The Shocking Hard-Boiled World Of Librarians!

by Stephen J. Gertz

They take no guff from deadbeats.

Original cover art by Casey Jones for Crackers in Bed
by Vic Fredericks. Pocket Books 1053 (1955).

Books and snacks in the boudoir are their after-hours business - and business is good.

Original cover art by Peff (Sam Peffer) for ?, London: Pan Books.

They're know-it-alls with only one answer - the one that men want!

Original cover art by Darcy (Ernest Chiriaka) for Dearest Mama
by Walewska. Digit Books 393 (1956).

They read trash for breakfast, season it with tawdry filth, chase it with smutty little stories, and reach their bliss multiple times but it's never enough to satisfy their primitive hunger!

Original cover art by Bill George for Haunted Lady
by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Dell 814 (1955).

Though they get creeped-out by wacko stalkers with twisted desires,

Original cover art by Rafael DeSoto for The Girl From Big Pine
by Talmadge Powell. Monarch 483 (1964).

they're always willing to go out on a limb for a sweet daddy-o with dangerous eyes and a savage smirk!

They're merciless with bimbos who avoid books,

Original cover art by Reginald Heade for Plaything of Passion
by Jeanette Revere. Archer Books 57 (1950).

and possess mad, unholy desire and strange diabolical hate and all-consuming love for abbreviations formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word.

Original cover art for The Case of the Rolling Bones
by Erle Stanely Gardner. Pocket Books 2464 (1949).

They play craps with their reputation and gamble away their morals for a chance at the big time - but a good time will do!

They're a strange cult into weird hats and bizarre dining rituals,

Original cover art by Verne Tossey for The Case of the Lonely Heiress
by Erle Stanley Gardner. Pocket Book 922 (1952).

with sensitive janes overcome in the public john by loathsome forces beyond their control!

Original cover art by Rafael DeSoto for Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective
by Agatha Christie. Dell 550 (1951).

But when those sensitive janes detect halitosis and rank B.O. wafting their way they smell trouble and it's pine-scent Mace® for the great unwashed with library cards!

They're no patsies, they ain't like Dr. Jennifer Melfi. Talk therapy don't cut it for some and she knows it.

Dr. Melfi: That Departures magazine out there. Did you give any thought at all to someone else who might wanna read before you tore out the entire page?

Tony Soprano: What?

Dr. Melfi: It's not the first time you've defaced my reading materials.

Tony Soprano: You saw that, huh? People tear shit outta your magazines all the time, they're a mess. I try to read 'em.

Dr. Melfi: I don't think I can help you.

Tony Soprano: Well, change 'em. Bring in some new shit. 

Dr. Melfi: I mean therapeutically.

Tony Soprano: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, OK? Now what the fuck is this? You're, uh, firin' me 'cause I defaced your Departures magazine?

No, when L-Girls are confronted by a chronic defacer of library periodicals they don't mess around. When they say get lost they mean take a long walk off a short pier: they cancel his subscription to life; you won't see him around no more; he sleeps with the fische.

Original cover art by Gerald Gregg for Who's Calling?
by Helen McCloy. Dell 151 (1947).

Silence in the stacks? Tell it to the library card-holding psycho with logorrhia and a Van Gogh fixation!

Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of the library book-drop box? Drop-offs, droppings, or rotting, vermin-infested fast-food left-overs? It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.

 

And how 'bout that famous writer of L.A.-noir novels who visited his local branch of the LAPL, hit on a married reference librarian I know, wouldn't take no for an answer, kept sending flowers to her, and didn't stop his unwelcome advances until she flipped him an oath and he skulked off and out of the library?

Original cover art by Rudolph Belarski for Don't Ever Love Me
by Octavus Roy Cohen. Popular Library 332 (1951).

The fact that she fought for her intellectual freedom to be left alone while wielding a heater to punctuate her point may have had something to do with it. He had an acute fear of perforation by a stacked n' sultry long tall sally with a MLS, a gripe, and a gat. Yet where had she been all his life?

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All images courtesy of Professional Library Literature with special thanks to the anonymous creator of these brilliant book parodies, who, I suspect, may be in fear of losing their job if outed. Additional thanks to B.T. Carver of LISNews for drawing our attention to this delightful webpage. There are more of the same on the site.

The Sopranos dialogue from Episode #85, The Blue Comet (2007), written by David Chase and Matthew Weiner.

Those with knowledge of the unidentified books (or pulp magazines) are encouraged to leave a comment.

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Of Related Interest:

A Lurid Story of Book Dope And Lives Twisted By Mad Desire!

Caution: These Books Are Too Hot To Handle!
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Bring Me The Head Of St. Lawrence Of Rome, Patron Saint Of Librarians

By Stephen J. Gertz

Martyrs roasting on an open fire,

Larry's last words bravely won:

Though it's been said many times many ways,

"Stick a fork in me, I'm done."

He's a patron saint of librarians because he sacrificed his life to save Church documents. He's the patron saint of cooks because he knew what it was like to be on the wrong end of a basting brush. And he's the patron saint of comedians because he was dying onstage yet still riffed a wisecrack.

The only Church deacon (of seven) to survive the Emperor Valerian's persecution in 258, St. Lawrence was afterward soon arrested for refusing to turn over Church treasures. By legend he was grilled to death and is said to have had the presence of mind to joke to his torturers, "I'm done on this side; turn me over."

There but for a consonant a myth is born. In the early twentieth century historian Rev. Patrick Healy postulated that the tradition was based upon a simple error. The Church formula for announcing the death of a martyr, Passus est ("he suffered," i.e. was martyred) was mangled, the "P" early lost in transcription, and Assus est - "He roasted" -  became the received truth. Not that Healy's hypothesis was accepted. It threw cold water on St. Lawrence; the faithful prefer the fire.

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend" (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).

"His charred body was claimed by the Christians, and his mummified skull is still in the care of the popes. At the Vatican on the tenth of August every year they expose in its golden reliquary the head of Saint Lawrence that still, in the distorted mouth, in the burned bone of the skull, shows the agony he suffered to defend the archives of the popes" (Maria Luisa Ambrosini and Mary Willis, The Secret Archives of the Vatican. New York: 1996, p. 27).

Another apocryphal story, by way of Father Jacques Marquette, is that St. Lawrence inspired the classic Julie London hit tune Cry Me a River before being beheaded (his likely demise).



It is not true, however, that the story of St. Lawrence inspired Peter Greenaway's  1989 cinematic salute to roast human, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.
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Image of St. Lawrence courtesy of Infolit, with our thanks.
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Libraries Are So "Quaint" - And Never More Crucial

by Stephen J. Gertz

Brian Cooley, CNET's senior technology commentator and editor at large, offered his view of libraries during a segment of the April 20, 2011 "Buzz Out Loud" podcast on Kindle's new library services.

Because it must be read to be believed, we reprint a transcription of Mr. Cooley’s comments:

I'm still a little vague on this.  Why would I go or deal with a library to borrow a book? You don't have to go there, right?  This is weird. Why would a library have anything to do with virtual books? It doesn't make sense.

Locality is about physical books. They're physically available in a certain place, so your library houses them, but once they're virtual, locality goes out the door. It's weird.  The library thing is real divisive. We can start a hate storm. I mean, I'm sorry folks, but I don't get libraries. In this day and age, I don't get libraries. Great air conditioning, good place to nap, right?

Libraries are for the very old and the very unemployed. I'm sorry, that's where it's at right now. It doesn't make sense anymore.  The local library's really starting to get shaky to my mind, unless it's for the poor, the unemployed, the homeless, and the very old. That's what libraries are for now. What kid in high school is going to get anything out of the library?

Seriously,  you've got some ninety-year-old reference librarian who's going to point you to what, a Britannica volume to look something up? All you've got to do is Google. For crying out loud. Getting out is fine, but there are plenty of bars. You don't need to go to libraries to get out of the house. 

How does the library ‘defend your right to free information?’ The Internet's already got that done, folks.  What do you mean, "for people who read"? Who on earth needs to go to a library to get a book? Crazy town!  The library? How quaint!

Mr. Cooley seems to be an arrogant young man that I strongly suspect has never undertaken a major scholastic research project. The Internet is good a start for preliminary research but, at this point and well into the future, you still have to go to a library (preferably, your city’s central branch) to access - for free - newspaper and magazine archives (with annual subject guides in print for each major U.S. newspaper going way back); government documents on microfilm (i.e., you will never find U.S. Senate records for 1947 on the Net), archival collections that will never be digitized, or even basic research guides, i.e. the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, which annually indexes articles from all magazines by subject; indexes in print for scholastic journals, obscure and otherwise. Yes, it's now available online - for a fee. At the library, nada.

“In this day and age,” physical libraries are more important than ever simply because the New is not the be-all and end-all for research. Ask a reporter. Leg-work, the physical schlep to primary sources, human or obscure and arcane texts, remains, and always will be, the key to effective research that reveals something heretofore unknown. I have a few books under my belt, the research for which would have been impossible without daily visits to L.A. Central Library; the Internet just didn’t have what I needed. It’s only by sitting in a chair going though the boring process of sifting through reels and reels of microfilm that one can unearth the golden nuggets. The Internet provides a lot of information but not all - far from it.

Oh, Mr. C., you are napping! Libraries are not just about borrowing books. Most of the stuff you need for research is not available for circulation, particularly rare and archival materials. Yes, painful as it may be, you have  to make an appearance and stick around a while to delve into all the great stuff available, for free, at a library.

The primary problem with doing research on the Internet is that you can only find what you know exists or can discover with a keyword or phrase. You cannot find what you don’t know exists and if you don’t use a magic keyword will never find. Serendipitous discovery is the soul of original research.

This is where those useless ninety-year old reference librarians come in. Only an ignorant fool tries to go it alone with research - you will likely miss something important to your work and not even know about it unless you know someone who has devoted decades to mastering navigation of the ocean of reference materials out there, far beyond the Britannica, most of which will never be digitized because it is not profitable to do so. We’ll gloss over Mr. Cooley’s  snarky attitude. Who needs someone with decades of experience to help with research? What can they possibly know that Mr. Cooley, with all his vast experience within a hi-tech cocoon,  doesn’t?

“How does the library ‘defend your right to free information?' The Internet's already got that done, folks.” Uh, no, it doesn’t.  With, for instance, online newspapers and scholastic journal aggregators (i.e JSTOR) charging fees for access to their content, the same material offered for free at a public library is a great boon. Scholars are, by definition, poverty-stricken and cannot afford to pay $10- $15 every time they need to read an article in an off the wall journal posted on the Net. You could easily drop $500 - $1,000 in fees by the time the project is done.

As those of us in the real world know, free is no loner the default position on the Net. The cost of  high-speed access in the U.S. is rising, as is content. Monetizing digital text to its true market value is the trend, not the end.

The real problem with libraries and scholarship is that you have to move a muscle to get  there and into it. Armchair researchers and couch potatoes can never be successful researchers. What can a high-school student get out of a library? Everything. For instance, the broad perspective that can only come when the digital world is recognized for what it truly is, a virtual facsimile of a slice of the real world, and not the actual, real world in its entirety.

Digital dweebs with an attitude so narrow that they seem to suffer from mental myopia and tunnel vision have doomed themselves to scholastic mediocrity. To perform research at the highest, most effective and revealing level you have to get the pixels out of your head and the print in your hands. Crazy guy, this Cooley! How boring! He needs a nice, air-conditioned place to wake-up to reality and solid research. A library is ideal.

So, by all means, begin with Google for basic research. But if you have any expectation of conducting quality, in-depth scholarship - whether as a student or professional  -  it  will probably end at a library.

When it comes to libraries, if ignorance is bliss then Mr. Cooley is the happiest guy around, the village idiot. Crazy town! Cooley's the mayor.

N.B.: The poor, the unemployed, the homeless, and the very old are not second-class citizens. They are entitled to the same access to info that Mr. Cooley, the, presumably, financially comfortable, and new, crown prince of high-tech putzes, enjoys.
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Our thanks to LISNews for the lead.

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Literary Action Figures to the Rescue!

by Stephen J. Gertz

"Dost thou desire a figurine of a man with sublime intellect
and sharp wit? Forsooth, thy dreams have taken shape!
'Tis a 5¼" (13.3 cm) tall, hard vinyl William Shakespeare
Action Figure with removable book and quill pen."

It's been a long, grueling day. Q: How can one take the edge off without intoxicants? A: Get in the playpen with these toys designed with the rare book lover in mind.

First Folio (in left hand) not included.

As accompaniment to the above, want to learn how to lose friends and salivate at the same time? Look no further than:

"Each set includes seven 1" (2.5 cm) tall boxes that look like miniature
Shakespeare volumes. Inside each box you'll find two fruit flavored gum
balls and an eloquent Shakespearean insult printed on the inside.
Sure to offend the intellectuals and confuse the dimwitted!"
 
"Thou art like a toad; ugly and venemous."

"You scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian!
I'll tickle your catastrophe!"

"Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool,
thou whores on obscene greasy tallow-catch!"

"You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat's-tongue,
you bull's-pizzle, you stock-fish."

Of course, when it comes to rapier-wit and the devastating put-down, no one cut deeper than Oscar Wilde.

"Oscar Wilde was a writer and lecturer of great accomplishment,
but he is most famous for his comedic plays, quick wit and eccentric dress.
This 5-1/4" (13.3 cm) tall, hard vinyl action figure is dressed for a party
where Wilde will quickly cut all those around him to pieces
with barbed witticisms. Removable cane included!"

The Wilde One.
Beware the removable cane!

Say hello to the G.I. Joe of 19th century English literature:

"The novels of Charles Dickens captured the essence of Victorian society
so well that the entire period is often described as Dickensian.
To this day, none of his novels have ever gone out of print in England.
This 5-1/2" (14 cm) tall, hard vinyl action figure
comes with a quill pen and a removable hat!"

What appears to be a codpiece is not. Included.

The Case of the Unintentional Codpiece is one best left to the master of literary detection himself:

"Created by Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes has become an icon of crime
detection and deductive reasoning. This 5-1/4" (13.3 cm) tall, hard vinyl action
figure comes with a removable magnifying glass and deerstalker hat. He even
has a pipe which fits snugly into his mouth to help him concentrate when
working on a particularly difficult case."
 Hypodermic needle and vial of .07% solution of cocaine not included.

Watson! I said magnifying glass, not tennis racket!

Jane Austen didn't get much action during her life. Time to make up for lost time with plenty of action now!

"Jane Austen was one of the greatest English novelists in history.
Despite a rather sheltered life, she was able to capture the subtleties
of human interaction so perfectly that her novels continue to be
 immensely popular to this day. This 5-1/4" (13.3 cm) tall, hard
vinyl action figure comes with a book (Pride & Prejudice) and
a writing desk with removable quill pen!" Zombies not included.

I'm hungry for zombies.

"Wreak havoc on your sister's precious diorama with this
Flesh Eating Zombie Play Set! Each set includes nine
1" (2.5 cm) to 3-1/4" (8.3 cm) tall, hard vinyl zombies,
 complete with blank stares, gaping mouths, open wounds
and missing limbs! Turn off the lights and they glow!
Fantastic undead fun for the whole family!"

What collection of literary action figures would be complete without representation by the profession that so often leads us into literature?

"If you just can't get enough of the Dewey decimals or if you
go bananas for books, chances are you have a Librarian Action Figure.
Nancy Pearl's likeness made history as the best selling Librarian Action
Figure of all time, but the true collector needs this Deluxe Edition.
Each 5" (12.7 cm) tall, hard vinyl figure is dressed in a stylish burgundy
outfit and comes in a library diorama with a reference desk, computer,
book cart, multiple book stacks and some loose books. Press the button
on her back for the infamous 'amazing shushing action!'"

"Amazing Shushing Action" or simply "Aren't I cute"pose?

Why would adults want to own literary action figure toys, however literary their action figures into play? Ask the litterateur-analyst:

"Each 5" (12.7 cm) tall, hard vinyl action figure captures Freud
in a pensive pose, holding a distinctly phallic cigar. Put him on
your desk or nightstand to inspire you to explore the depths of
your unconscious and embrace the symbolism of your dreams."
Couch not included.

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

I'm a grown man so I'm finally throwing out my pail and shovel and moving up to these toys.

"The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground."
G. K. Chesterton

"Play is the exultation of the possible"
Martin Buber

"To live is to play at the meaning of life...The upshot of this . . . is that it teaches us once and for all that childlike foolishness is the calling of mature men."
Ernest Becker - The Denial of Death

"We don't stop playing because we turn old, but turn old because we stop playing"
attributed to Satchel Paige

"Time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time."
-T. S. Elliot

"Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness."
- Mary Satton
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All  toys, quoted product text, and images from Accoutrements.
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Meet Adele Mundy, Badass Space Librarian

DRAKE, David. Some Golden Harbor. NY: Baen Books, 2006.
Cover by Steve Hickman.

For conspiring against the government of Cinnabar, her family was massacred; she is the sole survivor. She's a scholar, a librarian turned Signals Officer who has joined Daniel Leary, a lieutenant in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy (RCN) to battle against treacherous politicians, the Alliance, rebels, and all manner of galactic grief and peril. She is a master of information technology and spy craft. She likes weapons and knows how to use them.

Don't mess with Adele Mundy, sharpshooting librarian in space.

It was just the other day when I rued the exclusion of librarians from science-fiction literature only to learn that yes, in addition to Space Lawyer, there actually is a librarian plying her skills in the cosmos beyond Earth. I was so taken by the revelation, provided by Vic Zoschak, of Tavistock Books, who perpetrated Space Lawyer on me, that I pursued it directly to the source, David Drake, author of the  highly respected RCN series featuring the inter-galactic adventures of Lt. Leary and Signal Officer Mundy, and mercilessly interrogated him.

Booktryst; Why did you choose librarian as an occupation for Adele?

DD: My RCN series is consciously modeled on Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series which pairs a naval officer with a technical specialist who is a crack shot. O'Brian made Maturin a doctor. I wouldn't create so direct a copy, and anyway, I don't have the background to describe a doctor's work usefully.

I did, however, spend quite a lot of time as a book page at the University of Iowa and later at Duke. I love libraries, and I have some knowledge of and enormous respect for librarians - the first and still the best information specialists. It was therefore natural to make Adele a librarian. 

Booktryst: Is there something intrinsically sexy about a librarian with martial skills?

DD: I don't think of occupations as being sexy. I've never understood the cachet which some people attach to this occupation or that. In particular I don't understand why people consider being a writer 'special.'

I'm a writer and a darned good craftsman. My dad was a very good electrician, and my dad's father was arguably the best tinsmith in the country. These are all respectable things to be, as is librarian; but they aren't sexy.

Booktryst: You have cruelly destroyed the fantasies of many library patrons with over-active imaginations. Let's get to another key issue. Adele Mundy, space librarian, on e-books: sí­ or no?

DD: The late Jim Baen (who founded Baen Books) was a real leader in electronic publication. For some years now Baen Books earns a great deal of money annually through its electronic publications (though that's still a sidelight of its dead tree operations). Jim was one of my closest friends, and I'm proud that the RCN series has been a feature of Baen's electronic publications from the beginning.

Booktryst: Any chance of spinning off Adele into her own series? I smell chick-lit, grrrl power bonanza! Followed, of course, by film adaptation, Angelina Jolie, and sequels.

DD: Spinning off Adele? Tsk! As in O'Brian creating Stephen Maturin, Pistol-Packing Doctor? Adele and Daniel Leary are halves of a single archetype. I'm certainly not going to split them up.

Booktryst: Alright, then. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, together again after the deadly Mr. and Mrs. Smith, as Daniel Leary and Adele Mundy. Hollywood, are you listening?

DD:

Booktryst: I'll take that as "no comment."

DD: I'll throw in a comment on Space Lawyer, which I read a very long time ago. I think you'll find that the concluding portion of Space Lawyer was written for book publication, not for the magazine.

Schachner [Nat, author of Space Lawyer] (though he's forgotten today) was a mainstay of Astounding  during the Golden Age and wrote consistently thoughtful material. [Asimov was a fan]. Unfortunately he was at best a pedestrian writer. When I was 14, that didn't bother me; but Space Lawyer is sprightly compared to some of his work.

Best wishes to you and your readers.

And to you, David Drake.

Next time you visit a library, don't mess with that shy, demure reference librarian behind the desk. It could be Adele Mundy, incognito and undercover for a secret mission on Earth, packing a devastating weapon to deal with unruly patrons, rude behavior, and aliens in the rest room. And if you owe late fees, better pay up, buster. Adele takes no guff.

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The Feminists and the Financier: The Ladies Who Built J. P. Morgan's Library

Belle Da Costa Greene, 1911.
Image courtesy of the Morgan Library

In the 1890s, financier J. Pierpont Morgan began building a collection of art, rare books, manuscripts, and artifacts that would surpass anything previously known in the United States. In 1902, he commissioned Charles McKim, the nation's most prominent architect, to build a library to house his treasures. There remained, however, the problem of organizing his grwoing acquisitions, which had until that time been stored in the basement of his Madison Avenue mansion. Enter his nephew, Junius, a student at Princeton and an aesthete much interested in art and books.

J. P. Morgan, 1902. Image courtesy of the Morgan Library

Junius had made the acquaintance of a young librarian at Princeton, Belle Da Costa Greene, who was a knowledgeable cataloguer with a particular interest in old and rare books. He brought the young woman, then barely 20, to meet his formidable uncle on a fateful day in 1905. The senoir Morgan, impressed by the young woman's intelligence--and no doubt attracted by her beauty--hired her to put his collection in order. Belle accepted his offer, and spent the next three years cataloguing treasures that would make any librarian weak with envy.

Portrait of Belle by Paul-Cesar Helleu.
Image from Wikicommons

Bellle Da Costa Greene was very much a self-made woman. Raised in Washington, D.C., in an educated, middle class family, she had not attended college but hadreceived all of her library training on the job at Princeton University. She was, by all account, extremely intelligent, shrewd, vivacious, socially adept, independent, charming, and beautiful. She also had a secret: she was an African-American who was "passing" as white. Her father was Richard Greener, the first African-American to graduate from Harvard and the dean of the law school at Howard University. Greener and Belle's mother, Genevieve, has separated when she was a child. The very light-skinned Genevieve dropped the "r" from her prominent husband's last name and began to pass herself and her children as white, not because she was ashamed--she herself was a daughter of Washington's black bourgeoisie--but because she pragmatically realized they would have far more opportunities open to them if they were believed to be white. Belle added "Da Costa" to her name (her original middle name was Marion) and put it about that she was of Portuguese descent, accounting for her olive complexion and curly dark hair.

By 1908, Belle had won Morgan's confidence in her knowledge and abilities, and he began sending her to Europe to purchase books, and especially illuminated manuscripts, for his collection. Belle became a major figure in the international art scene: already strikingly beautiful, she dressed fashionably, declaring famously, "Just because I am a librarian doesn't mean I have to dress like one." She sought to learn from prominent scholars, including Sidney Cockerell and Bernard Berenson, the latter of whom she counted mong her lovers.

The Da Costa Hours. Image courtesy of the Morgan Library.

When J. P. Morgan died in 1913, he left Belle $50,000--the equivalent of $800,000 in today's money--effectively making her financially independent for life. Fortunately his son, Jack, recognized Belle's worth to the Morgan collection and asked her to stay on and to continue acquiring treasures. In 1924, Jack Morgan established the Morgan Library as a public reference library and art collection, and named Belle as its director. She held that position for the next 24 years, until her reitrement in 1948.

Given the depth, breadth, and stature of the Morgan Collection, it is difficult to overstate Belle's influence on American art and antiquarian book world. Her acquisitions and stewardship continue to benefit us today, as seen in the recent manuscript exhibitions at the Morgan.

She was not the only woman in a prominent position at the Morgan. Bookbinder Marguerite Duprez Lahey kept a much lower profile, but was responsible for the luxurious bindings and solander cases that housed many of Morgan's finest books and manuscripts. A friend of Belle Greene, she first began working for Morgan in 1911, and continued to do so, nearly excelusively for over 30 years. A graduate of Brooklyn and Adelphi College, she served a two-year apprenticeship in at New York's Old Chelsea Bindery and went on to study bookbinding with Paris masters, particularly Jules Domont. Little seems to be known of her life outside her work: She was fron Virginia, and a 1937 article in Time magazine describes her as "a slender blonde." It was noted with interest that she was left handed, often considered an impediment among artisans of her trade. Quietly toiling in her studio, she did all the work of binding herself, selecting an preparing the finest levant morocco, sewing the pages, pasting, mounting, pressing, tooling, and finishing the bindings. A 1937 exhibition at the Morgan showcased 150 of her creations for the library's manuscripts.

At a time when few women worked outside the home, and far fewer attained professional prominence, Belle and Marguerite rose to the heights of their chosen fields, gaining the respect of their collegaues, competitors, and patrons. It is a pity so few know of them today. I was frankly appalled that I had never heard of Belle Da Costa Greene when I was in library school--talk about an inspiring role model. A recent biography, An Illuminated Life, will perhaps raise awareness of her story, I highly recommend it.

Nancy Drew Gets Her Due (Zombies Beg To Differ)

KEENE, Carolyn [Mildred Wirt Benson],
The Hidden Staircase.
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1930.
(All Images Courtesy Of University Of Maryland.)

An online exhibit celebrating supersleuth Nancy Drew has transformed the intrepid, titian-haired detective from a old-time library pariah into a modern-day American Library Association (ALA) award winner. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Rare Book and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of ALA has bestowed its annual honor for "online exhibit of exceptional merit" to the University of Maryland Libraries for "Nancy Drew and Friends: Girls’ Series Books Rediscovered." That rumbling sound you hear is an army of reanimated children's librarians, rising from their graves in outrage to mount a zombie invasion of ALA's 2010 Annual Meeting.

KEENE, Carolyn [Mildred Wirt Benson],
The Clue In The Jewel Box.
New York:Grosset & Dunlap, 1943.

"The exhibition," stated Richard Noble, chair of the RBMS Exhibition Awards committee and rare books cataloger at Brown University, "is an editorial triumph, accessible and informative at many levels, with a consistency of voice that remains always somehow breezy without ever betraying the seriousness of the collecting and curatorial discipline that went into it." Mr. Noble is clearly smitten with this tribute to Miss Drew, and equally enchanted by its subject's considerable charms. But he's not really to blame. After all, his heroine has been described by novelist Bobbie Ann Mason as being: "as immaculate and self-possessed as a Miss America on tour. She is as cool as a Mata Hari and as sweet as Betty Crocker." So what's up with those Night Of The Living Dead Librarians?

KEENE, Carolyn [Mildred Wirt Benson],
The Mystery of The Ivory Charm.
New York:Grosset & Dunlap, 1936.
(Dustjacket.)

Well, despite the fact that Nancy Drew's mystery-solving expertise makes Sherlock Holmes look like a piker, her feats of fictional daring-do were considered by many Depression era librarians to be downright dangerous. The Nancy Drew books, and other similar series published by the Stratemyer Syndicate, were said to be the literary equivalent of Valium, inducing "mental laziness," "intellectual torpor," and even "fatal sluggishness," in unsuspecting young readers. While this state of tranked-out bliss would seem to preclude much strenuous activity, somehow these same lazy-eyed loafers were said to be single-handedly undermining decent society. As one scandalized librarian declared: "Much of the contempt for social conventions ... is due to the reading of this poisonous sort of fiction."

ALLEN, Betsy [Betty Cavanaugh],
The Clue In Blue. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1948.
Another Subversive Stratemeyer Series.
(Dustjacket.)

And as if figuratively destroying the best minds of a generation wasn't bad enough, Chief Librarian of the Boy Scouts, Franklin K. Mathiews seemed to believe "these cheap books" could literally cause brain damage: "I wish I could label each one of these books: 'Explosive! Guaranteed to Blow Your Boy’s Brains Out.' . . . [a]s some boys read such books, their imaginations are literally ‘blown out,’ and they go into life as terribly crippled as though by some material explosion they had lost a hand or foot." And lest you think lifelong mental damage from series books was limited to males, psychologist G. Stanley Hall chimed in that the female reader of these pernicious pages will be given: "false views of [womanhood]...which will cloud her life with discontent in the future." Brain dead boys and disillusioned girls, what's next, the apocalypse?

Nancy Drew Or Dorian Gray?
The Ageless Detective As Pictured From 1930-1977.

Series books were banned in libraries as early as 1901. A 1905 Library Journal editorial urged librarians to maintain their high standards: "Shall the libraries resist the flood and stand for a better and purer literature for children, or shall they 'meet the demands of the people' by gratifying a low and lowering taste?" But publisher Edward Stratemeyer took it all in stride: "Personally it does not matter much to me...Taking them out of the library has more than tripled the sales..." And Stratemeyer had the last laugh: not only are series books like The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew now commonplace in public libraries, research libraries and rare book rooms also collect this literature one labeled "substandard."

KEENE, Carolyn [Mildred Wirt Benson],
The Secret In The Old Attic.
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1944.

The ALA award winning online exhibition from the University of Maryland Libraries was created from their Rose and Joseph Pagnani collection of over 300 books from 33 different girls' series published from 1917 to 1980. The collection was donated, ironically, by a librarian, Elissa Pagnani, who earned her Masters of Library Science degree from the University of Maryland. The Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Award for outstanding online exhibition will be presented on June 27, 2010, during ALA's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. If you should see reports of flesh-eating zombie librarians crashing the ceremony, remember you read it first here on Booktryst.

__________

Previously On Booktryst:
Ohio Library Uncovers The Secret At Shadow Ranch.
Miracle Of The Two-Week Rare Book: A Nancy Drew Mystery.

Kaplan Boxing Archive: From Contender To Champ

Poster For An Exhibit of Materials From The Hank Kaplan Boxing Archive.

(All Images Courtesy Of Hank Kaplan Boxing Archive At Brooklyn College.)

The rags to riches story behind Brooklyn College's Hank Kaplan Boxing Archive just got a little richer: on April 16, 2010 the collection's chief archivist, Professor Anthony Cucchiara, became the winner of a $315,000 endowment from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) to organize the largest and most extensive boxing collection in the world. "This two-year grant will allow us to process and preserve this invaluable collection that spans two centuries of boxing history," says Prof. Cucchiara.

Finding the funds to organize, catalog, and digitize the 2,600 books, 500,000 photographs and negatives, 1,200 posters, reams of clipping files, scrapbooks, documents, letters, and memorabilia that make up the Kaplan collection was a daunting task. A $50,000 seed grant from Barry Feirstein, Chair of the Brooklyn College Foundation, allowed Prof. Cucchiara and his team, Assistant Archivist Marianne LaBatto and Conservator Slava Polischuk, to begin an inventory of the over 2,000 cartons of material. But the goal was to make the entire collection available to the public, in accordance with the donor's wishes.

A Rare Poster For A Fight That Never Took Place. The Bout Was Rescheduled When Then Cassius Clay, Later Muhammad Ali, Became Ill.

Fortunately, the Brooklyn College academic charged with the task has more than a professional interest in this treasure trove of boxing memorabilia. Anthony Cucchiara works out every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn with Hector Rocca, who trained the recently-deceased fighter Arturo "Thunder" Gatti, as well as "Million Dollar Baby" star Hilary Swank. It was the friendship between the pugilist professor and donor Hank Kaplan, an authority on boxing nicknamed "the sweet scientist," "the human encyclopedia," and "the Lord of the Ring," that resulted in the $3 million collection coming to Brooklyn College.

Hank Kaplan's life story sounds like something straight out of the Dead End Kids. Kaplan was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1919, the son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. His father died when Hank was only nine, leaving his seamstress mother to raise four children alone. At times the family was so strapped for cash the children were temporarily placed in orphanages. His interest in boxing began when he suffered a bloody nose in a boyhood fistfight at a charity summer camp for hard luck city kids in upstate New York. He fought as an amateur middleweight, and later turned pro, winning his first and only bout. But this was in the early 1940's, and World War II ended his ring career. Kaplan joined the U.S. Coast Guard upon learning that its Director of Physical Training was former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey.

Hank Kaplan At His Fighting Weight In The 1940's.

During the War, Kaplan was trained in the disinfection of contaminated ships, and after attending the University of Miami on the G.I. Bill, he began a career with the Centers For Disease Control (CDC). But his passion for prizefighting never waned. He retired at age fifty-five, and began a second career with his first love. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was a publicist for the brothers Chris and Angelo Dundee, who molded the careers of Muhammad Ali and other champions, and he occasionally promoted fights on his own. He served as a public relations consultant to top fighters, founded the Wide World of Boxing Digest, and wrote dozens of articles on the sport for such publications as Boxing World, The Ring, the London Times, and Der Stern. He served as a boxing consultant to Sports Illustrated for 24 years, and later worked for ESPN, HBO and Showtime. Over time Kaplan became known as a scholarly, reliable, and eloquent source of information on anything and everything related to the fight game.

Throughout his life Kaplan collected memorabilia related to the sweet science. Much of his collection was given to him by trainers and fighters he befriended. He knew every boxing champion of his day, including Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Henry Armstrong, Jake LaMotta, Sugar Ray Robinson and Sugar Ray Leonard. He met an eighteen year old kid named Cassius Clay at the Fifth Street Gym in Miami in 1960. By the time Clay became "The Greatest," Kaplan and Heavyweight Champion of the World Muhammad Ali were fast friends.

Kaplan's Comprehensive Collection Includes Products Endorsed By "The Greatest."

But Kaplan's one-man history of boxing isn't just about the champs. He kept detailed records on virtually every professional boxer and trainer in history, and on judges, referees, and announcers, too. Kaplan kept vast files on what he called "fistic arcana," such as mainstream and unorthodox training methods, boxing in the movies, animals in boxing, bare-knuckle fighting, and Jewish and Italian boxers who adopted Irish names. Despite his association with big-name boxers, Kaplan was devoted to the memory of each and every fighter. His files on now-forgotten fighters like Joe Grim, a palooka whose professional record of 6-91-9 was the worst of all time, were as important to him as the rest: "Even when I was 16 or 17, I said there's got to be some way to remember them," Mr. Kaplan told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 1995. "If someone were to ask me why I keep the archives, I guess that's what I'd say: Someone has to be charged with remembering them."

By the beginning of 1990, Kaplan's collection filled two rooms in his Kendall, Florida home, and an entire two-car garage. Then in 1992, Hurricane Andrew ripped the roof from the garage, putting much of the collection at risk. Kaplan was able to save nearly everything he had collected, but he began to think seriously about what would happen to his vast historical archive after his death. David Smith, a supervising librarian at the New York Public Library, learned about the Kaplan archive from the writer David Margolick, who was researching his book, Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink. Then Smith read a 2005 article in The New York Times that mentioned Professor Tony Cucchiara's devotion to boxing. Smith arranged the introductions that led to Hank Kaplan's archive finding a new home at a college in his boyhood home town.

A Portrait Of Hank Kaplan By Artist Bob Carson.

Hank Kaplan became ill in late 2007, and Prof Cucchiara received a call from his daughter, Barbara Kaplan-Haar, who informed him that her father intended to leave the entire collection to Brooklyn College. Mr. Kaplan died two weeks after that call. "I think Hank liked the idea that the collection would be coming to Brooklyn," Professor Cucchiara said. "And it could be that he thought, since I'm both an academician and a boxer, that I would not let him down." "Some people would want to turn up their noses at a boxing collection," he added. "But the story of America is in this archive. Boxing is more than a sport. It's a lens through which to look at American cultural history." The professor and the donor share an undying admiration for the sweet science, "None of this is for my own glory," Kaplan said of his collection. "I have no dreams of great rewards. My love of boxing comes first."

Posted by Nancy Mattoon