Book Review: "McSweeney's, Vol. 17"

McSweeney's 17 is a bundle of mail. That's right, a bundle of mail (addressed to Maria Vasquez of Arlington, VA), rubber-banded together. A full color advertisement flyer for Pantalaine ("Provisioners of America's Finest Plural Clothing") surrounds the rest of the pile, which includes a brochure for Tyrolian Harvest gift baskets, some "snail mail spam" from a Bangladeshi widow, a very odd legal document containing many pictures of red cars and dead fish, a prospective periodical of "very new artwork" (Envelope), and two journals: Yeti Researcher ("The magazine of the Society for Cryptic Hominid Investigation") and Unfamiliar ("a twice monthly magazine of different fiction").

Very imaginative, and quite entertaining. It must be so fun to sit around and come up with ideas for things like this! While some of the short stories in Unfamiliar were a little bizarre, the rest of the packet was fascinating to read through. Kudos, McSweeney's folks.

Boston Book Weekend!

It's that time again!

The Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair will be this weekend (Friday 5-9; Saturday 12-7; Sunday 12-5) at the Hynes Convention Center. Check out the activities, browse the list of exhibitors and cultural partners, and view some highlights. I'll be at the fair most of the weekend, including shifts at the RBMS and Ticknor Society tables on Saturday.

Also this weekend:

- The Boston Book, Print & Ephemera Show will be held at the Radisson from 9-4 on Saturday. Info here.

- The Skinner auction will begin at 11 a.m. on Sunday morning. I've done a preview of that sale, here.

Catalogs & Lists

A few interesting new catalogs out this week:

- from Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts, a beautiful list of books about books (my favorite, of course) and a list of post-1820 Americana. I love to read their lists - if there were awards for the best book catalogs/lists (you know, maybe there should be ...) , PRB&M would have to be considered the heavy favorite in many, many categories.

- from Justin Croft, a list of French Books & Manuscripts (PDF).

- from Thomas A. Goldwasser, Americana and World Figures, plus Literature (PDF). The latter includes an 1803 Thomas Jefferson letter priced at $250,000; a copy of Pope's works once owned by Jefferson ($17,500); and a pair of interesting George Washington letters.

- from Lorne Blair, a list of books to be offered at the Boston Book Fair (more on which later this morning). List in PDF.

- from Oak Knoll, the reference library of the Zaehnsdorf Company.

Ring of Library Book Thieves Indicted

The AP is reporting that twelve people have been indicted in Prince George's County, MD for the theft of textbooks from the county library system. "Prince George's County authorities said the suspects, at least some of whom were related [and who range in age from 20 to 51], withdrew close to the limit of 75 books from 12 of the library system's 18 locations. Each is charged with theft over $500 and faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison." Authorities said local colleges were also hit, with the total worth of stolen items approaching $140,000.

"'They're traveling quite far and wide for the little bit of money they get,' said Mary Eilerman, chief of security at Harford Community College, also victimized. 'They were ripping off the bar codes and handing them over to book consignment shops as quickly as they could.' Eilerman said a $100 textbook would yield about $3 or $4 at a consignment shop. She said one of the suspects told her she was using the cash from the thefts to buy Ecstasy."

I'm surprised we're not seeing more of this, frankly.

Greer on Proust

In Sunday's Guardian, Germaine Greer asks "Why do people gush over Proust?" She begins her column with this barn-burner of a paragraph: "If you haven't read Proust, don't worry. This lacuna in your cultural development you do not need to fill. On the other hand, if you have read all of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, you should be very worried about yourself. As Proust very well knew, reading his work for as long as it takes is temps perdu, time wasted, time that would be better spent visiting a demented relative, meditating, walking the dog or learning ancient Greek."

Greer goes on to criticize Proust's editors, translators, and gushers, but particularly his grammatical style: "If Proust did not make such a snobbish to-do about diction, it might be easier to forgive him for his battering of the sentence to rubble and his apparent contempt for the paragraph. He relies on commas and semi-colons to do what should be done by full-stops, of which there are far too few, many of them in the wrong place. Sentences run to thousands of words and scores of subordinate clauses, until the reader has no recollection of the main clause or indeed whether there ever was one."

Agnès Poirier responds, suggesting that Greer must have been knocked on the head by Proust's works while dusting her bookshelves. "What exactly is the problem with Proust according to Greer? It's too long, apparently, therefore too expensive to acquire, and impossible to read in the bath. Here is literary criticism of the highest nature." She takes issues with Greer's picking on Proust's grammar ("artistic style," she says), and with translations. Poirier concludes "I won't start defending Proust and praise his prose. You only need to read him to know that it won't be wasted time. It could even change your life."

Well. All I know is, having tried to get through about six pages of Proust and giving it up for temps perdu, I'm with Greer. But to each their own. If it makes you happy, read Proust. If it doesn't, don't. And if you're Greer and Poirier, keep up the exchange, it's entertaining for the rest of us.

Google Books Settlement Extension Granted

Google and its partners in the great Google Books Settlement have been granted an extension in filing their revised settlement, Publishers Weekly reports. Judge Denny Chin agreed to allow the parties to file their revisions "no later than this Friday, November 13." (The original submission deadline was Monday, 9 November).

In their letter requesting the extension Google & Co. indicated that they "have been in discussions with the Department of Justice both prior to and since the October 7 status conference. We met with the Department as recently as this past Friday, November 6."

Book Review: "The Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine"

Jack Fruchtman, Jr. has, in The Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) written the most concise and useful synopsis to date of Paine's political, religious, and economic philosophies. While Paine can "defy categorization," Fruchtman suggests, "by illuminating his thought, we can discover who he was and how he figured ideologically in the revolutionary mood of the late eighteenth century" (p. 4). Paine may have been "consistently convinced that he was always right and that anyone who opposed him was patently wrong and badly uninformed" (p. 3-4) - the more things change, &c. - he was, Fruchtman argues, remarkably consistent in developing a series of arguments for social change based around a set of major themes.

The themes Fruchtman sees in Paine's works, and which he examines in turn for the purposes of this study, are outlined on pp. 7-8, but can be summarized as: faith in God as benevolent deity; hatred of rank, privilege, corruption, injustice; democratic republics with written constitutions (and universal male suffrage); trust in civic-mindedness of citizens; strong commercialized society with a social welfare system; a strong navy, just taxation, and a fair banking system. Fruchtman adds a seventh theme - a belief in the transformative power of revolutions - but with the necessary caveat that Paine's views on this shifted after he was tossed into prison when things went sour in the years after the French Revolution.

Fruchtman notes that because Paine was writing not for the educated elite, but for "the people," and not to educate necessarily but to persuade, he "was often not particularly rigorous in his argumentation, frequently using sneering ridicule, personal invective, and entertaining humor to score points at the expense of those whom he thought were scoundrels and mountebanks. He certainly used hard evidence and sound theoretical principles, but only when he thought they played to his advantage. If the facts failed to fit his argument, he often discounted or ignored them. If a theory proved him wrong, he simply rejected it or even denied its existence as a rational principle" (p. 14). But, for all this, Fruchtman maintains, Paine was "the era's preeminent philosopher of political and social transformation" (p. 14).

In a series of six chapters, each of about thirty pages (the entire book is just 165 pages), Fruchtman delves into the themes outlined above, tracking Paine's life through his writings (offering both biographical details and a close reading of the works). The fifth chapter was the one I found most interesting, as Fruchtman makes the case for Paine's similarities with Alexander Hamilton on the question of economic policies (to a great extent they agreed on the means, but their vision of the ends were near-polar opposites). The first chapter, dealing with Paine's religious beliefs, was also quite intriguing, as was Fruchtman's depiction of his social welfare ideas on p. 125 (calling these "extraordinary" seems strikingly apt).

Fruchtman lets Paine do the summing up, quoting from an 1806 letter in which the great polemicist writes "My motive and object in all my political works, beginning with Common Sense, ... have been to rescue man from tyranny and false systems and false principles of government and enable him to be free, and establish government for himself" (p. 151).

I should also note the excellent notes which Fruchtman has provided, which would allow anyone interested in the aspects of Paine's writings outlined here to dig as deeply as they liked into the existing scholarship on the questions. They're a delight. The book as object is also noteworthy, being very well designed and printed in a very crisp, nice font.

Lucid and succinct. A good book indeed.

Auction Report: PBA & Upcoming

At the PBA Galleries Americana, Cartography, and Travel & Exploration of 5 November, the highlight was a copy of the first English edition of Patrick Gass' A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery ... (London, 1808), which sold for $7,800. The nine volumes of the fourth and fifth series of Peter Force's American Archives (1837-1848), including a flawed copy of the folding Declaration of Independence (est. $20,000-30,000) did not sell, and the clipped signature of Billy the Kid (est. $10,000-15,000) was withdrawn.

Don't forget the Skinner sale in Boston on 15 November.

Some upcoming auctions at Christie's London:

- On 23 November they'll sell Fine Printed Books, Manuscripts, and Traditional Sports. Notable items from among the 314 lots include include two of Sigmund Freud's walking sticks (lot 139, $3800-5300); Leo Africanus's rare description of Africa, De Totius Africae descriptione, 1556, of which only two copies have sold at auction since 1975 (lot 235, $4600-7500); the first edition of Gervase Markham's important book on horsemanship, Cavelarice, or The English Horseman, 1607 (lot 54: est. $3100-4500); a selection of books by H.G. Wells with interesting original drawings by the author (including lot 74, $1600-2300; and lot 75, $910-1400; a nice presentation copy of Evelyn Waugh's Mr Loveday's Little Outing, 1937, inscribed by Waugh to the daughter of Earl Beauchamp who served as model for Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited (lot 107, $1100-1500), and quite a few interesting Russian items including some very interesting Nabokov titles.

- On 24 November, Christie's will sell Valuable Manuscripts and Printed Books. Designed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, this sale comprises 81 lots, including some lovely Darwiniana. Lot 46 is a copy of the four-volume Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle (London: 1839), estimated at $29,898-41,525; lot 47 is one of just 15 copies of Darwin's On the Connexion of Certain Volcanic Phenomena in South America (a paper delivered at the Geological Society in 1838 and published the following year, est. $19,932-29,898). Lot 48 is a beautiful copy of the first edition of Origin, estimated at $66,440-99,660.

But the expected high spots of this auction lie among the non-Darwin items. A 1547 illuminated manuscript of Olivier de la Marche's Le Chevalier délibéré (Lot 7, est. $581,350-830,500) with very interesting provenance is sure to be extremely interesting, as is Lot 5, a c. 1470 illuminated manuscript on vellum of Petrarch's Il Canzoniere and I Trionfi and related works (est. $498,300-664,400). A lovely colored Blaeu atlas (1649-55), lot 43, is estimated at $215,930-298,980. This is a small sale, but it's got some real gems.

Links & Reviews

- Over at The Little Professor, Miriam Burstein engages in a very useful "thought experiment" about what a "bookless library" might look like (she's responding to this). It's a good start, that's for sure.

- Along the same vein, the Open Content Alliance released their "baseline requirements" for what they'd accept from the revised Google Books Settlement, due to be released on Monday.

- A 1477 Ptolemy map printed at Bologna set a record auction price this week, selling for 210,000 Euros ($312,000).

- Author Annie Proulx has donated her papers to the New York Public Library.

- Some historical/government action this week: a Senate hearing was held on several bills relating to national parks in/near Boston: one would change the name of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow House to "Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarter’s National Historic Site." Another bill expands the boundaries of the Adams National Historical Park to include the Quincy Homestead.

- The Siegfried Sassoon archive is likely to stay in the UK, after the National Heritage Memorial Fund announced that it would grant £550,000 to Cambridge University toward the purchase of the materials. The final £110,000 will probably be obtained.

- The NYPL was profiled in Friday's NYTimes; this is a fun piece, noting the "cabinet of curiosities," the first book lent out, the oldest/heaviest items in the collections, &c.

- Rare archival materials by Leonardo da Vinci are on display at the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana in Milan, through December.

- In the second installment of their "Difficult Books" series, The Millions tackles Richardson, Sterne, and Melville.

- The November Fine Books Notes is up: it includes some biblio-gift guides, including a book list by Nick Basbanes; and an interview with Robert Darnton.

- Over at Schott's Vocab, readers take a stab at reorganizing the library; this weekend they're changed with making up some "before & after" clues, composite individuals.

- From McSweeney's, "The Police Blotter Shakespeare."

- For the NYT's Paper Cuts blog, Woody Holton answers some questions about his normal day, writing on a laptop (he's looking for one he can use outside) and what he's reading and working on now.

- Marjorie Kehe asks can't bookstores, libraries and Kindles co-exist peacefully? Meanwhile, over at Bookride, the downsides of e-books.

- Allison Hoover Bartlett answers questions about The Man Who Loved Books Too Much in the Boston Globe.

- In Monday's Globe, David Mehegan has an essay about the future of the printed codex, asking "Why do we keep books?" He writes "Reading and having books is like wearing clothes. Much of the year, we could go around naked, if we could think of where to keep our keys. But that would not seem quite natural. I would feel abandoned, almost defenseless, without my books. Do others remember, as I do, where they were when they read certain books that changed everything? In a strange way, if I keep the book, I keep that memory. And if I know, or knew, the writer, it’s like keeping a friend nearby."

- Among the many cool images in the BibliOdyssey Image Dump is a very cool and previously unknown drawing of a dodo, which recently sold at Christie's for £44,500.

Reviews

- Jonathan Yardley reviews Kirk Savage's Monument Wars in the Washington Post.

- In the New Yorker, Jill Lepore reviews several new histories of murder with a lengthy essay on the strange question of just what makes American culture so much more "murderous" than other affluent societies. In a followup Book Bench post, Lepore discusses Edmund Lester Pearson, who wrote true crime stories for the New Yorker in the 1930s and was also responsible for the hoax that led to the name of this blog.

- Christopher Howse reviews Dan Cruickshank's The Secret History of Georgian London in the Telegraph.

- Woody Holton's Abigail Adams is reviewed by Diana Raabe in the In Denver Times.

- Liesl Schillinger reviews Barbara Kingsolver's Lacuna in the NYTimes, as do Ron Charles for the Washington Post and Kai Maristead in the LATimes.

- Robert Merry's A Country of Vast Designs is reviewed by Aram Bakshian, Jr. in the WSJ.

- Michael Dirda reviews Michael Slater's Charles Dickens in the Washington Post.

- Allison Hoover Bartlett's The Man Who Loved Books Too Much is reviewed by Carmela Ciuraru in the LATimes.

- Also in the NYTimes, Harold Bloom reviews David Nokes' Samuel Johnson.

Book Recommendation: "Abigail Adams"

As I wrote earlier in the week, I've been completely enjoying Woody Holton's Abigail Adams. I finished it this morning, and can only reiterate my earlier comments. It's one of the best biographies I've ever had the privilege to read, being at once pleasantly readable and also carefully researched. It breaks much new ground in pointing out the important role Abigail's financial prowess played in creating the family's fiscal stability: "it may be that if [John Adams'] financial records had survived the ravages of time as well as his correspondence did," Holton writes on p. 277, "they would show his wife making a larger contribution to the family's wealth than he did." A remarkable statement, perhaps, but not if you know Abigail as Holton reveals her.

A fine book, which I heartily recommend to all.

This Week's Acquisitions

Here's what arrived this week:

- A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation by Catherine Allgor (Henry Holt, 2006). Harvard Bookstore.

- Revolution Downeast: War for American Independence in Maine by James S. Leamon (University of Massachusetts Press, 1993). Raven.

- The Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine by Jack Fruchtman, Jr. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). Publisher.

- Abigail Adams by Woody Holton (Free Press, 2009). Work.

- Modern Chivalry by Hugh Henry Brackenridge; edited by Ed White (Hackett, 2009). Publisher.

- An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson by Andro Linklater (Walker & Company, 2009). Publisher.

- The Maine Woods: A Fully Annotated Edition by Henry D. Thoreau; edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer (Yale University Press, 2009). Publisher.

Recent Print Articles

Some articles in various print publications I've read and enjoyed recently:

- Hannah Farber, "The Rise and Fall of the Province of Lygonia, 1643-1658." The New England Quarterly LXXXII:3 (September 2009), pp. 490-513. A fascinating look at a failed colony in southern Maine.

- James S. Leamon, "The Parson, the Parson's Wife, and the Coming of the Revolution to Pownalborough, Maine." The New England Quarterly LXXXII:3 (September 2009), pp. 514-528. Another Maine piece, this one on Anglican minister Jacob Bailey's run-ins with the forces of revolution in the early 1770s (including his refusal to read the Declaration of Independence from his pulpit as ordered).

- Philip Ranlet, "A Safe Haven for Witches? Colonial New York's Politics and Relations with New England in the 1690s." New York History 90:1/2 (Winter/Spring 2009), pp. 37-57. An examination of why accused MA and CT witches sought and received refuge in New York; Ranlet also offers up a medical explanation for NY Governor Lord Bellomont's erratic behavior during his tenure.

- Maureen E. Mulvihill, "Literary Property Changing Hands: The Peyraud Auction (New York City, 6 May 2009)." Eighteenth-Century Studies 43:1 (2009), pp. 151-163. A discussion of the sale of Paula Peyraud's collection, the "largest collection in private hands of books, manuscripts, and images associated with the Georgian period," including much related to the "literary ladies" of the time, plus Samuel Johnson, Pope, Burke and others. Mulvihill recaps the sale, and includes information on buyers where known, and much background on the collection. [Update: Since I read it, the article has become available online, here (PDF)].

Reading Abigail

Just a quick note on why things are so quiet around here: I'm totally absorbed in Woody Holton's new biography, Abigail Adams (Free Press, 2009). It's as good a biography as any I've ever read; a really excellent and very new interpretation of the total Abigail Adams: businesswoman, political strategist, savvy manager, mother, wife, friend, the whole shebang. It's commanded every spare moment, as a good book should. While I can't provide a full review (being acknowledged in the volume) I will say it's truly a delight to read, and its portrait will, I suspect, surprise and delight more than a few people.

Holton will be at MHS this coming Monday evening, 9 November, for the official launch of Abigail Adams. More info here; do join us if you can.