NOTES OF A USED AND OUT-OF-PRINT BOOK DEALER

Issue #16. November 20, 2001

Published by Continental Books as a free email newsletter, at approximately 20 day intervals. Our intent is to call attention: That we list used and out-of-print books for sale on our web site, and that we have a secure order form on site. Our latent message: Buy direct. This is also an ego trip: Going public. One of the great boons of the Internet, a seeming infinitely expandable medium.

1. Book Trade: The Ex Library Book
2. Book Trade: Join the Struggle Against Book Deterioration
3. Politics: Read Another Book
4. Book Recommendation: If You Missed Madness, Catch Bedlam.

EX LIBRARY AND ALL THAT

A gathering of books, a library, where the books are.

Let's posit three types of libraries: general circulation open to all, limited circulation open to some, and private. Most libraries have a turn over in stock. Books wear out, are duplicates, lose popularity, have reduced usefulness. Space is tight and one has to dump some before he can access others. And then there are death and taxes. However it happens there are a lot of books coming out into the open market.

Please note that a private holding of books doesn't have to be massive in order to be a library. It is perfectly acceptable to own a library of one book. Everyone keeping books is participating in the library phenomena. It's like speaking prose. You don't have to be aware, but there you are with your own collection. So, and I hope you will be able to accept this, every used book has passed through the library experience. They are all ex library.

But the general convention limits the notion of library to those collections that are circulating. And a book is ex library only if it has markings and add-ons specifically indicating this. Any book that passes through a circulating library unmarked is just an ordinary used book.

Meanwhile the private holder frequently gets into the mark-up game by writing or stamping his name in the book or attaching a coupon-sized square of paper with a design and his name on it. These coupons are sometimes called ex libris, saying in Latin that this book is from a library. In Latin mind you, yet everyone pretends that because the book is privately held, not officially circulating, the identifying mark is not enough.

I think you may see where I'm heading. There are a lot of people who claim self-righteously that they neither buy nor sell library books and they only get away with this egregious twist in logic because we have all been trained, carefully trained, to deny the very fact staring at us from our book shelves. Library, a gathering of books, is right there before you in your own house.

Everyone without a book of his own is exempt from this characterization.

OK so what is going on here? The professional librarians who run circulating books have a gigantic accounting problem, keeping track of every specific, concrete book in their collections. This means marking-up, a procedure that is usually neatly and precisely done, not obtrusive, text remains legible, the reader is not distracted. In fact, the outcome is a uniquely identified book with at least a partially known provenance. You can't say this about a clean, unmarked private book or even about an ex libris book. These continue in their high levels of anonymity.

You might argue that very popular circulating books are read into tattered, battered clumps of nearly pulped paper, ergo ex library means physical "get-it-outahere-and-never-darken-my-door-again" junk. This is, of course, a classical prejudice. Evaluate cover and condition fairly, don't presume. Some ex libraries from the Library of Congress, for example, are in very good or better condition and rare to boot.

Listen, all those dealers in, and collectors of, pristine first editions are going to continue in that direction. It's a style and a way-of-life. The rest of us don't have to be stampeded into actions contrary to our self-interest. Clean, tight and the price is right? Go for it!

REPAIR. One's Own Book Mechanic

A fix, making things right, a book fix. Let me encourage everyone to consider doing simple repairs to their books. It's a class act. Wealthy people have it right up there on their must do lists: Show horses, gardening, sailing, book upkeep are all part of the good life. Just because you have money doesn't give you a pass. Get a skill, get busy. Not having money is no excuse. Can't afford a horse, get a dog. Pick up some white glue and wax paper and close a tear, replace an end paper, use a soft erasure to clear off useless pencil marks.

Equipment can be expensive: presses, paper cutters, book boards, special papers. Or it can be cheap, making do with what's handy. A paper-wrapped brick for a weight, salvaged boards and papers, pocketknife instead of professional scalpel. Two warnings: don't glue the wrong pages together, keep clear plastic wrap as a separator, and gather experience with simple jobs on books of lesser value before turning yourself loose on the antiquarian, valuable, and complex.

Even if you are precision challenged, a session with the books can be relaxing. You'll find yourself focused and concentrated, a task with a specific and attainable end, and the result, even if not perfect, will be a gratifyingly improved book. Clean and tight, all right.

See Lewis, A.W. BASIC BOOKBINDING. Dover, 1957 for a good, solid introduction.

THE WAR AND OTHER TROUBLES

One can't help noticing that the war on terror has diverted us from the energy and other crises. Remember a few months ago when California had rolling blackouts and everyone else was expecting the same. The price at the gas pump was going up and we were being assured that oil could be extracted from the northern slope of Alaska without damage to the environment except for the emissions from the end products and the consequent global warming. Maybe we should send out a Richard Lamparski to discover whatever happened to energy, cloning, miscounts in elections, the breakdown of the jury system, the untraceable missing persons, failed public education, a new Yankee Stadium in West Side Manhattan at tax-payer expense, the cancer scourge, the guilt of tobacco companies, ordinary crime, the end of social security.

It has to do with the transience of the day, the limited horizon of the daily journal. We are distracted for the moment but we are rarely introduced to the negative space, i.e. the context. No probing questions, no speculation, little analysis.

Have a moment. Start tracking these things down for yourself. Continuing education of the self, by the self, for the self. Read another book.

TOM O'BEDLAM

Robert Silverberg's science-fiction novel of the same name published in 1985 seems to me a usurpation even though legitimate according to copyright law, for the anonymous author or authors of this ballad, which traces back to the 16th century at least, have certainly given up their ownership rights long since. It is an unwarranted symbolic taking from the common British heritage. There is nothing wrong in embellishing on the original but at least leave the rest of us the name. Give us room for our own riffs.

But Silverberg does provide one service, a public rendering of the original, by quoting stanzas before each of the eight chapters of his book. So we can choose between the two O'Bedlams. As fine a writer of sci-fi that Robert is, Tom wins, no contest. So I would recommend getting a copy of the novel to have a ready access to the ballad.

At some past time Tom has been a resident at Bedlam, a contraction of Bethlehem, an insane asylum of the old kind, a bedlam. He now wanders the village streets and the country lanes singing his story, an upscale beggar, telling "dame or maid, be not afraid" while he offers a summary of his life and fancies. The language is rich, the images startling.

See Robert Silverberg. TOM O'BEDLAM. Donald I. Fine. 1985. ISBN: 0-917657-31-4.

Don't push. Plenty of copies available on the various lists.

Also see: http://owmyhead.com/silverberg/novels/ntomobedlam.html