I meant to do this months and months ago, but I never got around to it, and then I forgot about it altogether.  But, I thought it would serve me for posterity’s sake to document the hilarious correspondance between me and my blog’s biggest fan: Shannon.  Shannon found my post about Tintin (check it here) by who-knows-what means, and he was so incensed by what he read there that he was motivated to leave this amazingly insightful and simply devastating comment:

I woke up this morning on 5 hours sleep 45 minutes before my alarm went off, because I was that excited about this year’s Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco.  Immediately upon waking up, I annoyed my wife by humming “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” incessantly until I got out of bed to go get my books together.

Readers of my blog are well aware of how I am ridiculously obsessive to the point of insanity, manifested by my ability to write a blog that stands alone as a monument to boredom-inducing word slurry (at least according to a forum of tattoo enthusiasts called “checkoutmyink.com”).  So, it should come as a surprise to no one that I have been preparing for APE for over a month, creating a database of every comics and art anthology I own so that I can enter a list of names of people who will be appearing at the convention and have the database spit out a list of books in which said convention guests appear.  This enables me to maximize my signature gathering with minimal effort (except for the up-front investment).  So, I headed off to APE with a few totebags full of books, and my signing list – organized by signing times, of course.

A more complete wrap-up will follow (because fuck knows the world needs one of those, especially a painfully verbose one from me), but here are my thoughts on APE so far:

• Cheers to Fantagraphics for assembling an amazing cast of artists to sign books – they win the prize for best signing roster.
• Jeers to Drawn and Quarterly for not posting a signing schedule prior to the event.  How are insanely obsessive collectors supposed to organize their database-generated signing lists according to signing times in advance?
• While chatting with R. Sikoryak while he was graciously signing some anthologies, he mentioned a Drawn and Quarterly anthology that was – GASP – not in my database. Thankfully, APE runs over two days, so I can get this book signed tomorrow.  However, he hilariously then told me that I should create a list of all the anthologies I own and then cross-check it against all the artists who would appear at the event.  He was kidding.  Of course, I showed him my signing list and he laughed, but he also seemed scared.
• Dash Shaw did PAINTINGS on the cover of his new book.  I contemplated buying ten copies and putting them in some kind of enormous box frame, but the urge passed.  Still, watching him paint (like, with actual paint brushes) (and apply glitter glue) was the highlight of the day for me.
• I just realized that “Hash Wads” is an anagram of Dash Shaw’s name.
• Watching Anders Nilsen draw sketches is like watching the ocean from the beach.  I will upload pictures of some of the drawings he did in the books I foisted on him (there were over ten – yes, I am a nightmare), but those familiar with his art will know what I’m talking about.  Adding little, tiny lines here and there over and over and over and over until a barren, beautiful scene materializes on the page… it’s hypnotic to watch.
• Best find of the day – A limited edition (40 copies) Matt Furie book, hand sewn by Aiyana Udesen.  It is printed entirely using an Epson photo printer, so the quality is outstanding, and of course, the art is phenomenal.  I think I like his work so much because he packs an unbelievable amount of detail into each character that he draws, making his art technically mesmerizing.  However, at the same time, it usually just makes me laugh, or at least smile.  Plus, next to his signature on the rear flyleaf, there is a picture of Pepe from Boy’s Club.
• Speaking of Boy’s Club, the new issue (Boy’s Club 3 )has been out for a few weeks, and I have tried really hard to buy this book.  First, I checked out Giant Robot, but they hadn’t received it yet.  Then, I tried at Comic Relief (twice), but the were out of it both times.  So today, I finally bought a copy, and then I left it on a table somewhere while I was getting a different book signed.  I guess I’ll have to try a 5th time to own this damn book.
• Lots of art this year – even more than last year.  The Concourse exhibit hall has a main section in the center, and then a raised section on either side.  One of the side sections is mostly art, while the other one is mostly self-published comics.  I kind of want to put a sign up at the front with an arrow pointing toward the comics that says “NERDS” and one pointing toward the art that says “HIPSTERS”.
• This APE had a lot to live up to after last year’s.  With Buenaventura releasing Kramers Ergot 7 and featuring an epic signing panel (Chris Ware, Jaime Hernandez, Matt Groening, Dan Clowes, etc.), plus the release of Acme Novelty Library 19 and Chris Ware’s pretty rare presence at a convention in the first place, I was prepared for this one not to be as good.  But, in the absence of things like waiting in line for an hour to get Jimmy Corrigan signed, and without the logistical complication of carrying around a 16″ x 21″ book for two full days, I had time to check out some other stuff and to pick up some books from authors I hadn’t heard of before (like Andrice Arp, who was signing issues of Mome, or Emilie Ostergren, who was signing her new book at Buenaventura’s table).  Plus, other highlights listed above of the Shaw or Nilsen variety, as well as D&Q’s release of the new Marc Bell book really came together to make this an epic first day of APE.
• Finally, two comics that I can’t say enough good things about.  Both are from Buenaventura: Eric Haven’s “The Aviatrix # 1″ and Lisa Hanawalt’s “I Want You #1″.  I’ve read both of them twice since I got home, and they kick ass.  Eric Haven puts himself in every story a la any run-of-the-mill autobiographical comic, but his stores are far from autobiography (or if they are, Eric Haven is the most interesting guy on the planet)… and the fantasy scenarios are both visually stunning and inventive.  And also hilarious.  As for Lisa Hanawalt’s book, I don’t really know what to say – I have a feeling I will read it 100 more times and still laugh at things like “I Endorse He-Horse” or sex bugs or “hat that is floppy and then also has a shoe” or “the epoxy dispenser.”  Also, the book is beautifully illustrated in  what comics historians will surely term “an elegant mash-up of the DIY comics sensibility and a fine-art aesthetic.”

Okay, that about covers my first day impressions.  Maybe I won’t write I wrap up of the show in general, because this was supposed to be a few bullet points and now it’s 1200 words.  Anyway, I’ll post pictures soon.

(Also, if this blog ends up getting linked somewhere and you stumbled upon it, please cut me some goddamned slack (unlike those tattoo people) and keep in mind that I don’t consider myself a journalist or an authority or important or even particularly intelligent, and that this blog is mostly just an outlet for my obsessive ruminations about book collecting.)

Is it even worth apologizing to the handful of people who actually read this blog regularly, rather than finding it by googling “codex seraphinianus serafini surrealism” or “chicks who read mcsweeney’s juno ellen page” that I last promised updates 6 months ago and haven’t written a word since?  I was going to post my reactions to the California International Book Fair For Snooty Snoots, but I decided not to, since I was kind of disappointed once it was over.  I had been building the event up in my mind for months and months, and I was there with a pretty hefty amount of cash in hand ready to spend… and the rare books were incredible to behold, but the attitude from the booksellers was about as pleasant as the driving rain that began leaking through the roof on the last day.   Look, it’s a recession and everyone is feeling shitty; my pockets aren’t exactly overflowing with money these days, and yet I still made it a point to spend four days at the book fair and as much money as I could afford, so why was every asshole in a blazer and wire-rimmed glasses acting like the world was ending?  Maybe if more of these jerks took a page from Jeff Maser or James Musser’s book and encouraged people like me (age/income level, I mean) to explore the hobby of dumping every last penny into rare books, the industry would be able weather a recession a little better.  Then, maybe the book fair would feel more like a celebration of books, rather than a celebration of snobby and condescending looks at everyone who didn’t fit the profile of a rich white asshole ready to sink whatever real estate money he squirrled away before the bubble busrt into a first edition of Joyce’s Ulysses.

So, this explains the lack of an update, in a nutshell: I felt shit on by my own hobby, and it was made pretty clear to me by the participants at the fair that these are *not* my people, and they quietly tolerate me, as long as I plan to spend money; however, we will most certainly *not* be bonding over a shared love of books, that’s for sure.  (Sorry about the long sentence.)  Luckily, there are alternatives, in the form of events like the San Francisco Zine Fest and the Alternative Press Expo.  Obviously, these events aren’t quite analogous – the average price of something at the Zine Fest or at Ape is around $10, while that’s closer to $500 at the book fair.  And most of the zinesters and small press comics people do it as a hobby, whereas it really might be some guy’s mortgage on the line if he has a bad book fair.  But still, the recession affects everyone, and it might even be said that rare books are better able to weather a recession, because rich people have a nasty habit of staying rich, even when everyone else isn’t.  However, if you look at the average socioeconomic level of people at APE or the Zine Fest, they’re people who make a living, but who most likely don’t have the disposable income to fritter away (if by “fritter away” you mean “invest wisely”) on various printed matter.

All this aside, the bottom line is that the book fair was dour, stodgy, and unfriendly, while events like APE, the Zine Fest, and I would guess shows like MOCCA in New York or SPX in DC are more like celebrations of creative arts.  Now, maybe the key difference is that these latter events celebrate things people made, rather than things that people are flipping for profit.  Again, though, I don’t buy it.  I had always imagined book dealing to be a career one undertakes in order to merge hobby and profession – because you’re a book lover, you make books your career so you can be around them all the time.  Otherwise, why do it?  The profit margin is shit, the sales are sporadic, you’re forced to run your business on insane lines of credit in order to make meaningful acquisitions – if you have a mind for that kind of stuff and just want to make money, why not trade stocks or something that it’s actually easy to sell?  I love showing people my book collection, because I’m excited about the books I have, and I can’t imagine this wouldn’t carry over into selling, if I were to make selling books a career choice.  So where was this excitement at the mecca of fine books?

By contrast, walk by any table of xeroxed and stapled comics, rants, reviews, interviews, etc., and the proprietor will excitedly tell you about his/her work, even though this person probably *lost* money at the fair.  I happily stumbled upon a table run by Geoff Vasile (easily the best self-published cartoonist I have ever come across, and a hilarious mean-sprited antidote to the bland autobiographical “read about my stupid life” comics that are in vogue), and as I put on my best fanboy lame-o act, I thought to myself how he’s charging me $3 for a nicely produced comic, complete with 3-color silkscreened cover and acting downright grateful about it, and when I expressed interest in a $500 book at the book fair, I was met with complete indifference.

APE, last November and coming up in mid-October this year, had a similar vibe.  There’s some crossover with the Zine Fest, since APE caters to a lot of self-publishers, but bigger oufits like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly show up there too.  I had never been before, but everyone there was insanely friendly, with the Fantagraphics people profusely thanking me for buying $40 worth of books and giving me “great to see you”s and “thanks so much for coming out”s.  And shit, they publish PAPER BOOKS,  which is to say, a dying medium, recession or not.

Now (as per usual, nearly 1000 words in), the point of the title of this post: I wasn’t really sure what to expect at the Zine Fest (well, besides lots of staples and xerox copies).  I wanted to check it out, but I didn’t realize that there was going to be so much art there – silkscreening, inkjet prints, letterpressing, etc.  It really went beyond what I thought of as Zines back when I religiously read something called “The Joy of Laura” back in high school (it was a punk rock zine, not a thing about some girl named Laura).  We (meaning my wife, and trusty, patient companion) stopped by Theo Ellsworth’s table and bought two signed inkjet prints and a book (which, true to comic artist form, he painstakingly signed with a cool drawing), two things I didn’t even expect to see there.

Aside from the two cartoonists/artists mentioned (that’s Geoff Vasile and Theo Ellsworth again, and you should definitely google both of those names to learn more), the highlight of the show for me was “Two Fine Chaps,” a small press/fine press run by, erm, two upstanding gentlemen.  I don’t need to advertise for them (www.twofinechaps.com does well enough), but they make painstakingly crafted artist books with an insane amount of handwork, and they sell their stuff for way less than I think it’s worth, especially considering what most fine press stuff goes for these days.  I ended up spending most of our money until the next paycheck on two of their books (signed edition – yes; deluxe edition – of course, dick), because I couldn’t let awesomeness like that go unpurchased.

So, in conclusion: Congrats to the organizers of the Zine Fest – it was a rad event full of rad stuff with a rad vibe, and I can’t wait for next year’s.  Chance Press will probably have a table there, too, so watch out!

Pictures!

Two Fine Chaps - An accordion book with removable spine, hand cut text sections, and incredible art

Another Two Fine Chaps Masterpiece - But to get it bound in boards, you need to drop the big dollars

Interior spread - to answer your 3 questions, 1) yes it is letterpressed, 2) yes, it folds out into a four-panel drawing, and 3) yes, the art is infuckincredible

Colophon page - dig the signatures, and note that the stuff in color was done... wait for it... by HAND

Theo Ellsworth to the max - 2 prints and a book

He drew this in my copy of the book - what did he draw in yours? Oh right, NOTHING.

New Geoff Vasile comic - Silkscreen up front, sketch around back.

So, I’ve been off work the past few days attending book-related events surrounding and including the Calfornia Antiquarian Book Fair (actually, that’s not the exact name, although it gets the point across, which is the goal).  Truly a wonderland of shit I never thought I’d see, and what will be the subject of one of my trademark long, rambling diatribes.  My eyes are going blurry staring at the computer screen right now, so here’s a little teaser of what you’ll get.

Topics to be covered: Rare Shit and Expensive Shit that put the previous rare and expensive shit discussed herein to shame; exclusive behind-the-scenes, no-holds-barred guerilla reporting on the book business; my ongoing effort to cope with the fact that I have to operate within a reasonable budget; so many handmade books that your hands hurt just thinking about making them; a report and in-depth discussion of my wisely-chosen purchases, and finally, my crushing insecurity and desire to fit in among people who I assume secretly hate me.

Stay tuned for more!

This is an essay about random connections that pop up when I start really digging in and researching books. These connections are what make book collecting so great: it’s not just finding a book you want, buying it, and then staring at it occasionally as it sits on your shelf. It’s about realizing that a book you’ve wanted for years is only the tip of the iceberg, and that there are tons of interesting tendrils hanging off of that book, dipping into the vast ocean of everything else that’s ever been published… and about finding that things you’ve never known about aren’t actually that far removed from books you’ve had for years.

This particular adventure started, as it often does, with regret; the one that got away, the book with the pretty face that I always thought I’d see again but never did. When I lived in France, I bought as many cool French books as I could, constrained by my college-life means, but helped by the weakness of the Franc before the transition to the Euro and the strength of the dollar before the transition to GWBush. Still, there are some books that I never got around to buying, and others that I visited over and over again in rare bookstores but knew I’d never be able to afford. Two particular books come to mind: the NRF publication of Raymond Queneau’s Cent Mille Millards de Poèmes and Une Version Inédite du Premier Chapitre de Voyage au Bout de la Nuit de L.-F. Céline. And of course, these books are connected by more than just being sites of regret in my book collecting past.

First the Queneau: he was a mathematician in addition to being a writer and poet, and he is probably most famous for co-founding the literary workshop “Oulipo” (the workshop of potential literature) and writing Zazie dans le Métro, a novel about labor strikes, trains, and transvestites. When I first heard about the Oulipo, it sounded like a bunch of pretentious wankery, until I realized how bizarrely fantastic its approach to literature is. The basic precept is that creativity can be focused and harnessed by applying specific, often mathematical constraints to the creative process (see for example, La Disparition by Georges Perec, an entire novel written without the letter “e”). There are a couple good books on Oulipo that can be had for fairly cheap that explain the concept much better than I can, but suffice it to say that a constraint generates “potential” literature that wouldn’t exist if the creative process were left to operate unfettered.

Cent Mille Millards de Poèmes is generally regarded to be the foundational text of the Oulipo: the potential here is derived from the constraint of the sonnet. Queneau wrote ten sonnets, each line of which interchanges syllabically with the same line in the nine other poems. Even more, the lines have the same general intonation and cadence, such that any one of them could be substituted in a different poem to create a new poem. The result, taking into account a 14-line sonnet is, as the title suggests, 100,000,000,000,000 poems, or, the longest work of poetry ever written. To facilitate the potential creation of all quadrillion of them, the NRF published an edition in which the 14 lines are cut into 14 separate strips, enabling the reader to generate sonnets at will. It was released in a limited edition of 2200 in 1961 and then reprinted fairly regularly. I came across it in bookstores a number of times, but I never bought it, favoring a couple other Queneau titles instead.

One of those titles, and probably my favorite book that I brought home from France, is NRF’s deluxe publication of Queneau’s Exercices de Style. Here, the idea is to tell the same banal story 99 different ways… On a hot day, a man with a long neck and a hat with a cord around it instead of a ribbon boards a bus, yells at another passenger for jostling him, and takes an open seat. Later, the narrator sees the same man in front of a train station talking to another man who points at a button on the first man’s coat. That Queneau was able to retell this story in 99 different voices, to me, speaks volumes about his genius as a writer. It surpasses a mere student’s exercise (to which its detractors have compared it) by its sheer inventiveness, and it does things with the French language the likes of which hadn’t been tried in a literary format since Céline and Journey to the End of the Night (there they are, connected again). In this particular edition, Queneau’s exercises are accompanied by typographical exercises by Massin and 45 visual interpretations by Jacques Carelman (a board game, a Rorschach test, a rebus, etc.), in a cornucopia of artistic output generated by this one little story.

As much as I like this book, and as many times as I’ve flipped through it, I had never really followed up on either Massin or Carelman until recently. It turns out that Massin is a legendary French typesetter and designer, having designed some of the most well-known series in French literary history (primarily the Gallimard Folio collection, which you’ve probably seen if you’ve ever seen a French book). I had no idea, until I picked up Phaidon’s handsomely published retrospective of his career at Moe’s a few months ago. Looking through the book and getting a handle on Massin’s incredible contribution to French literature in the 20^th century stimulated my collector’s itch, and I decided to start looking up some of Massin’s more famous books… which I learned, of course, included Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes. Also of interest was his rendition of Ionesco’s absurdist play La Cantatrice Chauve, in which he set out to make the type another character in the play, as well as his more recently published edition of Cocteau’s Les Mariés sur la Tour Eiffel, a culmination of over thirty years of effort. (The fact that this book took so long to produce has the added bonus of demonstrating the evolution of his technique, moving from text pasted down manually to digital layouts.) Take a look at the pictures at the bottom of this article to see what it really means for Massin to “typeset” another author’s work… It’s not just a mere decision of font; rather, he totally reinvents the text and creates a totally new reading experience in which the type on the page plays as much of a role to the reader as the words themselves. It turns out Massin also wrote a book, Lettre et Image, which is a survey of type’s role in culture from pre-history up through present day. It is a big, heavy book, and while I haven’t yet read it, the illustrations alone are an incomparable sourcebook for anyone interested in type (such as, oh I don’t know, someone who has recently started a small press). And, in the course of digging up these books, I learned that Cent Mille Milliards is still in print, so after 7 years, I finally own a copy.

However, all this Massin-mania had me looking at my copy of Exercices, wishing it were a first edition, that the binding were a little tighter, and that the boards didn’t have those little imperfections… and so I started digging, and I found out that this particular edition has some interesting variants. In its first state (published in 1961), it featured 33 (not 45) illustrations by Carelman, meaning the book I brought back from France was a revised edition, with additional and revised illustrations. Interestingly, both collections of illustrations are unique, with a good number of the original 33 not appearing in the revised edition. The first edition is printed on heavy, matte paper, and many of the illustrations are on fold-out panels, whereas the second edition is printed on thinner, glossy paper (such that, with the same amount of pages, it is about half as thick as the first edition), with two-page spreads rather than fold-out panels. While the second edition was never issued as a limited edition (to my knowledge), the first edition was split into 3 versions: numbers 1-150 contained an original woodcut illustration numbered and signed by Carelman, and they were housed in a box covered in shirt fabric, secured by a button. Numbers 152-10000 (evens) were published under the Club Francais du Livre imprint bound in green semi-hardcover boards, and numbers 151-9999 (odds) were published under the NRF imprint, with the same cover as the special edition sans the box. (Another Massin tangent: before working as the design director of Gallimard (the French publishing giant one of whose many imprints is the NRF), he cut his teeth working for the French book clubs, meaning that a Massin-typeset book published simultaneously by the NRF and the CFL really covered all the bases.) With impeccable timing, an affordable copy of the special edition showed up on eBay in VG condition but lacking the box (an Abebooks search found one copy in the box for a cool $840), and I put in the first and only bid on it. My Massin collection was growing like a bamboo shoot, and I was really excited to have a piece of art signed by Carelman, an artist who I liked very much.

The weekend the auction ended, I was in Chicago, and, of course, a trip to Chicago isn’t complete without a visit to the rare book room at Powell’s Chicago Bookstore. After perusing a while, I was about to leave empty handed when I spotted a couple cases behind the counter and asked if I could look through them. I reached for a nondescript white book in a black slipcase, simply because it looked interesting… I pulled the book out of the case and noticed it was covered with signatures, and my mind got about as far as, “Is this….???” before I opened it and realized that yes, it was in fact the elusive 100-copy limited edition of the Atlas Press’s Oulipo Compendium, the ultimate English-language resource for the Oulipo. This book had been on my radar for years, but the only way to get it is to order directly from the UK for around $400. This copy was much more reasonably priced, and, while still technically an irresponsible purchase, I jumped at the chance to grab this rarity, especially since it was more impressive in person (as books of this nature often are). The interior is the same, save for the addition of a colophon page, and the book is bound in plain white wrappers, rather than the pictorial wrappers of the trade edition. The real bonus is the dustjacket made from handmade Rives paper, stamped with Atlas Press’s symbols and signed by twenty-six members of the Oulipo (and its poetry and visual art offshoots, the Oupopo and Oupeinpo, respectively).

It shouldn’t have surprised me, looking through the section on the Oupeinpo, that Jacques Carelman was a founding member of the group, just as Queneau had been for the Oulipo. Their collaboration on Exercices suggests as much, and the laws of book collecting coincidences would seem to pre-ordain such a connection. After reading about Carelman’s contributions to the Oupeinpo, my attention turned to the dustjacket to see if I could decipher his signature among the European scrawls… I had to wait for the woodcut to arrive from France before I could confirm it, but yes, there it was on the back, and even reasonably legible. Two Carelman signatures acquired in one weekend… not bad for an amateur book collector, and all thanks to picking up that Massin retrospective that got the ball rolling.

Of course, this was not the finishing point. In the months after the Oulipo Compendium find, I continued to look into books by/about Massin, in order to gain as comprehensive a view as possible of his body of work. Without too much more digging, I found a two-volume pictorial catalog published in French by Librairie Nicaise in Paris. While the books were a little expensive for me to buy sight-unseen (although I was certainly tempted), the name jumped out at me. First: “librairie” in French means “bookstore,” not “library.” Bookstore catalogs are not especially rare, but these books were comprehensive retrospectives/reference books, not catalogs of items for sale. Why would a Parisian bookstore be in the business of publishing books, and of all the hundreds upon hundreds of bookstores in that city, what were the odds that it was a bookstore I had emailed two days prior about an unrelated matter?

Paris is full of a staggering number and variety of bookstores. Bookstores and places to eat – if I think back on my time wandering around Paris, almost my entire memory is composed of looking among the shelves at a bookstore or eating something. As for the variety, there are the booksellers selling everything from cheap paperbacks to rare items out of painted green stands that line the Seine, multi-story emporiums like Gibert-Jeune, corner shops, and more rare book dealers than you can count. The last type was of the most interest to me- there’s really nothing like them in the US. There are plenty of rare bookstores, but almost all of them have a section of cheap paperbacks or standard fiction books, with the real “A” items under glass or in a separate room entirely. The Parisian rare bookstores, on the other hand, house the types of collections you usually only see here in appointment-only dealers. Even getting in the stores can be a challenge- most of the doors are locked, requiring you to ring a bell and subject yourself to the studious gaze of the proprietor. More than one time, I was refused entry to the store, probably because I looked like I didn’t have any money (mostly true, anyway). But there was one store I could reliably count on to admit me- the Librairie Nicaise. This was my favorite bookstore anyway- instead of floor-to-ceiling shelves, it was organized more like a little art gallery or museum, with waist-high bookcases displaying unique and rare items on top of them. Down the center of the shop was a long table, and more than once the owner invited me to sit and take as much time as I needed to peruse whatever interested me that day.

Most of the books at the Librairie Nicaise were limited-edition fine press books housed in clamshell boxes. I often felt a little guilty opening box after box to see what was inside, wondering when I would finally wear out my welcome – especially as it became clear that I would never be able to afford anything there. During that time, I had three authors on my watch list: Queneau, Jacques Prevert, and Céline. One day, I asked the proprietor if he had anything by any of these three, and he showed me a volume of Céline that I would return to look upon multiple times before I finally moved back home. It was a private press volume – published by Balbec, about whom I haven’t been able to find any additional information whatsoever – housed in a gray cloth clamshell case. The book itself was unbound, consisting of signatures loosely laid into the box, printed letterpress on Rives paper. It was illustrated by Thomas Gosebruch, an artist who is about as mysterious to me as the publisher. The text is simply the first chapter of Céline’s Journey to the end of the Night (a piece of text that holds up surprisingly well by itself), although it is printed alongside the original text from Celine’s manuscript.

The original manuscript is what threw me – in all the reading I have done about Céline (who was a primary focus of mine in college as well as in graduate school), I have never uncovered another printing of the original manuscript. Céline dictated his books, rather than writing or typing them himself, and so the original manuscript represents the closest that this text ever was to Céline’s mouth. After all the time I have spent reading poststructuralists work to set the text free from its author figure, the idea of Céline sitting at a desk actually speaking the words that became Journey while a dactylographer dutifully records them is too neat for a romantic like me to discount. That this text is reproduced in one of the single most luxurious books I have ever held just makes it that much more incredible.

The problem was, the book was priced at about $400, which was more than I could ever imagine spending on a book back then. I thought about trying to save up for it, but I knew that I’d fail and just get frustrated, so I wrote it off as something I’d never end up owning. I actually said good-bye to it in my head when I visited the Librairie Nicaise the last time before I left France, and I all but forgot about it when my book collecting habits went on hiatus in my mid 20’s. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I started trying to find it again… at which point I realized that I didn’t remember any of the identifying details about it. Eventually, my frustration at not being able to find it converged with my desire to own it, and I decided to spend as much time as necessary finding it again.

I started on Add-all, a website that amalgamates the listings of 30-odd used book sites. I searched “Céline” and “toile grise” (meaning “gray cloth”), hoping I’d catch a mention of the clamshell box in one of the listings. Eventually, it popped up – limited to 100 copies, no wonder I had never seen it anywhere else. And, surprisingly, that one copy was the same one I had seen all those years ago back in Paris at the Librairie Nicaise. I sold off a few books and used the money to buy it off of ILAB, an antiquarian book site that lists a lot of European dealer catalogs. A few weeks went by, I didn’t hear anything, and my emails asking for order confirmation went unanswered. I finally worked up the nerve to place a call overseas, and in my best French and his best English, Mr. Librairie Nicaise told me that he couldn’t find the book, and thus, he couldn’t sell it to me. He said he was going to spend one more week looking and then cancel my order. After a week of not hearing anything further, I assumed the book wasn’t available. The one that got away, indeed.

Still, tying up all of the above with the Librairie Nicaise as the center, all neat and trim, isn’t quite accurate.  The whole point is that the connections spew forth such that there is no center at all, just points of interest that sometimes intersect unexpectedly, sometimes over and over again.

Note: the preceding theme will be continued in the upcoming entry: “Quelquechose in the Water: More Observations about Book Collecting.”

Pictures (please excuse the low photo quality – I’m a bad photographer using a worse camera, so hopefully you came here for the brilliant writing, rather than the photos):

Phaidon's Massin book

The cover of Massin's rendition of Ionesco's The Bald Soprano

Interior spread from The Bald Soprano

Interior spread from Letter & Image

Another interior spread from Letter and Image

Cover of Massin's rendition of Cocteau's Les Maries

Interior spread from Les Maries

Cover of Cent Milles Millards

The separated strips

The original and reissued deluxe editions of Exercices de Style

The story, typeset as a telegram

Fold-out panel of Carelman's interpretation of the story as a board game

Carelman's interpretation of the story as a Surrealist collage

Carelman's signed print - "Danse Macabre"

Dustjacket of the deluxe Oulipo Compendium

A while back, I posted a blog about a book I had found that contained illustrations by Serafini (here is the link, if you’re really that bored: Etimologiario Post #1 ).  Due to my laziness, I never got around to adding the promised follow-up post with all of the illustrations in it.  A quick recap: the book is called Etimologiario by Maria Sebregondi and published by Longanesi, the same publisher who put out the Pulcinellopeida (Piccola).  It was originally published in 1988, and it was reprinted by a different publisher in 2003, although I don’t know if that new edition has the Serafini illustrations or not.  The book is a small 16mo paperback, a far cry from the deluxe publication of the Codex or even the large-format Pulcinellopedia.  I have sent a couple excerpts to an Italian-speaking friend of a friend, although I haven’t heard anything back, so I still have very little idea what this book is about.  This is familiar Serafini territory, however, since nothing he has ever done has ever had any sort of text to explain the image.  And, in typical Serafini fashion, these illustrations speak for themselves with the same tortured internal logic his fans would expect.

They are recognizable as Serafini illustrations at first glance, using the same pencil technique as the Pulcinellopedia, with only the cover illustration being in color.  It is interesting that this book and his other illustration work has pretty much been swept under the rug, while all the other facets of his artistic output have been chronicled in various design anthologies and the Luna-PAC Serafini book.  I’m still holding out for a copy of In the Penal Colony, but that’s not something I expect to find anytime soon.

Anyway, enough rambling… here are the illustrations, which – to my knowledge – are making their grand debut on the internet.  Enjoy!

Many of my favorite books are ones that I’ve wanted to own for a long time, but struggled to find… others are unique items I stumbled upon unexpectedly and happily picked up… but this one doesn’t fit into either of those categories. I had seen Kramers Ergot 6 (an anthology of modern comics and comic art) in bookstores, although I never felt motivated enough to buy it, and I never had much interest in the series overall – not because I disliked it, more that I just hadn’t taken the time to digest it. With Kramers Ergot 7, I feel like I stepped in at the last mile of a marathon and cruised blissfully across the finish line… Not being knowledgeable about the series, I was unaware that this volume had been in the works since before #6 was even finished, and that message boards around the web had been buzzing with advance praise and advance scorn for years before the release date. I had no crescendo of anticipation as the release date approached, no high expectations, no preconceptions… I had about as much of a blank slate as one can have regarding a book with this much baggage.

Here’s how it started: as anyone who reads my blog knows (meaning, as two or three people know), I am a fan of graphic novels, and I also research book topics pretty obsessively. However, I haven’t really spent much time digging and digging in the world of comics and graphic novels. I will admit to having a limited knowledge of comics that, aside from some Bay Area mini-comics here or there, pretty much starts and ends at what Drawn and Quarterly or Fantagraphics is publishing… I hadn’t even heard of Buenaventura press (the publisher of Kramers Ergot 7) until I stumbled onto their webpage looking for this new Charles Burns book I had heard about. (For reference, that book is called Permagel, it’s fucking mind-blowing, and it is published by United Dead Artists in France. At 11” x 16”, it was the largest book in my collection for about two weeks, as you’ll soon see.)

So, about two weeks ago, I got an email blast from Drawn and Quarterly announcing a comics show in San Francisco (the Alternative Press Expo), where Chris Ware would be signing books. This caught my attention, since Ware is one of my favorite graphic novelists, and he doesn’t do signings very often. Then, a couple days after that, I got an email from Amazon suggesting a book I might like. I almost always ignore these emails, but I happened to open this one, and there was Amazon’s pre-order information for Kramers Ergot 7, a gigantic 16” x 21” hardcover comics anthology, featuring many of my favorite comic book artists (Chris Ware, Kevin Huizenga, Dan Clowes, Jaime Hernandez, etc). Gigantic, too, was the price: $125 retail (although significantly discounted by Amazon).

After I read Amazon’s little announcement for the book, I decided that I would probably get it at some point, just not right away. I checked out Buenaventura’s website to see what they had to say about the book, and of course, I saw their announcement about the Alternative Press Expo, where this book would be making its grand debut. To top it off, 16 of the artists featured in the book would be signing copies throughout the show (including Matt Groening, if you can believe that), AND the first 200 copies they sold would come with a limited edition (there goes Jordan’s Book Boner #1) letterpress print (Book Boner #2), numbered and signed by Sammy Harkham, the book’s editor, co-publisher, contributor, and cover artist.

Turns out, in a lot of the pre-release discussion of this book (and boy, was there a lot of that, given that information started leaking out about it in early 2007), the price has taken center stage. I think it’s a shame that so much attention has been paid to the price (with some people even claiming that the price is intentionally inflated so as to garner publicity), but I guess the easy counterargument to that is that if the book were priced more economically, no one would talk about it. In a nutshell, here’s how I feel about the price: anyone who knows anything about manufacturing knows that this book wasn’t cheap to make. Without having any insider information, I’d guess that the landed cost of this book, including the rolled-up cost of the R&D (which apparently included a trip to Singapore and Malaysia for a factory check) and contributor payments, is around $50-$60 per piece. This includes ultra-premium paper, hand-binding, a low print run, container shipping, and a shitload of book-board, plus payment for 50 artists… but it doesn’t include ongoing expenses like warehousing and the overhead required to market and sell the book. My educated guess would be that they’re breaking even or making a slim profit on books sold wholesale and making that up via direct sales off their website. Plus, they had to air-freight the first 200 advance copies to get them in time for APE, which probably tacked on at least $25 per book, if not more. The idea that anyone is getting rich off of this book at $125 retail is absurd if you stop to think about what went into it from a production standpoint.

Holding the book, it just bleeds quality. It is truly a deluxe production with no expense spared, and I’m glad that Buenaventura Press and Sammy Harkham had the guts and tenacity to put this book out. Regardless of how one feels about the book or the price or the size, the drive to see this project through every hurdle has to be admired. I honestly don’t know how it will do in the marketplace, but I sure am glad to own one… as a book collector, book design nut, and comics fan, this book really hits every base for me. When I showed up at APE and saw the stack of copies sitting at the end of Buenavetura’s table, it took me all of five seconds to decide I had to have one. Now, admittedly, I’m not the average book consumer (to me, $125 doesn’t seem like that much for a book in the first place, given some of the rare books I have purchased), and I spend more of my disposable income on books than is probably healthy. Of course, I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with someone who doesn’t think this book (or any book, for that matter) is worth the money. Rather, I think that, in me, the publishers of this book found their absolute ideal customer: a comics nerd who spends stupid amounts of money on beautiful books. And that’s probably why the price is such a non-issue for me: as someone who feels targeted by the book and not deliberately left out in the cold, I don’t think there’s anything arrogant or presumptuous (or stupid or elitist or pretentious, or any of the other accusations that have been lobbed around) about pricing a book in this range.

So, out of all the hundreds of books I own, how does this one access that rarefied realm of my favorites? The size certainly helps, that’s for sure. According to Harkham, the genesis of the book came from the size of the Sunday comics pages from the early 20^th century, something with which I don’t have an intimate familiarity or nostalgia for. When another of my favorite comic book artists, Joe Matt, told me about the similarly sized Gasoline Alley book, I didn’t rush out to get it, because I am not all that into the history of comics, and these old strips don’t seduce me the way modern comics do (this is a taste issue, like so many things I write about in this blog, so please don’t rake me over the coals for this viewpoint). But, the opportunity to read my favorite artists (as well as a whole host of fantastic artists whom I had never heard of) in this format is a real treat. Some of the strips, such as the ones by Dan Clowes or Jaime Hernandez simply pack the page full of similarly-sized panels (although the large title panel of Clowes’s strip is pretty powerful), which leads to the fairly unique reading experience of spending 5-10 minutes reading one page. (To jump back to the price issue really quickly: one of the criticisms is that the book is “only” 96 pages for $125… but shit, when one page here would be 6 pages in another book, the value increases pretty quickly.) Other strips, like Kevin Huizenga’s or Adrian Tomine’s feature standard-sized panels interspersed with very large panels that really let the pages breathe while showcasing the artists’ talent in a much more expansive format. Some artists abandon the panel format altogether and let the comic loose across the entire page. It brings me back to my grad school papers about the materiality of the text dictating the sensory experience (well, back then I called it the “phenomenological experience,” but let’s call a spade a spade)… I expected the size to be cool and unique, but I didn’t expect it to mediate my reading process so dramatically. To tie it back to an earlier post, it almost reminds me of my response to books typeset by Massin in that the presentation of the text so affects the content that the experience of reading this content cannot be separated from the book itself. My conclusion after actually reading the book is that the size isn’t just a gimmick or a publicity stunt by Harkham or a way to justify charging an arm and a leg for the book- it really does play a critical role in making the book what it is.

And let’s not forget that I toiled for an entire weekend to get this book signed by 16 different authors. It started with Kevin Huizenga, who graciously signed and sketched the book as well as the accompanying print (which was ingeniously designed by Harkham with several “pages” littering the ground – each one perfect for a signature and doodle). Other authors followed suit (some reluctantly), and by the end of the weekend, I had a limited edition print and a gigantic book signed with sketches by Chris Ware, Ted May, John Pham, Eric Haven, Jonathan Bennett, J. Bradley Johnson, Johnny Ryan, Matt Groening, Matt Furie, Souther Salazar, Sammy Harkham, Kevin Huizenga, Tim Hensley, Dan Clowes, Chris Cilla, and Jaime Hernandez. They were not at the signing table all at once, however, and so I carried this heavy book around the expo for two days (well, my girlfriend carried it some of the time too), returning periodically each time a new groups of authors sat down with pens in hand. Not that I would have rather bought the book already signed- seeing comic book artists sketching in person is one of my favorite things about collecting books –Chris Ware drawing Jimmy Corrigan or Matt Groening drawing Homer Simpson is too cool for words.

Now, I just hope that the book holds up over time. The boards are so heavy that I’m kind of worried that after a few years of being read, they’ll start to strain the spine joints and eventually detach… and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t come with a warranty. But again, that’s a risk that the publishers (and me as the buyer) were willing to take in order to bring this book to market (and for me to bring it home to my bookshelves). I view it as this enormous labor of love on all parts – from the publisher actually producing it, to the artists who struggled with an unfamiliar format, to the editor who had to pick and choose to produce a cogent anthology, and even to me getting all the signatures individually. It’s totally irreplaceable, to the point that even my ridiculous anal retentiveness about book condition has allowed me to overlook the bump to the top board that forever renders the book “Near Fine” and love it for what it is.

Pictures below:

Kramers 7 on my bookshelf, dwarfing some other fairly large books

The limited edition letterpress print

Detail of Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, and Matt Groening signatures on the print

Endpapers of the book, signed 16 times.

Detail of sketches by Jaime Hernandez and Daniel Clowes

Detail of sketches by Matt Furie, Jonathan Bennett, Souther Salazar, Chris Ware, Sammy Harkham, Johnny Ryan, and Matt Groening

Daniel Clowes's page

Kim Dietch's page

]]> http://chancepress.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/my-favorite-books-explained-in-a-verbose-manner-volume-4-is-that-a-billboard-no-it%e2%80%99s-kramers-ergot-7/feed/ 0 chancepress Kramers 7 KE 7 Print Print Detail Endpapers Endpapers Detail1 Endpapers Detail 2 Clowes page Dietch Page http://chancepress.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/tintin-your-flipped-up-tuft-of-hair-is-the-least-curious-thing-about-you/ http://chancepress.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/tintin-your-flipped-up-tuft-of-hair-is-the-least-curious-thing-about-you/#comments Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:36:32 +0000 chancepress http://chancepress.wordpress.com/?p=37 ]]>

I first heard of Tintin through my friend Trevor. Trevor was pale and chubby (I was chubbier, but less pale), and the kids at school called him “Albamster,” which was short for Albino Hamster. I was at Trevor’s house, and he showed me these comic books (it may be fair to call them graphic novels) starring Tintin, a teenage reporter who goes on adventures and solves various crimes and mysteries. I thought Tintin was really cool, so I started reading voraciously, and I still go back and read Tintin now and then, because the stories bring a comforting sort of entertainment. Not in the way that I can identify with any of the characters, but because the stories are so engaging in their own ridiculous way. When I was in France and feeling lost and alone, I bought French versions of Tintin…. since I knew the stories so well, they were really easy to read, and I had the added benefit of being able to read the not-imported-into-the-US volume entitled “Tintin au Congo,” in which Tintin goes to Africa and befirends the natives, who are drawn as hairless monkeys. At the end, they decide Tintin is their god and they build a totem pole with his face on top. It’s pretty much the most pro-colonialist thing I’ve ever read. At least Herge, Tintin’s creator, apologized about it later in his life. Anyway, this blog will chronicle the weird things about Tintin, some of which didn’t hit me until much, much later in my life. If this sounds boring to you, go reread one of my older blogs (because that will be more boring, and then this one will seem better).

1. Unlike the famous comic book heroes, Tintin is not a meek guy who transforms into a super hero. He’s completely comfortable with his place in life as the most talented reporter in history, and he’s totally undaunted by anyone bullying him around. He faces evil mobsters, evil Native Americans, evil Peruvian indigenous folks, evil millionaires, evil South American rebels, and more, and he never really gets scared. In times of dire darkness, he plots totally implausible ways to escape, and then he sees them through to fruition with a calm coolness. There is never any mention of Tintin’s parents, although he is only supposed to be around 15. Who were these people who raised a brilliant, unflappable son and then totally disappeared from his life? It’s the ultimate contrast to something like Spiderman, where you know about Peter Parker’s life when he’s not Spidey… Tintin is and has always been Tintin (“reporter,” as he is always identified, although he almost never does anything remotely close to writing or researching news stories), and you just need to accept that and keep reading.

2. Tintin’s companions are his dog Snowy, Captain Haddock (an alocoholic sailor who loses a considerable amount of weight over the course of the series), and Professor Calculus (called “Professor Sunflower” in the French version, he’s an insane professor who has a knack for developing devices that get him kidnapped by people). Tintin never seems lonely, and I suppose one reason is that his dog (who is also an alocholic and drinks at every opportunity) is always around. But really, does he have that much in common with a sea captain and a mad scientist? I suppose this is part of a larger perplexing issue, which is that Tintin relates to every person he meets with a polite detachment that suggests profound sadness underneath his surface. He never associates with anyone his age, and he has no problem engaging professors, heads of state, military generals, and other such figures in polite conversation.

3. Tintin never gets mad at his own destiny. Many of the books start with a declaration that he’s taking a vacation, at which point something un-vacationy happens, and he is thrust into a new, dangerous adventure (sometimes so complex that it requires two issues to resolve). Interestingly, he never seems to mind… the most irritated he gets is when he says something like, “Here we go again, Snowy!” But, he says it with a smile, not at all in a grumpy way. Honestly, I can’t really imagine what Tintin’s vacation would be like… probably just relating to people with polite detachment, but with less scheming and intrigue. Or maybe he’d finally crack.

4. In German, Tintin is called “Tim.” Why do they have to be so efficient?

5. Tintin is totally asexual. I don’t think he’s gay (although he may be), I just don’t think his adventures involve him with women at all (save for the elegant Italian opera singer Bianca Castafiore, who is more interested in the alcoholic sea captain than in Tintin). He sometimes befirends young boys, but it doesn’t seem like he does anything funny with them. I mean, the time he saves his friend Chang from the Yeti’s cave, he doesn’t even hug him when they reunite at the end. There is a novel about Tintin coming to terms with his sexual side (obviously not written by Herge), although I could never get into it. Great subject though. I wish at some point Tintin would meet a girl his age, just to see what would happen. Obviously, he would greet her with polite detachment and go about his scheming, but maybe then he’d notice her pert breasts and well-shaped behind and feel something he hadn’t previously felt. I guess the world may never know. But seriously, is there any 15-year old in the world who is never, not one time, occupied with the thought of sex? Oh Tintin, you curious boy.

6. Tintin doesn’t age, but his fashion evolves with the times. By the end of the series, he’s stopped tucking his calf-length pants into his socks and has donned bellbottoms, as was the fashion in the 70’s. The bellbottoms look weird at first… you can’t tell what’s different about him, and then you realize. Boy’s got some style. The kind of style you need to help a drunken guerilla army in South America kick the liquor and mobilize to overthrow the despotic General Tapioca, reclaiming Tapiocapolis for the people. Oh man, that’s a great adventure. At the end, they surprise General Tapioca at the big carnival by dressing up as the “Jolly Follies,” a group of dancers in interesting costumes. You never really learn what the real Jolly Follies were going to do, but in those costumes, you knew it was going to be good.

7. Tintin is supposed to live in the real world, yet he does things that are clearly impossible. In one adventure, he’s stranded in the jungle with only elephants as his company (elephants to whom he relates with polite detachment). To communicate with them, he picks up a tree branch and handily uses a pocketknife to carve it into a giant trumpet that he then uses to approximate the sound of elephant speech. (Aside from the impossibility of approximating elephant speech, there is also the obvious difficulty of hollowing out a 4-foot solid branch of wood using a two inch pocketknife.) The scene where he asks the elephant to spout water out of its trunk so he can shower under it has to be seen to be believed. Also, he showers in his boxers, presumably because Herge didn’t want to show nudity. But is there a bigger secret being hidden here? In another episode, he kills an ape, cuts off its head, and puts its skin on like a suit in order to blend in with the other apes. And it’s not supposed to be gross at all. Gross.

8. Tintin is totally unfazed by incredible violence. This is the part that most leads me to believe something dark is going on beneath his sheen of polite detachment. I mean, he still expresses emotion, but mostly it’s the emotion of being mad at bad guys for not respecting the law. But he has no problem doing things that cause immeasurable pain or death to people that are out to get him. Yeah, he’s acting in self-defense, but he doesn’t even flinch. He’s like Leon in The Professional, but that guy is a grizzled old French hitman who wears his rough life in the wrinkles on his face. Tintin is a fresh-faced teenager who watches people die without it really seeming to affect him at all. Perhaps the most bizarre instance of this happens when Tintin and the crew make the first manned journey to the moon, where they find water (see #7). On this extremely dangerous journey, a member of the crew helps some hijackers stow away in the rocket. After the hijackers are found out and then killed, Tintin and the Captain tie their accomplice in the hold and wonder how they will get back to Earth without enough oxygen. Wracked with guilt, the accomplice writes an apologetic suicide note and jumps out of the spaceship. Tintin is moved by this show of sacrifice, but not that much. And by the time the rocket lands, the guy is an afterthought. All I can say is that when I was 15, if I were on a mission to the moon and a member of my crew who had aided hijackers committed suicide by jumping out into space, just so I would have enough air to breathe to get back to Earth alive, I’m pretty sure I would have needed at least a little therapy afterward.

9. No one questions Tintin in any way, and everyone takes him completely seriously. If Tintin were a normal comic book, his main struggle would be getting the world to take him seriously. But when he meets the President of Peru and tells the President that he’s going to rescue Professor Calculus from the crazy People of the Sun, the President of Peru acts as if nothing at all bizarre is going on. (He even offers the Captain and Tintin a round of the Peruvian national liquor, which is far too strong for the Captain, who prefers Loch Lomond whiskey). Or, when Tintin faces the evil mobsters in Chicago, they never make any remarks to the effect of: “What, this guy’s just a KID, and he killed Mugsy?!” In fact, offing Tintin is their top priority, because the recognize how difficult he’s going to make their lives when he decides to come to Chicago to clean up the town and free it from Capone’s (yes, that Capone) iron grip.

10. Tintin gets gassed all the time. Seriously, it seems like at least once per adventure, he ends up in a closed room where he gets gassed.

11. There’s the hair. I’m going to sign off on this totally irrelevant and probably mind-numbingly boring blog by commenting on the hair, which just doesn’t make sense. Even if I understood everything else about Tintin, there’d still be the hair.

The idea of McSweeney’s as a hipster staple is pretty well worn… if the tightness of the pants clinging to the patrons of 826 Valencia didn’t drive this point home, the scene in the movie Juno when the main character cites “nerdy chicks who read McSweeney’s” as an identifiable “type” of person certainly did. When I saw that scene in the movie, I got a little sinking feeling, but not because I felt like I was about to lose some obscure pet interest to the mainstream. I just felt a little uneasy with the idea of McSweeney’s being pigeon-holed as an image accessory, kind of like when the main character in a movie is shown reading Sartre in order to establish that said character has more depth than his gruff exterior might suggest. Why do I even care about this in the first place? McSweeney’s has been criticized almost from the start as a self-indulgent, navel-gazing exercise, perfect for people in their mid-20’s to early-30’s who have $24 to spend on books they may read 10-15 pages of in between listening to emo music and sorting their vintage ringer t-shirts. However, I guess I didn’t realize until Juno quite how empty McSweeney’s is perceived to be.

As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I wouldn’t be writing this blog if I didn’t think this reputation was undeserved. I don’t love everything that shows up in McSweeney’s, and I think a lot of the stories are garbage, but there have also been some brilliant pieces of writing (one of my favorites, in case you were interested, is the hoax excerpt from Nabokov’s lost last novel that appears in #8). Nor does much of the writing necessarily connote false edginess more than any other literature that lies just barely within what could be considered countercultural. But that’s not what bothers me either. My biggest problem is that McSweeney’s is the most visible and daring source of unconventional book design in contemporary mid-to-large scale publishing, and it frustrates me that a publishing house that regularly advances the concept of book design like they do gets relegated to the hipster trash bin so easily.

At one point or another, I have had a full set of McSweeney’s issues in my possession, although I’ve always ended up selling the early ones, because, rare and valuable as they are, they don’t interest me as much as the later issues, which really push the envelope in terms of design. The first three issues are fairly modest paperbacks- all white wraps with an abundance of text on the front. They are fairly difficult to find clean, although it is possible (the last copies of #1 and #2 I sold were in such good condition that I argued with a couple booksellers over whether or not they were first editions or reprints). It is easy to turn a profit on these early issues under the right circumstances… as it often happens on eBay, one will show up and fetch a high price, and then a few more will pop up, temporarily driving down the price. I picked up a copy of #1 for $70 this way, and even more surprisingly, and absolutely pristine copy of #2 for $15. With issue #4, they started to break the mold a little bit, issuing a suite of chapbooks (most stapled, although one or two are perfect-bound) in a printed cardboard box. Issue 5 is a standard hardcover, although there are multiple variants of the book itself, as well as multiple dustjackets. This started (well, I can’t say for sure if it started it, but it represents it pretty well) McSweeney’s trend of deliberately frustrating collectors by making books all of whose variants are difficult to collect, or – even worse – next to impossible to keep in good condition. Issue 7 is a good example of this- it’s another collection of chapbooks, this time housed in a hardcover wrap-around sleeve, all held together with a giant rubber band. The boards of the hardcover are uncovered, untreated cardboard, making them susceptible to bumps and smudges. Of course, the rubber band decays over time (especially if it is actually used to hold the book together) and eventually breaks, yielding a less desirable copy. Issue 11 introduces multiple variants once again with printings in 4 colors (for reference: blue is the rarest, followed by yellow, brown, and then black).

And then there are the issues that defy categorization. Issue 16 features panels that fold out in every direction, opening to display a softcover book, an oversize deck of cards with a story printed on it, and a comb. Issue 17 looks like a bundle of mail. Issue 19 is a bunch of ephemera in a cardboard cigar box, along with a “literary supplement” (the actual McSweeney’s issue). Issue 22 has a magnetic binding with three detachable softcover books within it. Issue 23 has an enormous fold-out dustjacket with a volville by Dave Eggers printed on the reverse. Issue 24 has a Z-binding that opens from both sides. Issue 26 is broken down into small books that look like Armed Forces Edition books. And finally, issue 27 houses three books in a slipcase with widows cut into the sides so that the art on the outside of the case changes based on which books are facing out.

As a collector, I’m more interested in the early editions, because they are rarer and much more valuable. However, it’s telling that I don’t own any issues before #5… as a book nut, I’m way more interested in the recent issues, even though their resale value will be nil for at least 20 years. Even then, I don’t know how much they will appreciate. In 1998, when McSweeney’s was young, I imagine that their print runs were only 1000 to 2000 copies, while now, I have a feeling they print 10,000 to 20,000 of each issue. A full set would certainly be worth investing in from a collector’s perspective, but individual issues after #8 often have a hard time getting half their cover price in the marketplace. (Of course, there are always exceptions to this when buyers get overzealous, but it will be a good long time before any issue of McSweeney’s besides the first 3 can legitimately be called “rare.”)

I am ambivalent about book-as-art endeavors. I have seen books that are just plain unreadable (especially comically oversized ones – books that not surprisingly are also ridiculously expensive), and I think those books are pretty worthless, even if they are attractive sculptures. But, for the most part, I like it when books break out of the standard although very efficient format of housing pages within a front and back cover. Any book that requires CAD drawings or 3D mockups is worth a look, and McSweeney’s has done a fantastic job being inventive while continuing to put out commercially viable book objects. I just wish that that commercial success did more to push other publishers to take chances with their book designs, rather than being reflected back on the stereotypical McSweeney’s reader as someone who cares more about appearances than literature.

Any high-end publisher knows that the materiality of a book is a prime factor in whether or not collectors will pay a premium for its merchandise. I think it’s a shame that when McSweeney’s demonstrates this focus on materiality, they are criticized for being superficial and putting more effort into the exterior while passing off the actual printed pages as an afterthought. Instead, I see them bringing a type of book that is almost exclusively the domain of highly limited, uber-expensive editions to a price point that any bookstore patron can afford. For all the guff they give collectors with their multiple variants and fragile covers, I think McSweeney’s is really innovative in how they encourage readers to be interested not just in literature, but also in books themselves.

And, really, should I be complaining if the core readership of McSweeney’s is an army of girls in plaid skirts and horn-rimmed glasses?

Today, I spent the day shelving books for a reputable bay area bookseller. I worked for free (or, more accurately, I worked for a copy of Lyotard’s Pacific Wall published by Lapis Press and a Chipotle burrito), because I decided it was time to stop hanging out on the periphery of the book trade and get my hands dirty. Right now, the business side of bookselling is only a curiosity for me, given that I’ve spent a considerable amount of effort building a career in another field that I really enjoy. Still, I’m awfully young to start closing the book (ha) on any potential futures, and so I thought aligning myself with a friendly and influential book dealer couldn’t hurt. Maybe I won’t be an amateur book collector forever, after all.

As I had hoped, the day paid off in knowledge and anecdotes- like how purchases of large collections get financed (by elves, in case you were wondering), and interesting stories behind various oddball collectors and dealers. However, the real highlight came at the end of the day, when I was shown the SECRET BOOK. I was specifically asked not to discuss the secret book on the interwebs, so you’ll have to excuse my use of underscores in place of key information that would actually make this blog post worth reading. I’m guessing that the secret book is secret because _____________ doesn’t want people to make him offers on it, something that would surely happen if people knew that this book was in his possession.

Here are the details: the book is titled _________ and written by _________, and this copy was _________’s personal copy. It has a full page __________ that is signed and dated, as well as two original ________s on the back two pages. There is really only one like it in the world, and it is easily one of the most desirable items that ________ ever published. The fact that I know what fills those blanks is my payment for a day’s work… it’s exactly the kind of thing I’d hoped would happen when I broached the idea of volunteering in the first place — the opportunity to hold and leaf through a book so rare and so special that a seller with a warehouse full of rare and special books would designate it as secret.

After that, I told the bookseller that I wouldn’t mind spending one Saturday a month there.