Another Small Surprise In The Stacks

"God prosper and illuminate all who read this"

That's how John B. Keane, a wonderful modern Irish writer, inscribed this copy of his play Big Maggie to our library. I wasn't there, of course, this all happened in...what does that say, there, 1987? Wait a minute, I was here then, we didn't host John Keane here.

Hrm. Is it strange to be a little upset that I might have missed something, when it happened twenty-two years before I even found out about it? I'll have to ask around.

Ken Gets A Shout-Out

Usually, our postal mail is boring. Bills, ads, solicitations. But today, today there was a package, and what did it contain but two inscribed copies of a new hardcover novel by Kim Ablon Whitney. In the acknowledgements, she thanks Ken for reviewing the manuscript! I am proud as punch, and so pleased to have this soapbox from which to shout it.

So today, we interrupt the never-ending saga of What's Going On In My Backyard to mention this great new novel for young adults, The Other Half of Life.

It's based on the true story of the MS St. Louis, which left Germany bound for Cuba, and eventually the U.S., on May 13th, 1939. She carried 937 passengers, most of them Jews escaping Hitler's persecution, and a ship's crew of Nazis. Whitney's novel imagines the lives of two of the passengers, illuminating this heartbreaking but little-known event.

Another Random Book From The Stacks

Here's an odd duck of a puffball from the biography stacks: Grocery Clerks Who Have Become Successful, a 1925 publication of the Beech-Nut Packing Company. Do you recognize the grocery clerk below? He did become rather successful:
(Hint: imagine him wearing a hat.)
This small volume contains portraits and profiles of 28 individuals. Bohack and Lipton are two of the very few names familiar to me. The rest I will assume are known to mercantile-history experts somewhere. A couple of the biographical sketches are first-hand, long and colorful and "in their own words." Others are short, bland and neutral, having been "compiled from other sources." All exhibit the Horatio Alger spirit evident in such passages as, "Beginning work one morning shortly after daylight many years ago, Mr. Rossell had a salary of nothing a year." The text and illustrations are unattributed, but the book looks to have been rebound in the thirties or forties, and information from the cover or flyleaf might have been lost.
An interesting example of a promotional trade publication, found under 926.58. (Also of interest to middle-schoolers who want a different portrait of you-know-who for the cover of their report.)

Plated Wares

Like particles, like neutrons, like individual flecks of glitter, the personal libraries of minor public figures who have long since passed on can be found scattered throughout our public libraries.
Back in the day, books from the collections of ordinary people were occasionally, through death or donation, incorporated into the library's own, and some retain the personal bookplates. I decided to start photographing them, either because I liked the design, or the typeface...or because I was holding a camera. Well, when The Internet saw me doing that, it begged to help:

"It'll only take a minute to search that name...maybe the book belonged to Someone Interesting." Well, whaddaya know, it was right!
Here are two plates I found recently, one distinctive for its ornateness, and one for its severe simplicity. Both belonged to Someone.
Look at the way the library slapped its own plate over that of George Woodward Wickersham, as if to subdue the lush grandiosity of the privately-owned volume, an 1865 edition of The Squibob Papers by John Phoenix (pseud.)

Wickersham, he of the stout name and beautiful bookplate, was born in Pittsburgh in 1858, served as Taft's Attorney General, codified international law with the League of Nations after that, then went to work for the Hoover administration, investigating the U.S criminal justice system. He died in New York City in 1936, and sometime before or after that his personal library was broken up, and this piece of personal, recreational reading fell into the library's hands. And was kept, allowing us all this opportunity to learn a little somethin' somethin'.

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It was the completely utililitarian cast of this next bookplate that made me curious as to the owner, who I'm guessing was probably this Louis F. Post. He was the editor of a progressive journal located in Chicago at the right time for this to have been a contemporarily owned book, so I'm guessing we somehow got some of Mr. Post's personal library. Since his life and work don't appear to have been very jolly, it's interesting to note the book is Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, a popular work by humorist Stephen Leacock. The bookplate is useful, but quite sober:

Milne in Russian

This is something to watch, that's for sure. Completely reworked, even sweeter, but utterly familiar.

Breaking News

Rats. Playdate cancelled due to illness. The little ones will be visiting the pediatrician, instead.

So alas, the only chubby cheeks I'll see today will be on this little guy, the title page illustration of an English literature anthology printed in London in 1793.

Saturday Already?

Thought I was "baby-sitting" today for my two youngest nephews, but it turns out that term really dates you; instead, I "have a play-date," which sounds like a lot more fun, although it will probably still involve changing a diaper. We shall see.

Meanwhile, here's a photo of another Random Book From the Stacks, this one written by The Old Soak, a character belonging to Don Marquis, the writer of archy and mehitabel, and himself an inimitable character.

Think You've Seen It All?

Based on last year's exhibition at The Whitney Museum , An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar is a mesmerizing collection of annotated images by documentary photographer Taryn Simon. Her wildly diverse subjects share no common thread, save that all were photographed in the United States. Some things are not all that unfamiliar; depending on where you're from in the U.S., you'll know a little or a lot about the existence of many, even most, of the things depicted. But, you'll not necessarily have seen them photographed, and certainly you'll not have seen them photographed by an artist using a large-format camera and only the available light. I've seen and handled a Braille edition of Playboy, for example, so an image of that didn't do much for me, but I found the photo of transatlantic submarine telecommunications cables reaching land unaccountably fascinating, and the image taken at Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Research Facility haunting. And, honestly now, what did you think a cryogenic preservation chamber looked like? I certainly didn't imagine this.

It speaks to her remarkable powers of persuasion that Simon was granted such intimate access by multiple branches of government, law enforcement agencies, extremist political and religious enclaves, and private individuals. But of course, not everyone said yes. One notable holdout is represented by a blank page, and an excerpt from their declination of permission. (I shouldn't spoil the surprise. But I never was good at witholding information.) So, spoiler alert, don't click here if you don't want to know: Who's afraid of the big bad camera?

For more about Taryn Simon's work, visit her page on Artsy

If you'd like to check the book out, plug in your zip code here to see what libraries near you own it. (Thumbnail image from http://www.gagosian.com/artists/taryn-simon)

A Random Book From The Stacks

This one is Cosmopolis, by Paul Bourget. Part of a series of books "crowned" by the French Academy, but apparently the library only owns the one. The light-brown bits are actually gilt, but my photograph doesn't capture the shine. A 1905 edition.