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

Issue Number 7. Friday. June 15, 2001

A free biweekly email newsletter published by Continental Books. Contains articles and stories on the book trade and book collecting; on games with and about books; on perceptions, opinions and projects on and about books.

Contents

• The Book Trade. Confused mission. An Elmer Conshohocken story
• Perception. Do it right! Do it now! Shute and Ellsberg
• Opinion. All is not lost yet. Hypnosis at work.

Elmer Conshohocken's Adventures in the Used Book Trade. #1. The Contentious Librarian

1
Elmer Conshohocken is a composite book dealer who gives us a fictional cover for the essentially true stories about the used book trade that we want to recount. False names and settings protect real people.

2.
Elmer always said that book dealers are wary of three possible scenarios, the acting out of which can produce disaster. The unleashed elements of earth, fire, water, and air can destroy his stock. The price paid in either buying or selling can mean financial loss and occupational humiliation if he guesses wrong. And love at inappropriate moments can fog perception and dislocate logic.

3.
Elmer met Helen Dutroy, the night manager of a private agency library, in his peregrinations in search of books for stock. She had a small roomful of some 2,000 duplicates and discards, books no longer wanted and now waiting, like orphans, for placement in foster care. Neither of them wanted to deal for the whole lot. He lacked the funds, she wasn't sure of their value, so they settled on the transfer of ten to twenty books at a time. He began to visit the library weekly, and he slowly burrowed into the cache, bidding individually on each book. He also began, though he resisted the feeling, to fall in love with Helen who though a little older was still a strikingly handsome woman.

Gradually he learned more about her. In her younger years she had partied a lot with a wild crowd. A little later she had been the companion of a famous book seller and had traveled with him on buying expeditions into the hinterland. She felt herself an astute book person. She gained notoriety when a famous gay novelist, Atman Compost, who was in her social circle, wrote a novel whose heroine strongly resembled her. It became a gigantic success, but she was publicly placed in a questionable moral light. Contentious as she was, she sued and won a settlement from Compost who from then on she despised.

Early on Elmer gave $10.00 to Helen for a book neither of them recognized as a sleeper. It was only later that they both realized their error. By then he had sold it for $50.00 to a Canadian dealer, who undoubtedly resold it for much more. But Helen suspected that Elmer knew the book's true value all along and had put one over on her. They avoided talking about it but Helen gradually became less friendly, started demanding higher prices, and even began to resist selling Elmer any books at all.

Elmer knew he had to clear the air "Helen," he said, "You must know that I have strong feelings for you, both physical and sentimental. I'm mooning around. My wife's noticed. She's very suspicious, thinks I'm up to my old tricks. It's interfering with my work" He reached out for her hand. She seemed to hesitate. "Is it that damned sleeper? I swear I didn't spot it. Look I'll make it up. I got $20.00 for it. How about I give you the extra $10.00 to show you my sincerity." He looked into his wallet, found only carfare. "I'll write you a check."

Helen, quietly withdrawing her hand, "Elmer, it's worse than you know. I've forgiven and forgotten about the sleeper," her face reddening, "But there is something else."

"What? We'll straighten it out," he interrupted.

"No," she said with finality. "Over these weeks, I've noticed things about you. The way you walk and talk. The way you comb your hair. The way you drink your tea. How you tilt your head when you listen. These are clear to me."

"I'll change," he murmured. "I'll clean up my act."

"Let me continue," her voice rising. "All these things remind me of Atman Compost. And you know how much I hate him, how he demeaned me, ridiculed me. I just can't separate the two of you anymore. The resemblance is too great. The feelings carry-over to you."

"Cheese," said Elmer. And without any thought whatever he reached over, clasped his hands on her upper arms near the shoulders and lifted her with the intention, he later recollected, of planting a tender kiss. But she was in motion, twisting and turning and kicking, so all he kissed was the side of her head banging into his face. He put her down. She was livid, telling him emphatically to get out, disappear. Her language unexpectedly violent. Calmly, blood seeping from his nose, his right eye swelling shut, he picked up his bag of three newly purchased books, turned and walked out, never to return.

It took him two weeks to get over the pain and sorrow of his misdirected and disappointed love for Helen. But he never did recover from the loss of his fair share of all those duplicates.

Technical Competence and Ingenuity

For Nevil Shute work is the center of life, technical work which is carried out in an understated way, no showboating, no floating like a butterfly, just a cool, do it right, do it now response to the physical and biological reality. Politics represents the negation of competent work; a devilish confusion introduced into the mind of the worker-craftsman-professional to turn him sour and sloppy. Everything else is religion, a sort of pious, feel-good, universal brotherhood to which not even a stiff-necked atheist could object. Doing is being and vice versa. Shute would have found the Garden of Eden a bore, paradise and shabat grand wastes of time. In Eden Shute would have been the snake. Let's get off this pink cloud and into the real world where a man can work up a sweat. Introspection, fantasy, the subtleties of relationships are ignored. There are no dreams in Shuteville only the minimal required periods of rest and renewal then grab your sox and at it again. But the work described by Shute is in a fictional space. Isn't it possible that it's only another cloud of smoke?

Not according to Commander Edward Ellsberg, who in UNDER THE RED SEA SUN stuns us with descriptions of technical competence and ingenuity in a historical setting saturated with danger and pain. In early 1942 the United States finally at war but with very limited immediate resources sends two men to cover the fronts in the other half of the world: Stilwell to China-Burma-India and Ellsberg to Africa. This is Ellsberg's report on his work at Massawa in Eritrea in 1942. Ellsberg was a specialist in underwater salvage and it was his job to rehabilitate the naval repair yard utterly destroyed by Mussolini's troops before they surrendered to the British. Also to raise and to bring into service again as many of the ships scuttled in the harbor as possible. Massawa is one of the hottest habitable places on earth with summer temperatures soaring to 148 degrees Fahrenheit. One drinks several gallons of water a day and swallows dozens of salt tablets. There is no respite. Not in the tepid sea. Not in the bath where scalding water flows out of the cold tap. Yet with deep knowledge, attention to detail and total dedication he placed the yard in operation very quickly, repairing ships from the British Mediterranean fleet, placing sunken freighters and cruise ships back into service.

There is a down side visible in Ellsberg's report. The old politics, represented by corporate profits and trade union protections, both of which limit productivity, are cast aside and with them the social order it took so long to construct. Health and safety concerns are reduced along with the need for a fair return. People fall ill, some die. Ellsberg himself goes sick in 1943. But Ellsberg had the overpowering rationale of the war, an ever-present background for the story. Competence has a cost. For a purist like Shute it is worth the price.

Competence literature, both fiction and non-fiction, is a habit for both writers and readers. From time-to-time we'll note some of the references.

• You can follow-up Ellsberg in a biography by John Alden. "SALVAGE MAN, Edward Ellsberg and the U.S. Navy". 1998.
• We have a copy of "UNDER THE RED SEA SUN" listed at http://continentalbooks.com/books.cgi?bk=8038
• We have three Nevil Shute novels available at http://www.continentalbooks.com/novels "ROUND THE BEND" (#2215), "TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOL ROOM" (#6052) and "THE FAR COUNTRY" (#7730)

Hypnotism in Police Work

The social and psychological sciences peaked in popular acceptance and support in mid-20th century and then precipitously dropped in esteem and attention under a very strong critique. But the kernel of technical, academic and intellectual achievement couldn't be separated from the chaff. Useful knowledge went out with the baloney, the cant, the myths, the misdirections. This is a real misfortune since today public discourse is full of unsolved mysteries that half-century ago would have been subject to careful analysis, not perfectly clear but at least tending in that direction. The attempted total obliteration of S. Freud, K. Marx , T. Parsons and company, even with all their grave errors in detail, now seems woefully premature.

I would place Charles Diggett and William C. Mulligan HYPNOCOP in the camp of the intellectually exiled. I don't want to exaggerate their achievement--and with an admission of self-interest since I am holding the remaining copies of their original edition--but I think the useful practical and theoretical knowledge they amassed, however modest, is in danger of being lost.

Hypnotism after detouring through medicine and show business was in process of finding a niche in police investigation with pioneer practitioners like Diggett. Extraction of confessions was not it. Anything suggesting planting of ideas via suggestion was rejected by the courts. It was as an aid to the memory of witnesses, leading not to fact but to the direction of fact, that it provided a new tool. The tension between undirected recall and outside suggestion was the fine line Diggett had to walk. To see whether he succeeded or not you have to read and evaluate the book for yourself.

Despite the sexy title this is a serious book by a serious trained and experienced hypnotist and police investigator. It describes many different kinds of police cases from homicide to hit-and-run where hypnotism was used, describes forms of hypnotic induction, touches on its psycho-therapeutic use, outlines Diggett's career and gives insight into the organization of the NYPD.

Whether it should become a more popular police investigative tool is still an open question. But any reader will come away with a more comfortable feeling about the technique itself. Diggett hypnotizes his daughter-in-law in preparation for childbirth. He helps people on diets. He even hypnotizes himself to reduce stress. A thoroughly pleasant fellow. You'll like spending time with him. But watch it! Don't nod off.

We have our copies of HYPNOCOP at http://continentalbooks.com/books.cgi?bk=165

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Copyright Alvin Katz 2001