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

Issue 24, July 2, 2002

Continental Books publishes this free email newsletter for customers and interested others on an irregular schedule. We started bi-weekly but are now stretched to a monthly. We feature a Conshohocken story today after a long layoff. Elmer Conshohocken is our composite book dealer. Each tale is elaborated around a kernel of true experience. Finding the incident is something like prospecting. You carefully and futilely scan the terrain for signs, or you walk around at random and luckily trip over an unsuspected lode. And, of course, vice versa.

1. How One Becomes a Book Dealer. Another Conshohocken Story.
2. Notes
3. Two Famous Book Dealers
4. Starting On Book Repair

Finding One's Way to the Used Book Trade

1
The classic book dealer career went from an apprenticeship in early youth with an established book dealer and continued full-time in the business until old age and beyond. But in the post-modern era dealing in used books can be a bounce, a reconsideration, like joining the French Foreign Legion when things get too hot in your original place.

Case in point: Jack Conshohocken, cousin of Elmer, the famous amalgamated book dealer. Jack loved journalism, especially the police beat where dames, whiskey, and cards filled in the time between breaking stories, a world recorded and immortalized by MacArthur and Hecht in "Front Page."

2
Scene: Reporters' shack (store front) across the street from the Bergen Street Police Station in Brooklyn. Jack and several others at cards. It is 2 A.M. The wall speaker is squawking police calls. One about labor trouble on a pier controlled by the mob, specifically by Tough Tony A, mobilizes the gaggle of reporters. They jump into someone's car and up and away.

3
Perhaps you can remember the iconic picture of the mob chief reclining in a barber chair, his face covered with hot towels, a cigar in his mouth sticking up through the cloth. The assassin enters and shoots him dead. That was Albert A in the chair, Tony's older brother. Red light. Danger ahead.

4
Another scene: Empty pier, decrepit, no shed, open to the elements, a few stars, hint of a fog coming in, the black water slapping the pilings. No one present but Tough Tony, (short, informally dapper, intense), his two heavy boned bodyguards, and the clamoring reporters. "The story, give us the story."

Tony spots Jack. "Ain't you the Brooklyn Eagle?"

"No, I'm Standard News, the local wire service."

"I hate the Brooklyn Eagle, always criticizing, calling me a hood."

Tony's associates brace Jack.

"Tony," says Jack emphatically, "I am not the Brooklyn Eagle. And," he feels himself airborne, "how about the First Amendment?" Splash!

"Cheese," says Tony, "That Brooklyn Eagle guy slipped. Got to be careful on these old piers," and turning to another reporter, "What was he babbling about the First Commandment?"

A voice from under the pier: "That too."

5
In the best traditions of his work, a soaking wet Jack Conshohocken called his story in to his editor, Spike Murray, (heavyset, tall, the face of an alcoholic who reformed too late), who ran Standard News with an office staff of three: himself and his chain smoking girlfriend Mable who being secretary and teletypist counted as two.

It was a story of a journalist who fell off a Brooklyn pier and was rescued by a passing North Jersey businessman.

"OK, Anything else, Jack?" asked Murray.

"I feel a little damped down," answered Jack, "Too much adventure. I'm taking time off to hang out with used books."

"Anything for a quiet life, right?"

"Quiet and dry," said Jack, "Stet."

Notes:

*The barbershop assassination scene is reproduced in an Italian movie starring Alberto Sordi, titled "Mafioso" (1962)

*Brooklyn Eagle was a major Brooklyn newspaper from 1841-1955. Walt Whitman was editor 1846-1848.

*"Front Page" was a very successful Broadway play of the 1920's, later converted into at least two Hollywood movies. ("Front Page" and "His Girl Friday") Hecht was a Chicago reporter and novelist who as foreign correspondent in post-World War I Germany used the police reporter's attitude and style in his new work. Later he supported the Irgun wing of the Zionist movement, writing a polemical "A Guide for the Bedevilled." MacArthur was a Broadway writer and producer remembered as the tragically lost love of the actress, Helen Hayes. The MacArthur-Hecht combo had a reprise later with Woodward-Bernstein. Different venue but the same police beat method.

We have copies of "Front Page" See http://continentalbooks.com/books.cgi/?bk=2749 and "A Guide for the Bedevilled." See http://continentalbooks.com/books.cgi?bk=5951

*"Anything for a Quiet Life," is the title of British actor Jack Hawkins' autobiography. It's a great punch line and an acceptable motive for just about any action. Hawkins is as charming on paper as he is on the screen. The story ends with his death. But before he reaches the quiet for which he ironically longed he has a full and energetic life, all the way. Right on Jack.

*The Tough Tony story is an exaggeration of a real event that took place circa 1952-53. Anyone who sends us an email identifying Tony (correctly or not) will receive a mention in our next dispatch.

*Standard News was a wire service like AP and Reuters are now except it was strictly local. Such services were popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among publishers and editors of newspapers in large cities with many competing papers.

*"Stet." means "To nullify a correction or deletion in printed matter."

Two Examples of Classically Trained Book Dealers

If you like book dealer biographies (and I admit that it is a specialized taste.) I would recommend two titles we have in stock.

Everitt, Charles P. THE ADVENTURES OF A TREASURE HUNTER. A Rare Bookman in Search of American History. (1951). See http://continentalbooks.com/books.cgi?bk=5917

Kraus, H.P. A RARE BOOK SAGA, The Autobiography of H.P. Kraus. (1978) See http://continentalbooks.com/books.cgi?bk=7144

Everitt was a product of the 4th Ave used book neighborhood in New York City. Late in his career he was famously successful in organizing and writing catalogues. Kraus was trained in Austria and specialized in selling antiquarian books to wealthy collectors. Both authors give details of their book trade operations-finding, buying, promoting and selling-and give anyone entering the trade a basic education for the work.

Busy Working

I am doing a little book restoration now. It is a traditional part of the used book dealer's work. I am experimenting in holding failed bindings together with thin steel wire. It is a cheap in-house reconstruction method that can salvage an otherwise good book for at least another 100 years (maybe more) of cultural service. Don't worry; every book I offer that has undergone a major repair is so described in my listings. In case any of you collect uniquely bound books I'll described some of these in future issues.

We need word-of-mouth to expand our audience. Drop our subscription address subscribe@continentalbooks.com to friends, relatives, associates while circulating. You'll find it a great icebreaker at your next cocktail party or PTA meeting.

If the unfathomable happens and you feel that one more issue will be too much try unsubscribe@continentalbooks.com for relief.

No more at the moment. Ciao Chico.

Alvin Katz copyright 2002