The Private Library

Guest Editorial: Harry and The Private Library

Linda Hedrick, author of today's Guest Editorial, notes that "today marks the thirteenth anniversary of the American release of one of the most remarkable books in the history of publishing."

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When I taught 7th grade, my biggest challenge was trying to sell my students on the concept of reading for pleasure.  Reading ran a close second in unpopularity to pre-algebra for most students.  Then a book called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was published in 1998 (published in Great Britain the previous year as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone).  I listened with half an ear to the hubbub thinking, “Ah, a cute children’s book on wizardry.”  Essentially I blew it off.  

During SSR (“silent sustained reading”) I noticed more and more kids reading Harry Potter.  I’m ashamed to admit that this made me disregard it even more, since I reckoned that if my non-readers were reading it, it must be simple and jejune.  Then one day I noticed my worst and most reluctant reader engrossed in it, which piqued my curiosity. One Friday, since everyone was completely absorbed in his or her reading (half of them reading Harry Potter) I just let them read until the end of school, a little over an hour. When the final bell rang, Reluctant Reader asked me if he could stay after and finish the chapter he was reading.  That certainly got my attention!

He finished in about ten minutes and left.  I picked up the copy he had left on his desk and sat down to browse through it.  Fast forward to 8:00 P.M.  My cell phone rang.  It was my husband, wondering if I was in a meeting, or just where I was.  I had lost all track of time.

I took the book home with me and began reading it again first thing upon rising.  When I finished, I set the book by the door to return it to school.  My husband picked it up (his curiosity aroused by my focused reading) and began reading it.  When he finished it he simply said, “We’re going to buy this.”  

The Harry Potter books (seven in the series) are available in 67 different languages, in a number of editions.  (The first book also was published in Latin and Ancient Greek.)  The first of these translations has routinely been to American English, since some of the British English words and cultural concepts were considered too confusing for American youths to comprehend.  The final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was the fastest selling book in history, with 11,000,000 copies sold within the first 24 hours (including pre-orders.) There are also two editions of the books with identical text - the difference being in the illustrations (one geared toward youth, the other toward adults). There are plenty of options for collecting the books alone, not to mention the films and merchandising items.

The books have spawned even more books focusing on a particular concept in the original books (think Quidditch guides, fantastic beasts), some by J.K. Rowling, some by others. There is even The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the World of Harry Potter.  Voracious Harry Potter fans could invest huge sums in collecting all or even some of what’s available.

So many people have read them, adults and children alike, that I unabashedly consider someone who hasn’t read them – arguably the greatest phenomenon in the entire history of book publishing – as not well-read. There have been many criticisms of the books, some rather harsh.  But the bottom line is this: the true wizardry of Harry Potter is how he charmed children into learning the joy of reading, something a myriad of parents and teachers have tried and mostly failed to do.

Perhaps Jeff Bezos said it best when it was announced that he had purchased the one original copy of Beedle the Bard that Rowling donated to a charity auction: "Even before establishing her charity, J.K. Rowling had done the world a rare and immeasurably valuable service -enlarging forever our concept of the way books can touch people - and in particular children - in modern times."

Guest Editorial: Chick Lit and The Private Library (Part V)

When I was a girl my female role model was Emma Peel (the Diana Rigg incarnation, with a nod to Honor Blackman.)  She was smart, independent, capable, wore all black and pants (in a dress era), and knew martial arts. Decades later I wear mostly black, always pants, and could probably karate chop a hamster if it was a life or death situation.  In my heart, I am Emma Peel, which is probably why I like Tart Noir.

Although some consider Tart Noir akin to Chick Lit, it properly is a sub-genre of the mystery or crime fiction genre.  Tart Noir shares a certain humor and cheekiness with Chit Lit, but there is a bit of darkness in it, too, often manifested as dark humor. The neofeminist heroine is not a victim or sidekick. She’s tough enough to take on the villains, yet can be turned on by one (or all!) of the good guys.  A tough broad who loves being a woman, and embraces all that that entails, stilleto heels included.  Bad attitudes and questionable morals are part of the kit and caboodle.

The term evolved from it’s original name, Slut Noir, which was deemed to be a bit much for an American audience.  So the mothers of its invention – Stella Duffy, Sparkle Hayter, Lauren Henderson, Laura Lippman, and Katy Munger – changed it to “tart” to reflect an attitude that is sharp, sexy, sweet, bad, and, frankly, a little cheesy.  They founded the Tart City website, which is still extant but not active (links are up and message board is still going.)

So you can start a new collection, or expand your mystery/crime fiction collection by adding titles that are a bit more tart (such as those depicted below)....

     

     

Guest Editorial: Chick Lit and The Private Library (Part IV)

Chick Lit’s fraternal twin is Lad Lit.  This genre is written mostly by men with male protagonists, usually young, immature, and commitment-phobic.  This genre is more popular in Great Britain than the U.S., where it just hasn’t caught on despite an onslaught of these books from publishers.  Some seem to be written for men, but not a lot of men are interested in this kind of book.  Some are written for women, who, it is claimed, want to read a man’s point of view in order to gain insight into the workings of the male brain.  Or at least to learn how similar experiences are perceived by men.

A well-rounded collection of Chick Lit should include some Lad Lit books.  (Actually it should include titles from the whole family.)  The unofficial king of Lad Lit is Nick Hornby, who I have repeatedly read is not particularly happy to carry this mantle:

   

Other well-known Lad Lit authors include Mike Gayle…

   

…Jonathan Tropper…

   

…as well as a host of others:

   

As you may have noticed, it seems that there is a Lit for each and every one of us.  This may be the book collector’s parallel to being a locavore – “read locally.”  The huge success of Chick Lit has caused an explosion of demographic Lit, which is burgeoning even as you read this.  

Just what place these Lits eventually will have in literary history remains to be seen, but since almost all of these Lit books reference numerous elements of pop culture they quickly become dated.  Less trendy books are likely to have a longer literary legacy.

Tomorrow, things turn a bit tart....

Guest Editorial: Chick Lit and The Private Library (Part III)

The sub-genres of Chick Lit are many, although a lot of them overlap.  New sub-genres constantly crop up, as authors speak to their own identities and publishers seek new markets.  A comprehensive collection of Chick Lit would include books from each of the sub-genres.

One of the major sub-genres is Matron Lit, also known as Hen Lit, and (rarely) Lady Lit. Written for women 40 and older, these books match the breezy tone and humor of Chick Lit but deal with women experiencing divorce, empty-nests, and restarting or beginning a new career or business, and a new life:

       

Some Matron Lit authors have developed series dealing with a specific character, such as Joan Medlicott’s Ladies of Covington and Haywood Smith’s Red Hat Club (above, right).  (Even Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry wrote Loop Group, featuring two feisty women in their 60s making a road trip from Hollywood to Texas.)

Brit Lit, or Singletons, is Chick Lit focused on British culture:

       

Mommy Lit, in addition to covering the trials of motherhood, often addresses the question of whether women can have it all:

   

Bride Lit often features bridezillas, and offers a cheeky look at the whole bridal scene:

   

Church Lit or Christian Chick Lit is a growing sub-genre which challenges protagonists to meet dilemmas with faith as well as humor:

  

Ethnick Lit, or Ethnic Chick Lit, possibly began with Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale, but has branched out into sub-sub-genres,include Sistah Lit, Chica Lit, Asian Chick Lit, and even Sastra Wangi (“fragrant literature” in Indonesian), among others, with more branches on the way:

   

On Monday we’ll take a look at Chick Lit’s fraternal twin….

Guest Editorial: Chick Lit and The Private Library (Part II)

Chick Lit is a term obviously derivative of Chick Flick, and those who are pro-Chick Lit sometimes are referred to as chickerati.  (Personal note: in my house, any film that my husband doesn’t want to watch is a chick flick.  It can feature an all-male cast, hundreds of tanks, and thousands of AK-47s, but if he doesn’t want to watch it, it’s a chick flick.)

The anti-Chick Lit contingent claims that Chick Lit adheres to feminine stereotypes instead of promoting women in a more politically active way.  This suggests that only a serious tone can reflect post-feminist sensibilities and values.  Chick Lit begs to differ.   What sets it apart from regular women’s fiction is precisely its personal (usually first person), humorous tone –- like a friend is talking to you.

Although Chick Lit often has romantic elements in it, it generally is not considered a subgenre of romance. In Chick Lit, the protagonist’s relationships with family, friends, and co-workers can be just as important, or even more important, than any romantic relationship in which the protagonist might be involved.  Having said that, it is interesting to note that the Romance Writers of America (RWA) has a Chick Lit Chapter, and the RWA claims it as a “rapidly growing romance sub-genre.”   

Some of the mothers of Chick Lit are Irish author Marian Keyes and her Walsh sister series, and Helen Fielding, whose novel Bridget Jones's Diary swept the USA like wildfire:

   

Keyes’s and Fielding’s books would be essential in a collection of Chick Lit, as would Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City and Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing:

  

The Chick Lit genre has grown phenomenally and new titles are constantly being published.  In fact, Harlequin (there’s that romance aspect again!), Broadway Books, and Pocket Books are but a few of the publishers who’ve recently established imprints for Chick Lit.

But what about those mature women whose lives are different and whose experiences are more varied than their younger counterparts?  What about women with different lifestyles, of different ethnicities and/or cultures?  Tomorrow, we will examine Matron Lit (aka Hen Lit), Mommy Lit, and some other Chick Lit subgenres.

[P.S. -- If you are into literary criticism, you may want to add Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction by Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young (a collection of essays on the topic) to your library.]

Guest Editorial: Chick Lit and The Private Library (Part I)

Your intrepid blogger would like to thank his long-suffering wife (aka "loyal reader" Linda Hedrick) for the following Guest Editorial, the first installment of a multi-part series:

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The cover is either in pastel colors or is something “beachy” -– Adirondack chairs on the shore, shells, an isolated pier –- or both, beachy scenes in pastel colors.  Or the cover may feature shoes and/or articles of clothing –- stiletto heels and hats are typical.  The title is often snappy, or a play on words.  You are looking at a typical volume of Chick Lit.

When most people hear the term “Chick Lit” they think of trashy fluff. Something vapid that appeals to women readers who crave formulaic garbage.  But then again, most people have not read Chick Lit.

Chick Lit is a genre written primarily for women, and usually by women.  The protagonists, women of course, can range in age from the twenties to the sixties.  These women deal with the usual life issues beyond love, dating, marriage, and other romantic relationships. Things like careers, finances and investments, addiction (alcohol, drugs, gambling, but more commonly shopping), and many other aspects of modern life.  What makes Chick Lit different from regular women’s fiction is the tone of humor and lightheartedness in which it is written.  These women refute the common stereotype of women as victims of their circumstances.  These women are independent, often driven by their careers but usually retaining a penchant for shopping and fashion.  These women are stylish and hip, or at least trying to be. 

Many women eschew the term Chick Lit, holding to the notion that Chick Lit is just a modern-day alternative to the bodice ripper and “beach read” novels.  Some self-described “serious” women authors in fact contributed to a recent collection of short stories entitled This is Not Chick Lit.  This prompted a collection of stories by women authors who proudly wear the mantle of Chick Lit, This is Chick Lit, an anthology which successfully demonstrates the diversity of the genre.

Tomorrow we’ll take a closer look at some of the books that define Chick Lit, and that would be essential in a collection of the genre....

Ah, Summer...! at The Private Library

I see the ambrosial fog stretched over the river, draping the trees. It is the summer’s vapor bath. What purity in the color! It is almost musical; it is positively fragrant. How faery-like it has visited our fields. I am struck by its firm outlines, as distinct as a pillow’s edge, about the height of my house. A great crescent over the course of the river from southwest to northeast....

--Henry David Thoreau, Journal (22 July 1851)

For those of you who may have missed it, yesterday officially marked the first day of summer (aka the summer solstice) here in the Northern Hemisphere.  That time of year when...depending on where you live...you can expect weeks of triple-degree heat, or monsoon rains, or (as Thoreau notes above) fog lazily drifting above a nearby river.

Many books have been written about the seasons generally (especially books of poetry), but finding books devoted specifically to summer (the season) can be a bit more challenging. 

(It's fairly easy to reel off a list of titles that are set in summer but really are not about the season itself.  Many such books even have "Summer" as the title [or part of the title].  Edith Wharton's Summer comes immediately to mind, which--though set in summer--actually is concerned primarily with a young woman's sexual awakening).

More to the point are books such as the following nonfiction...

  

...and fiction:

  

It's your private library.  Weave the net you cast as tightly or as loosely as you please.  You'll find there's a lot more that's been published about summer than just books about baseball....

  

That Devil Weed and The Private Library (Part VIII)

Notwithstanding last Friday's diatribe, we would be remiss if we closed out this series on cannabis without at least suggesting avenues for further research into titles that might be appropriate for one's private library.

As noted previously, the most comprehensive cannabis-specific bibliography that we've encountered remains Coy Waller's Marihuana: An Annotated Bibliography, for which several Supplements were published up until at least 1996.  Both the original 1976 title and several of the Supplements remain available in the marketplace.

A more recent (2003) work is the title depicted below left, which is widely available in the marketplace (and also is available as a print-on-demand title if you can't locate an original copy).  Because it references a variety of Internet resources, its own coverage of print publications is less extensive than Waller's.

Folks interested in reefer madness will want to pick up a copy of Stephen Gertz's Dope Menace (2008, depicted below right), which covers a number of other drugs in addition to cannabis and showcases seven decades of overwrought writing and lurid artwork:

   

A number of other titles also contain useful bibliographies that often feature literature about cannabis. Among these are various ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological titles, many of which focus on usage of specific types of plants (below left), plant usage by specific cultures, or usage of plants in specific geographic areas (below right -- many of these also may be found by doing searches for "folk" or "traditional medicine"):

 

The most up-to-date bibliographies, though, are likely to be found in recent articles that have been published in journals such as the Journal of Ethnopharmacology and the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine.

Tomorrow, something a bit less controversial....

That Devil Weed and The Private Library (Part VII)

As is the case with so many other controversial topics (abortion, immigration, etc.), much of what has been published in our day about cannabis (on all sides of the issue) is pure, unadulterated trash. 

Shoddy or non-existent scholarship.  Barely comprehensible arguments pro and con. Writing that is fueled more by passion than by even the most remote familiarity with grammar.  Little wonder that much of this literature is self-published, or published by organizations with very obvious axes to grind. Perhaps this is the best that can be expected from societies where history is re-written to fit the political agenda of the party in power, or the financial, religious or other interests that dominate particular economies.

A salutary defense against all such polemics might be a citizenry taught from an early age to think  critically.  But given what we know of the politicalization of science, of the supposed "objectivity" of peer-reviewed medical and related scholarship, and of the inability of many school systems to graduate citizens who can read and write, let alone think critically, such defense is not likely to be erected any time soon.

For someone building a private library about cannabis, this can make for a great deal of frustration. Especially if seeking to build such a library on a tight budget, one presumably wants to stock one's shelves with the best possible representatives of whatever arguments (and counter-arguments) are being advanced.  But because book reviews often are as polemical as the books being reviewed, perhaps the best approach is simply to investigate a title as widely and thoroughly as one can, across as many disciplines as one can, before plunking down one's hard-earned dollars for any book published about any controversial topic....

That Devil Weed and The Private Library (Part VI)

Cannabis production, distribution and use was tolerated, in fact was often promoted, throughout much of the West (the United States included) prior to the 20th century.  But after the Mexican Revolution of 1910, a flood of Mexican immigrants introduced widespread recreational use of cannabis to the United States.  Fear of, and prejudice against, immigrants that spoke a "foreign" language, combined with resentment arising from massive unemployment during the Great Depression, led to a flurry of research that purported to link the use of marijuana with violence, crime and other socially deviant behaviors, primarily committed by "racially inferior" or underclass communities.

It was within this noxious milieu that the pulp fiction we now know as reefer madness first saw publication:

   

Named after a morality tale (financed by a church group) that later was purchased and turned into an exploitation film, these pulp fiction titles tell lurid tales of the evils that inevitably arise from even the most innocent consumption of cannabis.  Of course, such fiction often merely reflected what was being touted in purportedly non-fiction works of the same era by folks like Harry Anslinger (who almost single-handedly created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics). 

While the formulaic purple prose of these titles has a certain je ne sais quoi about it, it's the lurid artwork on the covers that usually commands the attention of the average book collector.  Being printed on cheap pulp paper, copies that actually got read did not survive the ordeal very well--pristine copies are rare in the marketplace, and are priced accordingly:

   

Most of this fiction, which dates primarily to the 1930s-1950s, has fallen by the wayside because scientists and physicians have refuted many of its underlying claims (arguing, instead, that many of the social ills depicted in such fiction arise not from cannabis use per se, but from the criminalization of such use).  Much modern fiction tends to take this into account:

 

The artwork on the covers may not be as lurid, but the writing is generally much, much better....

That Devil Weed and The Private Library (Part V)

However difficult it may be to collect manuscripts and early printed books that depict and/or discuss cannabis (see yesterday's post), such books and manuscripts at least have the virtue of being fairly non-polemical. 

As nation-states arose, consolidated their powers, and began to take notice of cannabis, published attitudes toward cannabis became less straightforward and more polemical as nationalist policies predicated on political and/or financial gain came to dominate much of the discourse.  

A notable instance of this may be seen in how cannabis is depicted in English-language publications prior to, and after, Great Britain's colonialization of India (well-conveyed in the two titles depicted below, among others:)

  

Cannabis use was widespread in India during Britain's colonization of the area, and there were powerful British interest groups advocating both for and against cannabis use during the entire time that India was a British colony (a wide-spread system of licensing and taxing cannabis usage was instituted by the British as early as 1790).  An interesting comparison of how this impacted publishing is to examine the relatively straightforward treatment of hemp in the 1856 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica or the 1894-95 Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission to more polemical treatments of the subject just a few decades later (when it had become increasingly difficult for Britain to control the native population).  

In the United States, published works about cannabis also reflect a shift from relatively straightforward to polemical, although here the major influences were the earlier alcohol temperance movement, concerns about the baneful influences of immigration (primarily from Mexico), and overmedication (with a concomitant increase in addiction to patent medicines).  Bonnie and Whitebread chart the shift quite well in their detailed history of marijuana legislation in the United States (depicted left--the title is an elaboration of an article they penned for the Virginia Law Review in 1970).

In any event, cannabis and its users became the subject of increasingly negative depictions in print.  Interestingly, it is precisely such depictions that probably resonate most strongly with your average book collector.  For such depictions are the basis of the overwrought writing and lurid artwork that grace those paragons of pulp we now collect as reefer madness....

That Devil Weed and The Private Library (Part IV)

Illustrations of cannabis appear in manuscripts as early as the 6th century CE. 

The image below is from the Juliana Anicia Codex (aka the Vienna Dioscorides).  The first known manuscript to contain a donor portrait, the surviving pages (now housed in Vienna's Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) contain 383 full-page illustrations of plants (out of an original 435) to accompany De Materia Medica (a pharmacopeia written by the Greek physician Dioscorides).  This text was augmented with excerpts from other ancient writers (Galen, Crateuas, Nicander and Dionysius of Philadelphia). 

As can be seen from the illustration of cannabis, as the manuscript passed through the hands of various owners over the centuries it was not uncommon for names of many of the plants to be amended to reflect their names in Greek, Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew and French.  (De Materia Medica was the medical text in the Middle East and Europe for almost 1600 years.  Saved by Arab scholars, who translated it and passed it on to the West, it was first translated into Latin in the 10th century):

 

The illustration above (in fact, most of the illustrations in the Vienna Dioscorides) is believed to have been copied from an older herbal, not drawn from life. 

Most early illustrations of cannabis are not collectible, as the manuscripts and early printed books in which they are found usually are housed in institutional repositories.  This is true of the illustration below, found in Leonhart Fuchs' De Historia stirpium, from a copy held in the Bibliotheca Antiqua of Italy's Aboca Museum. (Fuchs, a 16th century German scientist, is considered one of the founding fathers of modern botany. His great herbal, drawn from life, is considered by many, including the folks responsible for Printing and the Mind of Man, to be [p]erhaps the most celebrated and beautiful herbal ever published):

Such straightforward illustrations are to be expected of a plant that was viewed for millenia primarily in medical or religious terms.  As other uses for cannabis began to suggest themselves, though, illustrations would begin to focus less on the plant itself and more upon the plant's effects on its users....

That Devil Weed and The Private Library (Part III)

Religious use of cannabis predates its medical use, and is documented for a variety of religious traditions. Among these are Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Sufism, Rastafarianism and (although the claims remain controversial) early Judaism and Christianity.

The above caveat indicates how difficult it can be for disinterested observers to sort out the claims and counterclaims made for cannabis use across time and cultures.  Nonetheless, folks may find the books depicted below helpful in sorting through religious uses for which there is archaeological, textual or similar evidence.  (The most comprehensive print bibliography, Coy Waller's Marihuana: an Annotated Bibliography, is now a bit outdated -- the last Supplement we could locate was published in 1996.) 

     

India provides perhaps the best, most widely accepted evidence for lengthy and wide-spread spiritual use of cannabis.  The Atharvaveda lists cannabis as one of India's five sacred plants, and devotees of Shiva often worship their god as Lord of Bhang.  Regrettably, many of the titles that document religious uses of cannabis in India frequently prove difficult to obtain from Western booksellers (fortunately, many Indian booksellers offer free or reduced-cost airmail deliveries to the USA and other Western nations):

  

Because traditional religious uses of cannabis have tended to focus more on the plant's psychotropic properties than have traditional medical uses, one finds in the West a plethora of literature extolling the plant's value for religious purposes.  Some of these titles are of dubious validity, and perusing critical reviews of such titles may save you a lot of money and frustration in your attempts to build a private library worthy of this topic....

That Devil Weed and The Private Library (Part II)

Medical use of marijuana dates back thousands of years.  Scholars have documented such use for a wide range of cultures.  

The earliest Chinese medical text, Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing (Divine Farmer's Materia Medica, a compilation of oral Chinese medical traditions dated ca. 300 BCE - 200 CE), lists cannabis among 365 medicines, 252 of which are derived from plants.  Indications for the use of cannabis included: rheumatic pain, intestinal constipation, disorders of the female reproductive system, malaria, and others.

One of the two foundational texts of Chinese medicine [the other is the Huang Di nei jing su wen, or Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine], the original scrolls of the Materia Medica have long since vanished. The English-language translation depicted to your left is based on later, revised copies of the originals.

Medical use of cannabis also is documented across much of India as early as 1000 BCE, where it was regarded as one of five sacred plants (we'll explore this further in Monday's post on religious uses of cannabis).  The range of medical uses in ancient India was quite extensive:

...analgesic (neuralgia, headache, toothache), anticonvulsant (epilepsy, tetanus, rabies), hypnotic, tranquilizer (anxiety, mania, hysteria), anesthetic, anti-inflammatory (rheumatism and other inflammatory diseases), antibiotic (topical use on skin infections, erysipelas, tuberculosis), antiparasite (internal and external worms), antispasmodic (colic, diarrhea), digestive, appetite stimulant, diuretic, aphrodisiac or anaphrodisiac, antitussive and expectorant (bronchitis, asthma).

Medical use of marijuana also has been documented for a number of other cultures, including ancient Egypt (as early as 1700 BCE, for the relief of hemorrhoids, among other conditions); ancient Greece (at least by the 1st century CE, when it was used to treat nosebleeds and tapeworms in humans, and was used to treat horses as well); Arabia, most prominently from the 8th-18th centuries CE (primarily for cannabis' diuretic, anti-emetic, anti-epileptic, anti-inflammatory, painkilling and antipyretic properties); and in the West from roughly the 18th century CE on, where it served as the primary analgesic before the advent of aspirin.

Understandably then, a plethora of books, in a variety of languages, examine the medical uses of cannabis from a wide range of perspectives.  Because the physiological and psychological effects of cannabis use depend upon a number of factors (potency, purity, duration, etc.), the book collector building a private library around this topic will find available in the marketplace everything from general histories of medical marijuana use to detailed examinations of very specific effects:

      

That Devil Weed and The Private Library (Part I)

Marijuana is a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Schedule I drugs are classified as having a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, Marijuana Control Status

In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating 10 raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death. Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within the supervised routine of medical care.

U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, "In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition," [Docket #86-22], (September 6, 1988), p. 57.

Anything that generates controversy generally also generates a copious literature.  One need only think of religion (to cite perhaps the most obvious example) to consider the impact of controversy on publishing. Passionate supporters, and equally passionate debunkers, pen an enormous amount of printed material outlining their respective positions, seeking to persuade the wavering to their particular point of view.  

Much of this, as we have seen in previous posts, is unabashed propaganda.  But a fair number of titles that seek objectivity also generally get published, and any controversy that has continued for any length of time usually affords the book collector a generous mix of both the sound and the silly.  Such certainly is the case with the copious literature that has been generated by the cultivation, distribution and use of cannabis, known more commonly as marijuana, and less generously in many quarters by epithets such as devil weed (an epithet that is applied to just about any plant folks find personally noxious, from cilantro to bull nettles).

Over the next week or so we will examine this literature in some depth.  As is the case with any good controversy, the literature devoted to marijuana is found across a wide range of disciplines, any one of which would make an excellent foundation upon which to build a private library.  Some of the most immediately obvious subject areas are botany, farming, religion, philosophy, ethics, law, medicine, sociology, ethnography, business, history and politics. As we shall see as we delve deeper into the topic, this represents but the minutest tip of a very large iceberg....

Automatic Writing and The Private Library

We have observed in several previous posts (see, for example, our posts beginning 12 July 2009) that book collectors, when faced with subjects that have generated an enormous amount of literature, often restrict their private libraries to successively smaller subsets of the main subject as a way of getting to a level of collectibility that they feel comfortable with financially and otherwise.  We term we this the matryoshka (nested-dolls) approach to book collecting.

Among the many subjects which lend themselves to this approach are food and drink, travel, history and so forth. Another candidate for this type of approach is the broad subject of Surrealism.

A French literary and artistic movement founded in the 1920s and promoted by, among others, André Breton, Surrealism was an attempt to "express unconscious thoughts and feelings in [artistic] works."  Its ultimate goal was to unify 'the contrary levels of conscious and unconscious, dream and reality, objectivity and subjectivity into a new level of 'super-realism'." One of the ways it sought to do this was through automatic writing--i.e.,

[w]riting carried out without a preconceived plan in an effort to capture every random thought. Authors who engage in automatic writing typically do not revise their work, preferring instead to preserve the revealed truth and beauty of spontaneous expression.

Automatic writing makes for a nice little collectible subset of Surrealism, although one has to be careful in perusing booksellers' catalogs.  This is because automatic writing also is associated with a quite different literary form, that of medium-mediated communication with the dearly departed (Spiritualism).

To clarify the type of automatic writing one collects, it usually is necessary to specify surrealist automatism or mediumistic automatism.  Writings of the Surrealist variety are represented by the first title depicted in this post. (Other notable Surrealist writers who penned "automatic writings" were the poet Paul Eluard and the poet, novelist and critic Phillipe Soupault.)

Writings of the mediumistic variety are represented by the second title, depicted to your right....

Cyanotypes and The Private Library

One of the more interesting photographic processes that has been used to illustrate books is the cyanotype process.  As Mike Ware, one of this process's most notable modern practitioners observes, 

...invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842, cyanotype was the first successful non-silver photographic printing process.  It was used for the first photographically illustrated book, and later became popular with some pictorialists, for whom a commercial paper, called ferro-prussiate, was marketed. Being simple, cheap and farily permanent, it also enjoyed an extended period of commercial success as the blueprint process for copying drawing-office plans, until it was made obsolete by the invention of dry, plain paper photocopying.

The process results in photographs that are immediately recognizable from their decidedly blue (infrequently gray) cast:

   

As Ware notes, the process is rarely used to illustrate modern books, although one occasionally encounters cyanotypes in modern fine press or artists' books (the images depicted below are from John Dugdale's Lengthening Shadows Before Nightfall and New Suns Will Arise, respectively):

   

Dugdale uses the cyanotype process because, being almost blind, he no longer can utilize other photographic processes.

Cyanotype-illustrated books are well-suited to book collectors who enjoy a challenge.  The first true photographically illustrated book, Anna Atkins' cyanotype-illustrated British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (published in parts 1843-1853), exists in only thirteen known copies.  Other early cyanotype-illustrated books also often are quite rare.  Fortunately, some of these have been reprinted for modern enthusiasts of the process:

   

The Dying (?) Art of Bibliography and The Private Library

The Private Library thinks bibliographies are critically important to book collecting.  In fact, the further along that one happens to be in building one's private library, the more essential bibliographies often become.

For this reason, we hope that those of you who may be associated with teaching, publishing or writing bibliographies will seriously consider responding to the following request for information, should you be in a position to help....

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Hello:

I'm working on a story for the Chronicle of Higher Education about the place of bibliography in academe--specifically how (whether?) it is now being taught at the graduate and undergraduate levels and what bibliographic skills are (or aren't) being passed on to the next generation of scholars. This idea came from conversations I've had with a couple of literary scholars concerned that bibliography might be in danger of becoming a lost scholarly art or skill.  I have also heard that it's not a specialization that is well rewarded by tenure and promotion committees.

I'd like to find out whether the fears are well founded and, beyond that, where the field [of] bibliography might be headed.  I'd be glad to hear from teachers and students of bibliography who'd be willing to share their thoughts and experiences.

Thanks and best wishes,

Jennifer Howard
Senior Reporter (publishing, libraries, archives)
The Chronicle of Higher Education
1255 23rd St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20037
202-466-1789

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Please respond directly to Ms. Howard.  Thanks!

Collecting What Others Do Not at The Private Library

Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles
Through the green lanes of the country,
Where the tangled barberry-bushes
Hang their tufts of crimson berries
Over stone walls gray with mosses,
Pause by some neglected graveyard,
For a while to muse, and ponder
On a half-effaced inscription,
Written with little skill of song-craft,
Homely phrases, but each letter
Full of hope and yet of heart-break,
Full of all the tender pathos
Of the Here and the Hereafter;
Stay and read this rude inscription....

Our mission at The Private Library is to convince folks that it's entirely possible to put together a very nice private library of one's own without spending a lot of money.  Our 414 posts to date have focused on tips and strategies for doing just that.  Our mantra is simple;  if you want to put together a very nice library of your own for very little money, collect what others do not.

As we have suggested in numerous previous posts, this can be accomplished in a variety of ways.  One can, for example, focus on "obscure" authors or subjects, or--as in the case of today's post--one can collect the works of authors who once were popular but have long since fallen out of critical favor.  If an author was once extremely popular, lots and lots of titles by that author usually still circulate, and thus such titles make not infrequent appearances at yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library book sales and the like.  Because most critics no longer show such authors any love, you're likely to pick up much of an out-of-critical-favor author's oeuvre for very little money.

Mind you, these are not likely to be First Editions in Fine condition.  But often they are fairly well-preserved later editions that most folks would be happy to have on their bookshelves.  And when you're ready to move on to the more expensive stuff, you'll find a large number of independent booksellers ready to help you out (see Regional Independent Booksellers Associations in the right-hand column of this blog).

The poster child for American authors who once were extremely popular, then plunged rapidly and almost  completely out of critical favor, has long been the poet whose snippet of poetry (from The Song of Hiawatha) begins this post.  If there is any poet whom many Americans can still recite the words of, it is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year....

No doubt because most folks could actually understand Longfellow's poetry, he achieved during his own lifetime what we today most probably would call rock star status.  By 1874 (his first volume of poetry, Voices of the Night, had been published in 1839) he was earning over $3000 per poem--in those days, an enormous amount of money!  During the same period, schoolchildren celebrated his birthday as if it were a national holiday.  He was equally popular in Europe.  (Longfellow remains the only American poet ever honored with a memorial bust in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.)  John Greenleaf Whittier, no mean poet himself, once observed that Longfellow's poetry illustrated "the careful moulding by which art attains the graceful ease and chaste simplicity of nature." 

Others, of course, were less kind, and Longfellow's reputation took quite a critical tumble during the decades after his death.  Lewis Mumford suggested that Longfellow could be completely removed from the history of literature without much effect.  The most common criticisms leveled against Longfellow were that he was too imitative of European poets and that his poetry was too sentimental and too geared towards the masses. 

It remains to be seen if works like Charles Calhoun's Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life (2004) will be able to restore Longfellow's once luminous reputation....

It's About Time at The Private Library

We have noted previously that private libraries often arise as a consequence of one's vocation or avocation.  One of the more interesting vocations, which also attracts a lot of folks as an avocation, is horology. 

Unless you are a devotee, you probably refer to this simply as clockmaking and watchmaking.  Even though there often is nothing simple about it....

Books about horology generally fall into a few distinct non-fiction categories.  (Fictional books about time are not the subject of this post.)

Firstly, in addition to books about horological theory and general histories of horology...

...there are many technical books that seek to teach individuals how to design, build and repair clocks, watches and other timepieces:

 

In addition to general histories of horology, there also are histories of horology as practiced in particular geographic locales (that undoubtedly will be of interest to students of local history)...

 

...as well as histories that tell the stories of particularly famous brands:

 

In not a few instances the history of a famous locale and/or brand is largely a biography of that locale's or brand's principal figure or founder:

 

Perhaps most highly prized of all, though, are those lavish tomes that seek to honor the extraordinary artistry of particularly talented horologists:

 

The National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors maintains extensive lists of books about all things horological, including the online (and searchable) Bibliographia Horologiae Mundi (which covers some 14,000+ titles).  Regrettably, the most comprehensive print bibliographies are now several decades old (General Bibliography of Time Measurement and Baillie's Clocks and Watches: A Historical Bibliography)....

"Eighth Thousand" at the Private Library

Book collectors often encounter descriptions in booksellers' catalogs where such-and-such a book is noted on the book's title page or cover as the "eighth thousand" or "twentieth thousand" or the like.  This is particularly true for books published in the 19th century, as well as the early decades of the 20th century.  Such a notation simply means that the book in question is a reprint. By itself, it may or may not indicate what edition the book happens to be (although such a notation is one piece of evidence, among many others, that descriptive bibliographers use to establish things like edition, printing, state, impression and so forth.)

Book collectors sometimes read more into this than the evidence permits.  A low number--"second thousand," for example--does not necessarily mean that the title at hand is an early reprint, any more than "one hundredth thousand" necessarily means that the book at hand is a much later reprint.  Much depends on when and where and by whom the title was published.

In the early part of the 19th century literacy was not as widespread, nor did the working classes have as much leisure to read, as would be the case later in the century. Nor was the printing of books as mechanized in the early part of the 19th century as it would be later in the century. These facts, among many others, impacted not only the size of publishers' initial press runs, but also the size and frequency of subsequent press runs.  It's thus entirely possible that a low number in the early part of the 19th century actually could refer to a much later reprint (say, a decade or more later), while a high number towards the end of the 19th century could actually represent a very early reprint.

Context is everything....