social work organizations have a fair unanimity here about claims relating to the so-called ex-gay movement or so-called reparative therapy where the central idea is that these groups would like to try to change people's sexual orientation or gender identity, and the consensus is that it's unnecessary and damaging and can be severely harmful to people," says Hayley Gorenberg, Lambda Legal Deputy Director.

So off to the court system they go and where we'll end up nobody knows...

Here's the FOX News slideshow of 5 of the books in question.

Tower of Babel at the Reference Desk

2009-10-23T00:30:00.000-07:00

(Okay, we shoot the next lunatic, and take it on the lam. You with me?)

The Merry Librarian is one of our favorite spots for prospecting; there's gold in them thar hills. Yesterday, Merry - we presume familiarity and beg her forgiveness - related the terrifying tale of a reference librarian at a loss for words simply because she was absent from high school the day the class learned to read hieroglyphics in Mayan and Egyptian, missed the pop quiz in Farsi, and failed Hebrew. And yet they still let her graduate! Here's the saga as related by Merry's correspondent:

Here’s a situation I ran into yesterday that I thought you might find amusing. It falls under the 'librarians should know everything about everything' assumption that much of the general public seems to have. A man walked into our branch yesterday and asked me the following questions:

“If something were translated from English into Mayan hieroglyphics into Egyptian hieroglyphics, would someone from Iran who speaks Hebrew be able to understand it?”

Umm...I’m thinking not.

“Well, then, could you translate it for me so they could understand it?”

Why yes, of course I happen to be fluent in ALL those languages. (I am a librarian, after all.)

“Well, do you have a book that translates Mayan hieroglyphics into Egyptian hieroglyphics into Hebrew?”

I’m thinking not. But I’ll check anyway just to appease you. Nope, just as I suspected. Nothing.

“Why don’t you have any books that do that?”

I don’t think there is a book anywhere that does that.

“Well, what can you do? I need it done tonight.”

Luckily, I it was close to the end of my shift and I was able to pass this patron along to my unsuspecting coworkers - who had no idea what they were walking into and may not be very happy next time they see me. - Julia from Fountain, CO.

We hope and pray that Julia is safe and sound. Had she been raised during the 1950s, she could have used her Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Ring to help the crazed patron, her co-workers would not have had reason to call Tony Soprano for "reference librarian waste disposal services," and this story would have a different ending. Given the circumstances, we figure Julia is settling into her new life in the Librarian Protection Program.

Is the E-Reader Price War Next?

2009-10-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

The way the current online price war between Wal-Mart, Amazon, Sears and Target is shaping up there is a chance one of them might be paying me to read one of their featured books by Christmas.

It started as a shot off the bow by Wal-Mart to wake up the populace to their online life. Pre-order the top upcoming releases for $10 and free shipping but before you could click the buy button Amazon joined the party and matched the deal. Soon after Target joined the fray. Now less than a week later the price sits at $8.98 at Walmart, $8.99 at Target and $9 at Amazon.

As if the publishing world isn't in enough disarray now an independent bookstore can order copies of these titles from these retail giants and make more money then if they ordered them directly from the publisher; in effect putting Amazon and the others in the distribution business.

Is it too much of a leap for a similar price war to hit the e-reader world?

I am not sure there are enough early adopters with that much disposable income to make all the players happy. And for ultimate success there has to be mass adoption and that simply won't happen at the current price levels in today's economic climate.

Since Barnes & Noble launched the nook into the world earlier this week Amazon has already announced that they are lowering the price of the International Kindle to $259.

By next year's holiday season, if not sooner, I trust we will be well into a e-reader price war with at least one of the e-readers being offered for less than $100.

I can also see Amazon beginning to offer different Kindle pricing plans to increase their reach.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Amazon offering a plan where they ultimately give away the Kindle, or sell it at low price ($50 or less), and charge the customer a little more for the content. So, instead of an e-book being $9.99 for one who purchased the Kindle outright an e-book might be $12.99 or $14.99 for someone who acquires it at a lesser price or for free.

Yes, all the the other players are capable of such an approach, but Amazon would seem to be the odds on favorite to get there first.

Fasten you seat belt this ride is just starting.

Image via

One Hell of a Book Store - Or the Wrong One?

2009-10-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

From Book Patrol's International Book Shops We'd Like To Visit Department. This one in Hong Kong.

Thanks to LISNews for the lead.

Gen. McChrystal's "Bad Habit": He Loves Old Book Shops

2009-10-22T00:30:00.000-07:00

(I wish I was home, relaxing in my library, reading a good book)

During the 1960s, the phrase “military intelligence” was considered an oxymoron. In the midst of the Vietnam war it was a darkly glib joke, defensible only because of the series of strategic blunders that were made; it certainly seemed to be true that military officers were not the brightest candles in the chandelier and disdained expressions of intellect.

It wasn’t true then, it isn’t true now. Buried within Dexter Filken’s New York Times magazine feature last Sunday profiling Gen. Stanley McChrystal, head of allied military operations in Afghanistan, is evidence of the Army’s intellectual firepower and well as its duds:

“Yet for all his asceticism, McChrystal displays a subtlety that suggests a wider view of the world. ‘If you go into his house, he has this unreal library,’ Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, McChrystal’s intelligence chief and long time friend, told me this summer. ‘You can go over and touch a binding and ask him, ‘what’s that one about?’ And he’ll just start. His bad habit is wandering around old bookstores. He’s not one of these guys that just reads military books. He reads about weird things, too. He’s reading a book about Shakespeare right now.’” [our emphasis].

There you have it: A four-star general who enjoys exploring old book shops, has a vast library of well-read books, can discuss them intelligently and in depth, and reads Shakespeare. And another general who seems to think that reading books about anything other than the military is weird.

Gen. McChrystal, apparently, loves Caliban, hates the Taliban, and is comfy with The Tempest and in a tempest.

According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff official bio of McChrystal, the general, who earned a BS at West Point, also has a MA in National Security and Strategic Studies, and a MS in International Relations. The Army really does want their troops to be all that they can be; commissioned officers are encouraged to earn graduate degrees, as many as they desire and to whatever level they aspire to.

U.S. military officers can pursue full-time studies toward a master’s or doctoral degree through either fully funded or partially funded programs or a bachelor’s degree through the Degree Completion Program. Under these programs, the Army pays all tuition costs and reimburses officers up to $600 per fiscal year for textbooks and supplies. In addition, the Army provides officers with full pay and allowances and moves officers and their families to the college or university of study.

Whatever your feelings are toward the military in general and our involvement in Afghanistan in particular, it is reassuring to know that our man in charge of operations is not a numb skull.

Warrior-scholar may not be a hyphenate appreciated by a general public that prefers its military to be all-fight, all-tough, all the time, no pointy-heads, please, but the U.S. military has no problem with it at all. They understand that a broad and deep perspective of the world is crucial to comprehending and coping with the challenges we face. Higher education, a love of books, and reading can only benefit its officer corps.

There will always be military officers (and business executives) with a maraca where their head is supposed to be; shake 'em and you can hear beans bouncing around inside. That is not the case with Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

"...for the play, I remember...'twas caviar to the general" (Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2).

73 Interpretations of Tristram Shandy's Infamous Black Page

2009-10-21T00:30:00.000-07:00

Black Page 73 by Patrick Hughes

In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the publication of the first edition of Tristram Shandy, Shandy Hall, author Laurence Sterne’s former home in Coxwold, U.K, has mounted an exhibition, The Black Page.

Seventy-three artists, composers and writers have created their own interpretations of the infamous Black Page, using a sheet of A4 handmade Somerset paper that Incline Press has printed with the outline of the original page in true proportion and the number “73.”

“At the end of volume 1, chapter 12 [pp. 73] of his comic masterpiece, Laurence Sterne famously confronts his readers with a page completely coated on both sides in pure black ink. The most memorable oddity in a book filled with memorable oddities, the black page marks the first death in Tristram Shandy, that of Parson Yorick, Sterne's whimsical, laughter-loving innocent...

"...Yorick acquires enemies even more quickly than he can produce bons mots, until at last the knaves confederate and exact their revenge by attacking Yorick in the press—slandering his character, questioning his faith, distorting his writings, trampling his learning, and burying every trace of his troublesome wit. Wearied by this war of words, Yorick finally ‘threw down the sword; and though he kept up his spirits in appearance to the last,——he died, nevertheless, as was generally thought, quite broken hearted.’ ‘Alas, poor YORICK!’ Tristram cries —and then his startling gesture of absolute opacity.

Design for the quilt on view at the exhibition at Shandy Hall

“Haunting in its strangeness, Sterne's famous black page offers a particularly dense example of a rhetorical formation that I would like to call "sentimental irony," irony and sentimentality placed in a mutually constitutive, dialogical relationship. The black page's sentimental appeal both deepens and complicates—and is in turn deepened and complicated by—its ironic implications. An overflow of ink, the black page seems to record Tristram's overflow of feeling at Yorick's death. It is as if, overwhelmed by the task of conveying his sentiments on Yorick's demise, Tristram tries to say everything at once—and therefore can say nothing at all. The black page thus takes to its absolute limit the inexpressibility topos that is the hallmark of sentimental rhetoric: the formula "words cannot convey what I then felt" surely finds here its most extreme expression” (Kim, James. "Good Cursed, Bouncing Losses”: Masculinity, Sentimental Irony, and Exuberance in Tristram Shandy. The Eighteenth Century, vol. 48, no. 1, 2007, p. 3).

Here are a few examples:

Black Page 46 and Black Page 65

Black Page 71 and Black Page 50

Black Page 25 and Black Page 16

The exhibition runs through October 31, 2009.

A tip o' the hat to Black Page Blogspot.
___________

STERNE, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman... York, 1759 (Volumes 1&2). Lowndes 3, p. 2510.

Bear Love: A Collector Opens His Den

2009-10-20T14:34:00.000-07:00

Jon Henri McCracken is not your ordinary arctophile. He has been collecting bear memorabilia for most of his life and in his new book, The Bears in My Life, McCracken takes us on a captivating visual tour of his amazing collection.

From the dust jacket:

Bears have captured human imagination for tens of thousands of years, simply by being bears. Mysterious, powerful and nurturing of their young, the natural characteristics of bears -- and the many, colorful, human beliefs associated with them -- have inspired creation of bear images in wood, stone, ink, glass, bronze and more. 'The Bears in My Life' features captivating photographs of images across all media and provides a wealth of information about the significance of bears within diverse cultures, over time.

His collection features images of bears from around the world with chapters featuring the European Bear, the Russian Bear, the American Bear, the North American Indian Bear and the Japanese and Neighboring Bear. Though the gist of of McCracken's collection consists of carved wooden bears there is a healthy dose of postcards, engravings and book illustrations. The final chapter, Bear Paper and Beyond, is an informative look at the history of 'bearmobilia' in print and as McCracken points out "following the Bear in paper, is to follow the evolution of printing."

The 500 copies that make up the limited edition are signed and numbered by the author and contain a tipped-in photographic print. The first 220 copies of the limited edition also contain an original silk-screen image of a bear by Larry Cyr.

This limited edition is available exclusively at Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers and sells for $65.

Wholesale inquiries welcome

The Beat of the Bullet, The Rhythm of the Book

2009-10-20T00:30:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press recently reported a story that’s positively biblical, with a good beat, and that you can dance to:

Dad, 83, Accused of Opening Fire on Drumming Son

Oct 16th, 2009 | SAN ANTONIO -- San Antonio police are investigating the wounding of a man after his elderly father allegedly opened fire when the victim refused to stop drumming. Police said the son, in his 50s, suffered a non-life threatening head wound early Friday while at the home the men share. Police said his 83-year-old father was detained on an aggravated assault charge.

They’ll wind up throwing the book at this latter-day Isaac who, like the lady next store when I was a kid who suggested with highly ambiguous sarcasm that an untimely end for me and my set of drums would suit her just fine, was likely driven to near insanity by paradiddles, flams, ratamacues, and every other drum rudiment at full volume.

But what book should they throw at him? As a drummer, let me suggest the following volumes to inflict maximum punishment on the perp and maximum pleasure for drumming fans.

Super-Drummer: A Profile of Buddy Rich by Whitney Balliett (Bobbs-Merrill, 1968).

This is one of the great pieces about any musician, written by Whitney Balliett, the long time jazz critic for The New Yorker. What Buddy Rich did was indescribable. Until Balliett described it.

Traps the Drum Wonder. The Life of Buddy Rich by Mel Torme (Oxford, 1991).

For BR, stormy relationships were the norm but singer-drummer Mel Torme endured and enjoyed his lifetime friendship with Buddy, and this book provides the most intimate portrait of the artist and person we’ll ever read.

There’s a reason why Buddy Rich was a living legend and why he’s remained a legendary drummer after his death: no one else then, (or now, and likely well into the future) possessed his flawless technique, speed, agility, taste, and musicality. Whatever natural talent he was gifted with (small-stature men tend to be faster and have quicker reflexes than larger men), the fact that he began playing drums professionally at age eighteen months as part of his parents' vaudeville act meant that his brain and entire nervous and muscular systems were developing around rhythm and the motor skills associated with stick control and four-way independent coordination of the hands and feet. Drum technique was hard-wired into his brain at the earliest possible time in a child’s development; only an in utero drum set during gestation might have given him a better opportunity.

That Buddy Rich never had any formal training and could not read a note of music made no difference in his playing career. It certainly made no difference in his writing career:

Buddy Rich's Modern Interpretation of Snare Drum Rudiments (Later edition. First edition: Peter Maurice, 1942)

Drummer and famed NYC drum shop proprietor Henry Adler actually wrote it. And when I studied with Roy Burns in the early-mid 1960s, in one of the upstairs studios in Adler’s shop on 46th street in NYC, BR would often stop by.

In his then standard uniform of Italian-cut black shirt and slacks, black shoes with “Cuban heels” (to provide an extra inch of height), and sharply snazzy black hat, you always knew when BR showed up:

“Hiya, Fats!” he’d trumpet, all-smiles, to Henry Adler, who treated Buddy like an errant son and overgrown brat. Which Buddy Rich was.

Gene Krupa Drum Method. Edited by Rollo Laylan (Robbins Music, 1939)

Gene Krupa, though technically overshadowed by the phenomenon of Buddy Rich, was the first drummer to take center stage and solo. Though he did take drum lessons, he, too, could not read a note of music. Here, Rollo Laylan lays out the rhythms and exercises in formal music notation. Krupa was the most popularly known drummer of his time, the subject of a sensational marijuana bust in 1943, and the only drummer to be the object of a movie biopic, a dubious distinction given the stink this film emits. You simply must see Sal Mineo-Gene in a marijuana-crazed mania hammer out the savage tempo of the jazz era.

John Bonham: a Thunder of Drums by Chris Welch and Geoff Nicholls (Hal Leonard, 2001)

I appreciated John Bonham's drumming more than I liked it. His patterns and fills, unheard in rock music at the time, had an enormous influence on rock n' roll drummers. Young drummers often cite Bonham as a drumming god. They'd do better to listen to the drummer that Bonham thought was a deity and that I prayed to, as well: Tony Williams, who, beginning with Miles Davis when he was a mere seventeen years old, rewrote the way drums were played in jazz, and led the fusion revolution with his band, the insanely good, Lifetime. Always reach back to the sources.

The Beat of My Drum: An Autobiography by Babatunde Olatunji (Temple University Press, 2004)

I think every drummer of my generation listened to Olatunje's classic album, Drums of Passion (1959). For many if not most, it was their first introduction to world music in general and African drums and drumming in particular.

Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew by Hal Blaine (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2002).

You're excused if you've never heard of Hal Blaine, b. Harold Simon Belsky, but you've definitely heard him. The most famous drum intro in pop music history?

The bass drum kicks and the snare drum whops:

"Bom, bom-Bom, BOM! Bom, bom-Bom, BOM!"

...And Be My Baby by The Ronettes begins.

Hal played on most if not all of Phil Spector's records and remains an immortal for that reason alone. It would be easier to state who Hal Blaine never played with; he was THE studio drummer in Los Angeles during the 1960s and "ghosted" the drums for many popular rock bands' recordings because the bands' own drummers were lousy to begin with and worse in a studio.

Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music by Steven Loza (University of Illinois Press, 1999)

The first in-depth historical, musical, and cultural study to trace the career and influence of El Rey de Timbal, Tito Puente, the Harlem-born "New Yorican" who was the first afro-cuban style drummer to take center stage and make the timbales a major percussion instrument. His influence on drumming of all styles is incalculable and cannot be overestimated. He was arguably the most beloved drummer of the twentieth century.

I wish there were books written about every great drummer. Few have been published; only the superstars have had a full-length book devoted to them but not even Elvin Jones, whose signature percussive vortex churned whatever band he played with, including the historic John Coltrane quartet, has had the honor. To the U.S.A.'s shame, the French and Germans have published books about many of the greats; their appreciation of jazz and its musicians has always exceeded ours.

My sense is that only the threat of an 83 year old wielding a gat at a publisher will compel an English biography of Jo Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Sid Catlett, Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, Baby Dodds, etc., etc. to be issued. But, then again, he'd probably be hauled off to the mental hoosegow for a 72-hour hold. A biography of Jack DeJohnette? What beat of a different drum is he marching to?
_______

Header image of my dream drum set courtesy of Drum Workshop.
Image of Super-Drummer courtesy of Between the Covers.

A sign of hope in the latest "last chapter for bookshops" saga

2009-10-19T18:18:00.000-07:00

The Kindle was released into the world today.

In anticipation of the event the UK magazine Retail Week published the piece: As e-readers launch, is it the last chapter for bookshops? by George MacDonald.

Surprisingly, before the yawn and the customary filing in the 'end of the bookshop is near' file the story balances itself out. It actually ponders "if the world of print will prove resilient" and offers some nuggets of sanity from Tim Waterstone, founder of the Waterstone’s, the UK's largest chain bookseller.

While Waterstone admits that the e-book revolution will have an effect he also is quite convinced that books aren't going anywhere for some time to come.

Waterstone says:

“The book as we know it now, the printed word on paper, is such a strong consumer product and so loved that it’s going to be many years before it’s seriously moved off the shelves. “I don’t want to sound Luddite - look what happened in the music industry - but the book is something different. It’s not expensive, it’s wonderful to collect, it’s the most beautifully tactile product and bookshops are lovely tactile places. They’re a form of entertainment. I think it will be a long time before we see anything really serious to divert people away from traditional book buying.”

Granted he has over 300 bookshops to worry about but he is spot on.

Just imagine if indeed this is the last chapter for bookshops and the e-reader onslaught is just a passing fad, a blip on the screen in the history of the book, then were will we be!

The amazing image above is from the Retail Week piece