$100
7. Firth, Desmond. The Benzene Ring. New York: Linden Press, 1986. Outrageously funny first novel about the publishing business. Released posthumously. Which reminds me. After my years at the bookstore in Cambridge, where I was getting minimum wage and amassing enormous credit card debt, I decided there was little choice but to retreat to the groves of academe, where, although I’d never had much success, Ihad learned to respect and admire books. My list of likely institutions included several top-flight northeastern universities, to which I intended to apply in both the English literature and philosophy departments. I was also interested in at least one art history program, so that I might be closer to a certain beloved expert in forgeries of pre-Columbian native American artifacts, namely, of course, Anna Feldman. Desmond Firth, friend of a friend, had gone to SUNY Binghamton before getting his job in New York in the computer books division of New American Library. Our mutual acquaintance, a ticket scalper, memorabilia collector, and paraplegic called Benny Fontaine, therefore suggested I call Firth to discuss the academic business with him. Since I’m a little disinclined to make or return any kind of phone call, it took longer than I anticipated to make contact with Firth, even if from reports Firth was eager to talk to me. However, by the time I dialed the unlisted number of his Jersey City apartment, he had already thrown himself in front of a Manhattan-bound PATH train. At rush hour. The Newport Mall station. For reasons unexplained. Persevering without Firth’s help I made application to some regional universities on my wish list, including UMass, only to be rejected from all these departments.
$ 15
8. Ford, David. Demanding That You Deny Me That Which I Offer You: Lacan as Advanced Capitalist in the Age of Post-Post-Structuralism. Santa Monica: Danger! Books, 1994. Including instruction inviaticals, topologies, rhizomes, and the petit objet a.
$25
A Fascinating Letter
9. Gelb, Mortimer. TLS from Gelb to Chip Man dible, dated 14 July 1973. Clearly typed on an early IBM electric without correcting key. The author was a minor playwright (Death on theBack Nine, e.g.), known mainly in the Providence area (including a disastrous tenure with the Trinity Repertory Company), but here he writes in his capacity as director of Woonsocket Camp for Boys (note letterhead), to the stepfather of a camper given to vexing kleptomaniacal tendencies. Gelb’s preoccupation, from a disciplinary standpoint, is with a vanishing collection of 1969 New York Mets baseball cards. The card featuring Nolan Ryan was later recovered. A fine example of how an early covetousness can pave the way for effective business tactics in later life.
$900
10. Holberg, Susan Emmerich. Blue and Gray Notebooks: A Novel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. New York Times notable book of 1985. Haven’t read it personally, and I don’t have to, but with a minuscule print run (1,500 copies), a meager advertising budget, negligible promotion, it has all the signs of an income-generating bonanza in my sector of the business. Especially now that the author, having appeared nude on the jacket, is a sensation! Dealers have been shadowing Holberg coast to coast on the promotional junket for her more recent White Male Oppressors. Listen, deplorable is the only appropriate term for the conduct of my professional brethren. If we can’t treat the authors of these works with dignity and kindness, our business is going to wither before our eyes. On the other hand, I personally brought a shopping cart full of seventy-three copies of this first novel to Holberg’s in-store appearance in Boston. I actually had to get a homeless fellow from the Common to help me carry the shipping containers. I guess, in a spirit of business conciliation, I should offer my strategy: I would carry five copies forward in the reception line, run back to the shopping cart — where my pal Spike would hand me five more — wait through the queue a second time. When, on each occasion, I reached the dais, where the author was rubbing her arthritic wrist, I would alter my expression slightly, from careworn sadness to earnest befuddlement, completely deceiving the poor, exhausted Holberg. When the rest of the crowd, with their dog-eared paperbacks that will never be worth a wooden nickel, were through extracting signatures from her (This is for my friend Kitty! She wants to be a writer too!), I asked Holberg if she wouldn’t mind signing just a couple more. There were in fact forty-nine additional copies left, and Spike gamely brought them forward. When I hinted that I might be associated with one of the larger chain merchandisers, Holberg obligingly complied. After twenty-five copies, however, she handed the Sharpie back to me. “Why don’t you sign them all yourself? Nobody’ll know the difference.”This copy near mint, rare as such, with an interesting inscription, The authors hand as complex promotional swindle, S.E.H. 6/16/85.
$ 150
An Unusual Association
11. Holberg, Susan Emmerich. White Male Oppressors. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. It wasn’t long after my initial conversation with Holberg, that, at a yard sale, I stumbled upon this copy of her second novel, inscribed to none other than Anna Feldman! The inscription reads in part, One broad to another, enduring fealty, don’t let the bastards grind you down. I was drinking an Irish coffee, about ten in the morning. This was in Glastonbury, Connecticut, I believe, and the people having the yard sale — their belongings flapping from hastily strung laundry lines — were the Weavers. When I cornered the woman of the house, a pudgy, outdated example of the nineteen-fifties bombshell wearing the obligatory pelican blue eye shadow, I demanded to know where she’d gotten this first edition of the Holberg. She remarked that there was no reason to use threatening language. I’d used no such thing. She’d gotten the volume at the library sale in town, simply because she liked the dust jacket, with its leering platoon of American militarists. Supposedly, Mrs. Weaver claimed, she didn’t know Holberg personally, had no idea of the value of the book (which in fact had one of the Weavers’ orange stickers on it: 500), and was in the process of declaring bankruptcy. I felt I needed to keep the Glastonbury residence of the Weavers under surveillance for a few days, from the far side of Oakdale Blvd., yet I noticed nothing out of the ordinary except for Mr. Weaver’s tendency to sob while cutting the lawn. Around the back of his ranch house he would go, on his riding mower, his face a mask of anguish.
$275
Very, Very Unstable In the First Place