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

Issue #3 7 Apr 2001

A free biweekly email newsletter issued by Continental Books. Our purpose: To entertain and inform and call attention to our web site.

Contents

• Book Trade. A sale is a sale for all that.
• Parlor Game. A search for meaning.
• Rosenberg on Doyle. Another detective at work

The Book Trade. A worthy exchange

Number of years ago I sold a Matisse JAZZ, not the original 1947 French edition but the reprint of 1983 by Braziller. The customer lived nearby so I hand delivered to his tiny apartment in the East 50's near the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. He was tall, thin, had penetrating eyes, hawk nose, a commanding presence except for the sour expression of one suffering from ulcers, and a slight unidentifiable accent. We made the exchange and then talked. To make a point, he opened a closet door and revealed, neatly stacked, an astonishing twenty to thirty copies of the book I had just sold to him; a book I had considered, until that moment, hard to find. Naturally I wanted the story which he only told after extracting my promise to not reveal it publicly until the 21st Century, so far away then, and this is my first recounting since.

The story paraphrased: "I come from a socially prominent family but recently I have had financial losses and found myself needing extra income. Many of my social acquaintances are wealthy and interested in modern art. When we meet at get-togethers and socials the conversation almost invariably turns, with a little help from me, to art and then to Matisse and "Jazz." I only have to hint that I have an extra copy and offer it to my companion of the moment for him to insist on paying more than its fair value. A good side business for me. My main problem is to keep a steady supply of copies."

A quaint byway of the book trade, but, on reflection, there is another level. The CEO's and the well-to-do aren't usually naive players. Suppose the buyer, knowing that his companion needs a leg up, uses the excuse of the book buy to give the money as a charity that the recipient can accept without humiliation. There is an unstated balance: The sale is disguised as a gift; the benefice is masked as a purchase.

The question of gift and rational economics has received some heavy academic attention, which usually traces back to Marcel Mauss. THE GIFT, a famous work by a French sociologist, early 20th Century.

• David L.R. Kosalka. GEORGES BATAILLE AND THE NOTION OF GIFT. http://www.geocities.com/lemmingland/bataille.html A useful but difficult in spots summary and review of the various works following Mauss.
• O'Henry. THE GIFT OF THE MAGI. http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html A sentimental short story that gives us the concept in a way we all can understand.
• An art dealer describes Matisse JAZZ in rewarding detail at http://www.gregkucera.com/matisse.htm

Parlor Games. Game 3. Partial cure for ambiguity

The question of books in games is still wide open and we continue our investigation. Today, consider the book as a signaling device. As we proceed, remember that pure randomness and perfect order belong to paradise. Here we approximate.

The game: A small group of players, say up to ten members, gathers in a circle. Necessary equipment: Each member brings an independently chosen book, duplicates not permitted, and a writing pad and pen.

Phase one. Pluck page and line numbers from the air. Everyone go to that page in your book and count down to that line. We need a line with text or we pluck again. Take the first seven words for the protocol.

Phase two. Read out the chosen words in order, starting with the person to the host's left and rounding clockwise. In the southern hemisphere go the other way, to the right and counter clockwise. We now have a document of up to seventy words in ten lines, and it probably doesn't make much sense.

Phase three: Divide into two or three teams, each of which separately wrestles with the miasma of chance for whatever meaning it can extract, a serious but comic business something like Jacob contending with the stranger in the night. A hint: Right off, what are the images, the free associations, ideas, emotions: The splatterings of the unfamiliar junctions of the phrases as they bump within the cyclotrons of your minds? The team members share these perceptions. This is the fun part.

Phase Four. To be done quickly, say within ten minutes. Each team forces apparent sense upon the beast. Change the word and line order. Add and subtract words. Interleave lines if necessary. But be minimalist. Emulate the matador. Stay as close to the original document as you can but turn the inchoate into prose. Ole!

Phase five. The group recombines to share the resulting amended protocols. Write all this down on your notepads as best you can.

Still energetic, up to the challenge? Repeat the sequence starting with a new page and line. Don't be excessive. Stop after three trials or after 90 minutes. Here evaluate and critique the work, suggest other possible outcomes. Each participant should then gather his or her notes (doodles and all), staple the pages together, sign and date prominently, and give to the person two down on the left and receive the notes from the person two up on the right. Reverse this down under.

Adjourn to coffee and small talk. While circulating you may, if you want, exchange autographs and written comments with others, using blank spaces on your unique take-home package.

Game over.

Some people are more comfortable than others in an anti-gravity world of balloons filled with words escaping the restrictions of grammar and rhetoric

See, for example, the experiments of a New York poet:

• Mac Low, Jackson. ASYMMETRIES I-260. The First Section of a Series of 501 Performance Poems. Printed Editions, NY. 1980. 257pp. We have this book in stock: http://continentalbooks.com/books.cgi?bk=3460
• Cage, John. Anything by this wonderfully mild musician, who the one time I saw him (it was either him or Crowell) at Cooper Union was totally surrounded by noise, as were we all. I understand that he spent his placid time collecting mushrooms. A web site dedicated to Cage. http://www.music.princeton.edu/~jwp/ John Cage An Autobiographical Statement. http://www.newalbion.com/artists/cagej/autobiog.html

An extranious aside.
Interested in the 18th Century? We have some copies of facsimile reprint pamphlets of that era issued by The Augustan Reprint Society. http://continentalbooks.com/augustan

Book Review: Conan Doyle & Good versus Evil

I always read Conan Doyle straight. No frills, everything working, one foot after the other, narrative direct on target, from beginning to end an arrow. Plunk. Bull's eye. Case closed. Then along came Samuel Rosenberg, who was physically like Sherlock Holmes's older brother -- a portly 300 pounds, 6' 3" tall. But, unlike Mycroft, Sam was very active. And he had a weird thesis: that our old sturdy reliable Doyle was into allegory. Wow. Like a dog following the lesser track you get a strong scent of a new direction. In his NAKED IS THE BEST DISGUISE, (We have a copy http://www.continentalbooks.com/books.cgi?bk=5797) Rosenberg argues that Doyle laid it out, left a clear trail, and all that's required to follow is cleared nostrils. And so we're off. Hard to keep up. Huff, puff. The man is relentless, like Holmes himself. A high point: "The Red-Headed League" is traced to the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah!

Be careful of Rosenberg. He is capable of mixing speculation with fact and reaching a slightly unanchored though convincing conclusion. That was his day job, as witness for the defense in plagiarism cases against Hollywood producers. Still the book is a great achievement, doubles the interest of Doyle.

• Also by Rosenberg. WHY FREUD FAINTED and THE COME AS YOU ARE MASQUERADE PARTY.
• A Sherlock Holmes web page by Chris Redmond http://www.sherlockian.net
• Doug Renselle's review of Chapter III of THE COME AS YOU ARE MASQUERADE PARTY http://www.quantonics.com/Sam_Rosenberg_on_WJS.html
• An obituary for Samuel Rosenberg http://panix.com/~scmiller/goodbye/jan/rosen.htm

We owe a mention of www.justbooks.co.uk, a book listing site specializing in reaching the European book buying public. They have been very kind to me, reprinting a short note of mine titled "Bibliomania" Find another copy at http://continentalbooks.homestead.com/bibliomania.html

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Copyright Alvin Katz 2001.