“Sorry.” The man shrugged. “But come by and see me at the fair. Or drop by in a week or two. We’ll have everything ready to go by then. I’ll even be able to offer you a cup of coffee or a hot chocolate.”
Our next stop was David L. O’Neal Bookseller, Fine and Rare Books. This would be the very first time we had walked into a shop that specifically announced that it sold fine and rare books. O’Neal’s was also on the second floor, in another brownstone, this one on a side street between Newbury and Commonwealth Avenue, two blocks up from Buddenbrooks.
This brownstone had a very classy lobby, recently renovated, mirrored and tiled in a soft aqua. The stairs to the second floor were carpeted and the wooden banister polished. Unlike Buddenbrooks, the door to O’Neal’s was solid metal and locked. We had to press a buzzer for admittance.
A sandy-haired man in his thirties wearing a dark banker’s suit and a maroon tie opened the door and paused in the doorway for just that moment that said we were being sized up. Then he stood aside stiffly and said, “Please come in.”
The entire shop was one large rectangular room with six-foot-high bookshelves that ringed the perimeter. The shelves themselves were polished hardwood. Classical music played softly from unseen speakers and there were Oriental rugs on the floor. This was the first time that we had been in a bookshop where there were no freestanding bookshelves in the center. It made the room look empty.
Except for the music, O’Neal’s had a hushed, museumlike quality. Although we were only one floor off the ground, we could not hear any street noise. Other than the man in the suit, who did not bother to introduce himself, there were only two other people in the shop, both middle-aged women who might have been either employees or customers.
The books on the shelves weren’t like those in the other bookstores we’d seen, either. There were few dust jackets. Most of the books were bound in leather, they were all polished and appeared to be grouped by colors. Light reflected off the covers.
We weren’t in the store a nanosecond before we realized that here, we were not buying anything.
The sandy-haired man stood nearby. “Were you looking for anything in particular, sir?” he asked. He spoke as if he were trying to keep his voice to a whisper, not unlike a junior associate at a funeral director’s.
“Uh, modern firsts?” we replied, parroting the dealer at the book fair. It was the only phrase we knew. We felt like the immigrant who always eats the same thing because all he can say in English is “ham and eggs.”
“We occasionally have some … of those,” he said, pointing to the section nearest the door. He hesitated a moment. “Let me show you what we do here,” he said finally. “We specialize in fine sets.” He looked at us. “Do you know anything about binding?”
“Uh—”
“Well, we have the finest binders and illustrators,” he said, proceeding to rattle off a bunch of names we’d never heard of and frankly don’t remember. He picked up a book. It was one of six. The book was bound in a rich dark green leather. He opened the book. We only recognized one word on the page: “Goethe.” The rest was in German. We did see one other thing as well. It was on a little piece of paper, typed or printed (in English), that lay between the cover and the endpaper. On it was a description of the set and presumably what it was, although the sandy-haired man turned the page too quickly for us to read it. The price was also on the piece of paper and that we did spot. It was sixty-five hundred dollars.
As quickly as he opened the book, he closed it. “Dickens is over here, the other English writers are over here, the French are over here …” He indicated a couple of other sections. Then he said abruptly, “If you need any help, sir, let me know,” turned on his heel, and strode away, leaving us standing there in the middle of the floor.
Our next stop was to be Pepper and Stern, just around the corner on Boylston Street. Pepper and Stern also advertised itself as a rare-book dealer. After O’Neal’s, we were a little shy about going in.
We finally decided to chance it and hiked up the stairs to the inevitable second floor. We turned to the left and walked in an open door.
If O’Neal’s was a mortuary, Pepper and Stern was a fire drill in a kindergarten. It was a small room, but people were everywhere, standing, talking animatedly in small knots, moving in and out of the door or loading books onto little rolling carts and scurrying off. No one paid the least bit of attention to us.
Finally, we stopped a man in his late twenties who appeared from his frantic activity and the fact that he was carrying an armload of books to have some association with the place. He was wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt, a black studded belt and penny loafers. His hair was cut short and slicked so that little clumps stuck up like porcupine bristles everywhere except in the front where it was slicked together flat as a table, forty-five degrees to the vertical.
“Are you open?” we asked idiotically.
“Yes,” he replied breathlessly, “but we’re getting ready for the fair.”
“That’s why we came to town. But we were hoping to see something first.”
“Cool. Look around.” He spoke breathlessly even when he wasn’t moving. He turned but we stopped him.
“What are these?” We were standing in front of a very tall bookshelf filled with what appeared to be mysteries. But they all had unusual covers. “Is this the mystery section?”
“No, Peter collects art deco dust jackets.” This response was not altogether helpful since we had no idea who Peter was.
“Who’s Peter?”
“He’s the Stern.”
“Are you the Pepper?”
“No. He’s in California. I’m the Brian.” He was about to start away again, then stopped. “Are you interested in anything in particular?”
“Modern firsts?”
“Right around here,” Brian said instantly, zipping around to a little alcove formed by the back side of the bookcase that held the art deco covers. “These,” he said, pointing to a rolling cart with three shelves, filled with books, “are the ones we’re taking to the fair. You can’t buy them. Well, you can but not here. I suppose you could if you really wanted to …”
“That’s all right.”
“Now these,” Brian went on, sweeping his hand up and down a packed thirty-six square feet of bookcase, “these you can buy. They’re staying here. If you need anything, give a whistle.” Then, as if in a puff of smoke, he was gone.
The first thing we noticed about the section at which Brian had left us was how very appealing it looked, all the different colors from all those different dust jackets. And there were so many. We went first to writers we knew. John Le Carré, for example. There were about six of them but the one that stood out was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. “First UK,” it said in pencil on the front endpaper, “$900.” From Here to Eternity. A first edition in perfect condition. That was $450. A step in the right direction. For Whom the Bell Tolls. $350. There were lots of P. G. Wodehouse, all in the $150 to $250 range.
All the while we were looking, we could peripherally see blurred images of young men and women sprinting back and forth. We heard the indistinct buzz of voices and the sound of ringing telephones. It was more like a Wall Street trading room than a bookstore. If the books had been any less intoxicating, we would have merely stood on the side of the room and watched the action.
We wanted to buy a book from Pepper and Stern.
We looked and looked but even their mediocre books were a good deal more expensive than Nineteen Eighty-four, our most expensive book. Paths of Glory, by Humphrey Cobb, for example, a book whose only claim to fame was that it had been made into a brilliant film by Stanley Kubrick, was $250.
By the time we got to Steinbeck, we were forlorn. Then we pulled out a copy of The Winter of Our Discontent. The Winter of Our Discontent is a nice little book. It’s not Of Mice and Men or The Grapes of Wrath, of course, but still it’s Steinbeck and it was … thirty-five dollars.
“We’ll ta
ke this one,” we said to Brian.
“Very good,” he said, not at all judgmental even though it was clear that we were buying the least expensive book in the entire shop.
He disappeared for a few moments and then returned with a computer-generated invoice.
We signed the credit card slip, took the book that Brian had carefully wrapped in brown paper, and told him that we would see him at the fair.
“Make sure and get there early tomorrow,” said Brian. “A lot of the best books go in the first hour.”
“Oh, we have to leave tomorrow. We’re going tonight.”
“But you can’t go tonight,” said Brian, looking aghast.
“Why not?”
“Tonight’s session isn’t open to the public. It’s only for dealers.”
“It can’t be.” We whipped out the little “Boston Antiquarian Book Fair” card that we had picked up at the book fair in Sheffield. “Here.” We pointed to the part that read “Friday 5–9.” “This doesn’t say anything about not being open to the public.”
Brian examined the card. He even turned it over once or twice. “Maybe they changed it,” he said finally.
“How can we find out?”
“You can call.” There was a telephone number on the card.
“May we use your phone?”
Brian glanced at the phones, each of which seemed to ring the second the receiver was replaced.
“If you can find one,” he said.
After about five minutes, we got to call the book fair.
“Is tonight’s session open to the public?”
“No,” answered a harried man on the other end, “it’s only open to members of the trade and exhibitors.”
“It doesn’t say that on the card.”
“Yes, I know,” replied the man apologetically. “We’ve been having a lot of trouble about that.”
He was having trouble. “We drove in all the way from Lenox. Since the card is wrong, could we come tonight just to look?”
“Afraid not,” said the man. “Can’t you come tomorrow morning? We’re open at ten.”
We considered the consequences of keeping Claire waiting while she was alone with our child. “Afraid not.”
When we got off the phone, we were surprised to see Brian standing just behind us.
“How did you make out?”
“They’re not going to let us in.”
“I didn’t think they would,” he said. “Book dealers are notoriously inflexible.” Then he paused for a moment, running something through his head. He seemed genuinely sympathetic. He went to the desk. Was he going to give us a badge or something that identified us as dealers so we could go to the private preview? He turned back and handed us a small book.
“Here,” he said. “Take a copy of our catalogue.”
So, while everyone in the book world was at the dealers-only preview, we made the best of it with some great sushi and returned to our hotel room at the Eliot (we were learning) to climb into our big, cushy king-size bed and, among other things, look through our new books.
The first book we looked through was the Pepper and Stern catalogue.
And we thought the shop had been impressive.
It became clear in the first two or three pages that Brian had not showed us everything. Every book we had been looking for was here.
Want a good hard-boiled mystery?
CAIN, JAMES M. The Postman Always Rings Twice. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934. First Edition. Very light spotting of the edges, corner of the first couple of pages creased, a fine copy in a dust jacket with a little rubbing of the extremities. A remarkably clean and solid copy of a book that is highly prone to shaking.
Accompanied by the original design for the jacket spine and front cover, signed at the bottom, “The original jacket design by Philip Van Doren Stern.” The finished dust jacket has some differences, mostly in the placement of the author’s name, but the basic design is the same, with pencilled dimensions and notes in the margins.
$5,000.00
Oh, and The Hamlet. We’d been looking for that one, too.
FAULKNER, WILLIAM. The Hamlet. New York: Random House, 1940. First Edition. Near fine in a very good dust jacket.
Signed on the title page, “William Faulkner, Oxford, Miss, 27 June, 1941.” Inscribed by Faulkner on the flyleaf with a private joke, “With love to Abe from Gertrude.”
$10,000.00
And Dracula. There were two of those.
STOKER, BRAM. Dracula. London: Archibald Constable, 1897. First Edition, first printing, first issue. Front hinge cracking, back hinge just barely started, small cloth tears at the top and bottom of the spine, light foxing and minor soiling. Overall, on the objective scale, a very good copy. On the subjective scale, given the fragility of the book’s manufacture, and the tendency of the book to attract soiling, much better than usual. Much better copies rarely turn up, and later issues and printings are often sold (usually innocently) as firsts. The later printing is on a smooth, thinner paper, thus the book is noticeably slimmer, and there is clear type deterioration. This copy, like copies inscribed on publication day has no publisher’s advertisements at all. Later issues may have one page (including Stoker’s Shoulder of Shasta), or several pages, some even advertising Dracula.
$9,500.00
If $9,500 was too steep, you could always step down to:
STOKER, BRAM. Dracula. New York: Doubleday & McClure, 1899. First American Edition. Tiny spot on front cover, minute wear, a fine copy.
$4,000.00
There was Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage for $6,500, Raymond Chandler’s Big Sleep for $8,500, and Ayn Rand’s own copy of The Fountainhead for $15,000. The Grapes of Wrath was here, as was George Orwell, Sinclair Lewis, and H. P. Lovecraft (the original page proofs to The Outsider and Others for $15,000). The descriptions were filled with words like “foxing,” “bubbling,” “rubbing,” “chipped” and, provocatively, “cocked.” Hinges might be “cracking” or “just starting.” Some books had “boards,” others had “wrappers.” “Fine” seemed to have a special meaning—there was “fine,” “near fine,” “about fine” and “very fine.” Then there was “good” and “very good.” The only thing that we were sure we understood was the symbol “$.”
Not everything was in the $5,000 to $15,000 range, of course. If we wanted to move out of the cheap stuff, there was a Gulliver’s Travels, first edition, first printing, portrait in second state (whatever that meant) for $47,500.
And then there was the most expensive item of all. It wasn’t Dickens, it wasn’t Shakespeare, it wasn’t Voltaire, Molière, or Mark Twain. Nor was it a great contemporary writer like Fitzgerald or Hemingway. It was:
BURROUGHS, EDGAR RICE. Tarzan of the Apes. Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1914. First Edition, first printing, first binding. Minutely used, a fine copy in a fine dust jacket. In a full morocco case.
The inside of the dust jacket has the ownership signature and notes of the author’s son, Hulbert Burroughs, who well-meaningly put tape around the inside along the edges and folds. This tape has been removed without damage. Truly a beautiful copy of a rare book. The last copy in dust jacket sold at auction was at the Bradley Martin sale, which brought $26,400.00, was a second binding, the jacket of which was worn and browned at the edges, and with a long scratch in the front panel (enthusiastically described in the catalogue as “a fine copy”).
First appearing in the magazine All-Story in 1912, the character of Tarzan appeared in Burroughs’ own sequels, movies, television, comic books, a successful comic strip and spin-off products. Burroughs was the first writer of fiction to shrewdly exploit his creation in a manner which is now considered business as usual. As a matter of fact, Tarzan was the first literary character to be registered as a trademark. He created his own publishing and marketing company, E.R.B., Inc., located in Tarzana, California, which is the only example that comes to mind of a town named after a fictional character.
$50,000.00
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Fifty thousand dollars for Tarzan? You could buy your own jungle for that. Could it be that somehow Tarzan was great literature and we didn’t know it? Was the book made of gold?
What was going on here, anyway?
CHAPTER 9
It was Thanksgiving, two weeks after the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair that we did not get to attend. We were in Chicago, on another family trip.
We had left our daughter with her grandparents and hotfooted it into Chicago to have lunch at the glorified diner with the amazing French toast and shirred eggs and visit the same bookstores we’d been to on the last trip.
We were at Rohe, wandering around in the Literature section. With the Steinbeck’s was a copy of The Moon Is Down.
The Moon Is Down was published just after the United States entered World War II, and is the story of the Nazi occupation of a small coal-mining town. It is written from the point of view of both the occupiers and the occupied and is sympathetic to each. The German force is led by Colonel Lanser, a polite, educated, and sensitive man who attempts to be fair and respect the occupants of the town that he has come to as an invader. The town is led by Mayor Orden, still referred to in the traditional manner as “Your Excellency.”
A tacit agreement is struck between two reasonable men. The Germans will allow the town to function, within limits, as closely as possible to the way it did before the occupation, if there is no resistance. Accordingly, the majority of the German soldiers conduct themselves in a civilized manner, extending respect and even politeness to the inhabitants. The townspeople, for their part, go about their business, ignoring the occupiers.
Then the bargain falls apart.
Unlike The Winter of Our Discontent, which is a nice little book, The Moon Is Down is, in our opinion, a great little book. It is powerful and heart-rending in its simplicity, and the characterizations are uniformly, achingly real.
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