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

Issue #17. December 10, 2001

Continental Books publishes this free email newsletter about books and the trading and collecting thereof. A little like a speaker's box, entertainment and information going out to a surrounding mob of intelligent and thoughtful book people. A rare rant emerges on occasion but mostly you hear the placid and debonair singing of a raucous blue jay in transit.

"The most primitive form of science is the list." Anonymous

1. Book People. Uses of books when the reading stops
2. Book Makers. Shadowy people around the scribbler
3. Meta-Politics. Is the water rising or the boat settling?

ALTERNATIVES. THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING ELSE.

The book, the alternative medium for sustained speech and thought, is subject to alternative uses itself. Don Juan promises to treat his copy of Carlos Castaneda's first book as a source of sanitary paper. Julio Cortazar finds books to be fine building blocks. Robert Louis Stevenson has Long John Silver send the black spot on a page ripped from a bible.

These extra options go on and on. If you find yourself in an unanticipated hiatus, a quiet moment, take the time to consider the ways that books have been employed beyond their original purpose. Note these on the margins and end papers of the book you're carrying as a substitute security blanket.

My list to date:

-Door stop
-Wedge to even the legs of a rickety chair or table
-Coffee table coaster for your sweating beer bottle
-Paper money holder
-File for notes and documents
-Press for drying freshly picked leaves and flowers
-A key for spy codes
-A weight to secure things in place on your desk

-A source of illustrations--razor them out, and while you're at it visit your local library and razor out pages at random to thwart those who follow you

-Want to reach beyond your grasp? Step on a book
-Shred and dampen book pages to a mash and form into a mask
-Need kindling--use a book
-Shade the sun from your face

-Throw the nearest book at an intruder... or against the wall to express frustration and anger

-Raining? The book is a fine head cover
-Give a very young child a crayon and a book to pass an idle moment
-Feed it to your local rodent
-Balance a book on your head. On your nose
-Do arm and leg exercises with books as a resisting weight
-Stimulate your heart with a load of books in your back pack
-Juggle

-Opting for the life of the smuggler? Carefully cut out a cube in the center of your book. Fill it with jewels and dope.

-Allow a book to be either a pillow or a foot rest or both
-Express political disagreement by burning your opponent's book
-Feed a bon fire
-Walking your dog? You'll need a pooper scooper.
-Decorate a shelf. Paper a wall
-Dandy packaging material
-Toss it for your pet to fetch and worry.
-A sponge to sop up a spill
-A stopper for your drain
-A weight and press for book repairs
-Bathing in a tub? Take a book along, see if it floats.
-Cuddle up with a good book

Keep expanding this list, friends. The joy of discovery beckons.

NOTES:

For Julio Cortazar short stories see "End of the Game and Other Stories" translated by Paul Blackburn. And "We Love Glenda So Much and Other Tales" translated by Gregory Rabassa.

For a start into Carlos Castaneda's anthropological-like studies of a Yaqui Indian shaman try "The Teachings of Don Juan. A Yaqui Way of Knowledge."

For a more conventional view of the Yaqui Indians by a leading authority see Edward H. Spicer "The Yaquis. A Cultural History"

For a classic adventure novel see Robert Louis Stevenson "Treasure Island"

CREDITS. SPREADING THE KUDOS

1.
In our eagerness to get to the text, which is the center and essential focus of the book, we usually skip the very rich peripheral information that tells us about the sources of the object we are holding, the who and where of its construction and ownership.

The ordinary book is the joint work of a cooperating group whose sources and antecedents reach back, as a tree's roots grasp the ground for sustenance, to the culture and civilization in which it and we, the reading audience, are embedded.

Grab a book and survey the cover, the preliminary pages, the closing pages, the end papers, the footnotes, and the dust jacket for the extent of the information available.

2.
In contrast to the division of labor and the disciplined manufacturing collective, there are classes of books in the tradition of the unique book and the art and craft that sustain it.

Private Presses. Organized and operated by dedicated specialists in craft as well as craft history who turn out limited and numbered print runs usually sold by subscription. Only the finest materials are used, worked with handcraft techniques and simple tools. Condition of the physical book counts.

Artists' Books. Aims towards a unity of design and content and process, which is governed by the single artist. The frequent result is esthetic, idiosyncratic, unexpected and startling. Not, at first or sometimes even later, a comfort for the reader.

Diaries and journals, notebooks. Everyone can do this for himself. Start with a bound blank book. (Not essential, for you can use odd sheets of paper as well, but the pre-bound book is an extra challenge since it is in permanent form.) Write, draw, paint, color, interleave, staple, and paste as you like and choose. It's you, baby, no one but you.

3
The distinction between the manufactured and the crafted lies along these lines: Public/Private, Collective/Individual, and Simplified/Subtle. The strategy for the individual collector is to gather, using self defined criteria of taste, as much as he can and wants of the private, the personally meaningful, the art that intrigues. And for the rest, he goes public. Great wealth is not a necessity.

NOTES

Roderick Cave. THE PRIVATE PRESS Joan Lyons (Ed.) ARTISTS' BOOKS: A Critical Anthology & Sourcebook Thomas Mallon. A BOOK OF ONE'S OWN, People and Their Diaries

WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT RE FOSSIL FUELS

This note is hardly political since it expresses a near universal sentiment. If the boat is sinking, search out the leak and plug it. Meanwhile everyone bail like hell. If you don't have a bucket, wave your arms and make a lot of noise.

I think, or at least hope, that there is a general swelling, like yeast soaked dough in a testing pan, of positive opinion among the world's peoples toward alternative energy sources beyond ecologically dangerous and economically and politically frustrating and expensive fossil fuels.

Not allowing themselves to be limited by the narrow vision of self-interested leaders, people are making pro-alternative decisions whenever opportunity presents.

Meanwhile, they talk up necessary public adjustments like lower pollution and higher mileage vehicles, reduced costs and increased efficiency and safety of alternatives, official acceptance of feed backs to electricity grids. Every little step contributes to holding back the flood and the bleak dawn.

Go toward a healthier environment. Go toward a stabilized atmosphere.

NOTES

Michael Potts. THE INDEPENDENT HOME. Living Well with Power from the Sun, Wind, and Water

David Schottenfeld (MD). CANCER EPIDEMIOLOGY AND PREVENTION. Current Concepts.

Preserve the past. Buy a used book.

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A pleasant holiday season.

Cut and print

Copyright Alvin Katz 2001