Writing With Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance, by Ellen Gruber Garvey

In my previous blog I mentioned a brief history of scrapbooks, and several books on the

subject. Writing With Scissors is probably the most scholarly of these, focusing as it does on some of the most historically significant albums and collections.  

Hooked on the subject by the discovery of a farm woman’s scrapbook of clipped articles dedicated to the environment of the home that she discovered in a used book store, Garvey went on to explore the world of scrapbooks housed in libraries, archives, and historical societies. Scrapbooks are often extremely personal, miniature archives of daily life not meant for public consumption. “Every scrapbook is its own world,” she writes, “compelling and impossibly frustrating.” She quotes from James Tate’s poem “Horseshoe” to describe the experience of puzzling over these volumes, 

          I can’t read the small print in the scrapbook:

          does this say, Relinquishing all bats, feeling faint

          on the balcony? There is so much to be corrected here,

          so many scribbles and grumbles, blind premonitions.

          How does one interpret, on this late branch, the unexpected? 

More on The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

I have just finished reading another of Alexander McCall Smith’s charming novels about Mma Ramotswe and her detective agency, the one and only in Gaborone, Botswana. I keep wondering why I continue to feel refreshed after reading one of them. The stories are sweet and compelling, although not riveting. The characters have grown through the course of the novels, each with his or her quirks and motivations, until I feel as though I know them fairly well. (Actually, McCall does little in the way of description – a few character tags, and you fill in the rest for yourself.)

Precious Ramotswe has some weight, a condition she refers to as “traditionally built.” In fact, the title of this recently-read book is “Tea Time for the Traditionally Built.” (I am not reading these in sequence, but as they come along.)

But I come away from one of them feeling warm, relaxed, happy, and somehow elevated in my perceptions of human behavior. More forgiving, perhaps. More capable of allowing for human differences. And just as I was trying to figure out the exact reasons for this, I came across this passage, in which Mma Ramotswe’s recently-wed husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni (the is how they address each other, in fact) reflects on his feeling for his wife:

“He looked away. He was not one for displays of emotion; he never had been, but it made his heart swell to be thanked by this woman who stood for so much in his eyes; who stood for kindness and generosity and understanding; for a country of which he was so proud; who stood for Africa and all the love that Africa contained.”

And that about says it. Precious worries at the loss of old traditions of respect, kindness, generosity, etc. as the newer generation adopts more selfish and unthinking ways, even as she upholds those traditions herself. She loves Africa in a way that I can understand in my heart, as common to those of us who feel our roots in a place run deep.

It is not a love that blinds: she knows the failings and failures of her beloved country. “”We were tiny creatures, really;” she thinks, “tiny and afraid, trying to hold our place on the little platform that was our earth. So while the world about us might seem so solid, so permanent, it was not really. We were all at the mercy of chance, no matter how confident we felt, hostages to our own human frailty. And that applied not only to people, but to countries too. Things could go wrong and entire nations could be led into a world of living nightmare; it had happened, and was happening still. Poor Africa, which could stand for love and happiness and joy, could also be a place of suffering and shame. But that suffering was not the only story, thought Mma Ramotswe. There was a story of courage and determination and goodness that could be told as well, and she was proud that her country, her Botswana, had been part of that.”

(Smith may, incidentally, be single-handedly responsible for reviving the semi-colon in literature.)

So in those quotations lie the answer to my questions. Deeply probing philosophy gently robed in kindness.

Did I Love It? Did I Hate it? I haven’t decided….

John Lanchester’s The Debt to Pleasure sports a subtle cover, a picture of peaches and grapes on a while tablecloth, with a very small script “A Novel” located at the base of a peach. In other words, if you don’t pay attention, you might miss the fact that it’s fiction.

While you would no doubt realize that it’s fiction before reading too far, the beginning is deceptive enough that you might feel that you are reading a food commentary akin to the writings of Brillat-Savarin, potentially because the author compares his book to that gourmand reporter. There is a lot about food and food history, and even some recipes, but all of the food related material is rather incidental and misleading except as it reveals a good deal about the narrator, and is used to introduce some of the characters.

You have to watch for clues in the text to discover what you are really reading, which is something of a murder mystery. I don’t think I have ever read a sneakier book in terms of not announcing its genre. There are some other unusual twists, which I dare not describe for fear of being a “spoiler.”

Aside from a devious plot and a lot of foodie stuff, this book contains a good deal of wit, sarcasm, hauteur, snideness and humor. Most remarkable is the author’s construction of sentences and paragraphs. The latter can run to two or more pages, the former – well, these are some of the longest and most compound-complex constructions I have seen since I was married to a man who couldn’t be bothered with punctuation. However, Lanchester produces sentences that a true masterpieces: they amble along through myriad subjects, related but often not in obvious ways, full of allusions, similes, and metaphors, with often something wrenchingly funny in their midst. Quoting one would be appropriate here, but frankly my patience and fingers are just not up to it.

I admit that I found the author exhibiting a high degree of intelligence, no small amount of gustatorial expertise, a wry and sometimes almost cruel sense of humor, and confident in his deceptiveness. As you read, you think you know what the subject is, but find that you have been tricked. You believe that you have built an accurate picture of characters and motivations, only to have that image fracture into shards. Your own expectations about the characters will lead to disappointment. Any attempt to guess at the ending is doomed to failure. Any expectation of a typical resolution or climax will be disappointed. You may feel guilty if you experience delight or pleasure in this book by the time you reach the end.

Or you may just wind up wondering if you loved it, or hated it.

Another Wonderful Book Fair

Once again, I rushed to prepare for the Rose City Book Fair in Portland (OR) May 18-19. I didn’t mean to rush – I had planned to have plenty of time. But then we had unexpected visitors, more visitors, and some more visitors. Which was lovely, since some were family and some were colleagues who bought some inventory. None-the-less, the preparation time evaporated. Fortunately, I have a lot of inventory permanently set up and ready to go – postcards, photos, maps, and ephemera. Although I had planned to sort, repackage, and index the ephemera before the show, that just didn’t get done. In time it will be.

My booth before the show opened.












In any case, the show – as usual – was well organized and very accommodating and friendly. None better. It is put on by the Portland Area Used Book Sellers Assn. and was started to give area booksellers a venue some years after the old Oregon Antiquarian Book Fair died. This year the Rose City show moved to a new venue – pleasingly, the site used for the old Antiquarian book fair. (The Doubletree Hotel, Lloyd Center, Portland Oregon.) Shades of the past, good memories of bygone days (and of some of the book dealers who have gone on to the Great Library in the sky). There is plenty of room for this show to grow, if only enough dealers remain enthusiastic about supporting it.

Portland as viewed from the hotel roof.

This year there were dealers from four states, and some very interesting material on display. Not to mention many with bargain books. Robert Gavorra was right inside the front door with a table proclaiming “no book over $10” and he meant it. Which actually reassured newcomers and walk-ins that this was not a stuffy environment where they couldn’t afford to enter. The show’s motto is “An unpretentious book fair.” The whole idea is to make the show affordable for dealers. There are tables for rent but dealers provide their own table covers, lights if they want them, and so forth. There are no curtains around the booths, which leaves the area light, uncluttered, and with good line of sight. (I much prefer this to all of those tedious little cloth caves that some shows provide.) On the other hand, for dealers the club provides bagels, donuts, and the like in the mornings, and sandwiches, chips, and beverages mid-day on Saturday, when some may not be able to get away from their booths to eat lunch.

Entry fees are also reasonable. $2, or a can of food and $1. The food, and half the gate receipts, go to the Oregon Food Bank. The club also left free passes on the hotel check-in counter and provides them to dealers ahead of time for distribution.

We threw the stuff into the van on Thursday morning –the sun shining agreeably (not a big deal for some, but this is Oregon). Unloaded and set up Thursday evening. Had a convivial “happy hour” in the hotel lounge with some colleagues. The show didn’t open to the public until 2 p.m. Friday (and ran until 8 p.m.) but the doors opened for dealers at 9 a.m., giving us a chance to scope (and scoop) each others’ goods. And the sun was shining. The 8 pm closing sent us to the lounge again, where the supper fare was just excellent. (The hotel restaurant was open only for breakfast and lunch, also excellent and our waiter “Ming” was delightful, funny, attentive, and still highly professional. Ask for him if you are ever there.)

Some hotel guests who wandered in seemed surprised to find themselves at a book fair. One gentleman stopped at my booth to admire a book. Said that he had just arrived and would look around. Unlike most “be backs” he did return to my booth to purchase the book ($85) and while there, had a phone call. I heard him explaining that he was at a book fair, obviously a bit stunned to discover himself there.

My booth during the show. That's me in the blue jacket on the aisle. The activity at the near end is at the postcard tables - I'll invent some kind of sign to go over it, since it's popular but kind of hidden there at the end.


Saturday morning we opened at 10 and ran until 5 pm, when everyone broke down quickly and hit the road. And the sun was shining. By Monday it was raining and has done so steadily since with temperatures mid-50s to mid-60s, but who cares? It was a bright and shiny show with reasonably good attendance. There was also good walk-in from hotel guests. I did about 2/3 of my normal “take” at the show, but given the current economy and the change of venue, it was not unexpected and still represented a reasonable profit, and some new customers to follow up with. Of course I spent more than I took in, but that will flip into greater profit.

There are no words to express my admiration for the volunteers who produce and run this show. The enthusiasm and thought going into it are incredible, and the results are always pleasing.

What Is It About Books?

What Is it About Books?

It was a dark and stormy night. Wind gusted wildly and lashed the house and roof with rain that sounded like pea gravel shot from a cannon. Small branches and limbs broke from the fir and oak trees around the house and littered the deck and yard with dark, half-seen lumps that could have been bodies or clumps of animated primeval sludge. OK, that’s going a bit far. But it was very dark, very stormy, very wet, and Gary was out of town.

I had planned to do some work in the studio while he was away, but the weather and atmosphere made me seek refuge. What better way to spend such an evening than in a room full of books, nestled into my recliner in a circle of light, cat on my lap and hot drink at my elbow?

Utterly evocative, but full of the pain
of lost libraries and disappeared books .

Even better, the book I was reading was Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night, with a cover illustration of a dark woods and a man in a chair reading a book by lamplight.

But the question in my mind is, what is it about books that is so comforting to some of us? I’m not talking so much about reading – one can read in many types of media. As Manguel reveals in another title - A History of Reading - the methods, entitlements, and habits of reading have changed greatly over the course of written history. The outcry about the “loss of books” to electronic media is misplaced. Electronic media provide reading: printed ink-on-paper books provide a mystique in their sheer physical presence that is not transmitted to cold plastic.

How to explain the feeling you get in a bookshop or a library - public or private - where you are surrounded by printed volumes, of there being something special there for you and you alone? Something waiting for you to find it, or to find you by serendipity. The feeling that makes you say “ahhhhh” when you step into the presence of a room filled with books.

A wonderful book, full of surprises. 

To be sure, there are those who don’t experience this; even those who appear to despise books. I have seen many decorating and interior design books, television shows, and even magazine articles where interior designers can’t bear the thought of colorful spines and dust jackets cluttering up their theme or color scheme. Some go to ridiculous lengths to disguise books, if they must remain in the room. They’ll cover them with plain white wrappers (or worse, paint them!), or place them on the shelves by color and size, or remove the dust jackets to display more uniformly plain spines, or – worst of all – display the books fore-edge out . Lacking the chance to do any of that, they’ll imprison the books behind doors.  It’s an aesthetic, but to booklovers a very wrong-headed and egotistical one.

The people who put themselves into the hands of these designers claim that they want a “warm and inviting” atmosphere. Laying claim to a room in which a gigantic flat-screen television becomes a focal point, they seem happy with the result. One (who loves books) can only wonder how this is possible.

To those of us for whom books are among life’s greatest pleasures, those many-hued dust jacket spines on our own shelves are like the faces of old familiar friends. One glance at such a book and one is reminded of previous pleasures, or taken back to a moment in time fondly remembered, or convinced that there is something more to be learned between those covers. The emotions of previous encounters enter one again, even without touching the book.

Bookshelves in a home speak volumes (literally) about the owner. Entering a home with books for the first time, one gravitates automatically to the shelves, scanning the spines for titles unfamiliar and familiar, deducing mutual or unexpected interests from them.  A home without books seems shallow and cold, lacking somehow in personality.

Those of us with books under our skin cannot imagine a time when electronic versions will suffice. They offer cold comfort at best. The image of sitting alone on a stormy night with the glow of an electronic screen for companionship simply does not convey the sense of safety and warmth as does the alternative picture I painted in my initial paragraphs. Will there be a time when it is enough? Not for me.

My Soulless Shoes

One of Life’s Little Moments (that we’d like to forget)       

With minor illustrations in Trade Cards   

Some women buy shoes right and left. They need huge walk-in closets to store their footware. This always amazes me – my array of shoes fits neatly on a small rack in the bottom corner of my closet. It’s not that I don’t like shoes, or need shoes – it’s just that I have never accepted the cost of good shoes. There are so many other things that one could spend that money on, like books. I have never hesitated over the cost of a book if I had the money for it. Between the need to find a pair of   shoes that are comfortable, attractive, and suitable support for a bad back, the cost just makes my head reel and my pocket book seal itself shut.

I have been saying that I need a new pair of casual dress shoes – my current pair is falling apart. We were headed downtown to visit some favorite art galleries that were open one evening so I put on some “go to town” clothes. In Eugene, Oregon, that translates to “good jeans” and a blouse instead of a tee-shirt. Unless it’s a very nice tee shirt.) Noting the condition of my decrepit shoes, I dug out some older flats that looked as though they still had some good wear in them, slipped them on, and headed down the hall to get my coat.

The shoes made a funny swunchy  on the hall floor. It wasn’t the usual squeak of rubber against wood. Squnch! Squnch! It was not like anything I had heard before, but since we had torn up the carpet and laid down new solid flooring recently, I figured it was normal for that kind of contact.

 As we walked around town, though, I noticed that the sole of my shoe seemed a bit loose, but I figured that it would last at least for the rest of the evening.

We stopped in at a favorite gallery, where I became absorbed in a display and I didn’t pay too much attention when the owner dove into the back room and dashed back out with a dustpan and whisk broom and brushed furiously at something on the floor. I figured that someone had probably dropped a cracker and stepped on it. But then she came along behind me and did it again….and then again, muttering, “What is this stuff? Mud or something?”

At which point I checked the bottoms of my shoes, only to discover that they were disintegrating. Apparently they were a composite that was decomposing (which reminds me of the joke about Mozart’s tomb, but you know that one) in big chunks and smaller crumbs. I apologized fervently, removed my shoes, and limped to the door.

I’d show you a picture but I threw them away the minute we got home. I still haven’t bought a new pair although I have looked around a bit. But I’m going to have to wait for the sticker shock to wear off.  Meanwhile, I wonder if I can dress up my Crocs to pass for evening wear? 

Remarkable Creatures: The Fictionalized Story of Mary Anning

Right before Christmas I was zooming through a new bookstore looking for a particular gift book, and as I passed the end of a gondola my gaze fell on this: Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures. The cover is attractive and the title provocative, and when I flipped the book over and read that it was a novel about Mary Anning it went directly into my shopping basket.

What could be better than a novel based on one of the 19th Century’s most significant fossil hunters? Mary Anning was an uneducated working-class woman in a culture where social stature, breeding, and education were part of a severe caste system. All of which mitigated against her receiving the kind of acknowledgement and acclaim that her discoveries deserved. She discovered the plesiosaurus, the ichthyosaurus, and other fossils that turned early 19th-Century assumptions inside out. (Not only did she find the fossils, she recognized them as being different from any living creatures, or previously-discovered fossils.) This was an era when the Church of England was still steadfastly sticking to Bishop Ussher’s proclamations that the world was created in 4004 BC. These fossils, and others like them, led British scientists to examine the concepts of evolution and the great geological history of Earth.

A middle-class spinster - Elizabeth Philpot, who was farmed out with two of her sisters to live in Lyme Regis when their brother inherited the family property and married - developed an interest in fish fossils and became Mary’s fossil-hunting partner and her champion to the scientific community. Mary’s talent for discovering specimens in the fossil-rich cliffs and outcroppings along the Lyme Regis beaches drew many scientists and amateurs to her, without attracting the recognition she richly deserved. A number of recent biographies have helped to rectify this lack of acknowledgement.

Chevalier’s novel captures these characters and richly evokes the atmosphere and muted excitement of the fossil beds, and of the town of Lyme Regis. Needless to say this novel would make an interesting movie, as did the author’s Girl With a Pearl Earring.



NOTE: the fossils shown are just a few of my own collection, and not intended to represent Lyme Regis material.

Serendipitous Reading

My “serious” reading is often focused on a topic that intrigues me at a given time – currently I rotate between geology, history of books and reading, cookbooks, and various art and artists. Sometimes I’ll get caught up with a certain author and want to read a string of his or her books – recent candidates have been Simon Winchester, Anthony Bourdain, Anne Tyler, and Bill Bryson.

My “potato chip” reading – the light stuff that I read just before turning out the light for the night – is often from some mystery series and usually depends upon my colleagues supplying me with cartons of mass market paperbacks by certain authors or in certain categories (bibliomysteries being a favorite, of course).

In between is a category difficult to name – usually literary fiction or non-fiction. I guess I would call it “intellectually engaging pleasure reading.” This category is generally filled with books acquired through pure serendipity – inexpensive copies picked up at the flea market or yard sales or however, where the investment of a dollar or two is not going to kill me if I try something new and find I don’t like it. This is often the most fun category, for I find myself reading books that I really love but hadn’t heard about. Because in my business I deal primarily with old and antiquarian books, I don’t keep abreast of best seller lists or even book gossip as I once did when selling new books.


What is somewhat odd about this process, though, is that sometimes these books coalesce around certain subjects, be they fiction or non-fiction, and quite often their relationship is not apparent from their titles or obvious subject matter when I pick them up. A few years ago a number of my “serendipity” reads turned out to relate, in one way or another, to the American Civil War. Not to the battles and warfare itself, but to some of the issues that led to, fed, and resulted from that conflict. So books such as The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, by Jane Smiley; John Bailey’s The Lost German Slave Girl: The Extraordinary True Story of Sally Miller and Her Fight for Freedom in Old New Orleans; a biography of Fred Harvey, and a couple of other random picks at the time surprised me by reflecting some Civil War issues between them.

Of course, if books are published within a short time-span you can understand some similarities – author imaginations are stirred, editorial departments are alert to, reader interest is fueled by, whatever issues are in general discussion or investigation at the time.

So it may not be surprising that several of my recent reads by European authors reflect upon the Second World War and subsequent Cold War years – again, not in terms of warfare and battles but more about the human factor and how lives were affected by these events. So consider these brief reviews:

Markus Zusak: The Book Thief. I had no idea what to expect when I snatched up this one to include in some purchases and bring home, but I was very pleased with it. The protagonist (book thief) is a young girl who is fostered by a couple in a town on the outskirts of Munich during WWII. Although illiterate, Lisle Meminger has arrived with a copy of The Grave Digger’s Handbook that she discovered in the snow where her younger brother, who died on the train trip to their new home, was being buried. Her foster father, a likeable accordion player and professional house painter, undertakes to teach Lisle to read, using the Handbook as her first reader. She subsequently steals a book off a Nazi burn pile, and from the library of the town mayor. The life of her adoptive family is complicated when they hide a Jew in the basement where Lisle has taken her reading lessons. Written in a clear prose style that still sometimes borders on poetry, the most surprising element in this book is the narrator. Zusak is an Australian author whose German mother stimulated his interest in this topic with stories from her personal history.


Jim Powell: The Breaking of Eggs. A debut novel by this British author, this one concerns Feliks Zhukovski, a Polish Jew expatriate who took refuge in Paris during the days of Communist idealism. There he has supported himself by publishing a frequently-revised travel guide to Eastern European countries, and has managed somewhat spectacularly to avoid his own history, his family, and change of all sorts. Sometimes this oblivion is quite amusing, in a similar vein to Anne Tyler’s obtuse travel guide writer in The Accidental Tourist.

Of course, by 1991 when the story takes place, the Berlin Wall is gone and Communism has collapsed. Now in his sixties, Feliks is suddenly forced to confront a half-century of personal history. Along the way he finds a long-lost brother and his family, the real story of what happened to his mother, his own unsuspected legacy, and the fact that his idealism obfuscated truth and reality. It is, in a sense, a “coming of age” novel of the second coming – the elderhood that sums up our lives. Feliks not only survives this exposure, he emerges victorious and a good deal more cosmopolitan.

Per Petterson: Out Stealing Horses. This novel takes us to a Norwegian riverside cabin with Trond Sander, a sixty-seven year old man who has retired to reflect on his life and perhaps to test himself in this rustic environment where he must learn to fend for himself, often using skills that his father taught him when he was still a teenager. A novel that unfolds in the mind of the protagonist, part of this story is set in the period of World War II where Trond’s father was clearly a member of the resistance, helping to smuggle political prisoners out of the country; and part is in his present, where shadows of the past become solid flesh and blood. There is a good deal of understated passion in this book, and a certain unsentimental poetry. It’s the kind of story you feel in your bones. And, of course, like the last one it’s a late-life “coming of age” story.

Another synchronicity, and I have to wonder if these books appealed because the characters are similar in age to myself.

White-Washing Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn – Should They Kill the Nigger Word?

News that a new edition of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer (combined) will substitute the word “slave” for “nigger” has raised a ballyhoo of controversy among scholars, educators, booksellers, and others interested in these iconic American novels.

In fact, Huckleberry Finn is the nation’s fourth-most-banned book. It has been censored for a wide variety of reasons, from atheism and antisouthernism to obscenity and lack of morals and manners. The current thinking is that the term, “nigger,” makes people too uncomfortable, and that it would be more acceptable for reading in schools if it is changed.




Let's think about the context of the book. Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn as a protest, not only against slavery but against the social attitudes that accepted it, and all of the perceptions of blacks that regarded them as less than human beings. This book is NOT just a boy's adventure story. It's more than a coming-of-age. It's a coming-of-conscience story. In the end, Huck has to choose between what is "right" legally, and what is "right" according to his conscience and newly-developed moral integrity.

If the book is properly taught, that is the message that students should be reading for. That message is much more strongly carried by using the offensive language that was none-the-less standard for the time, and that carried all of those social implications of blacks, and especially slaves, being subhuman creatures. Huck is surrounded by abusers, hucksters, rascals, thieves, scallywags of all sorts. The one true and honest friend he has is Jim. Does he allow Jim to be tried and hanged for murder, or does he - knowing the truth and that it will not be accepted by society - rescue Jim and break the law?

I admit that reading it as a teenager I was very uncomfortable with the language, since none of this was explained. I figured it out on my own, but I'm guessing that most of today's students, who no longer are exposed to some of those attitudes and prejudices that still lingered in society in my youth, would understand the protest aspect of it.

We older white folks took a great deal of the African-American experience in mid-20th-Century America for granted, even if we did not subscribe to the prejudices of the times. Growing up in a city with a large black population, I just accepted that the jobs that they filled - railroad porters, stevedores, shoeshine men, elevator operators, maids, cooks, etc. was the natural way of things. Only later did I learn that many of those people (including some who relocated during WWII for jobs in the shipyards) were professionals in many fields who could not find work in their occupations. I didn't really think about how difficult it was, for example, for African-American entertainers to find lodging in the places they traveled to for performances (or restaurants or bars to serve them), or for a black family to travel across the country by car and find accommodations and meals and garages and other services along the way. A recent article in the Ephemera Journal about the Negro Motorist Green Book - a guide that served the black community for many years - described that situation in a way that made my heart ache.

I have lived through eras in which the referencing terms changed, from "nigger' (always deprecating in my experience) to the more "correct" "Negro," which was replaced by "colored" in some areas or used more informally, to today's African-American. What has been important has not been the changing of terminology. What matters is that social perceptions have changed. Early television programs perpetuated some of those perceptions, only gradually breaking them down as African-Americans were portrayed in occupations and social situations on an equal plane with their white neighbors.


One of my favorite lines in a TV show ever was in an initial episode (the first, I think) of "Julia," in which Diahann Carroll had been looking for a nursing job, to no avail. She finally calls one last ad - to the doctor played by Lloyd Nolan who needs someone right away and indicates that she is hired. She tells him that there is just one thing....she's colored (the reason she has been turned down so many times previously) and he responds in typical curmudgeonly fashion, "Well, what color are you?" In fact, Julia was the first TV show to feature an African-American woman as something other than a domestic servant, and it became so popular that there was a Julia Barbie doll and various other themed products such as children’s lunch boxes, coloring books and paper dolls and more.

That show did a lot to break down some of the stereotyped perceptions of the era (it ran from 1968-1971). The fact that Julia was the widow of a pilot shot down in Vietnam helped to make it palatable – not to mention that Carroll was an incredibly beautiful woman and talented actress. While some decried the role as “white negro,” Julia went a long way to portray a black woman living a “normal” life but having to overcome many kinds of prejudice and bigotry that still lingered. White Americans became a little more aware of the inequities and premises that previously had existed unnoticed, they were so ingrained in the culture. One other insightful scene in the show that I remember – the young son, Corey, comes home and tells his mother that his friend called him a “name.” Of course Julia immediately is certain that the term used was “nigger,” but as it turns out, it was a word that referred to Corey’s weight (he was on the pudgy side).

Which brings us back to Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, the slave Jim and the term “nigger.” Does it belong in the book? Would it be a better book without it, or would it lose a great deal of its purpose and meaning? Should that purpose and meaning be retained as part of our history and social conscience, or should it now be buried in favor of making an iconic piece of American literature less controversial?

In 2002, Oregon residents were asked to vote for or against removing some “obsolete” material from the State Constitution. This Constitution was written in 1857 and Oregon became a state in 1859, but nearly failed in its bid for statehood because of what has been called the “Negro exclusion act.” This was a complicated matter, put to the citizens who were voting to adapt the Constitution, and with two articles (one dealing with whether or not slaves should be allowed in the new State, the other whether or not suffrage should be allowed to free negroes.) People were uncomfortable that these issues were in the original Constitution, and voted to expunge it. I felt strongly that it should be left – it was a piece of our history and for better or worse, it reflected some of the social issues that were prevalent at the time Oregon became a state. How can we understand our present if our history is cleaned and polished to reflect a later period in time?

So I guess I’m also against changing the terms that Twain very carefully used in his books, for these very reasons of historocity and social implication.

The Death of the Book as We Know It

Well, there is a lot of doom and gloom among booksellers about the future of the book – meaning the printed codex, of course – with the onslaught of digital reading devices. I saw them as evil incarnate in the beginning, but having listened to many arguments pro and con, I’m now revising some of my preconceptions.

Our thinking about books is somewhat entrenched in the way we have regarded them in the past: As repositories of knowledge and literature, as primary tools for access to information, as objects that we enjoy for their beauty, as means of entertainment. In fact, the only thing really missing from that list in digital format is the tactile aspect – the beauty of fine printing, lovely reproduction of artwork and maps, the feel of paper and cover materials, the smell of a freshly-printed or old book. And it does remain to be seen if digital copies can outlast good old paper and cloth. The technologies seem to move along very rapidly and a lot of things can get left behind and lost.

But when I think about the implications of the progression of technology, the future of the electronic reading device seems to warrant some respectful consideration. We need to realize that the current examples – Kindle, Nook, and the rest – are just baby steps into the possibilities. At some point they will surmount the need to replicate the codex, and take the concept of “book” much further. We already see some applications on the Internet that can be incorporated. If you’re reading about a certain type of music, you can click a link and hear an example. Some e-books already provide dictionaries (I’m always jotting words onto scraps of paper or post-it notes, if handy, and inserting into the book I’m reading to look up later), and they could provide many more layers of research and reference, including videos, 3-D maps and applications, and other scholarly or entertaining aspects.

In the grocery store parking lot the other day we were about to open the rear hatch of the van to load our purchases when a woman walking by spotted my Tomfolio magnetic sign and asked what it was. I explained that Tomfolio is an independent bookseller’s co-op website, and she was excited, declaring herself a “book nut.” I mentioned e-books and she threw up her hands, swearing she would never touch one. “I love my books! They’re MINE! I like to write notes in them. I like to share them with friends. I like to read the notes they write so we can discuss our thoughts about various passages. I want to KEEP them where I can SEE them and TOUCH them!”

The following night we were at a party, and I fell into a lively discussion about books with Mary Lou, another passionate reader. And then she mentioned “Kindle” and I stuck my fingers in my ears and went “neener neener neener” but she made me listen. Her arthritis, she said, made it impossible for her to hold a hardcover book for long, and paperbacks became difficult to hold open. But her Kindle could be propped up for reading without pain for as long as she wished.

About then our party host mentioned his Kindle, and I asked to see it. I admit I had never looked at one before. He has the “Third Generation” (I guess that means something). In response to my questions he showed the dictionary, the ability to make notes and retrieve them as footnotes, and the option to listen rather than read, with a choice of voices even. (I imagined sitting through a boring meeting with the earpiece in, listening surreptitiously to a book being read.) He also had the cover, which incorporates a reading lamp, so the absence of backlighting is not a problem.

I thought about some applications that others have mentioned – frequent travelers can take a “suitcase full” of books along, but all in this small device. Books that are difficult to obtain in certain parts of the world are easily downloaded – without having to pay heavy shipping or customs costs. And so forth.

I may take a look at some of the other devices out there. The Kindle seems unnecessarily restrictive with its proprietary downloads, etc. But I understand that there are some now that will download library books and purchased or free digital texts from a variety of sources.

In other words, it looks as though e-readers could become useful tools. I’m so hardwired into codex reading habits that it would be difficult, I think, to derive the same pleasure from a “tool.” And there are certainly many types of books that would not translate at all. I just received a letterpress-printed calendar and spent five minutes just stroking it. You can’t get that tactile satisfaction from a little plastic box. But there is no denying that the e-reader has a place in the future. I cannot agree that it will replace the printed book altogether, and perhaps not even to a significant degree. It’s going to be an interesting phenomenon to watch, in any case.

Response to a comment - Whither goest Internet bookselling?

I find the following comment left on my blog on bookselling:

“I think that this is an interesting, well thought out, post but I wonder if you could elaborate on your final sentence, 'The generalist Internet bookseller, however, either needs to develop a specialized market niche, or to adapt to the realities of an online marketplace.' It seems to me to be a contradiction in terms.”

I can understand how some confusion might occur in regards to my statement. Simply rephrased, it means that – given the proliferation of books available on the Internet -- anyone who is now a generalist bookseller needs either to become a specialist with a specialized inventory (thus being no longer a generalist) or to be able to sense the direction of the general book market and take steps to move with it.

I have thought and thought on what to say regarding the general book market. But, since I don’t sell in that category, and since I don’t sell on the sites that cater to mass market books, all I could offer would be hunches and guesses about where that market is headed. I leave it to the general-interest booksellers to figure out how and why and what affects their businesses.

I don’t think we yet appreciate the profound influence that the Internet has had on contemporary culture. It is huge, it is global, it affects every aspect of our lives these days. And it is very, very young. There are still many opportunities for it to be exploited, or regulated, or used and misused.

Bookselling was one of the first successful retail businesses to make use of the Internet, but it is being swirled around now like a woodchip in a whirlpool. With so much changing so fast, it’s no wonder that we feel that we can barely keep afloat. The only sure thing is that things will not go back to the “way they used to be,” and they will continue to change at a breathtaking pace. We can only try to anticipate what some of those changes will be, and what they will mean to us as entrepreneurs (not to mention, as consumers).

A Personal Review of the Bookselling Trade

Many of us earned our “bookseller badge” the old-fashioned way. We come out of an era of bookselling that drew its ethos from centuries-old traditions. Not much had changed from the time that books went into print, and much of what persisted in terms of trade standards was drawn from the European guilds of the sixteenth century on.

Then came the Internet. Some of us eagerly jumped on the opportunity to trade on the Internet. Books that were unwanted in our local areas were eagerly sought after in other parts of the world. We tried to bring our “old-fashioned” standards and ethics along with us….But!

Since bookselling was among the earliest successful Internet retail ventures, venture capitalists were quick to look for ways to jump into this small but potentially viable marketing scheme. Entrepreneurs quickly saw the potential and issued book after book about how to make money selling books on the Internet. People with little or no background or knowledge of books saw the opportunity in treating reading material as a commodity. Suddenly the old standards were at risk, or had been disregarded altogether. Websites that attempted to retain them were purchased by investors who also saw the medium as a moneymaking opportunity, not as a means to preserve a centuries-long tradition. Today, “traditional” booksellers struggle against a tide of cheaply priced merchandise. It’s market economy – supply and demand. If booksellers cannot embrace the changes wrought by the Internet, they are an endangered species.

The problem is one of making adjustments. That does NOT include lowering any standards. It does mean that ideas about marketing and business methods need to change. Efforts to retain the old models are doomed to failure. We are NOT going to go back to the old ways, at least not any time soon.

I handle a lot of ephemera and I’m always intrigued by advertising from those periods when a technology was in process of change. For many years, ice was a luxury and most of it came from ponds, lakes, and rivers (and sometimes caves) where ice could be cut and transported to markets where it was not otherwise readily available. This was a very lucrative business, and one that reared up in shock when refrigeration methods improved, and local markets could offer artificially produced ice. (The American South was primary in this development.) The “natural ice” marketers tried in vain to claim that theirs was a healthier product (never mind the issue of pollution that were present even then) but they were doomed. Artificial ice was more readily available and a lot less expensive in the areas that provided the largest market.

The advent of the farm tractor threw the makers of horse-drawn plows and equipment into a frenzy of advertising the advantages of the horse over the gasoline engine. (Cheap fuel, recyclable waste, easy maintenance, lower cost, easier on tilth.) The gasoline-powered tractor, however, allowed farmers to produce more work for less labor.

Then came the automobile. It’s interesting in some of the period magazines to see ads for buggies and carriages on the same page with ads for early autos. [See below] There were, of course, attempts to build autos that were propelled by steam, electricity, and gasoline internal combustion engines. [See below] What is most interesting is that the manufacturers who jumped onto the automobile phenomenon were the buggy and carriage makers, as well as bicycle makers. So you can see horse-drawn conveyances from Buick, Studebaker, Cadillac, Dodge, etc., companies that became some of the earliest makers of autos. Bicycle makers who turned to manufacturing autos included Pope and Columbia. In fact, it was a bicycle manufacturer (Stirling Elliot) who solved the problem of wheel-turning ratio, a solution that is still used on cars being manufactured today.

Well, the natural ice industry melted away and the horse-drawn plow still has its advocates, not only among groups such as the Amish but also with some modern farmers. In fact, as the old manufacturers abandoned their trade, and as the old equipment wore out, many small entrepreneurial firms sprang up to offer horse-powered equipment to a new generation of farmers who want to pursue this method. There is now an annual trade show called Horse Progress Days (they have a nice website) where modern horse equipment manufacturers can showcase their wares.

And yes, there are still buggy makers, and buggy whip makers, catering to a specialized market. And the horse population is larger today than it ever was.

All of which is to point out that bookselling has changed radically with the introduction of the Internet. Booksellers who cling to the traditional models are going to have to change perspective if they don’t want to follow the path of the natural ice merchants. Those who can convert their methods – as the buggy and bicycle manufacturers did – to take advantage of the new technology may prevail. There is still room for the specialist, and brick and mortar stores that have something special and personal to offer their customers (so long as they are in appropriate locations) can survive, so long as they accept a modest market share. The generalist Internet bookseller, however, either needs to develop a specialized market niche, or to adapt to the realities of an online marketplace.

About the San Francisco Earthquake

A stereo view card of the Refugees' camp at the ball grounds in Golden State Park,

in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.

Many tens of thousands of residents were displaced or homeless after this great disaster.

Card published by The World Wide View Co., Photo (screened print) by Griffith & Griffith

We tend to use terms such as “steady as a rock” and “solid ground” and “down to Earth” to describe stability and immutability. But in fact, our earth is a molten ball of melted rock covered with thin slabs of solid material that float, slip, slide, ooze, fracture, sink, collide, subside and that sometimes melt, flow, and spew. Meanwhile our little planet is whirling around our sun, in a solar system that is traveling through space at incredible speed. It’s enough to give you vertigo, and reading a book such as Simon Winchester’s A Crack in the Edge of the World can make you a lot less sure of your footing.

This book (Harper Collins, 2005) is ostensibly about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. As he usually does, Winchester uses the San Francisco earthquake as the major “character” in a story that covers a great deal more – plate tectonics, the Gaia theory, seismology, and other aspects of what scientists have come to call “The New Geology” – the revision of geological theories since the mid-1960s.

Winchester undertook a journey across the North American Plate – starting in Iceland at its Eastern perimeter, and traveling across the United States to San Francisco, thence to the northern reaches of Alaska. In order to understand what all this has to do with the San Francisco earthquake, one simply needs to read the book and make the journey vicariously with Winchester, who as always imbues his story with excitement, tension, humor, human interest and anecdote. Nor is he ever afraid to give his personal reaction to a town, a person, a book, or a theory.

Although he is a consummate researcher and made use of many experts in compiling his information, I’d have to quibble with his reference to the death of David Douglas in Hawaii. Winchester relates the old pit and bull story, which was considered to be highly suspect at the time, and has since been disproved by witnesses who came forward long after the fact to testify that Douglas was murdered and tossed into the pit with the bull to simulate an accidental death.

As for the San Andreas fault, Winchester uses a train-car analogy that make a fine clear image of what happens when it generates an earthquake. And as for timing – he brings forth a persuasive argument that another slippage is overdue and likely to occur at any time, but fairly certainly within the next quarter-century or so.

I was disappointed with the inside of the dustjacket – which cleverly unfolds the way that the jacket for The Map That Changed The World does. However, whereas the “Map” jacket had a large depiction of William Smith’s beautiful map of the geology of England and Scotland, the inside of this jacket has only reproductions of some of the disaster scenes from the San Francisco earthquake. Larger renditions of the endpaper maps of the North American Plate and of American earthquakes and volcanoes (and the author’s route), plus a better “close up” of the San Andreas fault itself, would have been far more informative.

Meanwhile, I’m not taking the ground beneath my feet for granted any longer.