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

Issue #8. Friday, June 29, 2001

Published by Continental Books. This is a free biweekly email newsletter containing short articles and stories about the book trade and book collecting; also featuring perceptions, opinions, and projects on and about books.

1. The Book Trade. An Elmer Conshohocken Story. #2. An actor's choice
2. Parlor Game with or about books. #6. Bread, beverage and thou
3. Observation. A byway in WWII

The Book Trade. An Elmer Conshohocken Story #2. Tanks for All That

1
Elmer Conshohocken is a composite dealer. I like to think that he had a shop on the East Side of First Avenue below 14th Street for many years until the rent became prohibitive and he was replaced by a Korean fruit store which later became a coffee and bagel shop. It was a dingy place, very little order except what was in Elmer's head or in his pockets. But he had a loyal following who gathered around him when he closed the door for the last time, none of us expecting that he would resurrect, which he did, in a Lower East Side tenement cellar. It was during this cellar period that he told me these stories. We would meet on the street or at the post office and he would casually drop a pebble.

2.
"The only problem with professional actors," said Elmer, "is their erratic career lines. Lavish spenders one day, totally broke the next. Did I ever tell you about Moe Shugana's fall into the tank?"

3.
A phone call had Elmer hustling up to Moe's Upper East Side apartment where he found Moe distraught, a wet towel wrapped around his head, pacing the living room.

"I'm undone," Moe said, gesturing thumbs down. "The wolf is at the door of my straw house and huffing. I am overdrawn, overspent, over..."

"Here," prompted Elmer.

"No, not 'over,' it is 'under.' I am underemployed. I haven't had a part in a movie or any other job in two years. I'm bust. I can't meet next month's rent."

"Serious," said Elmer. And it was very serious because Moe Shugana, the famous character actor, was his best customer, buying expensive books at a break-neck pace year after year.

"Remember my first movie where I played the cop who accidentally tripped the robber exiting from the bank. All those successes, two movies a year, trailing off to one, and now zero."

Elmer thought, "He's too fat now. He allowed himself to deteriorate physically, but his voice is still wonderfully melodic. He could make a living reading Shakespeare on a noisy subway platform." But he only asked, "What are you going to do?"

"Sell out my book collection. I want you to buy back all those books you sold me."

And Elmer did, paying a reasonable price, and this sent the wolf back to the woods for another eight weeks.

Elmer was deeply troubled waiting for the encore. If the situation continued Moe would be out on the street. What more could a book dealer do? What did the seller owe those buyers out on the fringe, falling into excess, emotionally compelled to consume beyond real need, addicted? Get them into therapy, something like Alcoholics Anonymous. Elmer's favorite was BBP, Benighted Bibliomanics Pseudonymic. "But Moe won't go," thought Elmer.

Before a month was out Moe received a modest annuity on the unexpected death of a distant relative in Saskatchewan. With that and the voice over work in advertising his agent eventually found, Moe got off his butt, back on his feet, missing catastrophe by a whisker.

And next thing Elmer knew Moe was back buying books again. Cautious this time, Elmer put him on a stretch out, taking longer and longer to answer Moe's requests. Eventually Moe Shugana drifted away, and Elmer never knew whether it was to other suppliers or to the world of biblio-sanity where in a moment of insight the maniac reaches satori and enters the bland and bookless nirvana where no dealer is permitted.

An extraneous reference:
Moore, John Hammond. OVER-SEXED, OVER-PAID AND OVER HERE. Americans in Australia 1941-1945. (1981).

Parlor Game with Books. #6. Walk to a Gathering of Song.

We must realize, as we proceed further into the labyrinth of invented games, that beside the pleasure of actual play and ritual there is the metaphor of how the real everyday world either is or should be. So the invention of games might be a universal game in itself reminding us of what surrounds us that too often we can not see.

Today's game is not an invention but a reporting. It's already in play.

1.
The gang gathers, size limited by the need to have everyone actively participate. Each carries a favored book of poetry, and they walk through a chosen land- or cityscape for light exercise and casual pleasure. They find an appropriate space and clustering together they read, each in turn, admired poems. Discussion and observation are allowed but not required. The cycle is repeated until they are sated.

2
Evoking the doctrine of fair use, everyone should bring copies of the poems they intend to present and these should be stapled together and given to each participant as souvenir and reward.

Serve a picnic of drinks and snacks during the game. End by having the group applaud itself.

Observation. A Comic Anomaly in WWII

During World War II in the USA a sidetrack developed leading off at a tangent from the paramount social purpose of fighting and winning. Looking back it appears to have been comic slapstick but at the time a mob of men were seriously distracted for months. The Army and the Navy both designed educational programs to place drafted boys and men in the 18 to 22 age range into open-ended college and university programs instead of into the active combat arms. Until a few months before the invasion of France a few hundred thousand were diverted to school while planners in Washington DC. were projecting deficits of 50,000 men a month for line units. General Marshall dismantled the Army program in March, 1944 and sent the overwhelming majority of these students to the infantry which is why so many college boys found themselves nose-on to the Siegfried Line a little later. A remnant loyally carried on in school until the war's end.

See
Keefer, Louis E. SCHOLARS IN FOXHOLES. The Story of the Army Specialized Training Program in World War II. McFarland & Co. Jefferson, NC. (1988)

Schneider, James G. THE NAVY V-12 PROGRAM. Leadership for a Lifetime. Houghton Mifflin (1987)

Plans

We will improve our web site as soon as we can round up our technical crew, which, if we think a little, is another Elmer Conshohocken story in itself. Meanwhile you will find our data base with a search function and with a secure order form at http://continentalbooks.com/continental.cgi While you are there click on "The Owner Speaks" on the home page to get to some independent notes, and click on http://continentalbooks.homestead.com/index.html. for some archived earlier issues of this newsletter.

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Further plans:
We will begin awarding "200 tons. We Move Books" t-shirts as prizes as soon as we can figure out for what. Maybe a game? Hum... One thing sure, you will have to be a subscriber to participate. Pass the word to friends and colleagues.

Regards... (30)

Copyright. Alvin Katz. 2001