The Private Library

Welcome to The Private Library!

We appreciate your visit.  To help you acclimate to our blog, we have listed below permalinks to several of our past posts. These posts will quickly get you up to speed on what we're all about.  (Because many of our posts are in fact a series of posts on the same topic, the fifth permalink listed below takes you to the first post in a series--click on the arrow at the top of the post to go to the next post in that series.)  

• Why a private library?
• Making The Private Library Mobile
• Links & the Private Library
• What's really important on this blog?
• How to Build a Private Library for Less Than $1 a Day
• How to Furnish Your Private Library

As of April 2012, this is a static archive.   We no longer post new original content.  We hope you enjoy the posts and links archived here.

[Note: The Private Library is a personal, non-commercial, educational blog operating under the Fair Use provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  All copyrights, trademarks and service marks encountered on this blog are the property of their respective owners and are subject to all laws pertaining thereto. For all other matters, see our Creative Commons License in the right-hand column of this blog.  P.S.: The image, above left, is Carl Spitzweg's Der Bücherwurm (1850).]

Those We Leave Behind at The Private Library

If money were no object, what one book would you most like to add to your private library?

This writer has posed that question to a great many book collectors over the past four+ decades.  The answers received to this writer's question, though, may surprise you.  When the choice comes down to a single book, the book chosen is almost never a rare or expensive title.  Rather, it's usually a book with exceptionally strong sentimental value.

For a collector in Texas, for example, it was a well-worn copy of The Poky Little Puppy.  It was the first book the collector had ever managed to read entirely by himself.  He lost the book when he moved to New York to attend college.

For a collector in Georgia, it was a Bible which had been in her family since before the Civil War.  It wasn't theology, though, that drove this collector's desire.  The first few blank leaves in that Bible contained a manuscript family tree that went back almost ten generations.  The book was lost during a flood several decades ago.

For a collector in Maine, it was a tattered paperback reprint of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  The collector's father was a workaholic, who relaxed by rebuilding motorcycles.  It was the only book the collector could ever recall his father reading for pleasure.  After his father died, the collector's mother sold the book (for a nickel) at a yard sale.

If money were no object, what one book would you most like to add to your private library...?

The Japanese Literature Publishing Project and The Private Library

If you are like most Western book collectors, you probably have little familiarity with Japanese literature. Perhaps because the Japanese language relies on three different writing systems (two of which are syllabary systems), this writer has encountered few private collections of Japanese literature that were not assembled by native speakers of the language.

This is unfortunate, for not only has Japan produced some of the world's greatest literature, it has produced some of the earliest surviving forms of world literature. Among these are one of the earliest surviving examples of the novel (The Tale of Genji); one of the world's earliest surviving examples of a story involving time travel (Urashima Tarō); Man'yōshū, one of the world's earliest surviving poetry anthologies; and Konjaku Monogatarishū, a 31-volume compilation of very early folktales from Japan, China and India, of which 28 volumes survive.

  

Western book collectors might be more familiar with Japanese literature if such literature were widely translated into Western languages, but such is not the case.   The Japanese language is only partly to blame for this situation.  History, too, is a culprit.

For over two hundred years, from ca. 1633-1853, Japan was largely isolated from the West. This at the very time when much other world literature was undergoing enormous change, and when the products of such change were being translated into a wide variety of European vernacular languages.

By contrast, the first translation of Japanese literature into German didn't take place until 1847. (Because August Pfizmaier's translation of Ryutei Tanehiko's 1821 story Ukiyoe Six-Paneled Folding Screen included reproductions of the original Japanese text and illustrations, this work became the first Japanese text ever printed in Europe from movable types, the font having been cast in the previous year, at Pfizmaier's direction, for the Imperial printing office in Vienna. The copy to your left is via the Tokyo Printing Museum.)

The Tale of Genji, the work of Japanese literature perhaps best known to Western book collectors, did not receive its first English-language translation until 1882, and its first complete English-language translation (by Arthur Waley) did not see its sixth and final volume published until 1933.

For reasons both linguistic and historical, then, most works of Japanese literature, like most Japanese authors, remain virtually unknown in the West. The exceptions (think modern Japanese authors Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami, for example, or Nobel Laureates Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburō Ōe) stand out precisely because their works have been translated into numerous Western languages.

  

This blinkered neglect of Japan's literary traditions by the West, though, may slowly be changing.  In 2002, Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs launched a bold initiative to better promote Japanese literature worldwide.  The Japanese Literature Publishing Project (JLPP) is designed to promote Japanese literature of the past 150 years by arranging overseas publication in a variety of (mostly Western) languages. As of 2010, 121 titles had been selected for translation, with more to come. (The publishing cycle is such that new titles are selected roughly every two years, which means that in 2012 we likely will see a new round of titles selected.)

  

Besides English, initial titles have been published in French, German, Russian, Portugese and Turkish. To insure the highest quality translations possible, JLPP also instituted, in 2011, the 1st JLPP Translation Competition.

  

So far as this writer has been able to determine, this is the very first translation of many of these titles into any Western language.  A ground-floor opportunity for book collectors so inclined....

FB&C and The Private Library

As many longtime TPL readers are aware, for the past couple of years it has been this writer's privilege and honor to contribute an occasional piece to the Fine Books & Collections Blog, official blog of Fine Books & Collections, the magazine (better known to its many fans as FB&C).

  

Founded back in 2003 as OP magazine, and now under the capable editorial direction of Rebecca Rego Barry, FB&C is one of the finest magazines of its type that remains in print. It regularly features compelling news and articles about every aspect of book collecting, and numbers among its regular contributors such worthies as Nicholas Basbanes, Joel Silver, Jeremy Dibbell, Nate Pedersen ... to name only a few who come immediately to mind.  

If you have any interest at all in collecting the printed book, your faithful blogger considers FB&C a must buy ... and cheap (only U.S. $25.00 for four print issues per year).  FB&C also sponsors a companion free monthly eNewsletter, delivered directly to the email address of your choice.

  

I bring FB&C to your attention because print magazines devoted to book collecting are few and far between.  Without the active financial support of readers, such magazines tend to cease publication, never again to be seen.  

FB&C itself disappeared from print a while back, only to be resurrected.  That alone, in this writer's humble opinion, deserves the respect and support of everyone who still collects the printed book....

From The Private Library's Archives: The World's Greatest Independent Booksellers and The Private Library (cont.)

We have observed in several previous posts (see, for example, our post of 20 June 2009) that if history has taught us anything, it is that some folks prefer their ideas to everyone else's ideas. This simple fact has led to the destruction of countless libraries, public and private, over the centuries.

But it also has led to the shuttering, and persecution (and often prosecution), of countless independent booksellers over the centuries as well.  In our own times, few independent booksellers have stood against the pernicious and malevolent influences of groupthink (or suffered the consequences of their opposition) as well as City Lights, the infamous (and beloved) San Francisco bookseller and publisher:

Founded in 1953 by Peter D. Martin, City Lights Books was the first all paperback bookstore in the USA. 

Martin had previously established a magazine named City Lights (after the Charlie Chaplin film) to publish Bay Area writers. This led to one of the magazine's writers, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, going into partnership with Martin later in 1953.  In 1955, the two launched a book-publishing venture, City Lights Publishing.  (Martin sold his share of the businesses to Ferlinghetti later that same year and moved to New York, where he opened New Yorker Bookstore, which specialized in cinema.)

Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York, though much of his early childhood was spent in France (he eventually would earn a Ph.D. at the Sorbonne).  He served in the Navy during World War II (taking part in the Normandy assault).  At the time he met Martin, Ferlinghetti was working in San Francisco as a painter, art critic and was teaching French for an adult education program.

It was City Lights publishing and promotion of the so-called Beat Poets that first, and most famously, brought this landmark bookseller into conflict with the "powers that be."  When City Lights published and sold copies of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems (number four in the publisher's Pocket Poet Series), Ferlinghetti was arrested on obscenity charges, though later acquitted in a landmark court case that established a legal precedent for the publication and distribution of controversial works of "redeeming social importance:"

As other tenants moved out of its building, City Lights took over their space, eventually acquiring the entire building.  It now offers three floors of both hardbacks and paperbacks, including many titles that other bookstores are unwilling to handle.  

In 2001, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors took the unusual step of designating both the building and the business an historic landmark for "playing a seminal role in the literary and cultural development of San Francisco and the nation."  A few years earlier (1998), Ferlinghetti--the author of more than thirty books of poetry--was named San Francisco's first Poet Laureate:

And the beat goes on....

OenoLit and The Private Library

Given that the first book printed from moveable type in Western Europe contains numerous references to wine, and given that the technology for printing that first book may itself have been modeled upon the screw press used to extract wine from grapes, this writer has always found it puzzling that the cultivation, processing, distribution and consumption of wine is rarely a major thematic element in works of fiction.  

(I should note that this post is concerned only with wine made from grapes, and the fiction associated with same.  For a more  encompassing view of wine -- including rice wine -- visit Cerebral Boinkfest.  In the absence of a better signifier -- VinoLit having already been spoken for by Mike Madigan's YouTube show -- I have coined the term OenoLit to refer to all such fiction.)

The non-fiction titles that have been penned about such matters constitute an enormous body of literature.  In fact, many such works were among the earliest titles printed in Western Europe (image below left via Bea & Peter Siegel Books):

  

These non-fiction titles cover virtually every aspect of the world of wine, and range from the virtually non-collectable (unless you have very deep pockets) to the mostly virtual (and inexpensive).  [The 1495 German edition of Crescenzi's Opus ruralium commodorum, below left, is via Washington University:)

  

The above notwithstanding, fictional depictions of the world of vineyards and wineries and oenophiles represent but a teeny, tiny part of the literary largess.  

(Poetry has celebrated "all things oeno" for thousands of years.  The poem below, for example, was penned by China's renowned Song Dynasty poet Su Shi in the 11th century CE.  It [and many similar examples] can be seen at Ridge Vineyards' excellent blog, 4488:

              I raise my cup and invite
       The moon to come down from the
            Sky. I hope she will accept
            Me. I raise my cup and ask
       The branches, heavy with flowers,
          To drink with me. I wish them
           Long life and promise never
            To pick them. In company
        With the moon and the flowers,
          I get drunk, and none of us
            Ever worries about good
          Or bad. How many people
        Can comprehend our joy? I
      Have wine and moon and flowers.
Who else do I want for drinking companions?

Numerous poetic traditions celebrate the world of wine, and many of these traditions pre-date [by several centuries] the advent of the printed book:)

  

Admittedly, folks have been composing poetry a lot longer than they have been composing prose works like novels, novellas and short stories.  Even so, a recent search on OCLC using variations of keywords like "wine fiction" reveals a mere handful of titles (at most, a few hundred) wherein the world of wine is a major thematic element:

  

Fortunately for the average book collector, much of this fiction is genre fiction -- often by well-known writers -- which means that it is both readily available and (perhaps more important) affordable.

Because the cultivation, processing, distribution and consumption of wine often requires, and attracts, a substantial amount of money, it probably comes as no surprise that much OenoLit is focused on murder and mayhem:

  

Only occasionally does OenoLit attract the attention of the general public, most typically when an OenoLit title gets turned into a movie.  For the most part, OenoLit seems to be appreciated only by the rare book collector who specializes in this type of fiction (or who includes such fiction as part of a more encompassing selection of literature about the noble grape and its lesser siblings:)

  

Like other food- and drink-themed fiction -- e.g., ChocoLit and Coffeehouse Mysteries -- it appears that the publishing potential of OenoLit has yet to be fully realized....

Epithalamia and The Private Library

Epithalamium: From the Greek epi ("at") and thalamos ("nuptial chamber").  A celebratory song or poem, often in sonnet form, in honor of a bride or groom or both, usually praising their virtues, describing the events of the wedding day, and wishing them good fortune....

ODLIS (Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science)

Even among those few folks who still collect printed books of poetry, it's hard to find many who focus on the epithalamium (pl. epithalamia), one of the most ancient of all types of poetry in the Western world. Basically a type of ode, the epithalamium counts among its better known practitioners such ancient worthies as Sappho, Pindar and Catullus; Renaissance masters such as Ronsard, Donne and Edmund Spenser; and modern poets such as Gerald Manley Hopkins and A. E. Housman.  (The examples below are via the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek and the Open Library, respectively:)

  

It is in fact to Sappho that the earliest known literary epithalamia (ca. 600 BCE) usually are attributed:

Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings

All desired and timely things.

All whom morning sends to roam,

Hesper loves to lead them home.

Home return who him behold,

Child to mother, sheep to fold,

Bird to nest from wandering wide:

Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.

  

Theocritus (inventor of the pastoral) is, however, the more famous author of epithalamia among the ancient Greeks (the example following is from his The Epithalamy of Helen):

...What Bridegroom! dear Bridegroom! thus early abed and asleep?
Wast born a man of sluggardy, or is thy pillow sweet to thee,
Or ere thou cam’st to bed maybe didst drink a little deep?
If thou wert so fain to sleep betimes, ‘twere better sleep alone,
And leave a maid with maids to play by a fond mother’s side till dawn of day,
Sith for the morrow and its morn, for this and all the years unborn,
This sweet bride is thine to own....

The great Latin poet Catullus (whose poems are known from medieval copies of a single manuscript) accounts for the earliest extant examples of epithalamia in that ancient tongue (ca. 84-54 BCE):

...And, roused by day of joyful cheer,


Carolling nuptial lays and chaunts


With voice as silver ringing clear,


Beat ground with feet, while brandisht flaunts


Thy hand the piney torch.

For Vinia comes by Manlius woo'd,


As Venus on th' Idalian crest,


Before the Phrygian judge she stood


And now with blessed omens blest,


The maid is here to wed....

  

Edmund Spenser, best known to most book collectors for his great unfinished work The Fairie Queen, produced what generally is conceded to be the best example of the epithalamium in English (he penned it for his own, second, marriage):

...let them make great store of bridale poses,

And let them eeke bring store of other flowers

To deck the bridale bowers:

And let the ground whereas her foot shall tread,

For feare the stones her tender foot should wrong

Be strewed with fragrant flowers all along....

Even folks who don't collect the printed book at all often are familiar (usually unknowingly) with this type of poetry, since the Christian Bible includes an example (until at least the Renaissance, the Song of Solomon was traditionally interpreted as an epithalamium celebrating the marriage between God and the soul and/or the church):

The song of songs, which [is] Solomon's.

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love [is] better than wine.

Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name [is as] ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.

Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee....

(This Biblical masterpiece has attracted the attention of many fine presses over the centuries.  The specimen below was produced by the Circle Press:)

Understandably, many modern critics do not necessarily agree with including the Song of Solomon as an example, inasmuch as epithalamia originally were recited to recently married couples by friends standing directly outside (until the Middle Ages, often inside!) the connubial bed-chamber.

Because definitions have become a bit looser over the centuries, it is not uncommon nowadays to find that such poems often are not addressed to a specific couple at all (cf. this recent example by Matthew Rohrer).  And lest one think that all epithalamia are genteel affairs, the example below (penned by 17th century English poet Sir John Suckling) should disabuse one of such notions...

...The maid—and thereby hangs a tale;

For such a maid no Whitson-ale

             Could ever yet produce:

No grape, that's kindly ripe, could be

So round, so plump, so soft as she,

             Nor half so full of juice.

Her finger was so small, the ring

Would not stay on, which they did bring;

             It was too wide a peck:

And to say truth (for out it must)

It lookt like a great collar (just)

             About our young colt's neck....

László Krasznahorkai and The Private Library

His mere arrival itself had been excessively mysterious, or at least had proceeded very differently from that of the others, for he had not come by train and then by bus; for however unbelievable it seemed, the afternoon of the day of his arrival, perhaps around six o'clock or half-past six, he simply turned into the campground gates, like a person who had just arrived on foot, with nothing more than a curt nod; and when the organizers politely and with a particular deference inquired as to his name, and then began to question him more pressingly as to how he had arrived, he replied only that someone had brought him to a bend in the road in a car; but as in the all-enfolding silence no one had heard the sound of any car at all that could have let him out at any "bend in the road", the entire thought that he had come in a car but not all the way, only up to a certain bend in the road and only to be put out there, sounded fairly incredible, so that no one really quite believed him, or more accurately, no one knew how to interpret his words, so that there remained, already on that very first day, the only possible, the only rational – if all the same, the most absurd - variation: that he had travelled entirely on foot; that he had picked himself up in Bucharest and set himself to the journey: instead of boarding a train and subsequently the bus that came here, he had simply made on foot – and who knew for how many weeks now! – the long long trip to Saint Anna Lake, turning in through the campground gates at six or six-thirty in the evening, and when the question was put to him as to whether the organizing committee had the honor of greeting Ion Grigorescu, he dispensed his reply with one curt nod....

Something Is Burning Outside, László Krasznahorkai (trans. Ottilie Mulzet)

Despite the fact that his novels have been translated into numerous languages, and despite the fact that his work has received the attention of publications like The New Yorker and The Guardian, the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai remains virtually unknown in the United States.

In part, this may be attributed to the fact that so few of his works have thus far been translated into English:

  

Of course, translating Krasznahorkai into any language is not exactly a straightforward process.  As James Wood points out in The New Yorker, 

[Krasznahorkai's] tireless, tiring sentences feel potentially endless....  It’s often hard to know exactly what Krasznahorkai’s characters are thinking, because his fictional world teeters on the edge of a revelation that never quite comes....  Krasznahorkai is clearly fascinated by apocalypse, by broken revelation, indecipherable messages. His demanding novel The Melancholy of Resistance is a comedy of apocalypse.... The pleasure of the book flows from its extraordinary, stretched, self-recoiling sentences, which are marvels of a loosely punctuated stream of consciousness....

Born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954, Krasznahorkai achieved fame (at least in Europe) with the publication of his very first novel, Sátántangó, in 1985.  His novel War and War (1999) was brought to publication, in part, with the assistance of the American poet Allen Ginsberg.  The translations this writer has read suggest, often simultaneously, elements of Proust, Kafka and Beckett.  How much of this is due to the author himself, and how much to his able translators (most frequently, the Hungarian poet George Szirtes), might make for an interesting investigation:

  

In any event, folks who do not normally collect "dense" works of literature might be well advised to wean themselves on something less daunting.  Krasznahorkai's novella, Animalinside (trans. Ottilie Mulzet) matches the art of painter Max Neumann with very short texts by Krasznahorkai.  (New Directions, Krasznahorkai's English-language publisher, had only 2000 copies of this title printed, as Neumann's images were printed in a seven-stage process.  The image below is via Vertigo:)

Because, as noted above, much of Krasznahorkai's oeuvre has yet to be translated into English, the author represents something of a ground-floor opportunity for English-language book collectors.  

This is the case with much "foreign" literature that has yet to be translated into English: Arabic literature, Islamic literature (which is not necessarily the same thing), Latin American literature, novels of officialdom, Popescu Prize winners, Primeo Planeta winners.  A private library often can be built "under the radar" of one's fellow book collectors simply by realizing that the world of literature does not stop at the borders of the United States....