Books are what I do : Write (very slowly), Read (rapidly or at leisure), Re-read (for pleasure or reference), Buy and Sell (my livelihood), Catalogue and Describe (ditto), Edit, Publish, Review (for The New York Review of Science Fiction and others), Recommend or Give away, Receive, and — unavoidably and repeatedly — Lift (whether singly or in boxes). I concede a fondness for private eye novels, equalled by my interest in the quirky, erudite, or obscure, and surpassed only by my love of the literature of the fantastic.
— Henry Wessells
21 June 08
links
Bookshelves on an upper floor in the house on the hill :
19 June 08
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor, 2008)
I am in the midst of this thought-provoking and fun book and plan to buy five or six copies to give to high school kids I know. I first heard about the book from Michael Swanwick and David Hartwell (at the Avram Davidson Society luncheon). The book has been widely praised and merits all the attention it will surely get.
14 June 08
Announcing a new book from Temporary Culture :
Forever Peace. To Stop War
Poem by Joe Haldeman
Nine Etchings by Judith Clute
11 x 14 inches, [4] pp. + 9 original etchings (each signed by the artist)Edition of 30 copies printed letterpress, with aquatint etchings printed by the artist from the original plates (two with added color), hand bound in patterned paper over boards. Forthcoming 31 October 2008 in Upper Montclair and London.
Terms of subscription and further details.
A bookcase in Camden Town :
The John Sladek Society ; or,
Other Events in Camden Town :
Announcing the formation, on 5 June 2008, of the John Sladek Society,
to promote interest and awareness in the life and writings of American-born
author
John
Sladek
(1937-2000),
whose novels include The Reproductive System (1968),
a book that established him as one of the great satirists of science fiction.
Sladek
was also founding editor of Ronald Reagan. The Magazine of Poetry (2
issues, 1967), where New Wave authors such as Thomas M. Disch, Pamela Zoline, J. G. Ballard,
and
others were contributors. Other works include The Müller-Fokker Effect (1970)
and the Roderick novels. Sladek lived in London through
1986,
when
he
returned
to the U.S. Maps (2002; Cosmos, 2003) collects
materials from all phases of Sladek’s career, and has a splendid introductory
essay by editor David Langford.
In a draft for an obituary of Sladek (published in Locus for April
2000),
Disch wrote :
“Back in January of 1968, when we were living in London,
in
a squalor worthy of today’s Mozambique but also in the glory of our own
self-declared genius, I wrote a poem in memory of John Sladek. He had not died
at that point, but I was sure he would in due course, and this way I would have
an elegy prepared against the day. It was a Petrarchean sonnet, no less . . . [Sladek]
was the kind of laughing fatalist who understood right from the cradle that the
grave was there as the punchline of life’s big joke.”
Sladek was resident at 221B Camden High Street, London, for several
years during the late 1960s,
with Zoline and Disch — the address is celebrated
in science fiction circles — and the
chief aim of the Society is to secure the placement on 221B Camden High Street
of a Blue Plaque designating the cultural significance of this address in the
literary landscape of London and the world ; and to encourage congenial
gatherings where one or more of the directors may be present. As Sladek will
only be eligible for designation in 2020 under the current nominating criteria
of
English Heritage, the John Sladek Society has a timetable of palaeontological
increments, but its activities will be continuous, and the society will be ready
to accelerate.
John Sladek was the high priest of something else , the clown in the choir, the valet who takes your keys to the Rolls and brings you an ice cream truck. He was a wonderfully funny and engaging writer, a satirist of the first rank, and he deserves to be remembered.
The founding directors of the Society are Thomas M. Disch, Honorary Chairman,
John Clute, Judith Clute, and Henry Wessells (to whom correspondence may be directed,
to : wessells [at] aol [dot] com ). Further details,
including the John Sladek Museum and a picture
of the London landmark
(now
handsomely
painted
burgundy),
will
be presented in a timely fashion.
A bookcase in an undisclosed location :
21 May 08
Recent Reading
— Earth House Hold by Gary Snyder (New Directions, [1969]). Interesting miscellany of journal entries, essays, and poetic fragments, deeply engaged with an ecological awareness and a pleasure in observing “the world-creating dance, ‘expanding form’ ” (the essay on Poetry and the Primitive. Notes on Poetry as an Ecological Survival Technique).
— Paris. A Poem by Hope Mirrlees (Hogarth Press, 1919 [but: 1920]). Modernist poem, "highly allusive and typographically original, it has claims to be the missing link between French avant-garde poetry and Eliot’s The Waste Land " (Julia Briggs, in the DNB).
— Steampunk Ann & Jeff Vandermeer, editors (Tachyon,
2008). Anthology of short fiction in the steampunk mode, including classic stories
such as “Lord Kelvin’s Machine” (1985) by
James P. Blaylock, and more recent pieces. The essay on origins briefly notes
Moorcock’s The
Warlord of the Air (1971) as proto-steampunk, and then examines nineteenth
century dime novels. I think that one must add Burroughs’ The Wild
Boys ,
also 1971, as proto-steampunk, for its nostalgic poetics of meals and names (the
litany
of railroad stations, extinct animals), the retrospective fashion, and general attitude. I don’t
have that book at hand or I would cite a couple of passages.
— Peregrine : Primus by Avram Davidson (Walker, 1971).
The best short summary of the Odyssey (pp. 45-6) anywhere ; and many other
whimsies and pleasures [Re-reading].
19 May 08
The affirmation in the negation ; or, The poem upon the stairs
— A curious (and unstaged) picture of a small group of books on my shelves.
The country you have never seen
Tales my father never told
Almost no memory
Why I don’t write like Franz Kafka
Things will never be the same
On the shelf below are to be found : A glimpse of nothingness , The empty mirror , and The power of nothingness .
3 May 08
Recent Reading
In the small hours of this morning I finished a review of the new collection of critical writings by Joanna Russ, The Country You Have Never Seen , which I first picked up a couple of months ago. Since my knowledge of Russ was limited to her novel The Female Man and a few short stories I read some of her earlier work : The Zanzibar Cat (1983) (short stories, two of which are critical fictions), How to Suppress Women’s Writing (1983), and To Write Like a Woman. Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction (1995). All highly recommended. The review will appear in a forthcoming issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction .
I have also been reading a curious new book by Gregory Gibson, Hubert’s
Freaks. The Rare-Book Dealer, the Times Square Talker, and the Lost Photos of
Diane Arbus (Harcourt, 2008). the adventures of Bob Langmuir :
"Bob’s archive was the same kind of evidence Harry Smith’s recordings
[The Anthology of American Folk Music (1952)] had been. Just as
Greil Marcus had presented [Bob] Dylan’s work in the context of the "mystical
body of the Republic" conjured up by Smith’s recordings, so the old, weird
America of Hubert’s, and Charlie, and the Bostocks would be the context
for the presentation of the Arbus photos."
The River Runs through It by Norman Maclean, with wood engravings by Barry Moser (Pennyroyal Press, 1989). A beautiful book and an engaging story of two brothers and their father in rural Montana in the late 1930s.
The Avram Davidson Society Luncheon
Each year in early May, the Avram
Davidson Society holds its annual luncheon to celebrate the life and writings
of the American fantasist Avram Davidson. This year, for the tenth anniverary
of its founding,
the
society was obliged to find a new venue, as the long-time favorite, Zen Palate
on Union
Square
East,
closed last autumn. Attendance is small but convivial, the conversation is varied,
and the new esoteric vegetarian restaurant of choice, Hangawi, has a wide selection
of appetizers
and starters to satisfy the secondary aim of the society : to enjoy the
luncheon. There were in attendance several founding directors of the society,
editors
of Davidson, and a new face.
27 April 08
The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
I am re-reading The Child in Time by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape,
1987), a taut and devastating book that is my favorite of his works. Part of
the enduring charm is in the complex layering of memory and event, the narrator’s
uncertainty about key incidents, and the utter Englishness of the
novel.
After the most suggestive passage about parked bicycles outside of Avram Davidson’s " Or
All the Seas with Oysters " , Stephen
looks
through
the
window
of
an
English
country
pub, The
Bell ,
and sees his parents before he was born (pp. 57-60). That the vision is experienced but
never quite explained (see pp. 91, 116-20, & 175-6) is the primary
reason the scene remains
fresh and memorable for me.
It strikes me that Stephen’s vision approaches a perfect response to William S. Wilson’s challenge * to a writer :
You had given me, not the motifs for the stories, but the impulse, the energy, as you said, to overcome the intimidations, and I had written as you had suggested, " The story I would not want my mother and father to read," " The story I would not want Owen to read," " The story I would not want my daughter to read," . . . I want you to do something for me that may do something for you, and that is to accept from me the sort of assignment that I used to accept from you. Now that you have read my letter, write the story that you would want me to read.
* " Conveyance : The Story I Would Not Want Bill Wilson to Read " in Why I Don’t Write Like Franz Kafka (Ecco Press, 1977).
On re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring some years back, I was surprised to find how economical Tolkien’s description of Merry and Pippin being trapped by the old willow tree actually is. Similarly, I was interested to note that Charles Darke’s descent into madness occupies rather fewer pages of The Child in Time than its shadow or resonances throughout the novel (the pathology of turning out his pockets for Stephen is at its heart) ; and that only in the strictly descriptive "five-hundred-acre wood" is there direct intimation of Christopher Robin’s Hundred Acre Wood . . .
24 April 08
A Field Guide to the North American Family. Concerning chiefly the Hungates and Harrisons ; with Accounts of their habits, nesting, dispersion, etc., and full descritpion of the plumage of both adult and young, within a taxonomic survey of several aspects of familial life by Garth Risk Hallberg (Mark Batty Publisher, 2007)
I found this ironic, postmodern illustrated book when I was in Bluestockings on Allen Street early in April and read it with increasing interest. The Field Guide is a series of sixty-three vignettes concerning two families on Long island, arranged in alphabetical sequence by "subject headings", with suggested cross-references to further shuffle the traditional linear narrative. The nature of reading is to create order and coherence, despite the odds , so as one reads through the Field Guide , the fragmented scenes cumulate into a genuine tragedy of wasted potential and loss : the ironic stance vanishes. A pleasure to read and look through.
Material
One house, three cars, four sets of clothes, gratuitous amounts of shoes, daily medications, weekly groceries, glossy monthlies, a year’s supply of firewood for the wood-burning stove, a garage worth of tennis rackets and basketballs, a lifetime of cigarettes. Honey can I, Daddy can’t I, Dad why can’t I, won’t you, will you ? Please would you write a check, please can I have some cash, please could we put your name down for a small donation ? Of course Frank would. He can. He could. For cellphones and Palm Pilots and personal computers, he’d shell out. For cornerstones and uniforms and meals on wheels for the elderly. These things cost money, but then that’s why he worked. In the end, it was easier to say yes.
The book apparently grew out of a website but the images there do not correspond to the commissioned photographs in the Field Guide .
The Ship That Sailed to Mars by William Timlin (1923)
It is always a joy to show a friend a classic book that one loves — and doubly so when the enthusiasm is shared immediately ! Ellen Kushner, author of The Privilege of the Sword (2006), etc., came by the booth at the New York Book Fair and we had a delightful time with Timlin’s masterpiece, The Ship That Sailed to Mars , and we could leaf through the artist’s sketchbook, too !
21 April 08
Life-changing
books : recommendations from 17 leading scientists
Interesting group of articles in the New Scientist . But
don't just look at the list, each of the essays unfolds into a glimpse
of other books
and
ideas
that
changed
the
scientists'
lives :
Jane Goodall, for example, mentions The Story of Doctor Dolittle and Tarzan
of the Apes as sparking her "burning desire to understand
what animals were trying to tell us". ( Link to the articles )
1. Farthest North — Steve Jones, geneticist
2. The Art of the Soluble — V. S. Ramachandran, neuroscientist
3. Animal Liberation — Jane Goodall, primatologist
4. The Foundation trilogy — Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist
5. Alice in Wonderland — Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist
6. One, Two, Three . . . Infinity — Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist
7. The Idea of a Social Science — Harry Collins, sociologist of science
8. Handbook of Mathematical Functions — Peter Atkins, chemist
9. The Mind of a Mnemonist — Oliver Sacks, neurologist
10. A Mathematician's Apology — Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician
11. The Leopard — Susan Greenfield, neurophysiologist
12. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior — Frans de Waal, psychologist and ethologist
13. Catch-22 / The First Three Minutes — Lawrence Krauss, physicist
14. William James, Writings 1878 - 1910 — Daniel Everett, linguist
15. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ? — Chris Frith, neuroscientist
16. The Naked Ape — Elaine Morgan, author of The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis
17. King Solomon's Ring — Marion Stamp Dawkins, zoologist
6 March 08
Books at work (part of an ongoing series) :
From [JC] : There two bookshelves, quite tall, in a corner ; I send the right side first, which has a lot of the research for [my] books going back to the beginning plus some newer things — you might be able to read the titles.
Here's the right-hand side, consisting mostly of odd multiple sets (Osbert Sitwell's memoirs, Victoria's letters, a Mathers and Mardrus Arabian Nights), some books important to me as a child, and a shelf of lit-crit (mostly Bloom.) [JC]
24 February 08
" I
disdain categories."
said [RH] in response to a request for information about his library, and then proceeded to delineate categories which he felt his wife would assign to the books in their house :
— Reference books (twentieth century art)
— His books
— Science fiction & thrillers
— My books
(as reported by [RH])
Recent reading & new arrivals :
— The Country You Have Never Seen. Essays and Reviews by
Joanna Russ (Liverpool University Press, [2007]). Collection of reviews dating
from December 1966 to 1981, essays (chiefly 1969 to 1981, and one from 1989) ;
and letters to literary journals (1970 to 1995). A few author's notes seem to
indicate subsequent attention to the pieces. A fierce intellect at work, directly
confronting topics that other reviewers and critics skirt or fail to notice.
Russ' readings of The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness by
Ursula K. Le Guin are fascinating. Original publication credits are clearly identified
but the index is profoundly flawed and only selectively notes titles and authors
from the first section of reviews (thus under Le Guin there is no reference to The
Left Hand of Darkness as it appears in " The Image of Women in Science
Fiction"). The book has no front matter, just a terse potted biographical note
on the back cover, and is as close to anonymous as it could be possible for a
book by such a notable author : except for the fireworks of the voice. I
shall need to find a copy of To Write
Like a Woman. Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction (1995) in order
to put this book into context.
— Infinite Riches. The Adventures of a Rare Book Dealer by David Magee (Eriksson, [1973]). Far and away the best memoir by an antiquarian bookseller, fun, self-deprecating, and just the right length. And boy ! did he have some great books pass across his desk. (I re-read this last week.)
— Bland Beginning. A Detective Story by Julian Symons
(Gollancz, 1949). Excellent novel of 1920s middle-class British life, murder,
and bibliography ; the bibliographical puzzle is adapted from John Carter & Graham
Pollard's
exposé of the forgeries of Thomas Wise, An Enquiry into the Nature
of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets .
— A Guide to Irish Fiction 1650-1900 by Rolf Loeber
and Magda Loeber (Dublin : Four Courts Press, [2006]).
12 February 08
Categories & methods of imposing order :
the following lists
of criteria for shelving and/or areas of collecting emerged during a recent
conversation.
— tall to small
— fiction to science
— art to science
— also embroidery and dye
— then there's Hitler, the secret room in which to hide like Anne Frank if Hitler seizes power (culls & stacks of unsorted books)
[RLB]
— plant books
— field guides
— old books with pictures
— art
— poetry
— books from HW
[AW]
— natural history
— botany
— cookbooks : food & sociology of food
— literature
— art
— fiction
[JB]
— history
— politics
— everything else
— current / books of past or future
[SS]
who also raised the question of the earthquake shelf or box : what to take from the burning building
— stories and fairy tales
— everything else
[MS]
— literature of the fantastic
— books by (or from) friends
— reference books & books about books
— OTW (off the wall) : odd, indispensable, or just weird
[HW]
Recently read :
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead, 2007).
This creaking and constantly evolving website of the endless bookshelf : I expect that some entries will be brief, others will take the form of more elaborate essays, and eventually I will become adept at incorporating photos or comments and interactivity. Right now you'll have to send links to me, dear readers. [HW]
electronym : wessells
at aol dot com
Copyright © 2008
Henry
Wessells and individual contributors.
Produced by Temporary
Culture, P.O.B. 43072, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043 USA.