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

Issue #20. February 12, 2002

Published as a free email newsletter by Continental Books for customers and interested others. If you are a bibliophile or a bibliomaniac, you belong with us. Come on in. If you flip through life, reading a word here and scanning a picture there, you belong with us. Come on in. If you are book phobic, walk on by. Recommend a visit to your nearest librarian for some therapy. Then come on back. We'll wait for you.

1. Non-stop around the world one way or another.
2. Read and eat.
3. Note on WTC
4. Looking forward to looking back.

FACT FOLLOWING FICTION

1
Fact following fantasy is always jarring. When the passing fancy actually happens, when you hear the crack of the splitting juncture of wish and reality, expect to experience a tension. While there are impractical plans, like the exaggerations of science fiction, that we can safely contemplate, sometimes the daydream of one becomes the experience of another even though the fit may not be exact and the prescience of the fantasist may be unrecalled amid the acclaim for the author of its realization.

James Thurber, for example, in his short story called "The Greatest Man in the World," produced a moral tale, using irony and exaggeration, in a critique of the practical world. The images he generated, comic in the 1930's, were astonishingly predictive of later events.

2
Thurber's story: Jack (Pal) Smurch, a 22 year old felon and miscreant, scion of a trash family with never a hint of bourgeois regularity, flies solo, nonstop, without refueling, around the world in nine days and, a la Lindbergh, becomes the darling hero, the charismatic icon, of the masses. But he totally lacks the moral discipline required for this role. All he wants is babes, booze and bucks, the unfiltered rewards of success. The nation's political, economic and journalistic elites see him as a threat to the moral education and the good order of everyone else. He is intransigent, unavailable for reform, so they throw him out a hotel window to his death and concoct a tale of an unfortunate accident and with this informal state sanctioned assassination foreclose his supposedly dangerous example.

3
Thurber was looking backward. He was investigating what would have happened if the pure and correct Lindbergh, who later chose a dubious anti-democratic politics, had been a man like Smurch. The fantasy actualized some fifty years later into two different realities: the technical achievement of the nonstop world flight and the social dilemma posed by the morally flawed popular hero.

4
The technical achievement of Thurber's fiction occurred in the nine days between Dec 14 to Dec. 23, 1986 when Dick Rutan and Jeana Jeager piloted a 939 pound airplane named "Voyager" 26,366 statute miles around the world nonstop and powered only by its original on-board fuel supply. Neither pilot came anywhere near Lindbergh in subsequent public adulation, and, unlike Smurch, neither has been marked by a hint of the notorious. They were two normal, ordinary adventurers who successfully carried out an extraordinary action.

5
The hero as moral cretin has been achieved and recognized in sports and politics. Choose your own example.

6
With failing eyesight, Thurber aimed at one target and hit two others.

Follow-up.
The full text of Thurber's short story is available online at http://www.visi.com/~tomcat/poetry/GreatestMan.shtml It is short and sweet. Highly recommended. You may also find it reprinted in Thurber's "The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze."

Dick Rutan has a web site http://www.dickrutan.com/index.html where he describes his various adventures and achievements and offers his logs and pictures and his public lectures for sale.

Whatever happened to Jeana Jeager? Anyone!

A movie titled "The Greatest Man in the World" was shown on PBS on Feb. 18, 1980 as part of their American Short Story Collection. Its players included Howard DaSilva, Carol Kane, Brad Davis, William Prince.

ALTERNATE USES OF BOOKS DEPARTMENT

In case you've missed the announcements there is an Edible Book Festival approaching. See Books2Eat 2002 http://www.geocities.com/books2eat/

If this catches on it will ruin the used book business.

For more pictures of edible books see http://home.vicnet.net.au/~papervic/high.html

More on WTC

In its brief existence the World Trade Center was a venue for athletic record making. In May of 1977 George Willig became the only one to climb the outer facade of the 110-story South Tower. No one could follow once he told the authorities how to thwart copycats. He wrote up (assisted by Drew Bergman) his career as climber in GOING IT ALONE, Doubleday, 1979. Terrific pictures. We just sold our last copy.

Plans.

1.
Close to finishing the first chapter of our projected internet publication called "Ordinary Sociology." The subject will be the 2nd hand experience, something very familiar to our readers. You'll receive an announcement as soon as it's on-line.

2.
Constructing an informal index of our first 20 issues. Expect to send it out as a supplement with the next issue. We might not know where we're going but at least we'll know where we've been.

3.
Continuing our series of notes on alternate street names in New York City, we will be searching for associated book connections.

4.
Expect our archive at http://www.continentalbooks.com/notes.html to be up to date within the next week.

So we, dear comrades, flip another page.

Win our undying gratitude. Get a friend, relative, or colleague to subscribe at subscribe@continentalbooks.com

Topped out, can't stand another round of the same. unsubscribe@continentalbooks.com
Go in peace.

Copyright Alvin Katz 2002