Charles Bukowski In High School

by Stephen J. Gertz

Los Angeles High School, 1917-1971.

Once upon a time - the late 1930s - Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), America's poet laureate of the depths, attended Los Angeles High School. His hard living years were ahead of him. His post-high school aspirations did not include writing. His ambition was to join the Navy. To that end he was a member of L.A. High's ROTC program.

A set of seven Los Angeles High School Blue & White semi-annual yearbooks - Summer 1936, Summer and Winter 1937, Winter 1938, Summer 1938 (in dust jacket, and a duplicate copy), and Winter 1939 - has recently appeared in the marketplace, offered by William Dailey Rare Books.

The provenance could not be more sterling; the copies of William Mullinax, Bukowski's closest boyhood friend and loyal high school buddy, who appeared in the novelist's Ham On Rye (1982) as Eli "Baldy" La Crosse. We know the provenance is solid because Bukowski inscribed two of the copies to Mullinax and other copies possess inscriptions to Mullinax.

Mullinax, the son of an alcoholic surgeon, was the person who introduced Bukowski to booze.

Bukowski has signed Mullinax's copy of the Winter 1939 yearbook on the front free endpaper. Whether he was aware of what he was doing or not, the line breaks suggest an eye and ear for poetry. And a sense of humor.

Best of Everything

to a good baseball

player and a swell

student.

Henry Bukowski

His inscription squeezed next to Mullinax's class photo is not so proto-literary; it's standard high school yearbook prose: "lots of Luck an old pal and truly great guy, 'Baldy' Bill Mullinax."

Bukowski's inscription in the Summer 1938 yearbook is found on the page devoted to ROTC Company A, and is another exercise in breaking the boundaries of standard Jahrbuch-Stil prose.

Best Wishes

to a good army 

man. I hope you

will be a Nevins

sergeant next

term. 

Navy

Hank Bukowski

1st Class

Seaman

Buk drew a line from the inscription to his ROTC Company A photo. He's fourth from the right in the second row down. You need a magnifying glass to see him with any clarity yet he stands out: deeply tanned between two snow-white boys, his cap with insignia at a rakish angle to the right and tipped down to  his  eyebrow. The attitude is already there.

The above page from Los Angeles High School Blue and White Summer 1938 is reproduced in Ben Pleasant's Visceral Bukowski (2004) and an enlargement of Bukowski within the group portrait is inset.

Of further value to collectors is that other classmates are found in the yearbooks who Bukowski later sandwiched into Ham On Rye, his semi-autobiographical novel recounting his youth in Los Angeles: Al Cole, Jimmy Newell; Jimmy Haddox, Jim Hatcher; and Harold Mortenson appears as Abe Mortenson. As a bonus, an autograph note is laid into the Winter 1939 yearbook, from Jim Haddox to Bill Mullinax, "Jim Hatcher" to "Baldy."

__________

Images courtesy of William Dailey Rare Books, with our thanks.
__________

Of Related Interest:

Bukowski's First Appearance In Print, 1944

Charles Bukowski, Artist

Lost Original Drawings Of A Dirty Old Man

 Charles Bukowski's Last, Unpublished Poem

Charles Bukowski Bonanza At Auction

Dirty Old Man Exposed At The Huntington Library
__________
__________

Death Makes A Lousy Nanny, Etc.

by Stephen J. Gertz

Extra engraved title-page featuring
Manny, Moe, and Jack, the last of the Graces.

He can run but he can't hide.
- Joe Louis on ring opponent Billy Conn.

What's up with Death? What's it doing? It never takes a holiday but nowadays it seems to always be someplace else and never near until it is: it's messy and depressing and we keep it in a compartment, generally confined to a television box or computer screen. As if a hotel toilet seat it's been sanitized and deodorized for our protection. Unless, of course, you're in the midst of war and it becomes the close friend you never wanted and don't like but can't get rid of. Death is such a downer, so anti-life. We've buried it as something to be avoided at all costs, life and death as mortal enemies. Kill death before it kills us. We're shocked by its presence; it's alien to our existence.

Keep an eye on the nanny.

This is a recent phenomenon. Until the twentieth century, death was an ever-present close companion, always lurking and liable to strike at any moment. Women routinely dying in childbirth; high infant mortality; rampant, intractable disease; and ignorant medical care ruled. How did people cope with it? Religious faith was one way. Facing it dead-on, accepting, and often laughing was another.

There is a rich tradition of illustrated books that treat death as a living character in the theater of life.  The earliest, appearing not long after the Black Plague ravaged Europe, is Ars Moriendi (The Art of Dying), two manuscripts from the early fifteenth century on how to attain a good death, the second containing eleven graphic woodcuts. Hans Holbein's The Dance of Death (1538) featuring forty-one woodcuts is probably the most celebrated.

The "dance of death" (or "danse macabre") was a "medieval allegorical concept of the all-conquering and equalizing power of death, expressed in the drama, poetry, music, and visual arts of western Europe, mainly in the late Middle Ages. It is a literary or pictorial representation of a procession or dance of both living and dead figures, the living arranged in order of their rank, from pope and emperor to child, clerk, and hermit, and the dead leading them to the grave." (Encyclopedia Britannica).

Death defeats all challengers.

The nineteenth century saw the publication of William Combe's The English Dance of Death, originally issued in monthly parts, 1815-16, with seventy-three hand-colored aquatints by Thomas Rowlandson.

The book at the doctor's feet is List of Cures.
The leaf on the footstool by Death reads, The Only Infallible Remedy."

Ten years later, in 1826, British painter-engraver Richard Dagley published Death's Doings featuring prose and verse selections by various writers highlighted by twenty-four hand-colored plates designed and etched by Dagley.

Ode To Immortality.
Greece 1824.
The poet is Byron, who died in Greece in 1824
while fighting for its independence.

Dagley continues the tradition, with Death near at hand to everyone no matter who they are, no matter the circumstances. Death is everywhere, all the time, in the background tapping a foot in wait.

"Richard Dagley (c. 1765-1841) was an English subject painter. He was brought up at Christ's Hospital, and at first made designs for jewellery. From 1784 to 1806 he exhibited domestic subjects at the Royal Academy. He then turned his attention to teaching drawing, but again appeared at the Academy from 1815 to 1833. As a medalist he obtained some success, and he published works on gems in 1804 and 1822. His life was a continued struggle against poverty. He died in London in 1841" (Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers).


The ultimate Dear John letter.

The Scroll

The maiden's cheek blush'd ruby bright,
And her heart beat quick with its own delight;
Again she should dwell on those vows so dear,
Almost as if her lover were near.
Little deemed she that letter would tell
How her true lover fought and fell.
The maiden read till her cheek grew pale -
Yon drooping eye tells all the tale:
She sees her own knight's last fond prayer,
And she reads in that scroll her heart's despair.
Oh! grave, how terrible art thou
To young hearts bound in one fond vow.
Oh! human love, how vain is thy trust;
Hope! how soon art thou laid in dust…


Very popular upon its publication, a second edition of Death's Doings with six additional plates appeared in its first year followed by an edition in 1827 and a first American edition (Boston) in 1828. Though well-represented in institutional holdings, the last (and only) copy of Death's Doings with hand-colored plates to appear at auction was twenty-four years ago, in 1990.

Assertions to the contrary, Death does take a holiday: it has recently been vacationing at Club Dead, the last resort to get away from it all, with an all-inclusive package featuring eternal days and nights and all you can eat, though, admittedly, appetites are infinitely suppressed; the only diet that really works over the long-term.

Though booked as far into the future as one can see there's always room at the inn and my 87-year old mother is currently en route to this fabulous ultimate destination spot where Death is headlining the midnight show in the Drop-Dead Lounge and slaying the audience. While there is no turbulence, her flight is in limbo, she's grown impatient, and the family is slicing anxiety into thick slabs, experiencing a thousand deaths as she nears hers. It's not that Death can't make up its mind so much as Death behaving as a cruel tease.

My mother, never known for sharp humor, has made a startling debut as deathbed quipster, making sardonic jokes during brief  periods  of lucidity. Asked the other day if she needed anything she replied, "a shroud" dare I say deadpan. Death is jerking us around. All we ask is that it get on with the show and be done with it.

We're dyin' here.

(Rimshot).

__________

DAGLEY, Richard. Death's Doings; Consisting of Numerous Original Compositions, in Prose and Verse, the Friendly Contributions of Various Writers; Principally Intended as Illustrations of Twenty-Four Plates, Designed and Etched by R. Dagley. London: Printed for J. Andrews and W. Cole, 1826.



First edition. Octavo (8 1/4 x 5 1/8 in; 211 x 131 mm). xviii, [2], 369, [1, blank], [1, list of plates], [1, printer's slug] pp. Twenty-four hand-colored etchings.

Not in Tooley, Abbey, or Hardie.

The Plates:

1. The Poet.
2. The Pilgrim.
3. The Scroll.
4. The Artist.
5. The Cricketer.
6. The Captive.
7.The Serenade.
8. The Toilet.
9. The Mother.
10. The Hypochondriac.
11. Life's Assurance.
12. The Antiquary.
13. The Champion.
14. The Glutton.
15. The Last Bottle.
16. The Hunter.
17. The Alchymist.
18. Academic Honors.
19. The Empiric.
20. The Phaeton.
21. Death's Register.
22. The Lawyer.
23. The Bubbles of Life Broken By Death.
24. The Epilogue.

__________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
__________
__________

Leonard Cohen: You Do Not Have To Love Me At Auction (Or Anywhere Else)

by Stephen J. Gertz

A copy of Canadian poet and songwriter-singer Leonard Cohen's poem, You Do Not Have To Love Me is being offered by PBA Galleries in its Beats, Counterculture & the Avant Garde, Richard Synchef Collection Part II sale tomorrow, January 30, 2014. It is estimated to sell for $400 - $600.

In letterpress designed and printed by Bill Roberts (of Bottle of Smoke Press) and tipped-in to black paper card, it is copy "N" of 26 lettered copies signed by Cohen of a total edition of 126. Originally published in 1968, it is here issued as Sore Dove Press Broadside Series Number 33, published in 2008. It has already become quite collectible.

Facing the poem is an original oil painting by artist-poet Soheyl Dahl.

Included in the lot are seven Sore Dove Press postcards celebrating Cohen, two duplicated with black lettering.

As part of the lot, a copy of singer-songwriter (and Leonard Cohen collaborator) Anjani Thomas' poem, Holy Ground, is being offered. No. 31 of 100 signed copies, it, too, is in letterpress designed and printed by Bill Roberts. It was published by Sore Dove Press in 2009.

"Sore Dove Press is edited and published by Soheyl Dahi, an artist and poet living in San Francisco. It is a progressive press that publishes poetry chapbooks and broadsides by established poets ranging from Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, and Jack Hirschman to newcomers like the talented actress and poet Amber Tamblyn. The press also actively looks for and publishes poets to make their debut in print. The chapbooks and broadsides are printed in small editions. A limited number are signed by the poets and when possible a lettered edition with an original painting by the poets is included" (website).

__________

Images courtesy of PBA Galleries, with our thanks.
__________
__________

James Thurber Illustrates Poetry

by Stephen J. Gertz

The four original illustrations by celebrated American humorist, cartoonist, author, and journalist, James Thurber (1894-1961) to accompany Charles Kingsley's poem The Sands o' Dee, as published in The New Yorker magazine March 25, 1939, have come to auction. Offered by Swann Galleries in its 20th Century Illustration sale January 23, 2014, they are estimated to fall under the hammer at $4,000-$6,000.

Executed in ink on paper, the artwork and poem appeared as part of The New Yorker's popular Thurber feature, Famous Poems Illustrated. Each drawing appeared above one of the four six-line stanzas:

 O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
          And call the cattle home,
          And call the cattle home,
      Across the sands of Dee."
    The western wind was wild and dank with foam
      And all alone went she.

 The western tide crept up along the sand,
          And o'er and o'er the sand,
          And round and round the sand,
      As far as eye could see.
    The rolling mist came down and hid the land;
      And never home came she.

Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,--
          A tress of golden hair,
          A drownèd maiden's hair,
      Above the nets at sea?
    Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
      Among the stakes on Dee.

They rowed her in across the rolling foam,

          The cruel crawling foam,
          The cruel hungry foam,
      To her grave beside the sea.
    But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
      Across the sands of Dee.

Each original illustration is 279 x 216 mm (11x8 1/2 or smaller). Thurber's signature appears at lower left on the final drawing. Three of the illustrations possess faint preliminary drawings on their versos.

Thurber illustrated nine poems for The New Yorker, the others being  Excelsior (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow); Lochinvar (Sir Walter Scott); Locksley Hall (Lord Alfred Tennyson); Oh When I Was ... (A. E. Housman); Curfew Must Not Ring To-Night (Rose Hartwick Thorpe); Barbara Frietchie (John Greenleaf Whittier); The Glove and the Lions (Leigh Hunt); and Ben Bolt (Thomas Dunn English). They were collected in Thurber's 1940 anthology, Fables For Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated.

Established in 1997, the annual Thurber Prize honors outstanding examples of American humor.

__________ 

__________

With an affectionate tip o' the hat to Thurber keeper of the flame, fanatic and collector, Jay Hoster, who knows more about the man and his books than anyone alive.

__________

Images courtesy of Swann Galleries, with our thanks.

Sands o' Dee reprinted via WikiSource under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

__________
__________

The Strange Suicide Of An Early 20th C. Female Rare Book Binder

by Stephen J. Gertz

On Sunday morning, December 29, 1913, at 11:30AM the body of Mary Effingham Chatfield, 42, an art bookbinder with work commissioned by many of New York's most eminent book collectors and private libraries, was discovered flung across a couch in her studio on the sixth floor of 400 W. 23d Street in Manhattan, NYC.

She had been stabbed with a long, slender paper cutter with keen edge and point. On a nearby table a blood-splattered note was found with the cryptic accusation, "Mrs. Howard is to blame for this."

Close friends of Chatfield, who knew her as "Mollie," upon learning of her sudden, violent death and the strange note, presumed that she had been murdered.  The bloody note indicated that Mollie had written it after being stabbed, then dragged herself to the couch where she soon died: the blade had pierced her heart.

Her older brother, Harvey, who identified the body, knew otherwise. "I have not the slightest doubt that my sister committed suicide," he declared to reporters. "I do not know who the Mrs. Howard she referred to may have been for I do not remember any one of that name who has come into touch with our lives for at least five years." He then told of the bizarre circumstances which led to her death.

Binding by Mary E. Chatfield.

For the prior two months Mollie had been the victim of strange hallucinations, pursued by an inner voice that she believed to be that of a woman, one who commanded Chatfield to submit to her will and do what was demanded by her. In her desperation to escape the voice Mollie rented a studio on the top floor of her building in the hope that the voice could not reach her there. Chatfield, additionally, had taken to long, exhausting walks at rapid pace to elude the harridan's voice that constantly chased her. "It may have been that she believed that a Mrs. Howard was the woman who was following her wherever she went," her brother told a New York Times reporter.

What prompted her snap? Mollie and Harvey had a sister, Elizabeth, who, a year prior, had become so stricken by tuberculosis that she was sent upstate to Saranac, then a world-renowned center for the treatment of TB. They were very close and Mollie had given up her work to accompany and help care for her sister, who was suffering and wasting away. The months which followed were difficult for Mollie and when Elizabeth died she experienced a nervous breakdown.

By October of 1913, however, Mollie had made sufficient progress in her recovery to return to the city and begin work once again. She placed herself under the care of Dr.. John E. Wilson, a "nerve specialist" with an office at 616 Madison Avenue. Then the strange hallucinations began with the voice ordering her to do things she did not want to do. Her escape to the top floor and the frenetic walks around the city followed.

Harvey Chatfield thought that Mollie had been making progress; he had taken her out to dinner on Christmas Eve and she appeared to be in good spirits. Her doctor was also encouraged. She was last seen alive at 7:30 Saturday night December 28th.

Her body was discovered on the couch the next morning by a Mrs. Taylor, who had come to the studio with books she wished to have bound. After no response at the door the superintendent was called and Mrs. Taylor was let in and discovered the tragic scene.

Mr. Chatfield said that Mollie's bindings were commissioned by respected book collectors such as Robert J. Colter. Mrs. Taylor, present at the time Harvey Chatfield was interviewed and, evidently, the soul of discretion, said she thought it best not to mention other prominent people who hired Mary E. Chatfield, who was known in New York's art community for many years.

"Miss Chatfield's studio was one of the most artistically furnished of those in the big building. She had her workshop in the large front room into which the sunlight poured through a great skylight. An old spinning wheel stood in one corner, and the furniture included an antique desk of considerable value and an old mahogany piano. On the mantel was a pair of brass candle-sticks of unique design. A complete bookbinding outfit was neatly arranged on the work table beneath the skylight. Off this room was a smaller one, where Miss Chatfield had lived. She did her own cooking on a small gas range. Miss Chatfield was a member of an old Southern family, friends said. She was a handsome woman," (NY Times obituary).

Upper doublure. Note Chatfield's stamped signature at bottom edge.

The binding seen here is the only one by Mary E. Chatfield that I've thus far encountered. Curiously, no reference to her is found in Marianne Tidcombe's Women Bookbinders 1880-1920. It seems that she did not produce a large body of work; I have not found a single binding by her in any major library's online catalog. Yet with bindings by her in the collections of prominent collectors and libraries, as reported at her death, the books had to wind up somewhere. From a family of means, it may be that she was a dilettante in the Arts & Crafts movement, which, from its roots as an aesthetic protest against mechanization during the late 1880s-early 1890s, had, to a large degree, fallen into vocational work for the wealthy. Yet Chatfield was, reportedly, devoted to bookbinding, an unmarried woman of taste, means, and artistic yearning unsatisfied with the traditional, stultifying role: all dressed up with no place to go except shopping, the opera, and social occasions.

While the binding here - for a selection of Rudyard Kipling's verses bound together from various source editions - is certainly attractive Chatfield was not breaking new ground. But she was quite skilled with onlay work, not easy to well execute. Who did she study with? On the covers she has pictorially recreated the first stanza to Kipling's poem, The Legend of Evil:

This is the sorrowful story
Told when the twilight fails
And the monkeys walk together
Holding their neighbor's tails.

The upper doublure depicts an onlaid scene of Mandalay at twilight:

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees..

The mystery that is Mary E. Chatfield demands solution. I encourage anyone with further information on her to contact me.

__________

February 3, 2014. We received the following from Thomas Conroy, with our thanks:

Both the Mary Chatfield binding and the article are important excellent finds. I can add a little knowledge to what you have already.

Mary Chatfield joined the Guild of Book Workers in 1906-1907, its first year, as a "Professional Member" and a pupil of "Minnie Sophie Pratt" (1868-1901). The Prat sisters, originally from Nova Scotia, were almost the only students of Evelyn Nordhoff, Cobden-Sanderson's first American lady student.  Neither Nordhoff nor Minnie Prat lived long enough to gain any particular skill as binders, but they were pioneers. Miss Chatfield didn't appear in the Membership List for 1907-1908, but reappeared in 1908-1909 with "A. Dehertagh" added to her list of teachers. Adolphe Dehertogh, of course, had replaced Frank Mansell as second finisher at the Club Bindery around 1898, and later worked for Edith Diehl; he had been trained in Brussells and had worked in Paris. Miss Chatfield does not appear in the GBW Membership Lists after 1909. It is perhaps impolite, with Dehertogh in the picture, to mention that binding designers have been known to sign books that were
actually executed by real binders, especially in a French-style context. The name "Bonet" comes to mind....

The story is a bit more obscure, though. The Grangerized Kipling shown here has been published before, in an article of 1915-- one of two fine bindings attributed to "Harvy Chatfield." Mary's brother Harvey S. Chatfield also joined the GBW in 1906-1907, sharing a New York address with her (this was most likely a studio address), as a professional but without mentioning his teacher. He likewise missed 1907-1908, and reappeared in 1908-1909, sharing a new NYC address with Mary, and now claiming Dehertogh as his teacher. In 1909-1910 he added "Teacher" to his listing. He remained a member of the Guild until 1920-21, changing his listing only in address. Possibly brother and sister worked as a team, forwarder and finisher; or possibly this was a binding of Mary''s, completed by Harvey after her death.

Finally there is Rose Farwell Chatfield-Taylor (Mrs. H.C.) of Chicago (b. 1870) who joined the GBW in 1906-1907 as a professional ("Rose Bindery") and as "Pupil of Rene Kieffer, Paris, France." The next year she listed herself as a teacher. She remained in the Guild without change to her listing through 1909-1910. It is at least an interesting coincidence that Mary Chatfield's body was discovered by a "Mrs. Taylor." Perhaps genealogical research might uncover a connection.

REFERENCES:

The Guild of Book Workers First Year Book and List of Members, 1906-1907. New York:The Guild of Book Workers, 1907. Annual, 1907-1946.

Burleigh, G. "Some American Bindings and The Guild of Book Workers." Arts and Decoration 5 (May, 1915), p. 274-276.

__________
 

Header image from New York Times obituary December 30, 1913.

Binding images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
__________
__________

A 19th C. Rare Book With The Worst Reviews You'll Ever Read

by Stephen J. Gertz

It is, perhaps, the most appallingly bad epic poem to have ever been written in English, comprised of 384 interminable pages of doggerel verse devoid of any literary merit, an opus d'odure that screams stinkburger. 

Introducing: A Nineteenth Century, and Familiar History of the Lives, Loves, & Misfortunes of Abeillard and Heloisa, A Matchless Pair, who Flourished in the Twelfth Century: A Poem, in Twelve Cantos, published in London by J. Bumpus in 1819, and written by "Robert Rabelais the Younger!" Rabelais the Elder, who requires no exclamation point, must surely wish, wherever he is, that Gargantua and Pantagruel squished the Younger under their feet before he co-opted Elder's reputation and committed  "horrible and terrifying deeds and words" associated with Pantagruel but here applied to poetry and western civilization's most tragic love story.

But why take my word for it? Contemporary critics flayed the pseudonymous new Rabelais and his creation.

"Our readers know, though not to the extent which we unhappily do, that there is a vast quantity of poetry, or lines arranged in the shape of poetry, with, sometimes, sorts of bad rhymes tacked to the end of them, and at other times merely purporting to be what they literally are, Blank verse, given almost daily to the world in these scribbling times. It is one of our heaviest tasks to go through a fair proportion (if there be any fairness in them) of these light productions; and we are often moved, though of most philosophical tempers, to exclaim with the satirist,

"'Your easy writing's d___d hard reading'

"But it is seldom that our patience has been more severely tried than by the volume before us. Ten thousand lines of stupid doggrel! Why, the Job or Griselda is unborn who could perform such a labour as their bona fide perusal! A page is a punishment for naughty boys at school to repeat in expiation of any offense, and six pages would be penance enough for the utmost mischief that ever luckless and unsteady wight committed. We would recommend the book to teachers for this use; but we are restrained by the little dull obscenities it contains, which might perhaps do no good to the morals of the rising generation. Not that our modern Rabelais is worthy of the name he assumes, even on the score of impurity: he is equally free from the piquancy and the wit of his prototype; guiltless alike of his learning, his humor, and his genius, and far distant from that grossness which he durst only imitate in modern days.

"Conceiving this book to be as pernicious as it is tiresome, we deem it our indispensable duty to enter our early protest against it, especially as its title and some pretty engravings are calculated to catch the general eye. Burlesques and travesties, to be at all tolerable, must in the first place be founded on a great preceding subject; in the second place, be not too much prolonged; in the third place, be witty; and in the fourth place, form entertaining associations of ideas with the original. In all these requisites this Abeillard and Heloisa is lamentably defective. Its ground work is barely sufficient for a few pages of parody…and could not, with fifty times the writer's talent, be endurably spun out to twelve long cantos. Of wit there is no particle, and of ludicrous association with the ancient tale we can discover no traces.

"…How then could this Mr. Rabelais the Younger hope that his trash could meet with public approbation or encouragement? - trash which has nothing to recommend it, but is as soporific as it is paltry, as senseless as it is tiresome, and as destitute of point as it is trite and unmeaning.

"We do not think it necessary to give any further account of such a piece of ribaldry, but shall subjoin merely one passage, taken at random, as an example of the whole tissue of stuff.

It's mighty disagreeable
Not to be, at all times, able
To pass o'er matters we don't like!
A truth so great, it all must strike.
-But first, our Hero had prevail'd
In Wedlock's wedge to get dove-tail'd
For Louey could refuse him nothing
Although, the ceremony loathing,
Was led reluctant à Paris,
Where for a trifling fee,
They married were - but privately;
Yet it (as usual) soon got wind,
All Paris, being so vastly kind,
Came complimenting now the pair
Which much vexed her, and made him stare.

"Eheu jam satis! - How would readers like to read four hundred pages of such wretched buffoonery as this, none of it better and much of it worse? We claim their gratitude for having done so much for their sakes, and with only the sensation of pleasure this volume has occasioned us, consign it to the trunk-liners and pastry cooks" (The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, etc. Vol. 3, No. 104, January 16, 1819).

"The title-page is characteristic. It would be impossible for good sense, wit, poetry, or excellence of any description, to proceed from such an introduction, as for Champagne and Burgundy to inhabit the house where 'porter, ale, and British spirits,' flare and float upon the sign in front. Not that we are disposed to pursue our comparison; we have too much respect for our house-brewed liquors to liken them to the vapid, vulgar, and disgraceful stuff which is here summated to our taste.

"No words of contempt are indeed adequate to stigmatize, with dire force, this labored mess of stupidity. We scarcely recollect a grosser instance of the general abuse of the press. Here is a thick, well printed, octavo volume, without one ray of intellect beaming through any part of it: reams of verse, without the shadow of versification; deluges of English, and not a sentence of the language properly so called. The befell, the crier, and the common hangman, are the only critics of such a performance; and we quit the task in utter disgust. The idea of illustrating such a thing with engravings…could never have conceived but in times of unmeaning extravagance.

"Let our readers justify our severity by enduring one extract - better than hundreds of lines in the book.

Poor Portia! when she lost her Brutus,
Wept in the groves of the Arbutus,
And calling for a pan of coals,
She ate them all red hot, by goles!
By which she chok'd herself, 'tis said,
- To this was Cato's daughter led:
Unhappy girl! -" 

(The Monthly Review, Or, Literary Journal, Vol. XC, October 1819)

"The author of these verses would fain assume to himself the character of a wit; and in order to persuade his readers that he is so in reality, he calls himself Robert Rabelais the Younger. We must, however, undeceive them on this point, as he does not happen to possess one single spark either of the wit, genius, or vivacity of the writer whose name he has so impudently pilfered for his title-page. As for his poem, we venture to pronounce it the vilest and most contemptible bunch of doggrel that has appeared for many years, having no one redeeming point to save it from unqualified condemnation. It is at once trite, dull, and obscene: and so far from becoming the hot-pressed pages of a guinea volume, would disgrace the penny pamphlet of an itinerant hawker" (The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register, Vol. XI, No. 61, February 1, 1819).

Aside from the fine printing of W. Wilson, the ten delicately hand-colored aquatint engravings are the only saving grace to the book. Designed by John Thurston, etched by Thomas Landseer (brother of Sir Edwin), and aquatinted by George Robert Lewis, their quality stands in such stark contrast to the poem that it's as if Helen of Troy was kidnapped by a Neanderthal with delusions of handsome, or a Dior gown was draped on a ditch-digger.

The identity of Rabelais the Younger! remains a mystery. I suspect that if the poem had been well-received his real name would have surfaced if for no other reason than he could bask in the plaudits. With these reviews, however, he likely dug himself a hole and jumped in.

Can the publisher, J. Bumpus - a canny businessman who began as a bookseller and built his business into J. and E. Bumpus of Oxford Street, an esteemed London department store - have really seen merit in the Younger's work? It seems unlikely. My guess is that the Younger (who I suspect was a man of means and amateur litterateur with the leisure time to devote himself to the reader's ordeal) underwrote the cost of production and Bumpus was happy to take his money and publish the book at no risk.

Many if not most writers are driven by the notion, however crazy and grandiose they know it to be, that what they are doing is great work that the world needs to read. It's a necessary fantasy to keep from quitting during those times when it seems that the work is a waste of time that no one will care about. Judging from the feral exuberance of the poem, Rabelais the Younger! appears to have been in a compulsive manic fugue state during its composition, carried away by the wonderfulness of his own writing: this was it, the greatest satiric epic poem since Pope's Dunciad.

Rabelais the Younger! could have used a dose of Lithium to get through his mania. Readers will need a Valium to get through the book.

__________

Image courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
__________
__________

Bob Dylan's Legendary Tarantula Proofs Bite At $10,000

by Stephen J. Gertz

A copy of the pre-production uncorrected galley proofs of Bob Dylan's first book, Tarantula, has come to market. Spiral-bound in the original salmon-colored wrappers, it is being offered by Biblioctopus of Century City, California. The asking price is $10,000.

Why the hefty price tag? Tarantula was published in 1971. These proofs - of which only "a few copies" were produced, according to publisher Macmillan's press release - are dated 3 July, 1966 ("376") with "pub. date: Aug 1966 Price: $3.95 (tent.)" in holograph ink at the top of the front cover. In short, the proofs were printed five years before the book was actually published.

What happened?

Dylan's motorcycle accident happened.

Publication plans were in motion when Dylan had his fateful accident on July 29, 1966. Hospitalization and recovery surely distracted him but Dylan was never really committed to this collection of prose-poetry to begin with. 

"Things were happening wildly in that period," Dylan recalled to an interviewer in 2001. "I never had any intention of writing a book. I had a manager [Albert Grossman] who was asked: he writes all those songs, what else does he write? Maybe he writes books. And he must have replied: obviously, sure he writes books, in fact we're just about to publish one. I think it was on that occassion that he made the deal and then I had to write the book. He often did things like that."

Further movement on the book ground to a halt. 

Except from bookleggers, one of whom was in possession of a stolen copy of these proofs, photocopied it, and printed and published the result. Subsequent pirated editions (over a dozen) followed, each based upon third or later generation photocopies of that first pirated edition of these proofs.

First authorized edition, NY: Macmillan, 1971.

Here, then, is the fabled, earliest and scarcest of all editions of Tarantula in print, one of perhaps only 3-5 copies produced, eleven inches in height, seventy-eight pages in length, and $10,000 in cost.

_
__
___
____
_____
______
_______

here lies bob dylan
demolished by Vienna politeness -
which will now claim to have invented him
the cool people can
now write Fugues about him
& Cupid can now kick over his kerosene lamp -
bob dylan - filled by a discarded Oedipus
who turned
around
to investigate a ghost
& discovered that
the ghost too
was more
than one person

(From Tarantula, ©Bob Dylan).
__________

View some of the Tarantula piracies here.

__________

Images courtesy of Biblioctopus, with our thanks.
__________

Of Related Interest:

Greetings From Bob Dylan On Highway 51.
 
Very Early Bob Dylan Song Manuscripts Surface.
__________
__________

Bukowski's First Appearance In Print, 1944

by Stephen J. Gertz

A wonderful association copy of the scarce March-April 1944 issue of Story, featuring the first published work by Charles Bukowski - at the time only twenty-four years old - is being offered by PBA Galleries in its Beats, Counterculture & Avant Garde - Literature - Science Fiction. Collection of Richard Synchef sale, October 10, 2013. It is estimated to sell for $2,500-$3,500.

Bukowski's contribution, Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip, was composed just two years after he had begun to write, and was inspired by a note from Story publisher-editor Whit Burnett regarding a recent submission:

Dear Mr. Bukowski:

Again, this is a conglomeration of extremely good stuff and other stuff so full of idolized prostitutes, morning-after vomiting scenes, misanthropy, praise for suicide etc. that it is not quite for a magazine of any circulation at all. This is, however, pretty much the saga of a certain type of person and in it I think you've done an honest job. Possibly we will print you sometime but I don't know exactly when. That depends on you.

Sincerely yours,

Whit Burnett

In Factotum (1975), Bukowski described his experience with this first publication, calling Whit Burnett "Clay Gladmore":

"Gladmore returned many of my things with personal rejections. True, most of them weren't very long but they did seem kind and they were very encouraging...So I kept him busy with four or five stories a week." 

Bukowski later recalled the circumstances of the short story's publication in an interview just shortly before he died:

"I can remember my first major publication, a short story in Whit Burnett's and Martha Foley's Story magazine, 1944. I had been sending them a couple of short stories a week for maybe a year and a half. The story they finally accepted was mild in comparison to the others. I mean in terms of content and style and gamble and exploration and all that."

But Bukowski was not happy when Burnett finally published him. Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip had been buried in the End Pages section of the magazine as, Bukowski felt, a curiosity rather than a serious piece of writing. The cover's tag line - "Author to editor with everybody discomfited" - didn't help. Bukowski felt discounted and humiliated; he never submitted anything to Story again.

In that same interview, he noted that in the aftermath of Aftermath... "I didn't feel that the publishers were ready and that although I was ready, I could be readier and I was also disgusted with what I read as accepted front-line literature. So I drank and became one of the best drinkers anywhere, which takes some talent also."

"Charles Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany, 1920. His father was California-born of Polish parentage, and served with the American Army of Occupation in the Rhineland where he met the author's mother. He was brought to America at the age of two. He attended Los Angeles City College for a couple of years and in the two and one half years since then he has been a clerk in the postoffice, a stockroom boy for Sears Roebuck, a truck-loader nights in a bakery. He is now working as a package-wrapper and box-filler in the cellar of a ladies' sportswear shop" (Bio in Story).

Laid in to this copy of Story is a postcard from Christa Malone, daughter of Wormword Review publisher Marvin Malone, stating that this copy belonged to her father. Bukowski was the most frequent contributor to the Wormwood Review, with works appearing in more than ninety issues. It's a strong association.

Story was founded in 1931 by Whit Burnett and his first wife, Martha Foley, in Vienna, Austria. A showcase for short stories by new writers, two years later Story moved to New York City where Burnett and Foley created The Story Press in 1936.

By the late 1930s, the magazine's circulation had climbed to a relatively astounding 21,000 copies. In addition to Bukowski, Burnett and Foley published early stories by Erskine Caldwell, John Cheever, Junot Diaz, James T. Farrell, Joseph Heller, J. D. Salinger, Tennessee Williams and Richard Wright. Other authors in the pages of Story included Ludwig Bemelmans, Carson McCullers and William Saroyan.

In 1942, Burnett's second wife, Hallie Southgate Burnett, began collaborating with him and Story published the early work of Truman Capote, John Knowles and Norman Mailer. Story folded in 1967 secondary to lint in its bank account but its roster of authors established and has maintained its reputation as one of the great American literary journals.

After finishing Bulowski's Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip,  readers of Story could take advantage of a fabulous offer advertised by the Book-Of-The-Month-Club. New subscribers to the BOTMC were offered a free copy of My Friend Flicka (1941) and its sequel (1943). Those familiar with the novel will note its thematic similarities to the work of Bukowski. 

My Friend Flicka is the story of a horse and the boy that loved him, and "Flicka," as we all know, is Swedish for "little girl." Flicka was quite the filly, and Bukowski had a keen eye for fillies - at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park racetracks. And, yes, Roddy McDowall, who starred in the 1943 film adaptation (as the boy, not the horse), was a dead ringer for Charles Bukowski, though a bottle or three of whiskey may be  necessary to appreciate their resemblance to each other.

__________

All images courtesy of PBA Galleries, with our thanks.
__________

Of Related Interest:

Bukowski: Lost Original Drawings Of A Dirty Old Man.

Charles Bukowski, Artist.

Charles Bukowski's Last, Unpublished Poem.

Charles Bukowski Bonanza At Auction.
  
Dirty Old Man Exposed At The Huntington Library. 
__________
__________

Poet & Literary Hoaxster John Glassco On Pornography, Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Etc.

by Stephen J. Gertz

 

Scraping the crumbling roadbed of this strife
With rotting fenceposts and old mortgages
(No way of living, but a mode of life),
How sift from death and waste three grains of duty,
O thoughts that start from scratch and end in a dream
Of graveyards minding their own business?

But the heart accepts it all, this honest air
Lapped in green valleys where accidents will happen!

                     — John Glassco, "The Rural Mail"

What distinguishes good porn from bad? Is there an aesthetic of pornography? Are porn novels an essentially romantic genre of literature? What are the true rewards of authorship? Is Margaret Atwood a sexual fetishist? And did Leonard Cohen really want to give up singing and join the Israeli army?

Last year, A Gentleman of Pleasure, literary historian Brian Busby's biography of the enigmatic Canadian poet, memoirist, acclaimed translator of French-Canadian poetry, novelist, pornographer, and literary hoaxster, John Glassco, the self-proclaimed "great practitioner of deceit," was published. Now, Mr. Busby presents The Heart Accepts It All, a selection of Glassco's letters.

Glassco's correspondents included novelist Kay Boyle; poet and novelist, Robert McAlmon; Olympia Press publisher Maurice Girodias; novelist, poet, and critic Malcolm Cowley; novelist Margaret Atwood; Henry James' biographer, Leon Edel; and many other literary notables, including novelist, literary and cultural critic, and professor, Geoffrey Wagner, who, under the pseudonym, P.N. Dedeaux, wrote a handful of erotic novels in the 1960s and early '70s that remain amongst the best written of the era.

DEDEAUX, P.N. [Geoffrey Wagner]. The Tutor.
Wilmington, Delaware: Taurus Publications, 1970.
Distributed by All America Distributors Corp.
True first edition, reprinted by Venus Library (Grove Press), 1971.

DEDEAUX, P.N. [Geoffrey Wagner]. Tender Buns.
North Hollywood: Essex House #0126, 1969.
First edition.

Glassco, whose Memoirs of Montparnasse (1970) is considered to be the best view of expatriate Paris in the 1920s, had a gift for stylistic imitation. He seamlessly completed Aubrey Beardsley's unfinished erotic novel, Under the Hill (aka Venus and Tannhauser) for Olympia Press in Paris (1959). He wrote the erotic poem, Squire Hardman, which he mischievously ascribed to George Colman the Younger, a once popular British dramatist and writer of the late eighteenth- early nineteenth centuries).

First edition. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1970.

He was the author of what is arguably the best-selling, most popular erotic novel in English of all time, The English Governess by Miles Underwood (Paris: Ophelia Press [Olympia Press], 1960) aka Harriet Marwood, Governess, The Authentic Confessions of Harriet Marwood, An English Governess; The Governess; Under the Birch, and who knows how many other reprint titles, a novel so often pirated that it may hold a record in that department, too. Glassco also wrote Fetish Girl by Sylvia Bayer, which he, with a gallant wink, dedicated, "To John Glassco."

He wrote the Introduction to The Temple of Pederasty by Ihara Saikaku, translated by Hideki Okada (Brandon House/Hanover House, 1970). He wrote more than the Introduction.  The book, purportedly based on one by the very real 17th century Japanese poet and novelist, Ihara Saikaku (1642-93), the volume is an grand exercise in literary deception. The translator, 'the late Dr. Hideki Okada,' is actually Glassco himself. Glassco's translation (in his word, "interpolation") is, for the most part, derived from Ken Sato's unintentionally hysterical and inept translation of Saikaku's Quaint Stories of the Samurais, a collection of homoerotic tales published by Robert McAlmon, Paris, 1928.

In Glassco's letters to Wagner he shares his thoughts on literary pornography.

"Ours are only more sophisticated, in better taste, more literate and civilized. In my 'Art of Pornography' I have hazarded a tentative definition of the genre, in so far as it can be considered a branch of literary art, as 'that kind of aphrodisiac writing which, no matter to what sexual disposition of vagary it is addressed, can command the interest of a judicious reader of dissimilar psychosexual disposition.' This rules out all kinds of trash but leans heavily on imponderables. I was simply trying to formulate some definition, to isolate what we know is good pornography (Cleland, Nerciat, Voisenon, Beardsley, Swinburne) from the mass of rubbish like Rosa Fielding, The Lustful Turk, etc. and such dead horses as poor Steven Marcus flogs so pointlessly [in The Other Victorians]. I was subjecting pornography to an aesthetic test: perhaps thereby imposing on it a dead critical hand. - the essential mystery of sadomasochism itself remains dark, and I for one shall never unravel it. All I know is that like all forms of psychosexuality it is auto-erotic, subjective, and the partner sought (and sometimes found, and isn't this a blessing) in real life is only a projection of one's own self. One does find one's alter-ego, as I know; and so does she, and then everything in the garden is lovely, even for years.  The real Luv arrives, and dulls the sharp end of sex, and both go wandering off on their endless quest for variety, separately alas, still seeking some new double version of the self..."

"Dear old Bizarre! It was an oasis back in the dreary fifties. Yes, I remember the wonderful photo of of Mlle Polaris, the Queen of the Wasp-waists, in her extraordinary corset, which John Willie unearthed and reprinted….He was a Pioneer. Though his pony-girl fantasy, in monthly episodes, did get rather tedious: the writing was so amateur…

"Thanks for your suggestion that I send the Governess to the Penthouse Book Society. Alas, I sold all British rights outright, in dear Harriet to one Aaron M. Shapiro of New York for $1,000 down and 50% of everything he can get over this. And notre cher Maurice G. owns the rights to the obscene version. He still owes me $500 (due last July) but what hope. So I am now only an onlooker of the progress of this absurd book. It gives me unexampled delight to see it on drugstore counters and being bought by liplicking trembly-handed gents on Montreal. These are the true rewards of authorship" (Sept 3, 1968).

North Hollywood: Hanover House (Brandon House), 1970.

On April 12, 1970, copies of Glassco's Temple of Pederasty sent to him by the publisher in California were intercepted at the Canadian border, examined in Ottawa, and determined to be "immoral or indecent." On April 24th, Glassco wrote Wagner:

"I just might make an issue of this. I am consulting our great F.R. Scott (Lady Chatterley's Lawyer) about this next week. After all, these 18 free copies are mine by right, aren't they? I'm mad as hell about this virtual confiscation of my proputty."

On June 16, 1971, Glassco wrote Wagner:

"Thank you so much for Gynecocracy [1893] and The Boudoir [1880s magazine]: they are both banned in this moral province [Quebec]. These Victorian things have always had a great appeal to me, largely as period pieces. In spite of or perhaps because of their awkwardness, bad grammar and super-abundance of cliché (descriptively, the girls simply don't exist!), they are still readable and often stimulating. What I find their greatest fault is their lack of verisimilitude, the demands they make on the reader for an utter suspension of common sense, and a certain monotony. But what is most interesting is that their very situations, action and preoccupations are still being reproduced in places like the correspondence column of Justice Weekly: in porno, there is almost nothing new under the sun! - Well, these old books were of course for the most part carelessly and hastily written: Gynecocracy begins rather well but falls down badly about half-way through, with absurdity piled on absurdity as the  author either became tired or lost all sense of proportion. I think you and I have done much better in the genre; the next generation will be reading us, rather than them, I'm sure…Even at that, however, I think we tend to bypass reality rather too much: it's such a temptation to let one's fancy lightly fly! And to pile things on. At least it is so in my case:I've forgotten Horace's ne nimium advice much too often.

"But this raises the whole question of an aesthetic of pornography, the matter of raising it to the plane of art, as Cleland and Nerciat somehow did. Perhaps we should try and forget the Victorians: they are, subtly, too much with us, too sweetly oppresive by reason of their décor, richness and nostalgia. But what milieu, what locus, can take their place? Our art is essentially romantic, and seeks a never-never climate; yet it must, I think, take more account of reality than it has in the past. This means, to begin with, it must have a strong story-line, a good skeleton as it were; it should also be psychologically viable; and should even have a certain moral truth such as it had in the 18th century. Perhaps this involves giving our work a wry, tragic, or unhappy ending. Quite a programme, indeed!"

For all his genius as an editor-publisher, Maurice Girodias was a poor businessman with a casual attitude about contracts and author payments. Everyone who wrote for Maurice Girodias had complaints and Glassco was no exception.

On September 26, 1966 Glassco sent Girodias a postal spear with firm point.

"It has…come to my notice that you have published a book called Under the Birch, using the text of The English Governess, and are apparently selling it in various countries. This is a breach on copyright, since under our agreement of 30 March 1960, you had only the right to reprint The English Governess on payment to me of NF 3000 for each reprint. The new title means a new publication, not a reprint…

"In view of the difficulties I have experienced in the past in ensuring performance of our agreement of 30 March 1960 I am sure you will understand my insistence on payment of the $1000 in Canadian funds within three months of the date of this letter…"

On May 11, 1967, Glassco wrote Girodias again, his spear inspired by Nabokov's Lolita.

"Dear Maurice (if I may):

"I have just been reading your 'Sad Ungraceful Tale of Lolita' in the reprinted Olympia Reader, and was struck by the undoubted fact that Lolita would not, as you point out, heve been published at all; but for you: at which point I realized that this also holds true for Under the Hill, and that my last letter to you was written in an unduly heated state of mind…

"…There is a chance I may be sent to Paris on a government cultural mission in a week or so…I hope then to have the pleasure of calling on you, and talking on all subjects except that of money.

"Yours with kindest regards, John G."

Later in that year, Glassco wrote again to Girodias in response to a request (and Girodias' plan to reprint The English Governess in the U.S. under his Olympia Press- NY imprint). The request remains intriguing:

"Some new Sade translations might be within my powers this winter. My versions would be quite unlike [Austryn] Wainhouse's as to constitute original translation…Sade has a good clear rhetorical style, a little turgid, but full of a life and vivacity which do redeem the dryness and tedium of his philosophical ideas…All the English versions of Sade I've ever seen are quite unworthy of this inspired madman who surpasses St. Francis of Assisi in the scope of his ideas. Sade is the moral Columbus of our epoch."

Margaret Atwood interested in fetishism? Leonard Cohen in the Israeli army?

"June 16, 1971

"Dear Peggy

Thank you so much for The Undergrowth of Literature [by Gillian Freeman, 1967, a survey of sexual fantasy in literature]. I was specially struck by the chapter on rubber fetishism, which I can see is rampant over there [in England]. As a latex fan since the age of 4 (my true Venus has always worn a frogman's suit), I enjoyed it enormously. Also, I had just finished a short novel [Fetish Girl] whose characters wallow delicate in this fetish, and it was encouraging to read about its popularity in the U.K…

"…Leonard Cohen tells me he is finished with Literature and chansonnerie and suggests we both join the Israeli army…"

NY: Venus Library, 1972. First edition.

In 1971 Glasco submitted the first chapter of Fetish Girl to Fraser Sutherland, publisher of Northern Journey, a Canadian literary journal, for publication.

"You may find FG disappointing. But don't forget that this is formula commercial pop-porno, beginning mildly because the action must always be a constant crescendo and all subsequent chapters depend closely on each other, and they can't be isolated. - By the way, FG is the first rubber-fetish novel ever written. [N.B. It was not. That honor lies with Rubber Goddess by Lana Preston (Paul Hugo Little, 1967).

"If you take this chapter - and please feel free to reject it in spite of your kind sight-uneen acceptance! - it must appear under the name of its true author Miss Sylvia Bayer, as the entire book will; nor should any reference be made to its publication this fall by Grove Press [under its Venus Library imprint], since this may invalidate her contract.

"I will send you a recent glossy of myself, and one of Miss Bayer, too…"

"To The Editors Of Northern Journey, July 15, 1971.

Dear Sirs: -

My good friend John Glassco has just told me you have accepted the first chapter of my latest novel Fetish Girl and I am delighted.

I understand you would like to use a photograph and to print some kind of introductory-biographical note.

I enclose the photograph. As for the note here also is a suggested first person text giving all relevant information and you can 3rd-person alter, cut, telescope or rearrange as you see fit. Only I must see the final text of whatever note you mean to use, I'm sorry to put you to this extra trouble, but I have to do it.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs. Sylvia Fenwick-Owen, 1224 Bishop St.,
Montreal 107
P.Q.

P.S. May I beg you to keep my home address quite confidential. Thank you."

Whose photograph did Glassco submit as that of "Sylvia Bayer?" His first wife, Elma. Fraser Sutherland had no idea. Glassco's friends did and were startled.

It remains a mystery just who John Glassco really was. For all the light Mr. Busby has diligently shone on the man, and no matter how revealing his letters, John Glassco remains, however open, charming and generous of spirit - his heart, indeed, accepted it all - something of a puzzle, he seemed to prefer it that way, and he's all the more fascinating because of it. He enjoyed pseudonymity and creating a tall-tale context for his erotica. His pleasure was writer as actor portraying his characters. He was one of Canada's gifts to literature, a gentleman litterateur in a smoking jacket with a talent for literary sex.

__________

Full disclosure: Mr. Busby is a friend, and in the book generously acknowledges the meager assistance I provided by answering a few questions.

__________

__________