Mark Dimunation to speak at the Baxter Society in March.

The Baxter Society is very pleased to announce that Mark Dimunation will be speaking at our March 10th meeting. Mark is Chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress. His talk is titled: Good, Bad, and Indifferent, Old, New, and Worthless: Thomas Jefferson and the Mind of the Eighteenth Century Collector.

The Baxter Society is Maine's only bibliophilic group, open to all those with an interest, passion, and/or love of books.

On a personal note (and as Program Chair for The Baxter), I can not tell you how excited I am that Mark agreed to come speak. I want to thank the many restaurants in town for their efforts in drawing Mark to town (and the NYC Times, too). With luck, we'll do some damage at eateries about town.

While I'm blathering about such things, I should also mention that in April, Bill and Vicky Stewart of Vamp & Tramp will be speaking and in May, Tom Horrocks of Harvard's Houghton Library will wrap out the year.

Finally, a teaser for next fall: while at the LA ABAA book fair, Michael Suarez, the newly appointed Director of Rare Book School, agreed to speak at a fall date to be determined.

I am, needless to say, going to retire from the Program Committee...I am not certain I can really improve on my recent run...

Irene Marie Sommer Gamble (1915-2010)

My grandmother passed away this morning. We visited Friday and Saturday and had a great time telling her all about our trip CA (us), school (Eli), and FL (mom & dad). She was among the last of a dying breed...the product of finishing school and Columbia...she was simply elegant. I recall her using a swear once in my life, and that to scold a table full of men (dad, Dr. Weaver, Granddaddy and Uncle Milton) who were discussing *very* disgusting things (she said, as I recall, "Damn it, I will not have this language at the dinner table").

When I was very young, she tried to get me to call her "Grandma Reenie". I promptly shortened it to Greenie and that is what she was for the rest of our lives. She, and my grandfather, lived a quite remarkable life. I offer one quick story, as I think it sums things up nicely. They went to Marion, AL 1938-1943...this young Irish immigrant and his new bride from NYC...to be the principal (Granddaddy) and a teacher (Greenie) at Lincoln School. Granddaddy was the last white principle of this famous black school that produced a remarkable number of leaders. Coretta Scott King would write Greenie, many years later, that her later college work "never taught me anything you didn't teach me at Lincoln School" (Greenie taught public speaking/drama classes). [The photo, to the left, shows the 25th reunion of the class of 1943, Granddaddy is at the left, standing directly behind Coretta and Greenie at the far right with the purse.)

Greenie called me Go Bragh...as in Ian Go Bragh (nee Erin Go Bragh). I'll miss a lot of things about my grandmother. I'll especially miss Go Bragh.

My mother crafted a lovely obit. I offer it here for friends and family:

Irene Marie Sommer Gamble

Tenants Harbor – Irene Marie Sommer Gamble, 94, widow of Wilfred Gamble, died on February 21st at Quarry Hill after a long illness.

Born on May 20, 1915, she was the daughter of John Sommer and Marie Haantz Sommer of North Bergen, New Jersey. She was educated at Hoboken Academy, Centenary College for Women in Hackettstown NJ, and New College at Columbia University in New York, where she received a Masters Degree in education, speech and dramatics.

She met her husband, Wilfred Gamble, at Columbia when he tried out for a play she was casting. After their marriage in 1939, she joined him as a teacher at the school where he was principal, the Lincoln School in Marion, Alabama. This was a groundbreaking private school for African American children, with a biracial faculty, run by the Congregational Board of Home Missions. She maintained close contact with both staff members and students throughout her life.

Upon Wilfred’s discharge from the U.S. Navy in 1945, the Gambles moved to Southbury, Connecticut, where they were involved in town, church, and school activities for over thirty-five years. Irene taught fifth grade for many years in nearby Woodbury. Towards the end of her career she became speech therapist for the Woodbury school system.

The Gambles summered in Maine, and in 1980 they moved to Tenants Harbor. They became active members of the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Rockland. Irene was very involved in the PBMC Auxiliary, working on many aspects of the annual Christmas Fair. For several years she ran the ornaments group and organized production of the advent calendars that are still used in so many homes in the midcoast area and beyond. She was an avid reader and was part of the Tenants Harbor book group for many years, where she is remembered for her excellent “book reports.” She kept up to date on anything concerning education and gave the education reports at meetings of the American Association for University Women. She loved crossword puzzles, travel, good conversation, her old houses in Connecticut and Maine, and above all, her family.

She is survived by her daughter and her husband, Patricia and Richard Kahn of Tenants Harbor, with whom she has lived for the past eight years, by her grandson Ian Kahn and his wife Suzanne Hamlin of Portland, Maine, by her granddaughter Gillian Kahn Hargreaves and her husband Andrew Hargreaves of Landing, New Jersey, and by great-grandchildren Aidan Kahn, Elijah Kahn, Oliver Hargreaves, and Madeline Hargreaves. They will always remember her as “Greenie.”

Arrangements are under the direction of Burpee-Strong Funeral Home of Rockland. A memorial service will be held in the Spring. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Penobscot Bay Medical Center, Six Glen Cove Drive, Rockport ME 04856, the Unitarian-Universalist Church, 345 Broadway, Rockland ME 04841, or to the Lincolnite Club, Inc. PO Box 434, Marion, AL 36756.

"Christians" seek damages for exposure to a book...and the right to burn it...

I wish I could make things like this up. T. Gerristen (who I would love even if she were she not a friend) has just posted a great piece at Murderati on book banning efforts. Her post revolves around efforts in Wisconsin to ban/burn "Baby Be-Bop":

Robert C. Braun of the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU) distributed at the meeting copies of a claim for damages he and three other plaintiffs filed April 28 with the city; the complainants seek the right to publicly burn or destroy by another means the library’s copy of Baby Be-Bop. The claim also demands $120,000 in compensatory damages ($30,000 per plaintiff) for being exposed to the book in a library display, and the resignation of West Bend Mayor Kristine Deiss for “allow[ing] this book to be viewed by the public."

Terry offers a nice overview of small-mindedness and error of such efforts...taking particular note of the fact that such efforts nearly always fail and generally serve the opposite effect, that is, peaking interesting and increasing sales of the subject books. She closes with a plea:

So please, ban my books. I want to join that lofty pantheon of authors that includes Alexie and Sendak and Twain and Vonnegut. My books have plenty to offend everyone. There's adulterous sex and graphic violence, foul language and disturbing perversions. So go ahead, ban me!

For those who do not have it bookmarked, here is the ALA's site for all things banning and bookish.

Personally, I think I am going to sue those who seek to ban books for emotional distress. I wonder if I could have them burned... Enough daydreaming, back to cataloguing books. Happy Tuesday.

More thieves benefiting from ebay...

These thieves are apparently not even bothering to be sneaky (or careful)...just ripping out the textblocks and leaving the debris in dark corners of the library. Annoyed by title, as they are not really vandals, they are thieves. I wager you can (or could have) found the stolen plates on ebay. I wonder how many loose plates sold on ebay are *not* stolen...very few these days, I wager.

Cambridge incunabula collection going online...

A remarkable collection of incunabula is being digitized and coming online from Cambridge University Library. 

Very few records of the Library's 4,650 treasures are currently in its online catalogue, which means that they are often invisible to scholars and students - both in Cambridge and around the world.

It is told that their copy of the Gutenberg Bible arrived on morning in 1930 when a man stepped out of a taxi and told the library he had a bible he would like to give them...

Can't wait to see the results of this project.

Apple says no to Proj. Gut. app because the db includes..

the Kama Sutra. It appears Wired broke the story about this inexplicable denial. The app, Eucalyptus, was created by Project Gutenberg and therein rest the "problem". The app does not come with any books, you search PG's database and download whatever you want to read.

Among PG's vast db of public domain books is the Kama Sutra, and Apple claims this work, first compiled in the second century CE contains "inappropriate sexual content" [N.B. I assume the PG version is the 1883 "Burton" edition  and not the recent 2002 "scholarly translation"]. 

The interesting issue here is that Apple is precluding it NOT for something "in it", but something obtainable *through* it. Doesn't this mean that Google and all other "search-y" apps need to be blocked as they can "find" dirty text and pictures??? It appears that PG has coded a filter to protect iPhone users from the Kama Sutra and hopes to get the app approved....at least those who don't know how to use Google...or Safari. Oh, wait....hmmm. [Thnx to @ncacensorship]

Censorship, Stupidity, Viruses and Immune Systems...

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."—Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas," The One Un-American Act." Nieman Reports, vol. 7, no. 1 (Jan. 1953): p. 20.

There has been an annoying spat of censorship events at various schools recently. The most recent was twitted about by He With His Finger On The Pulse Of All Things Biblio, M. Lieberman of BookPatrol. The story revolves around a teen poetry anthology (POETRY...being read by TEENS. Holy crap) called Paint Me Like I Am:

Paint Me Like I Am is a collection of poems by teens who have taken part in writing programs run by a national nonprofit organization called WritersCorps. To read the words of these young people is to hear the diverse voices of teenagers everywhere.

Unfortunately, "[t]o read the words of these young people" has apparently offended ONE mother of a teen who complained of the Superintendent of the Vineland, NJ school her son attends. Sup. Charles Ottinger read the offending poem and said "in no way, shape or form" should the book be allowed on school shelves. The principle did an interesting, though also egregious, thing in that rather than complying with the Super's order to pull the book, he TORE OUT THE TWO PAGES that contained the offending poem so the rest of the book could be shelved for student use. [Side note, while I appreciate the Solomonetic approach of splitting the proverbial book...tearing pages out is a rather lame solution. You are *still* censoring the book *AND* you have mutilated the book itself.] The poem, which I have tragically failed to find in full online, is apparently laden with "bad words" and written from the point of view of a drunken abusive step-father...arguably not a "happy, shiny people" piece.

I am tired of the Lowest Common Denominator being allowed to define and direct our schools and libraries (and government, but that is another rant). One person complains about a given book [or books] and FAR too many schools/libraries are willing to just roll over and pull the material. Sometimes it is because the administrator is of an equally small mind but more often than not, I wager, it is because it is just not seen as a fight worth having. I suggest that it is a fight worth having...to fail in this fight is to guarantee the ascendance of mediocrity and the rule of the narrowest mind. 

Children do not need to be protected from challenging material, they need *context*. They do not need to be told they are not able/old enough/mature enough to read certain things, they need the intellectual guidance to *understand* the material as written. To refuse the exposure doesn't "protect" a child, it denies from the child a necessary skillset for adult life...the ability to read, absorb, contemplate and embody challenging ideas...in all their forms. 

A virus analogy is quite apt. It is well established that our over-use of certain antibiotics in children has lead to not only to the evolution of drug-resistant bugs but, far more dangerous, the impairment of kids/young adults immune systems to be able to fight common bugs. Kids *need* to get sick...because it is by exposure/illness that the body builds antibodies to fight future infections. We make kids *more* susceptible to *serious* illness by denying them the ability to get sick now and again and, thereby, allowing them to build up antibodies.

Reading...the exposure to the ideas embodied in books...works on the mind in much the same way. The more you read, the greater your ability to comprehend complex/difficult/challenging material in all forms. Context is the critical variable...obviously there is a burden put upon parents (and teacher, etc) to help kids understand the things they read, *especially* when that material upsets or troubles them. But is is through that process of getting upset and resolving those feelings that a child *learns*. Denying children challenging material is simply to deny them the ability to learn.

Children are not infants. They do not need to be protected from the likes of the Brothers Grimm; the racism of Huckleberry Finn or the violence of Lord of the Flies or the language in Of Mice and Men. They need context. They need to be able to read these things and talk about them...with parents, teachers and peers. They embody the things they read and it makes them stronger...and smarter...and able to process bigger, more complex challenges down the road.

Treating kids like they need to be protected from any thought or idea that might challenge/offend/frighten them serves *no* purpose but to impair their ability to rationally analyze the data that bombards them every day. Dumbing down our books and, worse, dumbing down our libraries does nothing but dumb down our children. They deserve better. They *need* better.

At a time when the world is becoming more complex and arguably more dangerous, there are far too many people doing all they can to impair the next generation's ability to analyze and rationalize. Dogmatically held positions are held sacrosanct and those that dare challenge them with logical analysis are dismissed as "elitist". We need kids to read more...to be exposed to more...to build up the intellectual capacity to combat the myopic worldview that is becoming far too prevalent. 

It's 215am...I am confident I should read the above and edit out 1/2 or so...but I wont. I'm tired. It is all Brian Cassidy's fault, for telling me to blog my rant after I had twitted about it. If you are interested, see the ALA's Censorship in the Schools resources and definitely bookmark Blogging Censorship. In the end, I'm with Oscar Wilde:

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

Selling off Spec. Coll. books for fundraising. Many moving parts...

Two of my favorite bibli-bloggers have posted on the recent USF sale of material from their collection. PhiloBiblos and BookPatrol have written well crafted articles on the issues, with notable differences...both should be read. 

I've nothing to add as to facts and the over-arching issues. Personally, I think such sales are likely to be short-sighted solutions to much deeper issues and are unlikely to serve a useful long-term goals. That said, such efforts can certainly raise considerable sums and one has to think that such efforts are not pursued lightly. But then, broader issues sometimes fall to the wayside.

The most famous of these revolves around the Bodeian's First Folio. It entered the library in 1623 and was sold to a local Oxford bookseller in 1663-4 as part of a small collection of "superfluous library books sold by order of the Curators" for £24. "Superfluous" because the Bodleian had purchased a Second Folio, thought to be "better" and thus, the first was just taking up space. Sir. W. Osler spearheaded the campaign around the turn of the 20th century, to bring the Bodleian's copy back to the library (to the tune of approx. £3000).

I am not certain there *is* a right answer. There are a variety of issues in play and the balance can very greatly. In the end, it is hard to argue that having things come back to the market...to enter private collections and/or other special collections...is not good for the book trade as a whole. The next several months should be interesting....

The Bodleian Bans Stepladders...

From the "I really hope this is a joke" file: Due to safety concerns, Oxford has banned stepladders at the Bodleian Library. This, while relatively silly on its face, is made truly bizarre with the apparent decision "refusing to move the books from their 'original historic location'". 

As a result, much of what is out of reach is...well...out of reach. Students are, according to the article, being forced to go elsewhere to secure working copies.

Stepladders have been in use at the Bodleian for the last 400 years or so...any statistics on injuries and, dare I say it, deaths???

A caution regarding forgeries being offered for sale...

ABAA dealers Jeffrey Marks and Peter Stern have just released a statement regarding what appears to be at least 15 forged Hemingway inscriptions.  These are apparently of extremely high quality and there is evidence that there are other "high point" inscriptions being offered. Forewarned is forearmed. 

Their release follow, reprinted with permission from P. Stern:

Jeffrey H. Marks Rare Books and Peter L. Stern & Co., Inc. would like to caution our colleagues and the public regarding what we believe to be a substantial fraud involving forged Hemingway inscriptions. We purchased three of these last year from a European colleague but had only catalogued one, which we subsequently withdrew from sale. Four more showed up at the recent New York fair with European colleagues who had recently purchased them in Italy. Careful examination of these by Jennifer Larson and others revealed clues that led us to conclude that they, along with three we had in stock (but which were not with us in New York), contain forged inscriptions apparently by the same hand.

On being informed of this conclusion, our colleagues did not display these at the fair. We have found several similar inscriptions elsewhere (now, better late than never, that we know what to look for), for a total of at least 15 books. We are concerned that more such books have either been sold or are being offered for sale. We have some reason to believe that there are additional forgeries purporting to be by Fitzgerald, Salinger, Faulkner and others advertised for sale, although whether these are the products of the same forger remains undetermined. Thus far, we have no evidence of these being other than of recent manufacture.

We are seeking the cooperation of our colleagues to investigate the source of these forgeries. As required by the ILAB Code of Ethics, as well as by our own standards of conduct, we have always unconditionally guaranteed autographs as genuine. We have never provided "authentication" for so much as a single scrap of paper. That said, we are willing to examine any inscriptions that our colleagues might feel queasy about, and will provide our opinions so long as it is understood that, should we suspect these to be forgeries, we will be furnished with full and complete details of their origin.

Peter L. Stern
Jeffrey H. Marks

Book thief's sentence halved...

The Iranian/Brit who stole leaves from an untold number of books at the British Library and the Bodleian Library has had his sentence cut in half by the Appellate Court...and his deportation order was reversed.  

Mr Justice Blake, giving the court's judgement, said: "This was not a case of someone stealing to improve his library then preventing scholars from accessing those books in the future. All the books have been recovered and so have the pages.

Apparently, the court was swayed by his "charitable work". Sad commentary...good thing he did not steal beer from the market, the penalty would undoubtedly be harsher.

For other elements of this tale, please see this and that.

47 B. Franklin letters "discovered" in London

An American professor doing research in London stumbled across a series of previously unknown letters written by, to, and about Benjamin Franklin, a stunning find that sheds new light on early U.S. history.

The collection of 47 letters are hand-written copies made 250 years ago, when Franklin lived in London. That they were filed under the copyist's name, not Franklin's, may explain why they were overlooked by historians until now, said a curator at the British Library, where the letters are held.

Amazing when things like this appear from the ether....but to have 47 "new" letters fall from the sky is quite remarkable.

RIP Judith F. Krug: Read a Banned Book in her memory...

Judith Krug passed away April 11th, 2009. A librarian and a powerful voice for library's "right to choose", she was the Director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom since it was founded in 1967. She also started Banned Books Week in 1982, promoting the right to read, write and shelve stories and books without the interference of various censors.

"She was a force of nature, fiercely determined to make sure that censorship wouldn't triumph in the library or the larger world," said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom."

True to her convictions, she was a strong opponent of content blocking on library internet connections ("Blocking material leads to censorship. ... [E]very time I hear someone say, I want to protect the children, I want to pull my hair out.").

She also created quite a stir (particularly by librarian standards) when, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, she criticized the Delray Beach Florida librarian who reported to the police the library use of one of the attackers...contrary to a Florida law that guarantees confidentiality to library patrons. Said Krug, "I would have felt better if she had followed the Florida law. I suspect most people faced with the same situation would have done what she did."

She was a great standard bearer and I regret I never got to meet her. I hope whoever picks up her reins will have the same vim and vigor.

Set-up: Day One

All set up. Setting up half a booth is arguably *more* time consuming than setting up a full booth. In the end, it seems to have come together. I even managed to sell a book or two. My booth mate, Harteveld Rare Books, did not show up until very late afternoon. I was getting worried... Turns out they were held up for 2.5 hours in Customs. They were *far* more bemused by it than I would have been. They managed to get everything at least unpacked before we were all kicked out for the evening. I'll post images tomorrow.

Went to a great party at Bibi's shop (Imperial Fine Books). It was great fun. Many/most of the usual suspects were in attendance. People seem reserved but very hopeful about the weekend.

Will attend the Swann's auction tomorrow morning. There are a handful of things I may pursue. The gem of the sale (I think), is the Golden Cockerel Press edition of The Four Gospels (designed by Eric Gill). It is one of the 12 copies printed on vellum. Every element of this book is stunning. It is simply an exceptional piece of work. He (Gill) was a genius. I hope it goes to a covetous home.

It was a very nice day...a room full of book dealers is really all together too much fun...

Judging a book by its title...the votes are in.

NYTimes has an article on the winner of this year's Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year (sponsored by The Bookseller magazine). The winner for 2009 is “The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais”. A special collections librarian summed the win up aptly, stating, "As a collector of books on fromage frais, I'm elated that this award will help jack up prices for cheese container books!"

On the other hand, Dr. Brooks D. Cash, who was a runner-up with his “Curbside Consultation of the Colon,” said that while he was “honored to be in such august company," also added, “I think being beaten by someone with that title is really cheesy.”

Huge archive of medical illustrations and photos created by HMHM

The National Museum of Health and Medicine [part of the National Library of Medicine] has just created a massive archive of medical illustrations and photography. Best yet, it is *all* free and housed at flicker.

Per a very good Wired article:

An Army archivist is undertaking a massive project to digitize and make public a unique collection of rare and sometimes startling military medical images, from the Civil War to Vietnam.
This previously unreported archive at the Army-run National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C., contains 500,000 scans of unique images so far, with another 225,000 set to be digitized this year.
Mike Rhode, the museum's head archivist, is working to make tens of thousands of those images, which have been buried in the museum's archive, available on Flickr. Working after hours, his team has posted a curated selection of almost 800 photos on the service already.
"You pay taxes. These are your pictures," Rhode said. "You should be able to see them."

It is a remarkable collection. All images are being provided for free under a Creative Commons Attribution license. I look forward to see how this project evolves. 

Thanks to CD at BoingBoing for the heads up.

Tragic loss in PA - Humans fine, books and cats less so...

As some may know, David and Cynthy of The Philadelphia Rare Books and Manuscripts Company suffered a tragic loss recently. On March 9, 2009, a fire tore through the shop consuming books and taking their two shop cats, Sessa and Thalia. The silver lining is that no humans were hurt, many of the books were unharmed and/or will be salvaged and the building itself appears to be structurally sound.

Our thoughts and best wishes go out to them. I can thinks of few things worse and hope all goes as well and as smoothly as possible. 

Please note, they have indicated that their internet connection is currently flakey. That said, words of support and commiseration are seldom a bad thing and can be directed here.

A short article, image and video can be found here.

AOL video can be found here.

Wiscasset/ME loses Constitution case.

Per the AP:

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A rare 1776 copy of the Declaration of Independence belongs to a Virginia technology entrepreneur, not the state of Maine, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday. Richard Adams Jr. of Fairfax County purchased the document from a London book dealer in 2001 for $475,000. But the state of Maine claimed it belongs to the town of Wiscasset, where it was kept by the town clerk in 1776.
Virginia's high court said that a lower court did not err in its ruling in Adams' favor because Maine didn't prove the document was ever an official town record and that Adams had superior title to the print.
Adams' attorney, Robert K. Richardson, has argued that Wiscasset's town clerk copied the text of the Declaration of Independence into the town's record books on Nov. 10, 1776. It's that transcription, not the document upon which it was based, that is the official town record, Richardson said.
"The fact that the print was not made by an authorized public officer and was not intended to be the official memorial of the Declaration precluded the print from qualifying as a 'public record' under common law," the court said in its ruling.
Adams, who gained fame when he founded UUNet Technologies Inc., the first commercial Internet service provider, sued to establish title to the document after learning that Maine was trying to get it back. His attorney told the high court last month there's no evidence the document was ever an official record kept by the town of Wiscasset and that Adams is the rightful owner.
Maine Assistant Attorney General Thomas Knowlton argued that Wiscasset never gave up ownership of the document, which is one of about 250 copies printed in 1776 and distributed to towns throughout Massachusetts to be read to residents. Maine was part of Massachusetts at the time.
Maine state archivist David Cheever said he found it "incredible" that the state's rights were trumped by a private collector. Maine contended the document never should have been sold because of a state law which presumes that public documents remain public property unless ownership is expressly relinquished by the government.
"To us, it's a public document. It was then. It is now," Cheever said.
Knowlton said the state strongly disagrees with the decision, but acknowledged that it is the end of the road. There are no federal issues that could be pursued to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The unfortunate result is a public record that we believe rightfully belongs to the people of Maine is now in the hands of a private collector in Virginia," Knowlton said.
Adams' attorney was in court all day Friday and unavailable for comment.
Whether it was an official record or not, the document apparently was retained by Solomon Holbrook, Wiscasset's town clerk from 1885 until his death in 1929. An estate auctioneer found it in a box of papers in the attic of Holbrook's daughter's home after she died in 1994.
Knowlton said town clerks in those days worked out of their homes - a likely explanation for why the document remained with the family instead of being passed along to the new clerk. Holbrook also was a jeweler.
The document changed hands a couple of times before Adams bought it. Cheever said officials became aware of the print's existence after receiving an anonymous tip and decided to try to get it back because of its historical significance.
Cheever said only 11 of the approximately 250 copies printed by Ezekiel Russell in Salem, Mass., are known to still exist. One that originally belonged to the town of North Yarmouth also was obtained by a private collector but eventually was returned, Cheever said.
The opinion can be found at: http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/opnscvwp/1080987.pdf
By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM

Pillars of Knowledge - Type on Trees Before Pulping

The new Crawley library opened in West Sussex relatively recently. It contains some striking architectural/artistic elements...notably remarkable textual trees.

The striking, cracked trees, 14 in all, are situated throughout the library building and are installed vertically, flush to the floor and ceiling to resemble supporting, structural pillars. Each tree is, in fact, a real oak trunk and displays carved passages of text from literature within the library, the typeface of each passage chosen carefully to suit the nature of the text – which is where Why Not Associates comes in.

“We worked with the selected passages of text, choosing typefaces and designing the layout,” says Why Not’s Andy Altmann of the studio’s role in the making of the Crawley Trees. “Because there were 14 trees to do, all of us in the studio got to do one.”
...
The text to adorn the trees was chosen by the users of Crawley library, thanks to research done by Anna Sandberg. “She was another key collaborator and did all the workshops with the people [of Crawley] to point us in the right direction in terms of sourcing textual content,” says Young. “She also put hundreds of questionnaire postcards in books all over the library and we got hundreds of replies naming favourite books and passages and thoughts about what was good literature”

Thanks to boingboing for the headsup.

Quick interview of Hang Fire....

There is a fun little interview with William Smith, owner of Hang Fire Books over atBoingBoing. William specializes in "vintage paperbacks and lurid pulp fiction from the 1940s-60s" while also carrying general stock. His blog is great as he posts wonderfully lurid pulp covers with pleasing regularity. [Also, you should not miss his current post on the annotated sleaze that arrived recently. Thesis research?!?].

A Sterling Release - The Caryatids

I have a serious soft spot for "hard" spec. fiction. I like it when the numbers work. Among the best of the cadre who write such material is Bruce Sterling. His newest is The Caryatids. From the publisher:

Alongside William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling stands at the forefront of a select group of writers whose pitch-perfect grasp of the cultural and scientific zeitgeist endows their works of speculative near-future fiction with uncanny verisimilitude. To read a novel by Sterling is to receive a dispatch from a time traveler. Now, with The Caryatids, Sterling has written a stunning testament of faith in the power of human intellect, creativity, and spirit to overcome any obstacle–even the obstacles we carry inside ourselves.

The world of 2060 is divided into three spheres of influence, each fighting with the others over the resources of fallen nations and an environment degraded almost to the point of no return. There is the Dispensation, centered in Los Angeles, where entertainment and capitalism have fused with the highest of high-tech. There is the Acquis, a Green-centered collective that uses invasive neurological technology to create a networked utopia. And there is China, the sole surviving nation-state, a dinosaur that has prospered only by pitilessly pruning its own population. Products of this monstrous world, the daughters of a monstrous mother, and–according to some–monsters themselves, are the Caryatids: the four surviving female clones of a mad Balkan genius and wanted war criminal now ensconced, safely beyond extradition, on an orbiting space station. Radmila is a Dispensation star determined to forget her past by building a glittering, impregnable future. Vera is an Acquis functionary dedicated to reclaiming their home, the Croatian island of Mljet, from catastrophic pollution. Sonja is a medical specialist in China renowned for selflessly risking herself to help others. And Biserka is a one-woman terrorist network. The four “sisters” are united only by their hatred for their “mother”–and for one another.

When evidence surfaces of a coming environmental cataclysm, the Dispensation sends its greatest statesman–or salesman–John Montgomery Montalban, husband of Radmila, and lover of Vera and Sonja, to gather the Caryatids together in an audacious plan to save the world.

It can be purchased at the Big A or your local indy. Added context by CD over at boingboing.

RIP Philip Jose Farmer

Philip Jose Farmer (1/26/1918-2/25/2009) passed away in his sleep this morning. 

As posted on his website, [h]e will be missed greatly by his wife Bette, his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, friends and countless fans around the world.

He won his first Hugo Award in 1953 and his last in 1972 ["To Your Shattered Bodies Go"]. In the first few years of 2000, he one the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award [lifetime achievement, awarded at the Nebula Awards Ceremony], the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the Forry Award for Lifetime Achievement.

He will be missed by many...

A blog reborn...Good things happening over at Fine Books & Collections

Among the new things happening over at Fine Books and Collections is a new "group" blog. I am very pleased to say that I was involved in drafting the first crop of bloggers and I think it is off to a great start. The intent is that everyone will post about once a week, which should provide for some steady, interesting posts with a variety of voices and focus areas. Though there are a few asks still jelling, the crew as it stands includes the following:

• Exile Bibliophile, the ever mysterious Special Collections librarian
• Scott Brown, the original voice of this blog and owner of Eureka Books
• Brian Cassidy of Brian Cassidy, Bookseller fame.
• Jeremy Dibbell of Philobiblos
• Stephen Gertz of David Brass Rare Books
• Ian Kahn of Lux Mentis, Booksellers (that would be me...)
• Michael Leiberman who runs one of Seattle's great shops, Wessel and Lieberman
• Ann Loftin, editor of Fine Books and Collections
• Chris Lowenstein of the wonderfully named, Book Hunter's Holiday
• Forrest Proper, proprietor of Joslin Hall Rare Books

A riotous crew, if I do say so myself...and I do. I'm hoping to announce one or two more bloggers in the near future. So head over and read some interesting posts by people who write better than I.

Really, I handle so much that does not involve long pig...

Well, for the second time in as many weeks, my History of Gastronomy/J. Dahmer volume is in the news. This quarter's Gastronomica (Winter, Vol. 9, No. 1) has a full page (the last page in the volume, "Rare") article on the book and its history. The author, Jeanne Schinto, saw the book at a show in Boston nearly a year ago and asked if I would allow an article about it for Gastronomica. 

I do not recall making all the statements for which I am quoted...but there is nothing hugely off-base, either and the gist of the background is solid. It is an interesting and very intriguing piece. As she notes, it really does appear to be prima facia evidence of an effort on his part to understand something that he had to know was...well...not normal. 

I'll never complain about press placements...but I do hope the next one or two are focused on fine press books, early printed matter or...er...anything that does not include serial killers...

Interesting article on "silence helping tome raiders"

The Guardian article's basic argument is that nearly all players in the book world, collectors, dealers and libraries/special collections all tend to be as quiet as possible regarding losses. This, added to the tendency toward personal fiefdoms and the strong aversion to sharing data, allows miscreants and thieves a much "safer" playground within which to work. 

This is a very interesting issue and one that deserves deeper thought and, possibly, an attempt at a data[base] driven solution. I lack the time to run with this at the moment...but we shall return to it in the future. 

Thanks to JG for the heads up.

Save the Words...Best website of the year (thus far)

I am quaeritating you all to go take a look at "Save the Words", assuming you have a succisive moment or two. Sponsored by the Oxford U. Press, the site seeks to save unusual words from a teterrimous extinction. You can adopt a word (pledge to use it in correspondence and conversation) and sign up for a "word a day" emailed to the comfort of your 'puter.

These are words that will have a locupletative effect on not just your vocabulary but on your life as a whole... While it can sometimes be a senticous matter to use words that require explanation and/or definition, I don't think I should be prescited for hoping to save idiosyncratic terminology.

I, for one, am ecstasiated that they have embarked on this program. It is neither vexatious or dilatory to add interesting words to one's vocabulary...it certainly beats molrowing.

My squiriferous nature requires I thank JG for the heads up.

Tiny print+Storage record=Geek moment

Stanford has reclaimed its hold on the "fine print" crown, having just written "S U" "assembled from subatomic sized bits as small as 0.3 nanometers, or roughly one third of a billionth of a meter". The letters were written in the "interference patterns formed by quantum electron waves on the surface of a sliver of copper". Isn't technology fun!
We've come a long way since 1959 when Richard Feynman first challenged the scientific publishing world to:

find a way to rewrite a page from an ordinary book in text 25,000 times smaller than the usual size (a scale at which the entire contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica would fit on the head of a pin).

It was not until 1985 that Tom Newman (at Stanford) "printed" the first page of Dicken's, Tale of Two Cities onto the head of a pin (see smaller image). Fun...though hard to read without a scanning electron microscope. It is said that Tom's biggest problem in collecting his prize was finding the page of text in the vast expanse that is the head of a pin.

The fine folks at Slashdot are all excited because this same feat has major implications for computer storage. In a nutshell, there is/was a presumption that data storage limits would be capped:

when you get to the point that an atom represents one bit in some form or fashion. But Stanford University researchers have used a quantum hologram model to store the characters 'S' and 'U' by encoding the data at a rate of 35 bits per electron.

This has little short-term implications...but huge potential for the future. 

John Updike has lost his cancer fight - Dead at 76

The AP is reporting that Updike's publisher, Alfred A. Knopf has issued a statement that he passed away earlier today (Tuesday) after a long battle with cancer. At this point, pretty much everyone else is just repeating the AP blurb. In a hour or so, NYT, et al will polish up the obits they have had more or less finished for the last 6 months and there will be much to read.

Over his life he won nearly every literary prize, including not one but two Pulitzers (Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest). He also won a pair of National Book Awards. Great writer. Great loss. Always annoying to lose a great when there are so many terrible hacks who couldn't be healthier. I'll have to add a book or two to my reading pile...

Friends of the Darby Free Library...

From their FaceBook page:

The Darby Free Library, which was founded in 1743 and is believed to be the oldest continuously operating public library in America, will be forced to close its doors at year's end if somebody doesn't write a big check or a lot of little ones.

It would be a shame if this old library closed. It is not only a vital resource for its community but also a symbol, as our oldest known public library, of our country's commitment to access to knowledge and education for everybody.

Thanks to CD at BoingBoing for the post...

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Coming in April

Says Chronicle Books, "The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!" The publisher's blurb reads:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen's classic novel to new legions of fans.

I don't even know where to start. As you know, Gregory Maquire started a one-man rewriting of classics in alternative voices (e.g. Wicked, A Lion Among Men, Son of a Witch, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, etc). What we have here appears to be a different beastie...not a well-known tale told from a different perspective...rather, a well-known tale with flesh-eating zombies thrown in. I have already ordered a copy (possibly more than one).

I predict that P&P will see a bump in sales because of this...doubly so if they make a movie of it. Oh, please let someone make a movie based on this iteration.

I also predict this is the first in a series. Perhaps next we will see Matheson's, vampires ala I Am Legend invading Holmes' London. Maybe L. Bloom (of Ulysses fame) will have to fend off a werewolf as he wanders Dublin. Or Tom Sawyer will follow one more cut-off in the cave...and in his madness, release the Old Ones upon a Twainian world. Then again, it just might be a zombie horde roaming from one classic to another.

I hope this is as clever as it seems to want to be. It could actually be good fun...it could also be very painful. I will review it when it appears... Thanks for the heads up JG.

Yet another reason to look at ebay books with extreme skepticism...

A Reading, PA man has been indicted on Federal charges of forgery/fraud charges. According to the charges, he has made over $300,000 over the last several years foisting "signed" books to buyers on Ebay. The only upside here is that he apparently would buy a genuine inscribed copy and then have a company MAKE A RUBBER STAMP of the signature and use that to "inscribe" copies that he would then foist on buyers on ebay...the silver lining being that his bogus crap books should be easier to spot than "better" forgeries.

That is the real problem with this thief (can you really be a forger if all you do is rubber-stamp books?) and others like him. I do not have much...or any...sympathy for those who buy forgeries from sellers on ebay. Unless you know the seller to be reputable (this does *not* count ebays own "I am not a crook" system) personally and/or professionally, I think you have to *presume* that what you see listed on ebay is fraudulent. If, as here, you pay real money for a book from "bev103162smith," you deserve whatever arrives at your door.

The *problem* is that now and into the untold future, these bits of garbage are going to be polluting the secondary market. Even if you would never think about buying an inscribed work from ebay, you are going to have them offered to you in years to come by "innocent" buyers and/or their families. Rubber-stamp copies, one hopes, should be reasonably easy to spot...but I wager there are better (and worse) examples out there... I'd go so far as to suggest that unless you know the provenance of a given inscribed copy, it is not unreasonable to presume it is forged. 

Worse still, the growth of this kind of fraud poisons the well...driving potential collectors out of the field either because they have been burned or because they read articles like the above and decide it is just not worth the risk/headache. I know at least three of my clients started working with me only after they had been buying on their own on ebay and been burned more than once...I wonder how many knew they'd been burned, but lost the desire to pursue books altogether. As it stands now, I actively try to guide my clients away from inscribed modern lit and into "safer" (and more client-specific) areas. 

Ebay, of course, "has no comment"...as they steadfastly hold that they simply provide an infrastructure for the transactions and have no responsibility to police their cesspool for stolen property, fraud or forgeries. To paraphrase the good Dr., if you want to avoid forgeries, retain a book(wo)man you trust.

Good news: we have been picked to do the RBMS event

We have just been notified that we were selected (by lottery) to be one of the 28 ABAA members to exhibit at the 50th Annual RBMS Pre-conference. The RBMS (Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association...hence the convenient acronym) holds these meetings yearly, this year's topic being "Seas of Change: Navigating the Cultural and Institutional Contexts of Special Collections".

We tried to go last year, but were not able to get off the wait list. We are very excited to be able to attend this event. 

If we were very smart, we would coordinate this trip with taking classes at the RBS, but it is unlikely we will be that clever. Both Suzanne and I have been awarded scholarships (me last year, Suz this year...they are good for a two year period)...but I think we are planning to go in the fall. 

Inaugural D.C. Spring Antiques Show shares the space with...

...another inaugural event. It turns out our event will be right where that first dance took place. In a very nice bit of PR, the promoter of the upcoming DC Spring Antiques Show sent out the following today:

Excitement is in the air as history unfolds at the Washington D.C. Convention Center.

In just six weeks you will be part of history at the Inaugural D.C. Spring Antiques Show at the Washington D.C. Convention Center!

WASHINGTON - JANUARY 20: President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attend the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball at the Washington Convention Center on January 20, 2009 in Washington, DC. Obama became the first African-American to be elected to the office of President in the history of the United States.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Barack Obama;Michelle Obama)

That the POTUS is a geek pleases me to no end...

There is a bookish hook here somewhere. Our President will get to keep his crackberry, after a fashion. It appears he will be switching hardware, most likely to General Dynamic's Sectera Edge, a hybrid PDA that has been approved by the NSA for "Top Secret" voice communication and "Secret" email and web sites. 

It is a little bit clunky looking, but is pretty much the geekiest crypto-toy on the market. Security does not come cheaply, as this phone runs just shy of $3500...and apparently the car-jack adds at least another $100 [Note to self: stop whining about cost of iPhone toys.]. 

I, for one, am pleased the POTUS gets to keep his connectivity...while complying with the Presidential Records Act and keeping the folks at NSA, etc. happy. I can not imagine being unplugged and isolated...and am pleased to have a President who was apparently similarly twitchy about it... I wonder if it will take e-books...

Bad news on the show front...sign of the times?

The Boston Antiques Weekend, which houses MARIAB's Boston Antiquarian Book Fair, has been cancelled. Apparently there had only been one "new" dealer signed up and not enough returning to carry the show. It was a young show, only coming into its third year, and I was very pleased with it both prior years and was looking forward to it this year.

I hope they are able to get it rolling again for 2010. We shall see.

All is perhaps not lost...reading rates increase

The Economist, the recent NEA report indicates that "the number of adults who said they had read a novel, short story, poem or play in the past 12 months had gone up, rising from 47% of the population in 2002 to over 50% in 2008." 

Most remarkable of all has been the rebound among young men. The numbers of men aged 18-24 who say they are reading books (not just online) rose 24% in 2002-08.

It remains to be seen if this is actually a trend...or an anomaly...or spurious (perhaps they have just changed how they count...lying with statistics is an not much of a challenge). I hope it is a real trend. Reading makes you smarter and we need more smart people...

Sadly, what has not changed, "is America’s “functional illiteracy” rate. Fully 21% of adult Americans did not read a book last year because they couldn’t, one of the worst rates in the rich world." And yet 30MM people a night watch American Idol. 

RIP Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth, son of N.C. Wyeth and father of Jamie Wyeth passed away Thursday night in his sleep at 91. 

A pity...condolences to the family.

The Passion of the Hausfrau

Many years ago, I went to a school in the mountains of western Maine. I have recently been "finding" a number of my classmates thanks to the great time-hole that is FaceBook (find me and/or "Fan" LM). Several have gone on to do interesting things (notably Rainy Orteca). I have just learned (I am a bit slow) that another of clan has a book coming out in June of 2009 (preorder here).

Nicole Chaison has been chronically the trials and tribulations of modern parenting in her triannually self-published magazine, Hausfrau Muthahzine. Back-issues are available. They have resonated such that Random House is rolling out The Passion of the Hausfrau. Says RH:

How can women balance their intellectual (and physical) desires with the realities of motherhood and monogamy? And, no less profound, what’s the best bra to lift sagging, nursed-out breasts? In The Passion of the Hausfrau, Nicole Chaison addresses these universal and eternal questions as the monk-scribes of medieval times might have done: she illuminates her own humorous tale of reflection and self-discovery—including finding that perfect undergarment—with delightful illustrations and instructive asides.

Following the Hausfrau through a comedic take on the classic Hero’s Journey, we find our heroine lost in an intricate maze of hormones, identity issues, exhaustion, and mundane mommy-tasks. We follow her through the wormhole otherwise known as parenthood, concurrent with the renovation of a three-story Victorian with lice infestation; we travel to the center of “the happiest celebration on earth” with the whole dang family; and we cheer as our Hausfrau finally realizes that she not only has a story to tell, but wisdom to last the ages.

A hilarious memoir of the highest aesthetic order, The Passion of the Hausfrau is a delight to the senses and the funny bone; it’s the perfect indulgence for stressed-out, time-restricted mothers (and fathers!).

Best of all, I get a new book to give to my spawning friends (along with Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine). If I end up with a review copy, I'll post about else you'll just have to wait until June...

Perspective...good, bad and just interesting....

The Bank of England has just cut its interest rate to 1.5%...below 2% for the first time in its 315 year history. 

That's right, not the first time since 1964...the first time since 1694. 

For perspective, on March 1, 1694, the HMS Sussex treasure fleet (of 13 ships) is shipwrecked off Gibraltar with the loss of approximately 1,200 lives. On November 21, 1694, Voltaire, French philosopher. In December of 1694, Thomas Tenison becomes Archbishop of Canterbury. On December 28th, Queen Mary II of England dies. Wikipedia is very cool.

There is some dispute as to the oldest bank in the US, but it appears to me to be the Bank of New York (now with "Mellon" at the end), which was formed in 1784. 

Here's to the hope that all efforts to get the global economy heading is a better direction are successful. We need more people feeling happy enough to buy good books...

Big news in the Bookfair world...economic trickle down?

I just received an email from Bruce Gventer announcing that due to feedback from exhibitors and potential exhibitors and the economy in general, he is putting his New York bookfairs on hiatus. This would appear to mean that there will be no shadow show to the NY ABAA Bookfair. This would be a great shame, on many fronts...especially as the new location at Hunter College was quite wonderful.

I hope things change in the near term and that the shadow show is able to go forward. It would be a real loss for the weekend as a whole...

Post Ice, Pending Snow...

Well, our neighbor lost a truly lovely tree, but we made it through the Big Ice relatively unscathed. The house, luckily, is wedged between two of Maine's largest hospitals (Mercy and Maine Medical Center)...as a result, we lose power very rarely and when we do, they get it back on in this neighborhood before almost any others...

It was amazing to walk around out back the next day, listening to the ice in the massive maples in the back, as the branches blew (or swung, as the case may be) in the breeze, there was a constant crackling and popping of ice. Amazing.

My folks were on the generator for a while and midcoast was hit pretty hard. We had a guest stay with us while her house was dark and cold. The worst hit here in Maine was in the Alfred area...still without power after many days. This is, of course the local of the famed farm of Don and Sam, proprietors of Rabelais Books, the best foodie bookstore in Maine (and, in my not remotely humble opinion, the most/all landmasses in the western hemisphere...perhaps more). In the midst of their suffering, they hosts a *very* fun holiday cookie exchange (bring 1 type, leave with many). With luck, they are warm again this evening...tomorrow at the latest.

Amazing to see .25 to .5 inch of ice covering things. Amazing and very unpleasant. Snow tonight and for later in the week. Much more fun, that.

Did I miss a career in Medicine???

Who knew:

"Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but Australian scientists are using it to diagnose dementia, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of New South Wales, found that patients under the age of 65 suffering from frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the second most common form of dementia, cannot detect when someone is being sarcastic."

Original article is getting /.ed. 

Betty Page - RIP

A sad (and tacitly bookish) post.

Background.

Gallery.

quick tech post...facebook and beyond...

I've created a Lux Mentis, Booksellers Page on Facebook, please consider becoming a "fan".

On tech and bookseller, there are many interesting things afoot. I'm working on a few related posts on such subjects...expect them over the next few days/weeks. With luck, a bit of signal within the noise...

Philogelos: The Laugh Addict

And you thought Monty Python was original...

In Philogelos, a fourth century (and arguably the first) joke book has been getting a bit of press lately. William Berg, a classics professor in the US, has translated it and created a digital iteration (see below). It is confirmation that there really are no new jokes.

Consider the brilliant "Dead Parrot" skit by the collective genius that was Monty Python (e.g. "he's resting"). 1600 years ago, when a man complains that the slave he purchased was dead, he's told, '"By the gods," answers the slave's seller, "when he was with me, he never did any such thing."'

You can literally hear Dangerfield, Rickles, Youngman, etc tell:

"A misogynist is attending to the burial of his wife, who has just died. When someone asks, 'Who is it who rests in peace here?', he answers, 'Me, now that I'm rid of her!'."

"I had your wife, without paying a penny". He replied: "It's my duty as a husband to couple with such a monstrosity. What made you do it?"

"A student dunce goes to the doctor and says, ‘Doctor, when I wake up, I’m all dizzy, then after half-an-hour I’m O.K.’ ‘Well, wait a half hour before waking up,’ advises the doctor."

Articles on the translation(s): here, here, here, and here.

Translations of some here, here and here:

Greek here.

A "free highlights" version of his digital translation of this work can be found here.

W. Gibson's Agrippa Files re-introduced...

It has been a nice day for geeky bookish news. /. recently posted the following:

"While the text of William Gibson's elusive electronic poem AGRIPPA is widely posted around the Web, it has not been seen in its original incarnation — custom-built software designed to scroll the poem through a single play before encrypting each line with an RSA algorithm — since 1992. Today is the 16th anniversary, to the day, of the poem's initial release. A team of scholars at the University of Maryland and UC Santa Barbara used forensic computing to restore the code from an original diskette loaned by a collector and have placed video of the complete 'run,' as well as never-before-seen footage from the night of AGRIPPA's public debut in 1992, up on a Web site called the Agrippa Files. There's also a detailed essay documenting the forensic process, plus a mess of stills, screenshots, and a copy of the disk image itself." [emphasis mine]

Agrippa and the related files can be found here...expect to loose some time...

Will Mario kick Dickens' tush or vice versa...

TimesOnline just posted that Nintendo is rolling out "100 Classic Book Collection" for the NintendoDS. The "ebook" collection will include the likes of Shakespeare and Dickens to Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. It is only being rolled out in the UK...US to follow, perhaps.

For a geek/snark review of this announcement, see /.

Bowdlerizing alive and well and living in New Rochelle...

Bowdlerizing has a long, rich literary history. Named for a 16/17th century physician who published a heavily edited edition of  William Shakespeare "safe" for women and children, it is a practice that has had a small but passionate following ever since...generally within communities that wallow in moralizing, self-righteous indignation and a healthy sense of holier-than-thouness. Admittedly, I may be slightly biased, as I find gutting of literature to be on about the same plane as any other "abuse of innocents" activity...

The Talk of the Sound posted a cleverly titled entry yesterday: Now Playing in New Rochelle, "Book, Interrupted"! on the English Departments' decision to require students to return copies of the class book, "Girl, Interrupted" so that they could...literally...tear out pages 64 through 70 before returning them to the students continue their lernin'. 

Per English Dept. chairwoman Leslie Altschul, "The material was of a sexual nature that we deemed inappropriate for teachers to present to their students, since the book has other redeeming features, we took the liberty of bowdlerizing." [emphasis mine]. Bowdlerizing is not a "liberty" to be taken..it is an offense to be inflicted (c.f. "I took the liberty of thwacking Ms. Altschul in the forehead with a copy of Girl, Interrupted."). The article notes that the District has a "book challenge process", but that the district failed to follow their own policies. 

The article also provides a succinct summary of why Bowdlerizing is such an ugly thing: "Bowdlerizing is a particularly disturbing form of censorship since it not only suppresses specific content deemed 'objectionable,' but also does violence to the work by removing material that the author thought integral," said Joan Bertin, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. "It is a kind of literary fraud perpetrated on an unsuspecting audience."

I'm tired of the lowest-common-denominator controlling the "public good". I'm tired of small-minded, pseudo-religious bigots setting the bar for what is and is not acceptable. Shouldn't school be where you are *challenged* in your conceptions and analysis...where you *learn* to think critically and cogently? Do we *really* want out classrooms defined by material that does not offend anyone, lest it be purged (or, you know, the offending pages be purged). 

 I suggest that one's willingness to rip pages out of a book should be inversely proportional to one's ability to hold the job of "English Department Chair"...in fact, I think I might go so far as to say that if one is happy to tear great chunks of text out of books before handing them to students, one should not be teaching at all. There are plenty of stalls that need mucking, fish that need gutting and/or graves that need digging...just about anything that keeps books from your hands. 

Thanks (so to speak) to Joyce and LB for the late night posts about the good times in New Rochelle...

In for a penny, in for a pound...or...more blood in the water.

Apparently the Miami Herald is up for sale, too.

Next up, the WSJ will announce they will be printing the paper on Fruit-Roll-Ups. That way you can eat the paper when you're done reading it (value-add) *and* they can get in on that much-sought-after school lunch program subsidy...

and in other print-media spiraling the drain news...

Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times (and the Chicago Cubs), etc. is apparently heading toward bankruptcy. Just a great day. I am going back to bed.

The other shoe falls...appears Rare Book Review is gone, too

Following on the heels of Fine Books & Collections' decision to abandon print for a digital existence, it appears that Rare Book Review has also ceased publication. Published since 1974, RBR "is to be 'mothballed' with immediate effect!". There is no indication as to what direction they may take...perhaps they will publish periodically. They do, it appears, intend to keep the website live and to sell banner space there but there is no clear sign that they will be adding content. We shall see.

Icky way to start the week...with luck, the news will improve...

"L'Enfer" [Hell] on display at Bibliothque Nationale [Addendum - alas, a year ago...]

Bibliothque Nationale [Paris] displayed their collection of erotica and pornography, built over 170 years and "forbidden" from access generally. It is referred to officially as "L'Enfer" [Hell]...which I think is wonderful.

The "Enfer" section of the Bibliothque Nationale books and prints and photographs purchased, confiscated or donated over almost two centuries is believed to be one of the largest and richest collections of pornographic and erotic materials in the world. The Vatican's secret stash is said to be even larger but that, presumably, will never be opened to the public.

How strong can this stuff be? Given what appears daily on the internet, on cable TV, or in the pages of the Daily Sport, is it possible to be shocked by exquisite, but explicit, 17th-century porn?

The answer is, yes. The exhibition is an eye-opener: a quietly and intelligently displayed but garish cornucopia of sadism, masochism, bestialism, scatology, bums, tits and staring genitalia. It is also a fascinating, and sometimes beautiful, expedition through the dark, winding corridors of the human psyche.

It has just been pointed out that I payed no attention to a minor issue...that of the exhibition dates. This exhibit ran from Dec. 2007 through March 2008. I am relieved as I no longer need to ponder at all a jaunt overseas. Sadly, it appears they did not print a catalogue. Bah...

[N.B. Bib. Nat. has a great collection of "Virtual Exhibitions"...well worth a look.]

Multi-millionaire arrested for stealing from the British Library...

The DailyMail has good article on the recent arrest of Farhad Hakimzadeh, a wealthy London collector. He apparently was tipping unique sheets into his own copies of various tomes and/or just stockpiling the leaves. It appears he cut leaves from at least 150 books from special collections at the British Library. Authorities found "hundreds of pages" at his home.

His crime(s) came to light only after another reader at the BL notified staff that pages appeared to have been cut out. I'm not even going to rant about this. I'm tired and have things to do.

Question: Is it "better" that he was doing this for some personal/misplaced intent to "improve" his personal collection vs. doing it to sell on the secondary market? The psychology is definitely different.

Enjoy your recent Fine Books & Collections...it is the last hardcopy...

I have just had it confirmed that the Nov/Dec issue of Fine Books and Collections Magazine is the last hard copy issue. Starting Jan, 2009, they are going "digital only". Perhaps this should not be a surprise, US News and the Christian Science Monitor have both recently gone digital only. However, they are both "news" venues...and as such, the web (and push delivery and all sorts of other techish things) lends itself to their content. Personally, I think the world of Fine Books and Collection does *not* lend itself to digital only.

I *want* hard copies, nicely organized, on my shelf. I *want* to be able to go back to old issues when I run across something that I know they wrote about. I *want* the content in my home, all the time. I am *so* pleased that our last ad in the magazine was a "celebration" of our first ABAA show. I want to be able to keep that...to show it to the boys...and their boys and girls in many years.

Most of all, I *want* to be able to keep and control the data. I want to be able to get a back issue if I loan one out and it does not return. I want the archive. I trust that FB&C will keep "back" content and have it searchable and all that great stuff. HOWEVER, they will only do so as long as they exist...or choose to do so...and/or as long as their hardware does not catastrphically fail. I am uncomforatable with the risk of losing data (and that is what the textblock is) that I value with no ability to do anything about it... Urgh.

That said, it is not my business and I am confident that Webb and his team are making the decision after careful consideration and contemplation. Webb has indicated that they have triple the number of readers online as they do for the print edition. I don't doubt that...though I know several of the clients I can directly trace back to FB&C are significantly "anti-tech"...no email, not computer...and we will lose them in this switch.

On the other hand, it does reach deeper and broader with very minor incremental costs. It certainly does have interesting options and opportunities. Push tech that could put new content onto my iPhone, auction calanders dynamically updated, integration with Facebook, dynamic content and "community" elements that might more deeply engage subscribers, interesting ways-from an advert standpoint- to reach new customers, etc.

I think it will be interesting and I hope it will be good. I will miss the paper though. Paper is good. Paper is real. Paper lasts. We shall just have to wait to see how long this medium lasts...