tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12900415643772124932024-03-13T08:09:15.302-04:00Adventures of Professor Booknoodle - Biblioharrumphery at its BestProfessor Booknoodle © is an autodidactic used and rare book dealer from the Edwardian Era of the early 20th century who has found that he has been inexplicably transplanted to the 21st century. The Professor has adjusted nicely. He still pursues bookselling as an avocation, and sells the occasional book. The Professor has noticed a change in the complexity of shipping. But his biggest perplexity is, in his own words, "How the deuce did I get shipped to the future?"Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-28575468074845031622014-08-25T20:26:00.002-04:002014-08-25T20:36:18.518-04:00FOR A GREAT SELECTION OF VINTAGE RECORDS VISIT CITY BEAT VINTAGE VINYL<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: large;"><b>We have changed the name of our vintage record shop. </b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: large;"><b>It is now called City Beat Vintage Vinyl. </b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: large;"><b>Here is how our banner looks in its entirety:</b></span></div>
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5x8sggXbQq6Y66fGhYLlIrcSuaPPmfm5y10ZnmCs_fShCy-4Nbz5ieA4Kkc84iox_hvpym486Z9dq3STNw14JWY4xKO-iG-aeKN0Mnv-JNFSo8Lz54u99W-VfUYe8o3xMKz01WbQrxPg/s1600/citybeatbanner3.jpg" height="90" width="320" /> </div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/CityBeatVintageVinyl" target="_blank">City Beat Vintage Vinyl — Our used record shop on Etsy</a></span></span></span></div>
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<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-81526987111840968852014-07-15T20:22:00.002-04:002014-07-15T20:28:45.638-04:00Joseph! you can't Help Yourself!<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent">While perusing an old post-Civil War music book, "The Golden Robin", I discovered a forgotten Women's Suffrage song within its covers. This was 1868, mind you.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent">"Woman's Rights, a Musical Colloquy". It was written by M. B. C. Slade,
with music by Arthur Lloyd. M. B. C. Slade was Mary Bridges Canedy
Slade ( Born in Fall River, Massachusetts, 1826 - 1882); she was an editor, a
poet, and author of many Protestant hymns, as well as a few patriotic
songs </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent"><span style="color: #660000;"><br /> This is a very early Woman's Rights song. I find it interesting that it is presented a</span><span class="text_exposed_show"><span style="color: #660000;">s
a 'colloquy', with verses sung alternatively by boys and girls. The
girls get the final word. Here it is — and it's certainly a prescient piece of work! :</span><br /> <br />
<span style="color: #660000;">BOYS</span> : I've been down to Boston, boys, To see the folks and sights.
Dear me! I heard such fuss and noise, About the Women's rights ! Now,
'tis just as plain as my old coat, That's plain as plain can be, That
when the women want to vote, They'll get no help from me!<br /> <span style="color: #660000;">BOYS CHORUS.</span><br /> "Not from Joe, Not from Joe, If he knows It, Not from Joseph! No, no, no, not from Joe, not from me, I tell you no!<br /> <br />
<span style="color: #660000;">GIRLS</span> : Tell us Joseph, why not I, Should vote as well as you? What Is
there. If we girls but try, We can't make out to do? Ah! but we shall
surely win the chance; And now I'll let you know, That If we don't our
cause advance, We'll vote, but not for Joe!"<br /> <span style="color: #660000;">GIRLS CHORUS</span>. Not for
Joe, Not for Joe, If we know It, not for Joseph; No, no, no, not for
Joe, not for you, sir, — oh! dear! no!<br /> <br /> <span style="color: #660000;">BOYS</span> : See. young woman,
just look here: Your home Is your true place; You never ought from out
your sphere, To show your pretty face. Don't you see, you ought to knit
and sew, And meek and humble be ? If from your sphere you wander so,
You'll get no help from me." (<span style="color: #660000;">BOYS CHORUS</span>)<br /> <br /> <span style="color: #660000;">GIRLS</span>:<br /> Joseph!
you can't help yourself, Our cause is speeding on; And you'll be laid
upon the shelf, When woman's rights are won. When our President Is Katy
fair, And Mary's eyes of blue, Beam sweetly from the Mayor's chair,
They'll see no place for you! (<span style="color: #660000;">GIRLS CHORUS</span>)</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"><a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/196525896/womens-rights-suffrage-song-in-1868-song" target="_blank">Early Women's Suffrage Song in "The Golden Robin" - for sale</a> </span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-32400316623618179632014-03-05T13:57:00.000-05:002014-03-05T13:57:04.735-05:00<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="userContent">Have you ever passed by the old stone house
where Edmund Wilson used to live up in Talcottville? The house sits
there , solid and implacable — like Wilson's literary opinions — a stone
monument to lives lived and a past that seems tangibl<span class="text_exposed_show">e
and rich, but just out of reach ... unless you were to open one of
Wilson's many books and especially if you were to open his memoir,
"Upstate" , which is his homage to rural New York, wherein Wilson
reveals a frustrated relationship with the countryside. It is a
love/hate relationship - but mostly love ... much like Wilson's
relationship with literature. For that relationship as it existed
between 1950 and 1965, "The Bit Between My Teeth" reveals much.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKFO3ZhtiMx540EwymzKH65i5ZSxaahmSDcjWM3dm4qRlssjXaJ5c-6hGncs1L7JrQUlYKXzTq8GyzA_dV_0vvx8sTLjeYTTr1EPeWeNgaAkSI8svW0wbEPsjPqG06FgXy0ICVnmNvLus/s1600/wilsonbitbetweengal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKFO3ZhtiMx540EwymzKH65i5ZSxaahmSDcjWM3dm4qRlssjXaJ5c-6hGncs1L7JrQUlYKXzTq8GyzA_dV_0vvx8sTLjeYTTr1EPeWeNgaAkSI8svW0wbEPsjPqG06FgXy0ICVnmNvLus/s1600/wilsonbitbetweengal.jpg" height="320" width="228" /></a></div>
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<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-45353286970022056082014-02-04T04:00:00.000-05:002014-02-04T15:22:37.892-05:00A NEWLY DISCOVERED POEM BY SAPPHO!<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Excting news for everybody that cares about classical literature — and poetry in general. An ancient poem by Sappho has been newly discovered. This is quite a find. Congratulations to those who were involved.</span> :<br />
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<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/10607569/A-new-Sappho-poem-is-more-exciting-than-a-new-David-Bowie-album.html?fb" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Rediscovered poem by Sappho — click here</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I wrote a little poem of my own in celebration:</span><br />
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<b><span style="color: #783f04;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent">Determined that her traces be scatter'd and few,<br /> The upstart with firm belief so sure,<br /> Placed the condemn'd upon a pyre,<br /> To eradicate that poetic soul by fire.<br /> Hubris! To purify the already pure; <br /> Still, the old endures …thus refreshingly new.</span></span></span></b><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-59356603644418030782013-09-05T15:39:00.002-04:002013-09-05T15:45:01.827-04:00<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;"><b>Elmore Leonard - RIP. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I posted this answer to somebody in an online forum, but want to repeat it here, because it think it part of the many reasons why so many readers recognized the brilliance of Elmore Leonard, and because it is a large part of why I enjoy his stories:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Elmore Leonard was the first author since Samuel Richardson (</span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;"><span class="st"> 1689 – 1761)</span> to understand how conversation actually sounds ... who understood its flow - its pauses, its stumblings, its extemporaneous freshness - <i>how it</i> <i>works</i>. After all, no single conversation has <i>ever</i> happened before. Of course the conversations (and character thought-processes) were of a different time and thus have a different flavor than Richardson's. But they are time-separated colleagues in observational perception and brilliancy.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-92067859728855521762013-05-09T14:38:00.001-04:002013-05-09T14:41:51.479-04:00FLEETING FAME<div class="mce-p">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span data-mce-style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: medium;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">I notice that in a short biographical entry for preacher/poet John Jordan Douglass in the <i>Dictionary of North Carolina Biography </i>edited by William S. Powell, and issued by the University of North Carolina, Douglass is compared to an equally obscure previous author (Alan Cunningham): </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span data-mce-style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: medium;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">" In an appraisal of Douglass' poetry, G. A. Wauchope, professor of English literature at the University of South Carolina, wrote: <i>'As a sea-poet, the author's style and treatment remind one of Allen Cunningham, a poet of a century past who excelled in ballads and songs of the free salt seas. . . . Mr. Douglass' mind is modern, but his soul is Greek. Though by profession he happens to be a Protestant clergyman by divine calling he is a son of Apollo whose magic flute has lured him into the secret haunts of nature, where he communes with the lovely nymphs and goddesses of the great outdoors.'</i> "</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span data-mce-style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;"><span data-mce-style="font-size: medium;">I like, "his mind is modern, but his soul is Greek ..." maybe the melodious sound of his sermons, and their interest for his congregations was enhanced by his inner pagan <i>daemon</i></span>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span data-mce-style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;"><span data-mce-style="font-size: medium;">Please note, that - for me - the obscurity of an author does not connote any particular value judgment on that author's work</span>. Even considering the regional/local nature of such an author's possible recognition.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span data-mce-style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;"><span data-mce-style="font-size: medium;">We have a local poetess, whose life spanned the 19th and 20th century, and who wrote quite passable verse (very enjoyable). Her collected works, prose and verse, display for those interested a genial view of the local past - small history writ personal. Her old home is just down the road a mile or so, and you will be hard pressed to find any persons, outside of local historians or antiquarians, who are even aware of her existence, and even less of her poetry, or of her charming columns written for a local paper. </span></span></span><br />
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;"><span data-mce-style="font-size: medium;" style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-size: large;">Fame and renown is so fleeting.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-44132810387345158342013-03-28T14:57:00.000-04:002013-03-29T02:08:33.755-04:00A Snippet about Grosset & Dunlap<div id="thread-body-message">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Nothing
big here, but we all know how frustrating it can be to establish an
exact date for a Grosset issue. I've got one of their early books in
front of me, (a work by Liberty Hyde Bailey) and the title page has
Grosset's imprint, along with a date and an address .... <br /><b>11 East 16th Street, New York ... 1906</b>.
I had the thought that it might be a good idea to keep that address on
hand, which could help at least with zeroing in to a closer <i>circa</i> date for other Grosset issues, if the address be present in those books sans date. If there is no address on title page, then check for the publisher's catalog or list at the rear.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Just thought some of you might like this little snippet. (And I realize the information may well be present elsewhere)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Maybe someone else can chime in if they know the duration of their publishing from that address.</span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />The printer for this particular book is stated as <b>Mount Pleasant Press</b>, J. Horace McFarland Company, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Price of a new Grosset & Dunlap book in 1906 : 75¢</span></span></div>
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<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-14926201106143692572013-03-04T16:38:00.000-05:002013-03-04T16:38:00.073-05:00FICTIONAL BOOK SHOPS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Of course, as one might expect, I am drawn to fiction in which bookstores figure largely as a character in the story. One finds fictional book shops in the most unexpected places.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This charming vintage scene </span><span style="font-size: large;">by Harrie Wood</span><span style="font-size: large;"> of a shop interior is especially poignant for me, and speaks beguilingly to memory. For me, its sense of a still-living past carried into the future is strong.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The book is a juvenile story about the Boy Scouts entitled <b><i>Three Points of Honor</i></b> and was written by Russell Gordon Carter and Published in 1929 by Little Brown, and Company. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This picture and the story it illustrates are both fictions - but the illustration has great veracity in terms of its depiction of the character of a used book shop.</span></div>
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<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-49469020938167460962012-10-09T16:19:00.000-04:002012-10-09T16:19:15.001-04:00LIVING IN THE POST-LITERATE WORLD - HARRUMPH.<span style="font-size: small;">Alas and alack! for I feel sometimes that I am living in a post-literate age, where a book has more value torn apart and its internal guts offered up to the gods of crafting. Where a good author stands out if he be sea-green and posed against some beach detritus .... <br /><br />And what of movies made from great literature? A classic novel is served up for movie audiences only to find itself in the service of<i> immature bathroom humor</i>, so that even in the visual media a good story is plowed under the roar of bathroom scenes, public restrooms, graphic visual episodes of bodily discharges of various sorts, car chases and explosions - lots of explosions - and even when philosophical queries are posited and characters are possibly allowed to enter a higher or different realm, they are still stupidly kicking kung fu and lugging about gigantic weapons of bodily destruction. <br /><br />It is<i> Jane Austen vs Zombies</i>. Tess as a vampire. <i>Abraham Lincoln vs Zombies</i> has been done... Next, I think ... <i>Mark Twain vs Walking Dead</i> ... <br /><br />Hopefully this too shall pass. </span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-76065296259585614602012-04-23T17:01:00.000-04:002012-04-23T17:01:06.971-04:00<span style="font-size: large;"><b>You can follow Professor Booknoodle and his friends on Face Book. </b></span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/Professor.Booknoodle?ref=tn_tnmn" target="_blank">Josiah Booknoodle - Professor Booknoodle</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-87192180734983337032012-03-29T14:19:00.000-04:002012-03-29T14:19:46.612-04:00Rotten Bibliographical Citations<div class="mce-p">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;"><strong>Don't blithely accept other seller's listings for bibliographical data. Do your own research.</strong></span><br /><br /><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">I
have a certain book. It is the First American edition of a title by a
well-known English author. The World Catalog entries for this edition
all cite the bibliography of said author. [You know how that looks:
George Muffington-Davies, <em>Jack Straw, an Uncivil Adventure</em>. Boston. Sheffield, Shuffled, Surefire &Co. 1853 …. etc etc (Wright, A2) ]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">At
issue here is the presence of the publisher's advertisements in the
back of the book. I have a copy with ads to 8 pages. Every listing I see
describes the ads in the First Edition as being 16 pages, which follows
what is found in World Cat; in fact, there is a copy catalogued in a
university collection that is viewable on-line page by page, which shows
16 pages of ads.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="mce-p">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">I,
for some reason, had a question in my mind about these ads and
precedence, etc. One of the differences within the ads is that the 16
page ads include several more titles by said author, who died the year
after this title was published.</span></span></div>
<div class="mce-p">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">Every
one of the on-line listings for the First American Edition of this
title (which was issued under a different title than the English
edition) follow through with the same inaccurate information (or at
least they have accepted incomplete data as well-enough) . It is obvious
they have all referenced OCLC. And the OCLC entries cite the
bibliography of this author, but wrongly.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">Yesterday
I went up to the college library, which just happens to have the
bibliography in question (a very complete physical bibliography of this
author's works), and read the entry.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">There it is: the bibliographer describes the First Edition <em>with publisher's advertisements of 8 pages</em>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">No mention of 16 page advertisements at all.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">One <em>assumes</em> that if a cataloguer <em>cites</em> a bibliography, that they <em>have</em>, in fact, actually <em>read </em>the bibliography and <em>compared</em> the book in hand <em>against</em> the bib. <em> </em></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">Though we all necessarily from time to time look to World Cat as a reference, one must keep in mind that it is <em>not</em>
infallible - for often World Cat is incorrect, or, at least frequently
incomplete - this is to be expected as one of the unfortunate things
that happen with such a huge undertaking, which is serviced by so many
countless individuals.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">But
the dealers who have blithely accepted the Word Catalog entries,
thinking that they have thus done the required research, and who are not
so anonymously a cog in the machine … do we give <em>them</em> such a pass?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">Do book dealers actually examine a book against a bibliography any more?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">Likely many do , but - harrumph - obviously all too many do <i>not</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span _mce_style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino; font-size: small;" style="font-family: book antiqua,palatino;">And … what must those-who-do-not <em>do</em>
when the collector checks his newly purchased treasure against the
bibliography? Short of throwing themselves down upon their pen, there
is really only one correct course of action in the face of customer
disappointment.</span><br /><br /></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-38962786103177764412012-03-20T15:39:00.003-04:002012-03-22T19:58:06.734-04:00Mumbling Over the Mummies of the Past<span style="font-size: large;">I was perusing an old periodical the other day when my eye was captured by a brief editorial piece, meant for amusement, but with all too obvious implications, considered from more than one hundred years in the future. It was from <i>The Dial</i> and titled, simply, "Casual Comment".</span><br />
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<span style="color: #783f04; font-size: large;"><b>THE DIAL Jan 1, 1907<br />Vol. XLII , No. 493<br /><br />CASUAL COMMENT. (p.5)</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #783f04; font-size: large;">"The serious study of fiction, so warmly advocated by Professor Phelps of Yale, is finding favor with many novelists of the day — or, one might safely affirm, with them all. Mr. Booth Tarkington enlarges on the benefits of such study, if devoted to novels of a certain type, in familiarizing the student with Indiana life and manners. Mr. Upton Sinclair is reported as declaring that novel-study will be required for a degree from the Jungle University, soon to be established at Helicon. Mr. George Ade says a good word for the movement as one (we will suppose) likely to result in a more serious study of college widowhood and other weighty sociological problems. Expectation is cherished that a student would gladly devote three or four times the number of hours to a course in modern novels that he would give to one in ancient language and literature, with a correspondingly greater intellectual quickening. <br /><br />"Says Professor Phelps: "The two most beneficial ways to study a novel are to regard it, first, as an art form, and, secondly, as a manifestation of intellectual life." To this Mr. Ade adds : " But there are other ways. It is desirable to ascertain the identity of best sellers, and to study the reasons why they sell. The mechanism of publication should be studied also; as, for example, the methods of publishers in negotiating royalties, the best methods of street-car and bill-board advertising, the art of printing on rotten paper," etc. Manifestly the great novel-manufacturing industry must be recognized. <br /><br />"Mumbling over the mummies of antiquity will no longer answer."</span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">What hath Professor Phelps spawned? In his day (did he have tongue playfully planted in cheek? - certainly Mr. Ade did.) This brief note in the January 1st 1907 issue of <i>The Dial</i> hinted of a new university being being established by Mr. Upton Sinclair … <b><i>The Jungle University</i></b>. I suppose it would confer degrees earned from a course of study similar to that of the <i><b>School of Hard Knocks</b></i>. Possibly the hard knocks would be conferred upon graduation with a giant hammer blow to the heads of the plucky future alumni. Whether it was to be set up in the jungles of the inner city (Chicago, meat-packer to the world? New York, the world's market center? - a jungle, even then - Detroit - hardly yet advanced from a gleam in Ford's eye?), or solely within the jungley confines of Sinclair's mind, we are not told.<br /><br />But Mr. George Ade, tongue or no, nailed the future squarely. These gentlemen of the book - academic and published wit alike - even prescient George Ade - could hardly have foreseen exactly how pulpy the future would become - could have little imagined the giant industry that would shortly sprout up like a gargantuan pulpy jungle vine strangling its host tree. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The host tree is the Romance Genre, a sturdy enough and virtuous tree of lovely leafy foliage. This jungle vine, sprouting from a seed dropped by some passing bird of plunder or cavorting monkey, has itself dropped down thousands of twisting tendrils that have taken root, growing up into leafy periodical genres of their own - adventure pulps, romance pulps, movie pulps, western pulps, fantasy pulps … contents exciting, nutritional value for the mind: nil. Most of the old pulpy vines have died off - wilted and dropped to the ground or remain hanging, slowly drying out and shedding their tenuously attached outer coverings - to be browsed by collecting ruminants (you see how Mother Nature provides, nothing goes to waste!). <br /><br />But a singular central vine continues to thrive and grow. It has evolved from a pulp industry to a paperback romance industry, with bright, garish blooms announcing their contents - super-saturated nectar with no mentally nutritional content. Entire stores are given over to this industry. Walk in to any one of the paperback emporiums that specialize in romance (and its sister genre, the romantic fantasy novel with its numberless sequels stretching into a mind-scrambling eternity), and look over the sea of low shelves on which a riot of K-Mart colors throb in siren like enticement, luring the avid reader to swallow their mind-fattening contents. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I used the word 'reader' with hesitation, for it seems these industrial products, in reality, offer an escape from actual reading. No thought process is necessary for the intake of their contents. No stimulation of memory will be necessary, for the contents are one and the same for all. For sure it has its defenders - and there <i>are</i> even now college courses giving serious study to these romantic plot boilers - each to their own, I say; but let us still identify what is surely a voracious vine - a vine that strangles any ability to appreciate a finer, more considered literature.<br /><br />Romance as a genre has always been with us - and always will be, hopefully. Consider the novels of Jane Austen, the wonderful literary outpourings of the Brontes, and the great melodramatic adventures of Dickens, Collins and Trollope - even Conrad - all wrote romances or stories that had elements of romance, and readers read and are moved and relish the stories and take them to heart; in other words, both the heart and the mind are nourished. Even some modern genre romances - I am thinking of that charming by-lane of staid but hopeful adventure, the Regency Romance, inspired by Austen - feeds the mind and heart. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I fear the paperback industry, in its factory-like output, has even defeated Mother Nature, for who could imagine collectors of the future collecting, and cleaning the public environment of the </span><span style="font-size: large;">choking deposits </span><span style="font-size: large;">of what is essentially the same empty object repeated again and again - like fast food toys. But all one must do to envision this is to look at the habits of collectors today. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Even myself, though I am cut loose in time's flow, may be along with Mr. Ade, may be blind to the future, and collectors <i>will</i> avidly attach yellowing romance paperbacks to their collection. Like today's collector of penny-red stamps, which also look the same stamp to stamp, unless one takes a loupe and examines their differentiating details. I imagine a paperback collector of the future lovingly stroking colorful covers, and explaining to her friend who may not understand, saying in defense of their passion, "… But they are <i>not</i> all the same - look, the hero on <i>this</i> cover may be wearing the same doublet as the hero on <i>that</i> cover, but he is sporting a mullet, don't you see! - and the heroine's bodice is cut lower!"<br /><br />Some head-shaking arbiter of taste to come, aghast at such a collecting trend of the future, may then quip, echoing the editor of <i>The Dial</i>, </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>"Mumbling over the mummies of antiquity will no longer answer."</b><br /></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-38083565455886770722012-03-04T14:50:00.007-05:002018-05-29T04:25:28.317-04:00The Book that Oscar Wilde Detested<b><span style="font-size: large;">A little item I had previously for sale:</span></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6MI6l0Fqb_HNvTZ7aTME-80KNhbBZBfj6pzCXj-sSwGqv4bzJEqj9MG3bZAvTsWca-PVPguTuRu1yUl8jUi6YINYxR4JscqJd3tYHnDBdGVc6QRLGkSlWU2EhVYn0N5ivhy3wNKh7QIM/s1600/rossettibyknight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6MI6l0Fqb_HNvTZ7aTME-80KNhbBZBfj6pzCXj-sSwGqv4bzJEqj9MG3bZAvTsWca-PVPguTuRu1yUl8jUi6YINYxR4JscqJd3tYHnDBdGVc6QRLGkSlWU2EhVYn0N5ivhy3wNKh7QIM/s320/rossettibyknight.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">I've tried to be a bit entertaining in my write-up. Never know how these things are taken at that end, don't you know ...</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/Life-Dante-Gabriel-Rossetti-Joseph-Knight-Pre-Raphaelite-Poet-Painter-1887-/190648641214?pt=Antiquarian_Collectible&hash=item2c638b66be" target="_blank"></a></span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">The Critical Biography of Dante Gabriel Rossetti by Joseph Knight, issued as Part of Eric S. Robertson's Great Writers Series, and Published by Walter Scott in London in 1887. Oscar Wilde hated<br />this book and wrote a scathing review of it … except for its Bibliography, which he praised.<br /><br />“Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti” by Joseph Knight, was the sixth volume of the “Great Writers Series” published by Walter Scott under the general editorship of Professor Eric S. Robertson. The series was issued in two formats: The Monthly Shilling Volumes, of which the book here offered is a part; and the Library Edition , a Large-Paper edition, printed on paper of ‘extra quality’, in ‘handsome binding, Demy 8vo’. (that was the 2s, 6d edition)<br /><br />Being solidly thankful for whatever prizes from the past come down to me through the years, I am happy to offer the Monthly Shilling Volume. Of course that shilling is history, and such a low value is also history. The author of this book, Mr. Joseph Knight, tips his hat to two biographers and memoir writers that beat him to the press with books on the then recently-deceased Dante Gabriel Rossetti : William Sharp and Hall Caine. He also thanks Mr. Ford Maddox Brown and Mr. William Rossetti for their generosity in giving access to the correspondence of Rossetti.<br /><br />What a great and fascinating subject is Rossetti, one of the greatest of Pre-Raphaelite Painters and Poets! To master a single calling - as an artist - hoorah! But to master, not only the brush, but the quill also - one must bow to genius. Which is exactly what Oscar Wilde did, worshipping at his mental altar to the great artist. Wilde detested this book’s popularization of a great artists life, and said such a consummate life could not be contained in such a small affair as a Great Writers Series. He didn't like the criticism either, and found much wrong with transcriptions of some of the lines from Rossetti's poems. (I think it more likely those were printer's errors - typos - but who am I to posit?) Anyway, Wilde absolutely detested this book, and his review of it was an absolute marvel of aesthetic disgust ... one of the most delicious examples of a critical slam ever written. (He did think highly of the Rossetti Bibliography appended at the end of the book; small beer that, though.)<br /><br />Maybe you'll think differently about this book than poor offended Oscar, who couldn't sigh in exasperation loudly enough, (and let's face it, if ever there was a man with a highly educated and refined literary taste, it was Oscar Wilde), or ... maybe you'll agree; the test will be in the reading. And it is, indeed, a fascinating read. Knight's book was one of the earliest posthumous studies of Rossetti that purported to be more than a recollection or memoir. For persons amassing Rossetti materials it remains a integral part of any collection.<br /><br />The Rossetti Bibliography is indeed worth the price of admission; and there is a very nice series of pages at the back with the publisher's list, always of interest for those who care about such things.<br /><br />SERIES : Great Writers<br />SERIES EDITOR : Eric S. Robertson (Professor of English Literature and Philosophy in the University of the Punjab, Lahore)<br />TITLE : Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti<br />AUTHOR : Joseph Knight (1829 - 1907)<br />IMPRINT : Walter Scott<br />PLACE : 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Lane, London<br />DATE : 1887<br />EDITION : First Edition<br />STATUS : OP<br /><br /> Contains an Index, the author's introductory Note and a Bibliography; 186 pages + xix pages of Bibliography, plus 6 pages of publisher's list; (including the list delineating the other books in the series); approx. 4 1/2” x 6 1/2” (16mo); olive green smooth cloth with<br />title, etc. and decorative embellishments, printed in black and gold on spine and title, etc. lettered in black on front board (a palm leaf is printed in black on the spine and a simple double-line border stamped in black on front board)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/Life-Dante-Gabriel-Rossetti-Joseph-Knight-Pre-Raphaelite-Poet-Painter-1887-/190648641214?pt=Antiquarian_Collectible&hash=item2c638b66be" style="color: blue;" target="_blank"></a></span></b></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-51293566825445930012012-02-28T03:46:00.002-05:002013-06-16T15:45:51.536-04:00A Princely Sum - A Bookish Excursion into The Treasury of Life<div style="color: black; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I retrieved this story of mine from the BookThink Archives. They had been kind enough to print it on their site. Now it has languished in the dark for some time, and I thought to resuscitate it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A Princely Sum</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What the <i>deuce</i>, one might ask is the decrepit object we see, pictured below, looking like some mummified relic retrieved from Tut's mausoleum? This object - like some chunk of dark debris cast up on a shoreline by the waves, its salt-soaked hide baked and cured by the sun, its innards invaded by sand fleas? Can it be a book? Haw. It can. Indeed it is. Yes a precious book ... cherished, even. But valuable? You be the judge.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was many years ago, long before many of you youngsters were even born. Antediluvian times ... harrumph ... they were not so antediluvian to us then ... they were times of bookish adventures and hopeful investment. September it was when a colleague and I were out booking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I remember it well. William Deckle was a colleague, and friend, although our friendship might have looked quite <i>adversarial</i> to any casual observer. We frequently went out booking together across the land, foraging, as it were, through the nooks and crannies of the landscape for bookish goodies. Our tastes were so different we were rarely in competition. An unkind person would have said it was because our purses were so different. Harrumph.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Our temperaments were different. I am - I do not hide it - others insist on it - I am a curmudgeon, a crusty generalist, a populist, if you will, when it comes to books and paper. William was an ... haw! How shall I say it without seeming to denigrate the memory of a close friend? William was an <i>elitist</i>. Yes Elite ... not in any font-ish sort of way, and he only rarely put on a snob's nose in company, but William Deckle was obsessed with what he called <i>The Best</i>. To his very inner depths Deckle was a Royalist - at least when it came to books.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">No tawdry paperbacks for Willie. No cheap sensationalist dime novels. No superstitious almanacs. No moldy old journals. Willie's nose was attuned to the smell of leather, the glint of gold, the patina of vellum. He could not resist a book cradled in velvet, set on display like some sort of silent siren. The covers of a beautifully bound book were Willie's Symplegades, and once he had touched the binding or stuck his nose into such an enticing book - to smell the leather, to stroke the snowy white pages, to feel the impress of the type - the book's siren song would cloud all reason and its covers slam shut on his purse like <i>Scylla </i>and<i> Charybdis</i> ... a more willing victim there never was. If a bookshop smelled like a tannery, then William Deckle would spend hours therein and his purse would be appreciably lighter upon exiting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As I said, it was September - balmy, breezy fall weather perfect for booking; so the two of us set out in Willie's 1905 Rambler. Willie was proud of the car's automatic ignition and loved the fact that the throttle was connected to the steering wheel. He was often heard to say, if a Rambler was good enough for President Teddy Roosevelt it was good enough for William Deckle. Haw. This is all well and fine for those who care about such things. Even I can admit it was a fine vehicle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We drove into a town .... some small, tony commercial village in the Hudson valley with a variety of shops on the main street. Immediately Willie spotted the sign indicating an antiquarian book shop, housed in an elegant, Federalist style building.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"There you go, Booknoodle, what did I say? A fine establishment! Sable and Savory only sell the finest books. Oh, this is going to be <i>so</i> much fun! Why just a couple of months ago I received their catalog. I must have spent over $3,000 dollars just from that one mailing." He rubbed his hands together in eager anticipation. I <i>swear</i> - William Deckle is the <i>only</i> person outside of a stage drama that I ever saw doing that.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Harrumph. Please, <i>spare</i> me the details," said I, heading off what could entail a lengthy description of every bit of minutia concerning the books purchased.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Why, you're just jealous, old boy!"</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">At that moment I espied a shop down a ways on the opposite side of the street. That building needed a coat of paint. The windows were grimy and one could not see within. This shop had a sign worn with age - faded letters swinging from a rusted iron frame. I could make out the words: </span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Shovel and Pile ~ Antiqs & Junke</b>.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Look here, Deckle, I'm going down to that junk shop to poke around."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"What on <i>earth</i> do you think you will find <i>there</i>? Why they can't even <i>spell</i>. What ignorance to put up such a sign. I can't think why the town allows a building to remain in such seedy condition. <i>Why</i> do you insist on poking around in these grimy places? You always come out covered with dust. And I <i>shan't</i> have you soiling the covers of my automobile seats. Come along to Sable and Savory with me. <i>That's</i> where the real treasures are.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Blast your seat covers. I intend to have a look around. You go to <b>Sable and Savory</b> and I'll go to <b>Shovel and Pile</b>. I just feel there's something to be found. We'll meet back here."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Ha! All that you'll find are rags and a bone, flyspecks and mouse droppings!"</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"You always say that and I always prove you mistaken."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Nonsense. I seek and find the real <i>books</i>. You always come up with these objects that are <i>mistaken</i> for books, Booknoodle. Ha, ha, ha."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">But I was already striding away. <i>Blast!</i> The man could be so irritating. Shovel and Pile was just what I expected (and hoped for) - piles and heaps of merchandise in all conditions. Objects came here to complete their transition back into their elemental parts. Anything and everything. Yes, my sort of establishment.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Peering into the dark interior, I could just make out a wall of shelves upon which were a large, jumbled assortment of books. There was no sign of a proprietor. A cat lay sleeping on top a huge old steamer trunk. Of course I had to tickle its ears. The shop was silent, but for the loud purring of the cat.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">To make my way to the shelves with the books required a bit of contortionistic agility on my part. What passed for aisles were narrow and mined with objects scattered on the floor. They wound between shelves that loomed like mountains - threatening landslides at the slightest disturbance - a veritable jungle of disparate objects. I imagine the town's entire history might be squirreled away in these cast-off articles.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Finally, with only a modicum of difficulty I found myself standing before the books. Behind me loomed a tottery concoction of shelves piled and stuffed with things that seemed likely to topple over on me. It was not possible to back up so as to see the lower shelves of books. To see those required further contortions on my part. One practically had to stand on one's head to read the titles. And it was dark. A single small light bulb hung above, covered with dust - it hardly gave enough light to see. The light that came came through the windows was but a timid affair.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Of course it was a motley, ragged lot. Worn, dusty, frayed, age-darkened ... stained, to say nothing of the mouse nibbles and flyspecks. The books were a mess. Flies buzzed about, as if to be in competition with the cat's purring. Leaning over to read a title I bumped against a coat rack upon which hung an assortment of garments - an old raccoon coat loudly proclaimed its presence with a cloud of dust ... something thumped to the floor.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Harrumph. Deckle was right," muttered I, sneezing loudly. "Whatever am I doing?"</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Then I saw what had thumped to the floor. The dust it had dislodged in a puff was now settling and I could see that it was a book. A leather book. But it's condition! Lying there on the floor it looked like something a dog might have dragged in as something on which to gnaw. More, it looked like something upon which the dog had already gnawed.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I picked it up and blew off the dust. Then wiped the covers on the raccoon coat. The book was so worn that there was no leather left around its edges. The corners had been eroded to a smooth roundness. The spine had been amateurishly, but solidly resewn onto the boards. The leather was covered with scratches and awl holes where someone had once attempted to reinforce a corner. Its shape was amorphous. One could not really call it book-shaped any more. The leather was shiny, the way old harnesses become after years of use. Indeed the book had an aspect of the saddlery about it.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The pages were brown with age and use - worn down - worn down, I was to find by centuries of use. Inside the book was marked by an old damp stain, the tide line of which traveled through the entire volume. What had I stumbled upon? Why it was an old herbal! A<i> Culpeper</i>, in fact. There were no end-papers; the book started right in with the Preface (<i>The PREFACE To All Students in Physick, Chirurgery and Chimistry</i>). Written in ink in a very old hand were discernible marginal notes.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">After the Preface was a brief biography of Culpeper and several poems of dubious talent, with Culpeper as their subject. Then came the Title. It read, and I give it in its fullness: <i><b>CULPEPER'S SCHOOL OF PHYSICK, OR, THE ENGLISH APOTHECARY</b> A Treatise of the Transcendent Sufficiency of our English HERBS, as they may be rightly used in Medicine. BEING a brief and exact Account of the chiefest Concernments of the whole HERBARY ART; as also of the Excellency of our English Home Physick</i>. By <b>NICHOLAS CULPEPER</b>, Gent. Student in Physick and Astrology. London, Printed in the year MDCXCVI.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">1696! "Ha!" exclaimed I, "There's your find. Let Deckle crow all he may, but here is a gem, no matter its condition."</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I looked around. Still no sign of a shop keeper. Retracing my path back through the store, I neared the sleeping cat. I heard the sound of a chair creaking. Behind the huge steamer trunk upon which the cat blissfully lay was a desk, and at the desk sat the shop owner. An old man, dressed in a dusty cardigan and equally dusty brown trousers - seamed face squinting out through old-fashioned spectacles, the old man spoke in a voice that was as soft as the cat's purring was loud ... as dry as the rustling of old newspapers.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Find something of interest?"</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Interest depends on the individual," said I. "How much are your books?"</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Price <i>depends</i> on the <i>book</i>, y'see."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Well, I picked this book up from the<i> floor</i>, and had to <i>dust</i> it off. It is in <i>terrible</i> condition. But I find I still have some small interest in it."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Let me see. Oh, that there's an <i>old</i> one, that is. Yep. That's a <i>valuable</i> book. Valuable. Look at it. Covered in <i>leather</i>. And it's got that old timey spelling in it. All those funny looking S letters. Yep, it's old. Covered in <i>leather</i>."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"So are <i>shoes</i>," replied I, sagging a bit.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Yes, but this is <i>book</i> leather. I can't just let this here go for the same price as the general mill of books."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Well, how much do you <i>need</i> to charge?" I asked</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Wellll ... see, I charge one dollar a book unless it's rare or if you buys a lot, which case I gives a <i>discount</i>. But look here, you're <i>only</i> buying this <i>one</i> book. Only one. And it's <i>old</i>. And it's <i>leather</i>. I have to charge you <i>two dollars</i>. Can't charge less. Nope. After all leather's leather."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Harrumph. So it is," said I, handing over two bills. "No need to wrap it, I'll carry it just as it is."</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Wasn't offering to," said the proprietor, pocketing the bills.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Back at the Rambler I found William had not yet emerged from Sable and Savory. The deuce if I was going to go in there to cajole him out. Leaving a note on the car, I went over to a restaurant with my prize and determined on a nice hot drink. I perused my <i>Culpeper</i> whilst sipping what turned out to be quite passable coffee.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Eventually Deckle sauntered in, looking very smug and pleased with himself. In his arms was cradled a package, neatly wrapped in creamy paper and encircled by a neatly tied string. He placed the package deliberately but gently on the table, before taking a seat opposite me and beaming at me with a Roosevelt grin.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I said nothing. No need to provoke what would be a tedious shelf-by-shelf account of his browsing and a page-by-page description of what I knew was in the package.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"<i>Well</i>?" he asked.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Well <i>what</i>?" replied I.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Aren't you going to ask?"</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Ask what? About the <i>weather</i>? The route home?" retorted I, baiting William.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"I say, Booknoodle, why <i>must</i> you be so damned <i>difficult</i>! You know perfectly <i>well</i> what the <i>question</i> is."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"I see no question at all. There is no doubt. Where there is no doubt there is no question. I see you have purchased something. Indeed it is a <i>book</i>. Imagine <i>that</i>. And it cost you a pretty penny, no doubt! And ... you cannot <i>wait</i> to brag about it to me."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"That's a bit unfair." William posed a pout.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Brag away," said I.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Oh, well, if you <i>insist</i>!" my friend said, his demeanor brightening instantly. And he proceeded to delineate in loving detail the discovery and purchase ... discovery, my <i>eye</i>! Harrumph ... the blasted book was probably sitting regally in full sight with a spotlight on it.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"This - <i>this!</i> has to be the most beautiful book I have <i>ever</i> purchased," exclaimed Deckle. Harrumph. Every new book purchase is the most beautiful - the most wonderful book he has ever bought.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"I have found a 1574 <b><i>Libellus de dentibus</i></b> by Bartolomo Eustachi. It is bound in the most <i>sumptuous</i> red morocco leather. The gold tooling is simply <i>exquisite</i>!"</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Harrumph. Would have been nicer in a contemporary plain vellum," said I dryly.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"But Noodle, old chap, this is a <i>marvelous</i> find! It is <i>beautiful</i>. I had to pay ..."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"<i>Stop!</i> I don't care what you paid." In fact I <i>did</i>, but I was not going to give Deckle such immediate satisfaction of thinking I gave a hoot how much he had squandered. Now I can admit to being impressed, but at that moment I was determined to make Deckle work hard for the praise he wanted.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"So ... you spent a little money on <i>A Little Treatise on Dentistry</i>. Do you have enough left to purchase petrol for the ride home?" Deckle sighed ... impatiently ... I noticed with some satisfaction.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"I didn't spend a little bit of money, I spent a <i>great deal</i>!" he exclaimed. I spent $5,000. After all it is one of the first books on dentistry ever printed.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Inwardly I blanched. $5,000 dollars was indeed an impressive sum.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Harrumph. John D. Rockefeller spends that much every morning before he gets out of bed," I said.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"You're just jealous."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"I am <i>not</i>. I managed to find something myself in that shop you so hastily dismissed as being nothing but a collection of flyspeck. I happened to find a medical book also."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"You <i>did</i>?"</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"I did."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Well?"</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Well <i>what</i>?" I enjoyed playing this game with Deckle. He was such an easy score.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"That's <i>it</i>?" he said incredulously as he spotted the book lying next to my coffee cup. </span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"That's it? Good <i>gracious</i>, Booknoodle, what did you do - browse the dust bin? Rob the <i>dog</i>? That is certainly the most <i>unsightly</i> excuse for a book I have ever laid eyes on. Surely you picked it out of some dog's mouth!"</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Harrumph. I would never take a bone from a dog's mouth," I replied indignantly. "Sneer all you want, but this is a very important title."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"In that execrable condition, it must be the only copy in existence to warrant any value at all."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"I'll have you know I paid <i>dearly</i> for this book."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Surely you are mad. The junk store owner should have paid you for removing it from his premises.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"I paid the princely sum of $2.00."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Now you are making fun of me," cried Willie.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Confound it, I paid two dollars - two whole, <i>hard-earned</i> dollars. That is the cost of two good lunches!</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"But ... but - to pay anything at all for such a thing ..."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"It is what is inside that counts," said I. "Would you kick and sneer at your dog just because he had gotten old and scruffy? I tell you, I shall get more pleasure out of this tattered, worn-out book, in one evening than you will out of that rare volume in a life time. Why you can't even read Latin."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Well, what is it then, that could be worth such a <i>princely</i> sum?" asked Deckle.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"It's a <i>Culpeper</i>."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"<i>Culpeper</i>! Why they are as common - as common - as common as peppers on a pepper plant! I don't see that was worth <i>culling</i> at all. Ha, ha!" Deckle always laughed at his own jokes and puns.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Yes. A <i>Culpeper</i>, from 1696, and I shall share some of the inner wisdom of this <i>Culpeper</i> with you on the drive home. I will read its <i>entrails</i> and predict you <i>will</i> understand its fascination."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Since I am to do the driving, I shall then helplessly be your captive audience. I say, that coffee smells good."</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyCoto4noQrRailALh7bDkjS-qCYhL1nEDgk0CN655y2zXXQLohigSA5ZLdXeSJilOEkEFS4ACzn9Lp6-0szkuCIUVF-scUD25IxBIsz_U-I1PYchh5qHdcS2X-9N88XHtBcbTOvDHMSY/s1600/culpeper1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="506" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyCoto4noQrRailALh7bDkjS-qCYhL1nEDgk0CN655y2zXXQLohigSA5ZLdXeSJilOEkEFS4ACzn9Lp6-0szkuCIUVF-scUD25IxBIsz_U-I1PYchh5qHdcS2X-9N88XHtBcbTOvDHMSY/s640/culpeper1.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Part II: Golden Fragments,
or, Dialogue with an Old Herbal</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Well, Booknoodle, old fellow, that was a very nice repast." </span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">We had left the restaurant and were happily wheeling down the country road, heading home. Deckle was in an expansive mood, especially since I had capitulated and warmly congratulated him on his find. The copy of <i>Libellus de dentibus</i>, for which he had just paid such a handsome sum, brought his collection of pre-twentieth century books on dentistry to a grand total of 259. This not counting numerous pamphlets, letters and off-prints from journals. His find was securely situated in a box on the back seat specifically constructed to hold and protect books on just such a trip.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I held the <i>Culpeper</i> in my lap.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">He flashed one of his toothsome smiles. "See here, Professor, you must admit that that ratty old book you pulled out of the junk shop is in <i>simply execrable</i> condition. I also remember that you <i>threatened</i> to share with me the secrets of your infatuation with that old clinker."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I looked out at the passing countryside - barns, small houses, cows in their fields, apple orchards, folks sitting in rocking chairs on porches, barking dogs ... William's Rambler, with its ability to maintain over long distances average speeds of 30 - 35 mph, imparted an exhilaration to the driving experience. William handled the big wheel with assurance. It was all a pleasant postlude to our booking adventure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Harrumph. Clinker indeed. While your volume on dentistry may have a track record in the auction rooms, my little <i>Culpeper</i> has made no less an impact on the world. <i>Probably</i> more."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Do <i>say</i>? Professor Booknoodle I <i>am</i> your captive audience! Pray, enlighten me." Of course Deckle was no ignorant puppy. He knew full well who Culpeper was and how important the man had been to the field of herbal medicine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Well then keep your eye on the road and your ear on what I shall recount," said I.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"In the short space of time between his birth in 1616 to his death in 1654, just 38 all too brief years - but what he packed into those 38 years was <i>quite</i> amazing! Nicholas Culpeper did more, possibly for the arts of herbal medicine than any other single individual. He openly attacked and sneered at the general practices of the physicians of his day, criticizing their methods and, as he saw it, their <i>greed</i>. Of course all the good doctors attacked him right back, calling him a quack, a scoundrel, and <i>worse</i>. He was certainly eccentric, and, by modern minds, some of his ideas may seem quaint, if not outright ridiculous. But he was a man, by <i>jingo</i>, a man full of creative energy, and he went out in to the English countryside where he collected and studiously catalogued <i>hundreds</i> of English herbs. Just <i>think</i>, if his herbal, which first saw the light of day in 1653, has hardly ever been out of print since that time - or at least it has remained a <i>presence</i> in current book lists in one form or another, then it may be considered the most influential herbal ever published. Far more influential than your book of dental wisdom."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Deckle interrupted, "That - right there - staying in print for so many centuries! <i>That's </i>certainly enough to make one take notice."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Yes! The man had genius, no matter that some of his ideas do not hold up! How many poems do you think have been written about dentists?" I posited.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Well, let's see ...."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"That's <i>not</i> the point. I'm sure in your collection you could find some. But at the start of this book is a biography of Culpeper and included with it are a poetic epitaph and several other poems written in honour of the man. Just <i>listen</i> to this epitaph - I think it fitting and fine to boot:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>THE EPITAPH OF NICHOLAS CULPEPER</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Here lies the Doctors' great envy and wonder,
</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>To th' Empericks and awful clap of Thunder.
<br />Whom he stript and whipt, for wise Men hereafter,
<br />To make them the scorn and scene of their laughter.
<br />To their joy sleeps here our three Kingdoms sorrow,
<br />Till the Resurrection bids him, Good morrow.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Come, Professor, that's all very pretty and nice, But I don't see anything in that to wax sentimental over."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Con<i>found</i> it, can't you <i>see</i>? The man was admired and revered, despite the anger and enmity of the members of the medical profession that he showed up as charlatans. The people could see they had lost something <i>good</i> when Culpeper passed on. Just listen:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>To Mr. Nicholas Culpeper on His Cheap and Charitable Cures.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Amongst some Charity is slander, sure
<br />They're neither cheap nor speedy in their Cure.
<br />Health is the gift of Heaven, and so to us,
<br />They will have God alone propitious.
<br />Thus some Physicians the Ague turn
Into a Fever, as they please we burn;
<br />Then sneeze by fits, alas we cannot tell
<br />Without the Doctors Gold how to be well:
<br />They turn Disease into Disease, till we
<br />Worship the Urinals, visit for the Fee.<br />
Whereas throughout the danger of thy Skill
<br />Thou didst retain God and Religion still.
<br />Our Healths are owed unto thy Charity:
<br />Thou spend'st thy self for to do good; and we
<br />Have so our humane Frailties now forsook.
<br />To live to Honour thee, and praise this BOOK. <br />- F. B.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Oh really, Booknoodle, that is too much. The things that ... that ... <i>doggerelist</i> conjoins in one poor effort. <i>Too</i> much!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Oh really? Prissy niceties from a collector of <i>gum and tooth books</i>? That was a very sincere tribute to a man who spent his life attempting easement of the human condition. There are more-"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"<i>Stop</i>, Professor! Have <i>pity</i>, no <i>more</i>! No more <i>nephrological</i> nuances! I fear I cannot stomach such <i>renal</i> verse. It is all just so much poetic <i>gravel</i>. ha ha!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I groaned, as I knew he wanted me to. Such low word play, I fear, takes up much of our energy and interaction. Humph. I would give <i>him</i> some poetic gravel, indeed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Ahh, but Deckle, don't you see? The felicities of Culpeper's cures were so beguiling and beautiful of form that men could only find in poetry the phrases apt enough and beautiful enough to match Culpeper. He went far beyond your garden variety of yarrow and mugwort or vervaine and boneset and foxglove, <i>far</i> beyond. Nicholas Culpeper opened vistas into treatments for the human body and its cares that conjure a deputation from Bosch. By the way, how's your <i>stomach</i>?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"My <i>stomach</i>? Why, my stomach is fine."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Oh? Well I thought I saw you finish off a few extra <i>cookies</i> and you <i>did</i> drink quite a bit of that coffee. It certainly was <i>strong</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"My stomach is as the rock of Gibraltar," boasted Willie.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Have it as you will. Just listen to <i>this</i>," I said, opening the <i>Culpeper</i>: " 'A Hedge-sparrow is of a notable Vertue for the<i> Guts</i> detracted, and the feathers taken <i>off</i>, and so either kept in Salt, or converted into <i>Mummy</i> and <i>eaten</i>, (the birds I mean, not the Guts nor Feathers) and it will break the Stone, either in the Reins or Bladder, and bring it forth.'"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I say look there, in that tree, isn't that a <i>scurry</i> of <i>sparrows</i>?" I chuckled.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"<i>Mummy!</i> One can only imagine what is done to make a poor sparrow into <i>Mummy!</i>"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Yes. Well, how's your <i>stomach</i>? It says right here that 'A green Jasper hung about the Neck of one that hath a weak stomach, so that it touch the Skin near the region of the mouth of the Stomach, doth <i>wonderfully</i> strengthen it.' Oh look, he cites <i>Galen</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Ha! That is no rotten herb, it is a rock. I see what you're up to, Booknoodle! "</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"You <i>do</i>? Say, do you remember that waitress girl in Hudson?"</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"<i>What</i> waitress girl?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"As I<i> thought!</i> Failing memory! I worry about you, Deckle. Well, no fear, for Potion No. 57 in <b><i>Culpeper's Fragmenta Aurea, The First Golden Century of Chymical and Physical Judicial Aphorisms and Admirable Secrets </i></b>..."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Wait, wait! I thought this was <i>Culpeper's Herbal</i>," interrupted Deckle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Don't interrupt. It is, of course - but, you <i>see</i>, it is made up of several excellent smaller books, or parts, not quite a <i>sammellband</i>, since they are all by Culpeper, and all to a single point - but <i>still</i> ... each has its own title page ... any hoooo ... you <i>don't</i> remember that waitress girl? Sad. Look right here - just the thing for you! 'If you anoint your Temples where the Arteries pass, once a Month with the <i>Gall of a Partridge</i>, it mightily strengthens the Memory.' Shall we <i>try</i> it?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"What gall! Lucky for me there are no partridges about and we have no gun to shoot them."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Ha! We are passing through the landscape so quickly we might well be passing partridges. <i>There!</i> Wasn't that one? You didn't <i>see</i> it? Did you know, 'Eyebright is an Herb of the <i>Sun,</i> and is a <i>wonderful </i>strengthener of the Eyes?'"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Oh Really, Booknoodle, you saw no <i>partridge</i>. There were <i>no</i> pear trees and there was <i>no</i> partridge."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Tut. Tut. Culpeper states that many men are troubled with watery Stomachs..."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"The <i>deuce!</i> There you are on about stomachs again. There is nothing <i>wrong</i> with my stomach. It is <i>not </i>watery."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"This sad plight ('which <i>molesteth</i> thy body') can be <i>admirably</i> remedied. 'Take a little stick and tie some Oaken leaves about the end of it, and cut them pretty round, then put them into your Mouth as far as you can well suffer them and hold the stick fast between your Teeth ...."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I'd like to take an oaken stick to <i>you</i>!" cried Deckle, "if you were ever to try something like that. That man should have been called <i>Culprit,</i> not Culpeper!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Look here", I said holding the book in front of Deckle, open to a page upon which was printed Culpeper's astrological natal chart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-6YkdrN6VPxzCtzKeXSsWvu41Uakvr5Rk-8X2ltFc6jrL6-UVaFknxVKDeuz4eemZx58pb0tKpl6SC6_mPxFTiki6mvlfDrAn_5MvNSVQ7vEqK6qqV4TIlN8qgq8fJPqFMUOehMLw1T4/s1600/culpepernatalchart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="526" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-6YkdrN6VPxzCtzKeXSsWvu41Uakvr5Rk-8X2ltFc6jrL6-UVaFknxVKDeuz4eemZx58pb0tKpl6SC6_mPxFTiki6mvlfDrAn_5MvNSVQ7vEqK6qqV4TIlN8qgq8fJPqFMUOehMLw1T4/s640/culpepernatalchart.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Tell me you don't <i>believe</i> that nonsense, Professor!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />"Me? But you see <i>Culpeper</i> did. It was quite central to medicine then, as all herbs and medicines were under the aegis of particular zodiacal signs, and Culpeper did <i>not</i> repudiate Astrology, but embraced the actions of the stars and planets on human physique and health. <i>Also</i>, as we saw with jasper and gold, and many other stones, there was a great belief in the efficacy of various crystals and earthen compounds for affect. Take, for example, <i>this</i>," and I proceeded once more to read from <b><i>Fragmenta Aurea</i></b>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />"'Take Oil of Crystal, drawn by the Art of the <b><i>Alchymist</i></b>, let him that is troubled with the Stone take a Dram of it at a time in a good <i>draught</i>, either of White or Rhenish Wine, and it will break the Stone ....' I won't trouble your delicate ears with how he suggested testing the efficacy of that cure."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />"Thanks for small favors," said Deckle. "But there you see, again - white <i>wine</i>. It must have made much that was unpalatable go down easier. What do you think was this <i>Oil of Crystal</i>?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />"I don't know," I replied, owning up to a small area of ignorance. "I must research that. But see, Culpeper states this potion to have been made by the <i>Art of the Alchymist</i>. Chemistry, Medicine, Astrology, <i>Alchymy</i>, - it was all part of the larger world view of the educated man of the seventeenth century. It really <i>does</i> make one think.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />"It surely is different from today's world of medicine."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />"Oh, I think it is all really much, much closer than one might wish to today's practices. <br />After all, people go to doctors and accept what is diagnosed and recommended with such blind faith. The common man in the streets, or the rich banker or the college professor all take their medicine with a gulp, a grimace and a little prayer for its efficacy (whether a believer or not)."<br /><br />"I think there was <i>much</i> more grimacing going on in Culpeper's time," said Deckle.<br /><br />I laughed. "Oh, for sure. Just listen to <i>these</i>! And I warn, these are <i>not</i> for the easily disgusted! Haw Haw! <i>de gustibus</i> and all that, eh?"<br /><br />"'For the <i>Sciatica</i>, take a Gallon of <i>Urine</i>, I suppose it were best of the Party that is Deceased [sic], <i>boil</i> it and <i>scum</i> it well till it be clear, then put to it a Quart of black <i>Snails</i>, such as you shall find in the Meadows without shells (he means <i>slugs</i>, haw!) boil them together, till it be <i>thick</i> like a <i>Pultiss</i>, then spread it upon a Cloath, and apply it to the grieved place.'" <br /><br />I peeked over at Deckle. He was firmly concentrating on his motoring.<br /><br />I continued. "<i>Snake bites!</i> Yes, an <i>excellent</i> remedy for snake bites. 'The best way that I know for the biting of an Adder is this: Catch the same Adder that <i>bit</i> you, as she is easily caught, cut her <i>open</i>, and take out her heart and <i>swallow</i> it down whole.'" Another peek at William. He was holding up. <br /><br />I continued.<br /><br />"Ah, 'tis good we are not plagued so much any more with the plague. Now <i>there</i> was desperation mixed with black hope, indeed! I read on, : 'Take a Cock-Chicken, pull off the Feathers, till the <i>Rump</i> be bare, then hold the bare <i>Fundament</i> of the Chicken to a <i>Plague Sore,</i> and it will attract the Venom to it from all parts of the Body, and die; when he is<i> dead </i>... take another and use likewise; you may perceive when all the <i>Venom</i> is drawn out for you shall see the chicken no longer pant nor gape for breath; the sick party will <i>instantly</i> recover.'"<br /><br />"Oh for heaven's <i>sake</i>, Booknoodle, that is <i>really</i> too <i>much</i>! Such <i>twaddle!</i>"<br /><br />"Yes, it <i>was</i> ignorant, but it was because Heaven beckoned <i>prematurely</i> that they tried such twaddle as you call it. In their mind it was the <i>grave</i> or sitting there with a featherless chicken on their head; maybe it would work, maybe not. What harm? Have you ever tried it?"<br /><br />"Tried it? <i>Tried</i> it?! Tying a plucked <i>chicken</i> to my body? Even with plague I would not do such a silly thing!"<br /><br />"I doubt the plague victim was concerned with such trivial matters as his dignity or how <i>buffoonish </i>he looked. It seems that the entire world around man was open to interpretation as a source for cures. Every nook and cranny and every small<i> creature</i> that might hide therein was a possible cure. Earth worms crushed and dried ... <i>sow bugs</i> for a decoction ... spider webs (one sits under a full spider web holding on to a particular thought in one's mind and a particular <i>object</i> in one's mouth) ... <i>dung</i>, <i>snails</i> - the whole biological <i>universe</i> was all one big medicine cabinet. Sure, some of it was confoundedly illogical; but there was logic behind much of it - and observation <i>and</i> experience."<br /><br />"How much logic or observation could there have been for sitting under a <i>spider's</i> web?"<br /><br />"A good point, Deckle. That <i>certainly</i> seems to cross the border into sheer quackery. Here's another bit of quaintness - it's one for leg cramps at night: 'If you use (<i>when</i> you go to bed) to rub your Finger between your <i>Toes</i>, and then <i>smell</i> to them, you shall find it an excellent prevention, both of cramps and Palsies.'"<br /><br />"That's so ridiculous as to beggar belief," sniffed Deckle, indignantly.<br /><br />"Yes, but it is written right <i>here</i>, see? And I must say, that there are so many marginal notes in the book, it is evident that it was well used - who knows what recipes and cures were suggested by which herbalists. Why, Culpeper even believed in<i> witchcraft</i>, as see this short bit of advice: 'If anyone be bewitched, put some <i>Quicksilver</i> in a Quill, stop it close, and lay it under the threshold of the <i>Door</i>.'"<br /><br />"You will note a common, steadfast belief in the <i>efficacy</i> of actions that are in this book. Often the actions were combined with the ingestion of some potion or the application of some salve. But some of the actions recommended are, as you perceive, absurd. Haw! It was almost as if the good doctor was having his little joke on irritable patrons, such as this one: 'The Chin-Cough is easily cured, if the party troubled with it spit three or four times into a Frog's <i>Mouth</i>, but it must be into the Mouth of the same Frog, you may easily keep her alive in a little water'"<br /><br />Deckle laughed loudly. "What's a little<i> spit</i> lost between man and frog, eh? At least he doesn't say to <i>swallow</i> the frog ... or the Quicksilver. How efficacious might that have been for anything? There seems to be a lot of messing about with things that were truly dangerous."<br /><br />"Well Deckle, life was more precarious. But was it any more precarious than rushing along the highway at 30 miles and hour sitting atop some rattling <i>contraption</i> that might <i>explode </i>any minute?"<br /><br />"Oh for heavens <i>sake</i>, this fine machine is <i>not</i> going to explode! And it does<i> not</i> rattle! That rattle's probably gravel in your stomach. Ha, ha."<br /><br />"Well, I tell you, Willie, this bone-shaker seems to hit <i>every</i> hole in the roadway and I am getting a headache, so I shall stop reading these most excellent cures after imparting this last suggestive passage from Culpeper on the headache. It is general advice and one should pay heed."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />"'Many Sicknesses, and Impediments may be in a Man's <i>Head</i>; wherefore whosoever hath any distemper in the head, must not keep the Head too <i>hot</i> nor too <i>cold</i>, but in an equal temper, to beware of engendering of <i>Rheum</i>, which is the cause of many infirmities. There is nothing that engender <i>Rheum</i> so much as doth the fatness of fish, and the <i>heads</i> of fish, and <i>Surfeits</i>, and taking cold in the Feet, and taking cold in the nape of the neck or Head; also they which have an Infirmity in the head must refrain from immoderate Sleep, <i>especially</i> after Meat; also they<i> must </i>abstain from drinking of <i>Wine</i>, and use not to drink <i>Ale</i> and <i>Beer</i>, the which is over-strong; <i>Vociferation, Hollowing, Crying and high Singing, is not good for the Head: All things the which are Vaporous or do Fume, are not good for the Head: All things which are of evil favour, as Carrion, Sinks, wide Draughts, Piss-Bowls, Snuff of Candles, Dunghills, stinking Channels, and stinking Standing Waters, and stinking marshes, with such contagious Airs, do hurt the Head, the Brain, and Memory; all odiferous Savours are good for the Head, the Brain, and the Memor</i>y.'"<br /><br />"Well Professor, all that was <i>quite</i> amazing. But first, it seems some three fourths of what Culpeper prescribed was delivered in some <i>liquorous</i> form: Ale, Beer, Wine, Cider. Then he says stay away from such. I must agree about avoidance of noisome and stinky places. But which is it to be? <i>Avoid</i> smells or <i>use</i> them? After all, just what constitutes an <i>odiferous savour</i>?"<br /><br />"Harrumph. I do not know, and I do not care right now, <i>blast!,</i> but my confounded head is an <i>awful</i> throb. It is this vehicle ... and road, full of <i>potholes</i>. Or it is the vaporous fumes from the engine. Or both. Look there, ahead is an inn; pull in there and we will be able to avail ourselves of some<i> liquorous potion</i> - and <i>caffeine</i> to boot. Sitting warmly in front of an open hearth with some ale will alleviate this ailment!<br /><br />And so he did; and so I did. I must admit that the ale, combined with the warmth of a fireplace was <i>most</i> efficacious. There were <i>no</i> powdered worms in the ale nor <i>crushed ant eggs</i> in the coffee.<br /><br />Aside from the title first delineated at the beginning of this reminiscence, the book under discussion contains the following separate but unified titles, all by Culpeper:<br /><br /> 1. <i><b> Fragmenta Aurea: The First Golden Century of Chimical and Physical Judicial Aphorisms and Admirable Secrets</b> (with) <b>The Second, Third and Fourth Golden Century &c. </b></i><br /> <br /> 2. <b><i>The Garden Plat; or, A very brief Account of such Herbs, &c. that excel, and are some of them most useful in Physical and Chirurgical Cures on emergent and sudden occasions. </i></b><br /> <br /> 3. <i><b>The Celestial Governour: or, A Discourse, in which is plainly declared what Members of the Body are governed by the twelve Signs, and of the Diseases to them appropriate. </b></i><br /> <br />4. <i><b>Cardiac Simplicia; or, A brief Account of some choice Simples, as are chiefly appropriated to the Heart. </b></i>(Left unfinished by Nicholas Culpeper) <br /><br />5. <b><i>The Chirurgeon's Guide: or, The Errors of some unskillful Practitioners in Chirurgery Corrected. </i></b><br /><br />6. <b><i>Plebotomy Displayed; or, Perfect Rules for the Letting of Blood</i>.</b> <br /><br />7. <i><b>Urinal Conjectures. Brief Observations, with some Probable Predictions on the Sick Patient's Stool or Water. </b></i><br /> <br />8. <i><b>The Treasury of Life: or, Salves for Every Sore. Experienced and tryed Receipts, for the Cure of the most usual Diseases that our frail Bodies are most subject to, wilst we remain in this Life.</b></i> (Corrected by Nicholas Culpeper) <br /> <br />9. <i><b>The Expert Lapidary: or, A Physical Treatise of the Secret Virtues of Stones.</b></i> <br /> <br />10. <i><b> Doctor Diet's Directory: or, The Physician's Vade Mecum. Being Short, but Safe, Rules to preserve Health in a Methodical way, passing by the Impertinencies and Niceties of former Physicians, treating only of familiar and the most useful things in Diet, such as chiefly nourish and continue Life. </b></i><br /> <br />11. <i><b>Doctor Reason and Doctor Experience Consulted with: or, The Mystery of the Skill of Physick Made Easie. Short, clear, and certain Rules how to Discern, Judge, and Determine, what any usual Disease is, from the Parts of the Body affected; the Causes, Signs, or Symptoms: Collected and Observed from the most approved Authors, and constantly Practised. </b></i><br /> <br />12. <b><i>Chymical Institutions, Describing Nature's Choicest Secrets, in Experienced Chymical Practice: Shewing the several degrees of Progression in the Physical Cabinet of that Art.</i></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;">For a veritable cornucopia of bookish information visit BookThink.com</span></b></div>
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<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-4393016225612586492012-01-26T14:54:00.019-05:002012-02-01T18:40:29.747-05:00Do you trade in Mass or do you have a mass of trade?<div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Someone said that they preferred to use the descriptive word <i>soft-cover</i> rather than <i>paperback</i> because they felt the word <i>paperback</i> connoted a cheap product, implying tawdriness and lack of quality. Their term: "dime-store". Personally I have always been fond of the dime store, and find nothing untoward with its offerings. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />The whole discussion came about because of a simple question , ""How does one know if it is a TRADE PAPERBACK or a MASS MARKET PAPERBACK? Anyone who has been in publishing or book dealing for any length of time does not even have to think about this, but I bow to the purity of such a question asked in all sincerity.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />Soft-cover vs paperback? Unless books are bound in plush or someone's old pillow, they are not soft. Paperback is hardly pejorative - but rather descriptive. The bibliographical word used is wraps - or wrapper (as far as I am concerned wraps is a misnomer as goes physically descriptive aptness - I have a whole diatribe about this very subject with which I shall not bore you)</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>But consider that, leaving aside any considerations of ideas and the such printed marks found within, consider that paper is the very heart of a book, so why should a book not wear its heart on a sleeve, so to speak? In fact paper covers (wrappers) are nothing new - they have been around at least since the eighteenth century. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />MASS MARKET PAPERBACKS (Think: revolving racks, etc.; think: fit in your pocket - hence the famous Pocket Book publisher; think: bright, often garish covers - think: what does this thinly clad woman on the cover have to do with Steinbeck?; think: collectability ... Much of paperback collecting is centered around cover artists such as Bergey, Meltzoff, Powers and Avati and such sub-genres as Good Girl Art and Map-Backs, but a goodly amount of collecting still focuses on authors):</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />Golden Age Size (approximately 4 <span style="font-size: small;">3/4</span>" x 6 <span style="font-size: small;">3/8</span>" ... used through the 1940s and 1950s. This is where much of the collecting occurs.)</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />Thereafter - Size is approximately 4 <span style="font-size: small;">1/4</span>" x 7" (recently some publishers have been experimenting with a taller mass market size)</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />TRADE PAPERBACKS (Think: Digest-sized; think "This does not really fit in my pocket very comfortably"; think: college courses and "serious" subjects, although any subject, including fictional are game; think: often stodgy cover decoration - this last has changed significantly through the years; think: low collectability - trade paperbacks have yet to establish themselves as a collectable field - there are exceptions within the field, which collecting activity is series-driven or author-driven)</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />Sizes vary ... approximately 5 " x 8" or 5 <span style="font-size: small;">1/2</span>" x 8 <span style="font-size: small;">1/2</span>" + -</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />Harper Torchbooks, for example, was one of the most commonly recognizably trade paperback series on the market. There are many others. Many, many publishers issued trade paperbacks.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />In fact, one possible way to view the difference between mass-market paperbacks and trade paperbacks was that completely separate publishing concerns sprang up to issue mass market paperbacks .. ACE, Pocket Books, Penguin, Lion, Lancer, Dell, Pyramid, etc., etc., etc.; while trade paperbacks were generally issued by already established trade publishers (publishing to/for the trade). Of course there were exceptions ... the history of publishing is a record of concerns established on constantly shifting sands.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />We've seen what had been solely mass-market publishers enter the realm of hardcover publishing.<br />…….</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />Then there are the OVER-SIZE PAPERBACKS - the beached giant squids of the paperback world.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />8 <span style="font-size: small;">1/2</span>" x 11" .... and larger. Almost to a one these Awkward Things are an evolutionary mistake.</b></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-81891721200070180952012-01-24T14:25:00.001-05:002012-01-24T14:28:14.392-05:00<b><span style="font-size: large;">A giant cinematic, technicolor harrumph from me. <span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}">I was reading a review for a new movie (which somebody brought to my attention). I was taken aback by the casual acceptance as normal of the movie's puerile sensibilities, which to me seem nothing so much as gutterish. As in so many other modern movies, I find the Rabelesquean emphasis on bathroom humor and body functions offensive. I guess it is just one more thing that removes me from modern sensibilitie<span class="text_exposed_show">s and from the generation known as tweens. Actors and actresses are frequently seemingly adult, but they are constantly playing to the immature (of course - that is where the 'bling' is). I am shocked sometimes by the casual, flippant mentioning of private outre acts, which, at least in my time, would not even have been thought of, let alone talked about except by the most debauched minds, (or by psychiatrists, but they would, in their examination of such, have had the decency to guard their thoughts in a plain brown wrapper.) Has society regressed to an infantile state? I know it certainly has as regards political candidates. I guess where the one is the other is to be expected. </span></span></span></b><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-45828587919714177142012-01-23T11:51:00.000-05:002012-01-23T11:51:11.200-05:00<span style="font-size: large;">The<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"> Paris Review tweeted about Minetta Brook, the subterranean stream that flows beneath Greenwich Village. It used to flow freely across the landscape, and was commonly used as a fishing stream by locals. Now it is viewable only through hidden grates in basements and sub-basements. Most people are not aware of its existence. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}">I am thinking that every vital literary neighborhood has its own subterranean Minetta Brook which percolates up and periodically infuses the landscape ... Likewise every literary work of strength, depth, and originality has its own Minetta.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}">One analyzes a literary work, seeking to plumb the subterranean stream of its creative genius - its minetta.</span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-23896146634135926882011-12-21T14:48:00.002-05:002011-12-21T18:42:15.946-05:00<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;">Merry Christmas, one and all,<br />
And to all and one,</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;">A Happy New Year!</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #783f04;">I have dug the following book review of mine out from where it has long been buried in the archives of the <b>BookThink </b>website, where it was originally published as part of </span><i style="color: #783f04;">Professor Booknoodle's Scrapbook</i><span style="color: #783f04;">. I think it not inappropriate for the season. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Harrumph!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
Every confounded year! The same blasted thing. One has <i>finally</i> gotten settled down from last year's assault upon peace and quiet when what happens? One is assaulted - <i>assaulted</i>! - by the same infernal, twinky, eye-pokey lights and mewling, mindless jittery music bleating out from out of every possible radio speaker: Red-necked reindeers, jingling rocks - and kissing Santas! </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
It's insufferable! Even if one make the small effort of turning off one's radio (and in my inner sanctum I <i>can</i> keep the infernal machine unplugged).... but just step outside - the confounded noise is vibrating the very air - if I just dare to step outside ... every tree, every mail box, every window, every <i>squirrel</i> hole, every service station and <i>every</i> place of business, indeed every place of public assembly has connived - connived! - to disturb the peaceful winter air with ear-rattling noise. Santas multiplied on every street corner, clanging hand noisy bells, ho-ho-hoing in one's face!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
Why it even advances backward through the Calendar. <i>Months</i> before Christmas the blasted holiday is upon us like an unwelcome guest, crowding out other more sedate and less hectic observances.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
Christmas is fast upon us and folks are rushing about willy-nilly looking for gifts. Not just one gift, but thousands of gifts. The shops are laden with bright garish things ... piled high with unsightly ties and sweaters that nobody in their right mind would ever wear. People bustle here and hustle there, arms full of doodads, eyesight impeded by packages piled high in their arms, so - </span><span style="font-size: large;">if one has the temerity to attempt a mere casual evening stroll</span><span style="font-size: large;"> - they bump and jostle and generally impede one's progress.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
Listen, I am <i>not</i> all harrumphery. I <i>understand</i> Christmas. It's a joyous season. A celebration of a blessed event. These things are, I believe, still there.... somewhere. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But I pine for a quieter, more sedate and personal observance. Where have the merry Yule logs gone? The happy carolers, who once were such a pleasant surprise outside one's door, have been drowned out by loudspeakers blaring <i>Jinglebell Rock</i>. If they do dare to walk about, house to house, they are lost amidst huge, inflatable polar bears, snowmen and garish green grinches, all bouncing madly about on snorts of machine-generated wind. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
I know when the frantic Yuletide mania began. Haw! It began with a blasted, evil world war many years ago. A war so long ago most people have forgotten that it ever was. Only crusty historians remember and study it. It was a war that poisoned everything it touched. Even the story of Saint Nick was infected. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
All that running around looking for the perfect gift. When, if people would just settle down and stand quiet for a moment they would realize just exactly what the perfect gift must be. Aside from the spiritual message (the true gift), is there anyone still reading here who does not know what it is? Is there any one reading who does not think a <b><i>book</i></b> to be the perfect gift? Is there anyone here who cannot remember receiving, at least once, a book as a Christmas present that turned out to be so exactly perfect?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
I think not.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Many children are naturally of a scampish nature - mischievous imps tossing snowballs at the hats of innocent bypassers - the little scallywags! They eschew books to tend to misdeeds.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
However there are those rare lucky children who eschew unruly mischief and are blessed with a particular receptive perception when gazing upon a book. They will have, always, a favorite tome. And it is usually near to reach. It little matters what book is perceived as perfection. What matters is that the book exists and it is near to hand, a friendly companion. When ideally situated, it is in hand, and open - and the hand is attached to a little person who has found a place of quiet refuge wherein to enter a world that opens only when the covers of their favorite book are opened.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
Let me briefly take a passage from a great book that most people have <i>forgotten</i> was presented to the world as a Christmas gift by its author:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<b><i style="color: #e06666;">"Child of the pure unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
Though time be fleet, and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
The loving smile will surely hail
The love gift of a fairy tale ..."</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i> </i><br />
That verse, which opens Lewis Carroll's immortal story, <i>Through the Looking Glass (and What Alice Found There)</i>, embodies - exactly - just that perfection for an uncanny tale that unfolds with such puissant magical grace.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
In <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>, Carroll's heroine observes, rather peckishly, I always thought (child after my heart!), <i>"What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?"</i><br />
Harrumph, what indeed? What more perfect pair of books for <i>wonderment</i> ever were there, than those penned by Mr. Lewis Carroll?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
But our purpose here is <i>not</i> to look at the perfect Christmas book. Our purpose is, instead, to examine a book from that dim wartime past that was thrust unsuspectingly into the hands of children come Christmas morning. It was a vessel of fear - a harbinger of future Christmas franticness and worry. Intrusively, it carried chaos and fear into the nursery.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> <br />
This particular book is forgotten now to literary history and reader's alike. And, thankfully, unknown to the children of today. It is an object for collectors of old juveniles.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
Among Christmas books there have always been some very pretty books, granted; but many have been packaged garishly with unrelievedly bright covers; but just open them up and one finds inside thick, pulpy, stiff paper with dull blotchy illustrations. ABC booklets with 1-2-3 and A-Apple pie simplicity. But, yes - there <i>have</i> been a good many pretty little books with pretty little chromolith pictures. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">There have also been some pretty strange books. And, as I said, I would like to focus on just one of them, as I found it so unsettling. And if it is unsettling to an old curmudgeon like myself, what must it have been to a small child? It is possibly the strangest Christmas book to have ever been published, at least until Dr. Seuss arrived on the scene with his Grinch. What must the children have thought upon receiving the following harbinger of punishment?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
It was titled <b style="color: blue;"><i>Googly-Goo and His Ten Merry Men</i></b>.</span><br />
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<br />
Written by Helen Jeffers and published by the Stecher Lithograph Company of Rochester, New York in 1916, the book presages <i>somewhat</i> <i style="color: #6aa84f;">How the Grinch Stole Christmas</i><span style="color: #6aa84f;">.</span><br />
<br />
Googly Goo looks like a roly-poly, self-indulgent brat. All of his Ten Men look just like him. Yes, they all look like brats! They look like Santa's Elves gone bad - </span><span style="font-size: large;">they are</span><span style="font-size: large;"> sycophants to a one, dressed all in blue. They are <span style="color: #3d85c6;">Blue Meanies</span> with googly eyes and vapid grins. Googly-Goo and his Ten Men <i>don't like naughty children</i>. And they mean to do something mean about it. And they do!</span><br />
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The text spells it out, short and simple, in poor, ragged verse, no less:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: large;">"</span><i><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: large;">This Googly-Goo, His Ten Men too,
<br />
In gowns of blue,
<br />
Got together and caught Saint Nick -
<br />
Before he knew it -
Bound him, quick. <br />
They stole his sled,
<br />
So full of toys, <br />
The sled he'd packed for girls and boys!"</span></i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkKZCK1jLN4LR7nPrUxyNYM4tf1X-DvcUNvh-Qgz2Tu91Ld7KkTIQsfrbMTjfbBMM4PaxxmiJLkZHrecizzSzdFEhXDf9LonEZJyMFsE9e-l7CNGXWZPskAQDpNvn2NG8KK3OuahGrgmA/s1600/googlysprd2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkKZCK1jLN4LR7nPrUxyNYM4tf1X-DvcUNvh-Qgz2Tu91Ld7KkTIQsfrbMTjfbBMM4PaxxmiJLkZHrecizzSzdFEhXDf9LonEZJyMFsE9e-l7CNGXWZPskAQDpNvn2NG8KK3OuahGrgmA/s320/googlysprd2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
A page in the book shows Googly-Goo and his Ten Men flying through the air in Santa's sleigh, drawn by Santa's six reindeer. Googly-Goo is blowing a trumpet announcing his evil deed to the world. Where Santa would fly quietly over rooftops with an occasional Ho! Ho! Ho! and softly jingling sleigh bells, and a farewell Merry Christmas, Googly Goo must trumpet his arrival with noisy fanfare! The book also shows Santa tied up. The children are looking out of windows at this madness with horror.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i style="color: #3d85c6;">So Googly-Goo - his Ten Men, too,
<br />
Hurried along, in gowns of blue,
<br />
Still shouting "O ye children bad,
<br />
Your Christmas surely will be sad.
<br />
You'll get no gifts from old Saint Nick, <br />
Unless you mend your ways right quick!
<br />
Then lads and lassies shivered and shook, - <br />
Out from their trundle-beds crept to look
<br />
At Googly-Goo, his Ten men too, <br />
Hurrying on, in gowns of blue.</i></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
Harrumph! <i>Kidnapping</i> Santa Claus! What outrage! Does this book end happily? Could it? Haw! Well, in a manner of speaking, I suppose it does. If one doesn't think too much about it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
After warning about the <span style="color: #3d85c6;">"girls and boys who growl and poke and get angry when others joke"</span>, Googly-Goo relents - and releases Santa, for the children have all said their prayers. (I find it so strange and ominous that it is Googly-Goo who hears those prayers.) But Googly-Goo still holds some nefarious power over Santa and gives the jolly old man, who seems none the worse for having been trussed up, some instructions about filling stockings and distributing gifts. Harrumph, as if <i>he</i>, of <i>all</i> people, wouldn't know how.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Even though the children of the world buckled down and said their prayers and promised to be good and obey their parents, the damage had been done. Poor children! The fearful seed was planted. The message was clear. Even Saint Nick, in a world ravaged by a World War was not safe. (it was 1916, after all). If Santa is not safe from depredation and mischief, and kidnapping and trussings, how could mere innocent, helpless children be safe?</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX10nr6hjRkPgXF-rWdw6uHReRTZ8HQbx3RMkm93wJnVTggZIKkW78d9hHqww20HgRvTAy6FQ_QMCVOUDV5XufmP2vH_tlSpo3O-thJ-s-LFx68XOnpjRLtXdihPMCDoa_ZAIvm98B8kA/s1600/googlysprd6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX10nr6hjRkPgXF-rWdw6uHReRTZ8HQbx3RMkm93wJnVTggZIKkW78d9hHqww20HgRvTAy6FQ_QMCVOUDV5XufmP2vH_tlSpo3O-thJ-s-LFx68XOnpjRLtXdihPMCDoa_ZAIvm98B8kA/s320/googlysprd6.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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The Googly-Goo Xmas message?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Hide and tremble in your trundle-beds, kiddies</span></b>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
And so to end, let us hie back to Lewis Carroll and his 1867 Christmas message, found in the front of <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</i>:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><b><span style="color: #e06666;">"Lady dear, if Fairies may</span></b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b><span style="color: #e06666;">
For a moment lay aside
</span></b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b><span style="color: #e06666;">Cunning tricks and elfish play, </span></b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b><span style="color: #e06666;">
'Tis at happy Christmas-tide.</span></b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>We have heard the children say - </b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>Gentle children whom we love -
</b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>Long ago, on Christmas Day,
</b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>Came a message from above. </b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>Still, as Christmas-tide comes round, </b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>
They remember it again -
</b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>Echo still the joyful sound
</b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>'Peace on earth, good-will to men!'</b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>Yet the hearts must childlike be
</b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>Where such heavenly guests abide;
</b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>Unto children in their glee,
</b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>All the year is Christmas-tide! </b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>Thus forgetting tricks and play
</b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>For a moment, Lady dear,
</b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>We would wish you, if we may,
</b></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #e06666;"><b>Merry Christmas, glad New Year!"</b></span></i></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
On the back cover of <i>Googly-Goo and His Ten Men</i> is this message:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">"Santa Claus, smiling, will come your way,
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And bring you a better Christmas Day."</span></i></div><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Do we dare believe this? <br />
Scrooge relented. The Grinch reformed.<br />
.... but Googly-Goo?</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Harrumph.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> <i style="color: #cc0000;">Merry Christmas!</i></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-17387025035485352742011-12-11T18:44:00.004-05:002011-12-18T22:01:12.000-05:00Circular File ... Critical Slam Dunks<h3 class="post-title entry-title"><span style="color: #8d3a00; font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"><b>A current literary fracas taking place within the halls of Academia and extending onto the <i>WorldWideWeb</i> reminded me of this post of mine from long ago in which I revived a critical review from even longer ago: </b></span></h3><h3 class="post-title entry-title"><span style="color: #8d3a00; font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"><b> </b></span></h3><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #8d3a00; font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">Old Review passing in review -- If there had been such modern slang in use .... Circular File - </span><span style="font-size: large;"><i style="color: #8d3a00; font-family: Georgia;">Slam-Dunk!</i></span><span style="color: #8d3a00; font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"> :<br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i style="font-family: Georgia;"><b>Arrah Neil, or Times of Old</b></i><b style="font-family: Georgia;">. by G. P. R. James. <br />
New York. Harper & Brothers.</b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">"We <i>suppose</i> that this novel will be read, admired, praised and forgotten, like the preceding fictions of the same writer. The usual cant of eulogy will be <i>lavished</i> upon it, and it will then pass into oblivion, to be succeeded in three months by another equally valuable.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">"In our opinion there is hardly an instance on record, of an author who has contrived to win an<i> extensive</i> reputation, as a writer of works of imagination, with such <i>slender</i> intellectual materials as Mr. James. No one has ever written so many books, <i>purporting</i> to be novels, with so small a stock of heart, brain and invention. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">"He is <i>continually</i> infringing his own copyright, by reproducing his own novels. Far from being surprised that he has written so much, we are astonished that he has not written more. From his first novel, all the rest can be logically deduced; and the reason they have not appeared faster, may be found in the fact that </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large; font-style: italic;">he has been economical in the employment of amanuenses</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">."</span> </span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-46531969506539256632011-12-08T16:25:00.003-05:002011-12-08T19:25:48.619-05:00Binary Archaeology - Sifting Through the Corrupted Past<div style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-size: large;">Authors who publish only via electronic devices and not through the agency of paper media of some sort may well be forgotten by and irrelevant to the future.
</span></div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-size: large;">Could this be true?
</span></div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-size: large;">Will authors who publish only via electronic media be remembered by future generations? Through what agency? With what impact?
</span></div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-size: large;">What is the shelf life of electronic storage? How quickly can we expect data stored in computers to be corrupted?
Or, in other words, what is the temporal extent of of our electronically-stored social and cultural memory?
</span></div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-size: large;">This is not to say that electronic media is not now host to a very vibrant literature, and an astoundingly complex ongoing (and often instantaneous) commentary on current events - but what is the shelf life of that literature? - of that commentary?</span></div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
I am concerned that, with the vast information already stored via computers, accessible at the touch of a finger, humanity may lose its capacity for functional memory. </span></div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-size: large;">The extreme vastness of information now stored electronically already inhibits the accessibility of that data. This hardly addresses the banality and irrelevancy of much of that stored data. Consider that much that is vital and vibrant on a computer browser page is surrounded - and often lost - within a plethora of extraneous and irrelevant visual material (This extraneous lateral field is filled with both pictorial and textual content: advertising, links, moving images - a constant and confusing barrage of entreaties and enticements for the reader's attention to stray away from the desired text if not away from the very page on which the text is displayed). </span></div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-size: large;">As goes storage for the future - how does this barrage of irrelevant material impede or corrupt the relevant text? What extraneous materials visible on many a blog or news page will be thus corrupted into the content of the blog or news?
The short shelf life of electronic storage, and the incredible complexity of binary configuration within a single electronic document bodes well for the future development and importance of Binary Archaeology. <br />
<br />
There is an old literary joke - that was stated in a very humorous poem, once published in <i>The New Yorker </i>: "Ha hah! the book of my enemy has been remaindered!" Now, I guess the exultant cry might well be, "ha ha! the text of my enemy has been corrupted!"<br />
<br />
The exigencies of Temporal Displacement require that I regularly subject my own memory to "data scrubbing".</span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-33856884513502213292011-11-20T14:01:00.008-05:002011-11-20T20:52:33.047-05:00Poe's Noble Visage.<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #741b47;">This, I say - THIS - was the true visage of Edgar Allan Poe. Noble of brow, clear-eyed, straight-forward and honest. Samuel S. Osgood produced, it seems, two portraits of Poe - one looking to left , and one looking to the right. Both show the same inviting, intelligent, noble visage. My thanks to Undine for using the first image</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #741b47;"> on her blog</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #741b47;"> (shown below), and thus reminding me of this forgotten portrait. Below the portraits will be seen a link to her excellent blog.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3oKGqxpKMI1ND79_lXr75z6Qp-Uv5PtceaLcX3YRFrjP2nsOnSm88IBKhSZcv9v1MSIuiYD130AzCyl3AbxBM2UJR-mAqVzyT8Eo1IkxHtyfgx99EC5WTpWvnmcgXDBskFBVurRQWa2g/s1600/poevisage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3oKGqxpKMI1ND79_lXr75z6Qp-Uv5PtceaLcX3YRFrjP2nsOnSm88IBKhSZcv9v1MSIuiYD130AzCyl3AbxBM2UJR-mAqVzyT8Eo1IkxHtyfgx99EC5WTpWvnmcgXDBskFBVurRQWa2g/s400/poevisage.jpg" width="165" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFBhqC3nM5dgKI9aj53xopSicg0er12Z8qXt1GjiA4rmlBKUKMEiJB7MvwJ6yasaWQnEgXvqcbm3h3pIunYaZHRhF5bEPCPaTRapJCFI6rs9rT9UGBjpl15p6N7gBjdnH2Mfd1uHlrLYs/s1600/poebyosgood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFBhqC3nM5dgKI9aj53xopSicg0er12Z8qXt1GjiA4rmlBKUKMEiJB7MvwJ6yasaWQnEgXvqcbm3h3pIunYaZHRhF5bEPCPaTRapJCFI6rs9rT9UGBjpl15p6N7gBjdnH2Mfd1uHlrLYs/s400/poebyosgood.jpg" width="249" /></a></div><br />
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<div style="color: #674ea7;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Undine's Blog - Most excellent! :</span></b></div><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://worldofpoe.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><b>http://worldofpoe.blogspot.com</b>/</a></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-62953905322969101692011-11-20T00:41:00.000-05:002011-11-20T00:41:22.343-05:00The Quills in Poe's Quiver<div class="BlogEntry"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #8d3a00; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="color: #8d3a00; font-family: Times;">I'm dredging this up from a year long past - just because it still amuses me. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #8d3a00; font-family: Times;">Everyone knows those most excellent delineations of horror and psychological madness penned into reality by Edgar A. Poe. He remains the Grand Master, the Puissant Thaumaturge. But fewer people know that Poe was one of America's most trenchant literary critics. In Poe we have the critic who did not mince words ... who did not pull his punches. A good review from Poe was surely earned through Herculean efforts by a writer laboring for a slim foothold on the slopes of Parnassus. But a critical pan .... could any author continue to blithely sail about on the literary sea after Poe had leveled a critical broadside at their plimsoll line?<br />
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</span><span style="color: #8d3a00; font-family: Times;"></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #8d3a00; font-family: Times;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The following example of Poe's caustic tongue-in-quill is from the December 1839 <span style="font-style: italic;">Burton's Gentleman's Magazine.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #8d3a00; font-family: Times;">Harrumph, it is obvious that someone didn't pay their dues.<br />
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<b><i style="font-family: Times;">The Poets of America, Illustrated by one of Her Painters</i><span style="font-family: Times;">. Edited by John Keese . Colman, New York. 1839</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times;">"This long announced and much puffed volume has at last made its appearance. For the sake of the publisher, whose enterprising spirit deserves at least the good-will of the critic, we regret that we cannot award his beloved bantling a word of honest praise. We are compelled to pronounce this "splendid gift book", this loudly-vaunted specimen of American art and science, a common-place and profitless attempt. .... We are not sold to the will of any publisher; we never criticize a work without giving it an attentive perusal; we never obtain the gratuitous presentation of expensive publications by the promise of a puff; nor do we covertly slander a brother scribe because he is connected with another periodical. There are editors who cannot make these averments. The expression of our just opinions may give offense to various individuals, but we are not to be deterred in the execution of our critical duty. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times;">"The editor of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Poets of America</span> has woefully erred in the selection of some of the authors included in is list -- we know not whether he has mistaken the quality of the chosen from the lack of a kindred spirit with the sons of poetry -- from an ignorance of the attributes of of those whose name, although not enrolled on the catalogue of his acquaintance, have awakened the echoes of the bi-forked hill -- or whether he has suffered the interference of personal prejudice to warp his judgment and direct his choice. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times;">"When we observe that some of the most celebrated poets of the day are excluded from his selection, and that various minor lights burn in the highest places, we are tempted to doubt the truth of his averment that he sought to present the finest specimens -- the true spirit of American poetry. There are names in his list 'alike to fortune and fame unknown', and the merits of their doings will not compensate the reader the offence of pushing better men from their stools. One writer, who has not yet attained the heights of mediocrity, has three pieces within eleven ages, while some of the best poets of the age, not being intimately connected with the publisher, are compelled tostand the ordeal of a single exhibition, and others are prohibited from all chance of show. "</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8d3a00; font-family: Times;">[Poe gives us a sample ... and <span style="font-style: italic;">wretched</span> it certainly is]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times;">"The pictures are tolerably fanciful in conception, but their execution is paltry and ineffective; many of them are inferior to the woodcuts in Peter parley's school books. .... [the woodcuts] are inexplicable in their detail, and seem as if they had been engraved with a sharp fork on the back of a pewter plate."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="color: #8d3a00;">E. A. Poe was one of the most incisive and important critics of his day. Most of his pronouncements on writers well stand the test of time.<br />
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<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-68576217525987311012011-08-29T18:51:00.001-04:002011-11-17T00:14:13.041-05:00The Lumpencorporatariat.<b>Fie on the Lumpencoporatariat. </b><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-65831497659292179262011-02-22T14:41:00.003-05:002011-06-21T19:09:47.423-04:00Crying Wee Wee Wee all the Way to the Market<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">One could probably find just about any animal species being used as a decorative motif on a book cover. Here's a nifty little porcine quartet that scampered across the front cover of an old book. Can any of you guess the title of the book?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="73" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidUmLUAaMCpAtPBfI-Atjsu_etCNjgzrpxa9-bDCKa2vGN4VBnZ_J8U4GO7pKkWjaH9Jo7GdolylyjjZYg_oWgVFM293x-LdPmUaJHqZl4M8StTh0b-LN8caMoK9aw9Z2Y6MOgETp2fsw/s320/pigsrunning.jpg" width="320" /> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001278496984#%21/photo.php?fbid=166842570035025&set=a.113674058685210.21467.100001278496984&theater">The answer.</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
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<a href="http://www.brothertownbooks.etsy.com/" target="_blank">A great place to look to look for unusual books, vintage paperbacks and decorative prints.</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrothertownBook" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @BrothertownBook</a>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Professor Booknoodle ©http://www.blogger.com/profile/14466947705437961188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1290041564377212493.post-38748682055941873262011-02-10T15:26:00.004-05:002011-02-10T15:30:03.905-05:00I don't know why, but the Brothertown Books page on Facebook keeps getting buried. So I am posting this link. Check us out!
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