As bibliophiles in the 1920s and ’30s already knew, books were more than the paper, ink, cloth, and leather that made up their parts. They were the physical expressions of our true potential. If we wanted to be romantic or witty, we needed to buy F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise. If we wanted to feel masculine angst, we needed to buy Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. If we wanted to see glamour and scandal in the world around us, we bought Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.
In the 1920s, booksellers realized they were selling culture just as much as physical books. “[Individual b]ooks cannot be advertised, but reading can be,” announced one adman. Looking at our own bookshelves today, we’re going to say they succeeded.
With the twenties roaring recklessly toward the Great Depression, consumerism must have seemed an inevitability. This waking giant would define us as Americans and, in 1929, undo us as Americans (also 1973, 1982, and 2008). Surely, publishers thought, there had to be a way to make this behemoth serve the interests of the printing industry. Entrepreneurs such as adman Harry Scherman knew it could be done. Start a club, a monthly club, where folks can have their books selected and then mailed right to their door. Then create a customer-retention strategy that combined a pyramid scheme with strategies for selling heroin, and—voilà!—a whole country chasing the literary dragon.
In the case of Eddie Bernays, sometimes the crystallizing power of advertising could help save America’s printing industry. Other times, it convinced people that getting lung cancer was liberating and tasted better than chocolate. Sometimes it made us believe that life would be better if we bought and read Ralph Waldo Emerson. Other times, it convinced us that something such as the McRib, the Hot Dog Bites pizza, or a jar of Baconnaise was an actual food that human beings should put in their mouths. But that’s the price of American consumerism. You can’t have As I Lay Dying without Baconnaise. (In fact, one pretty accurately describes the other.)
Even the Father of Spin realized the potential for advertising running amok. This was demonstrated by one memorable event at a dinner party in 1933. Bernays and other dinner guests were seated under a large elm tree discussing the issues of the day, which in 1933 were Hitler and the rise of the Nazi Party. This was a time when opinions were split on the rising German leader. Some guests “wrote him off as a crank who wouldn’t amount to much.” Karl von Wiegand, a foreign correspondent who had just returned from interviewing Joseph Goebbels, was also in attendance. Goebbels had shown Wiegand his “propaganda library,” as Bernays wrote, which was the “best Wiegand had ever seen.” Sitting there in the library of the master propagandist of the Nazi Party had been none other than Crystallizing Public Opinion, by Austrian American Jew Edward L. Bernays.
“This shocked me,” Bernays wrote, “but . . . obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis. [It was] a deliberate, planned campaign.”
I guess we’re lucky that American PR men in the 1930s were more focused on selling full-priced copies of Steinbeck’s Cup of Gold and less focused on selling international crimes against humanity. In hindsight, it made that sticker price of $2.50 just a little easier to swallow.
CONCLUSION
NOTHING MORE DECEPTIVE THAN AN OBVIOUS FACT
“PEOPLE NEED BOOKS,” CHRISTOPHER MORLEY says, “But they don’t know that they need them. Generally, they are not aware that the books they need are in existence.” With so little space and so much to say, we’ve written this book as the academic equivalent of a tailgate party. We are the booze-soaked, hot wing–stained bash before the big event—which in this case would be sipping a cup of tea while quietly reading a biography of Thomas More.
In the world of books there are endless roads to explore. There are curiosities and triumphs, comforts and provocations. The twists and turns are as endless as the peculiarities of the human mind, for we have translated our inner universes onto the printed page. The single artifact that best captures the human spirit is the book—which means that it inevitably captures both our glory and our frailties.
While writing this book, we came across a 1593 painting of Thomas More, our Tree of Truth villain from the English Bible chapter, sitting with his family. This painting is a copy of a lost work by Hans Holbein, one of the great portraitists of the Renaissance. The original is missing, but Holbein’s prepainting sketch did survive. It shows More’s wife and two other women kneeling on the floor in front of the famed British statesman. This did not sit right with More. As in, his wife was literally not sitting right. Rather than kneeling on the floor like a servant girl, she should be seated on a chair like a normal human being. Even More’s jester is sitting on a chair, for heaven’s sake. Shouldn’t the lady of the house have at least as many rights as a professional fool? The 1593 copy of the finished Holbein oil portrait shows that, in the end, More got his way. His wife is indeed seated next to him. Well, seated a foot lower than him, but still, very PC for the day.
“There’s nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,” Sherlock Holmes once observed. Thomas More was more than a snarling, frothing attack dog obsessively tearing at Protestants during the early upheavals of what became known as the Reformation. He did all that, no doubt, but Rottweilers can have cuddly feminist sides, too. Rottweilers can be loyal. Rottweilers can be protective. Rottweilers are more complex than one might believe if all one knew about them was their proclivity for removing the skin from trespassers’ skulls. Or burning people alive.
In less metaphorical terms, Thomas More was human, with complex motivations and inner contradictions. We’d say he was just like us, but we expect a bit more from our statesmen (and Catholic saints) today. So let’s say he was like other people from his time (who were white, and male, and wielded a staggering degree of political power). Actually, he was one of the better people of his time. Did he say someone should shit and piss into Martin Luther’s mouth? Yes. Technically he wrote and published this all over Europe. Was More also forward thinking when it came to women? Did he love his children? Was he well regarded by friends? Was he a master politician? Was he pious within his own code? Was he an exemplary husband? A brilliant author? A formidable philosopher? The greatest mind of English humanism? A tragic martyr? Yes, to every one of those. He was even considered an exceptionally funny guy for the Renaissance; one scholar calls humor “integral to More’s purpose” in his Dialogue Concerning Heresies (the same work in which, we can’t help but note, he uses a parable of Jesus to justify burning heretics). Could a historian write a chapter on Thomas More that made him the hero of the story? More was canonized in 1935 and declared the Patron of Statesmen and Politicians by the Vatican in 2000, so yes. Absolutely.
When choosing the subtitle for this book, we elected to use Irreverent Stories from Book History, rather than The History of the Book. After writing a work that attempts to highlight a few events (so very few) from half a millennium of history, and knowing firsthand the ocean of material that could never be included, we find that this distinction has proved crucial. While we hold profound respect for Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, it’s technically not accurate. Gibbon’s prolific volumes are a history of the Roman Empire’s fall, as told by Edward Gibbon. Thomas More’s depiction in the “Trees of Truth” chapter is a depiction: as factually accurate as we can make it, but certainly not exhaustive with regard to the nuances of More’s conflicted and endlessly fascinating personality.
The writer and philosopher George Santayana coined the historian’s favorite aphorism, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It may seem at times that people living three, four, five centuries removed from us have little to contribute to the issues of our day. Yet, in many ways, the problems we face now are iterations of the past. Especially as the human race blazes its way through the technological advancements of the digital age.
From the Benedictine monk Trithemius, we observe the futility of resisting innovation. Bibliophile
s are, perhaps, some of the most egregious offenders. In the same way that Trithemius clung to the power and majesty of handwritten manuscripts, many book lovers today resist the shift to electronic books. Ones and zeros may seem fragile next to paper and cardboard and leather, but Trithemius thought the same thing about the delicate creations of Gutenberg’s printing press.
During Mercator’s day, vast amounts of information were becoming widely available for the first time. The printing presses of Europe were flooding the continent with accounts of circumnavigations, newly -discovered manuscripts, original treatises, and probably drawings of “Keyboard Cat.” Humanity struggled to find a way to process this deluge of information—with all the foibles and dangers that accompanied it—in a way not so different from the advent of websites such as Wikipedia.
From Tyndale’s day we see the true power of the words we use. By changing the word church to congregation, an entire religious sect can be spawned. Pious people can burn their fellow citizens for printing the word love, and feel justified for doing it. Words are narrative-defining tools, especially during conflict. In modern times, we needn’t look any further than advanced interrogation techniques versus torture.
As with language, so with history: context matters. It was something William Blake knew all too well as he combined the printed word and the printed illustration into one “composite art.” When context is left out, important meanings can get lost in translation. If the scholars who first authenticated De Caro’s Sidereus Nuncius, for example, had been informed of other known Galileo forgeries, they might have been more primed for doubt and thus have uncovered the counterfeit earlier.
The “bad” plays of Shakespeare challenge the way we perceive the dominant narratives we take for granted. When we put Shakespeare on such a high pedestal, he becomes more statue than human. So it is with his work. The great Bard’s plays are richer and more meaningful because he was an actual human. Other actual humans helped bring those plays to the printing presses of the world. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but apparently it also takes a village to create King Lear.
The rise and fall and rise of Mary Wollstonecraft makes us question what it means to be an author when people are treated differently not for what they say, but for who they are. Considering that gender equality is not a problem today—sorry, that should read “considering that gender equality is still a problem today”—Wollstonecraft’s fate is just as relevant in 2017 as it was in 1800.
The network of printing and its influence that spread across the American colonies in Benjamin Franklin’s day did so on a river of currency. If you want to trace the corridors of power, you need only follow that money. And when Dickens followed that money right to the doorsteps of American publishers in New York and Massachusetts, the United States promptly said, Bugger off, Charles Dickens. America steals things. But before we gasp in horror at the wholesale stealing of another’s work, it’s worth taking a quick look at how flippantly we post original quotes, photos, designs, and illustrations on the Internet without giving credit.
We might also want to cast a more critical eye on those “nobody reads anymore!” essays online. Recall that in 1921, only 4 percent of Americans visited a bookstore. Book-loving folks who claim everything was better in the old days must have a very limited perception of the word old. Many of our assumptions about what book culture “should” be were formed only in the twentieth century, by men such as Eddie Bernays, using clever marketing techniques we don’t even notice. “We live in an expanding culture,” the historian Raymond Williams has said, “yet we spend much of our energy regretting the fact, rather than seeking to understand its nature and conditions.”
T. J. Cobden-Sanderson understood the power of beauty, in his own way. Ironically, his disdain for technological innovation led him to create some of the most innovative books of his time. When he hurled his Doves Type into the Thames, he was expressing a fear that people still harbor: that advancements have the potential to rob books of their essence. But what is a book? Is it a codex? Is it a scroll? A handwritten manuscript? Is a true book the result of a single-pull printing press? Or a double-pull? Or a Linotype machine? Does it have to be physically printed at all? Can the letters on a screen match the power and resonance of wood, cloth, and leather?
We exist in a time that is not as unique as it first appears. Many of the issues we face in the digital age have been faced before. History is a window that lets us look backward for answers. It’s a window we should be constantly revisiting. The historian Randolph G. Adams said, “Each generation has to rewrite history for itself—and sometimes from the same sources used by previous generations.” How do we resolve disputes over public domain or Net neutrality in 2017? Just ask Mr. Dickens. He has firsthand experience trying to change American minds about copyright. In 1867 he declined even to talk about the issue, “on the grounds that he felt the case to be a hopeless one.” Okay then, fine, don’t ask Mr. Dickens.
If history is that glorious window to our past, remember that this book is the tailgate party. In the parking lot. Of the building down the street from the house in which said glorious window resides. So pull yourself up from the pavement, wipe away the vomit in your hair, and crack open that biography of Thomas More.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank the following persons and institutions, without whom this work would never have been possible: Cal Morgan, who believed in us; Michelle Brower, our rockstar agent; Stephanie Hitchcock, our precise and long-suffering editor; Bauman Rare Books and Honey & Wax Booksellers, where Rebecca learned her trade; the specialists and advance readers who gave us notes: Nick Wilding, Russel Maret, Adam Hooks, Rachel D’Agostino, John Windle, Elizabeth Denlinger, Vic Zoschak, Robert Green, Ina Saltz, Loren Glass, Mitch Fraas, Jonathan Kearns, Ben Skerker (to whom credit is due for the Feng Shui joke), and Mike Smith; institutions that were kind to us, especially University of Virginia’s Rare Book School and University of Pennsylvania; our children, who are too young to have been anything other than obstructions, but screw it, thanks, Elliott and Anson; and lastly, a special danke to Johann Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg: you weren't the first to invent movable type, and virtually no one credited you properly for two hundred fifty years, but you gave the world a European single-pull printing press and without you the subjects of this book (and the physical book itself) would not exist. Rest in peace, bro.
NOTES
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was made. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature on your e-book reader.
Introduction: What Do You Reckon This Is?
xivfirst edition of the King James Bible: A book that A. S. W. Rosenbach described four hundred years later as “in every respect one of the finest things a collector can ever hope to acquire.” Books and Bidders: The Adventures of a Bibliophile (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1927), 237.
xii“Thou shalt commit adultery”: Henry Richard Tedder, “Barker, Robert,” Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 3: Baker–Beadon (London: Smith, Elder, and Company, 1885), 207–8.
xiv“mistake”: In quotes because, really, was it a mistake? Some scholars suggest it may have been sabotage.
xvtens of thousands of dollars: The most recent copy on the market sold for more than $45,000 in November 2015. Bonhams, the auction house, records only five copies appearing at auction since World War II. See https://www .bonhams.com/auctions/22715/lot/5/.
xvand a penis: For a full play-by-play, see Kevin Mac Donnell, “Huck Finn Among the Issue Mongers,” FIRSTS 8, no. 9 (September 1998): 28–35.
xvfive-hundred-dollar reward: New York Herald, November 29, 1884. Concerning the problem of finding the culprit, Mac Donnell memorably remarks, “Webster was unable to identify the culprit because his pressroom employed 50 people, all with access to the plates. Most, if not all, of those employees had penises.” Not to criticize this lovely explanation, but people without p
enises can draw them, too. Mac Donnell, “Issue-Mongers,” 32.
xvi“greatest American humorist”: Obituary, New York Times, April 22, 1910. http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/sc_as_mt/mtobit8.html.
xviended up displayed: New York World, November 28, 1884.
xvi“sole cause of consciousness”: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, trans. by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 34–35.
xvii“dead, but they are there”: Yakov Smirnoff, America on Six Rubles a Day (New York: Vintage Books, 1987), 118.
xviiWho gets to determine how we are remembered: Cf. Lin Manuel Miranda, Hamilton: An American Musical: “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”
xix“cause of madness”: Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900, foreword by Jonathan Rose (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1957), 37.
xix“or you wouldn’t have come here”: Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a facsimile of the original edition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 90.
Chapter 1: How to Forge a Rare Book
1presented for sale: According to his 2013 interview with Nicholas Schmidle, De Caro was working with a partner in offering the book, Filippo Rotundo. See Nicholas Schmidle, “A Very Rare Book: The Mystery Surrounding a Copy of Galileo’s Pivotal Treatise,” The New Yorker, December 16, 2013, http://www .newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/a-very-rare-book.
2“acquisition of a lifetime”: Ibid.
2so unheard of: As Nick Wilding pointed out in conversation with the authors, many types of forgeries have appeared over the centuries. Piracies, a complaint of printers as early as the fifteenth century, are an ever-present example. However, we both agree that the type of forgery here (the production of a complete item from scratch with the latest technology, specifically to be sold on the collectible market) is a new and particularly modern event. The oldest of its kind may be T. J. Wise’s early twentieth-century forgeries of poetical pamphlets sold to collectors, which were uncovered in a book with the most boring name possible for the bomb it truly was: John Carter and Graham Pollard, An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets (1934). See also Nick Wilding, Faussaire de Lune: Autopsie d’une imposture, Galilée et ses contrefacteurs, trans. Antoine Coron (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2015), 14.
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