The Great Gadsby: A Rare Book Written The Hard Way, No "E"s

by Stephen J. Gertz

Today is Lipogram Day on Booktryst, and because it is Lipogram Day we celebrate Gadsby, a novel from 1939 whose sole claim to fame is that of its 50,110 words not a single one contains the letter "E." 

Lipograms, which have nothing to do with liposuction unless you're vacuuming avoirdupois letters from a composition that could use a little less around the middle, are simply forms of writing from which the author has omitted a certain letter or letters from the alphabet.

The form dates to the ancient world. The Greek poets Nestor of Laranda and Tryphiodorus wrote lipogrammatic adaptations of Homer, with Nestor composing an Iliad, followed by an Odyssey by Tryphiodorus.

If you're a writer composing in English the most challenging lipogram will involve leaving out our most common vowel, "E." Gadsby novelist Ernest Vincent Wright gave himself a rigorous task: no common English words such as "the" and "he"; plurals in "-es"; past tenses in "-ed"; and even abbreviations like "Mr." (for "Mister") or "Bob" (for "Robert"). In short, he deliberately gave himself a pain in the ass to work through. To ease his E-burden and avoid mistakes he tied down the "E" on his typewriter's keyboard.

Personally, I consider that cheating but shiftless scribe that I am, I once wrote an entire novel without using any letters from the alphabet. It was harder than you think. I had to jerry-rig a shield over my keyboard to prevent all twenty-six letters from being accidentally depressed. It was grueling. The prose was pristine (as well as the paper when printed-out) but the story pointless, as well as invisible. It was an ordeal. I had to take days off to recover and got nothing written at all.

Lipograms are just about the silliest form of writing endeavor I can imagine, the writer held hostage to a form that is more puzzle than novel, an intellectual game of dubious literary value where form trumps content and quality goes down for the count. So it was something of a miracle that Wright not only pulled it off but did so with aplomb. He tells the story well, the necessary substitution of words without "E" flowing smoothly off the page rather than causing the pain associated with a dentist pulling "E"s out of your gums without anesthesia.

An anonymous narrator relates the tale, which begins c. 1906 and continues through World War I, Prohibition, and the presidency of Warren G. Harding. The narrator introduces us to the city of Branton Hills, its history, and sterling citizen John Gadsby's place in it. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts abound, as if a Jamboree hit town and afterward left the scouts behind with sticks, string, and kindling fluff that ignite a political career when middle-aged churchman John Gadsby wakes up his sleepy, isolated community with the help of these youngsters, and soon becomes its Mayor in the process. 

Ernest Vincent Wright was a graduate of M.I.T. and served in the First World War. A warehouse fire shortly after the book's publication accounts for its rarity. With dust jacket it is absolutely scarce. According to the jacket blurb it took Wright 150 days to complete the work, but, apparently it was years in the making; hamstringing your keyboard will only go so far - you have to plan ahead. The novel, such as it is, has become legend in word circles, admired by lexicographers, lipogrammatists, puzzlers, and language freaks.

Gadsby has its own Wikipedia page which notes: "The book's scarcity and oddness has seen original copies priced at $4,000 by book dealers."

Wikipedia needs to update its entry. There is only one copy with dust jacket currently being offered in the marketplace. The asking price is $7,500.

"E"gad.

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NB: In further honor of Lipogram Day this post was written without "X" being the first letter of a word. This, despite my best efforts to work Xanthans, Xanthate, Xanthein, Xanthene, Xanthine, Xanthins, Xanthoma, Xanthone, Xanthous, Xenogamy, Xenogeny, Xenolith, Xerosere, Xerox, Xiphoid, Xylidine, Xylidins, Xylitols, Xylocarp, Xylotomy, Xanthan, Xanthic, Xanthin, Xenopus, Xerarch, Xeroses, Xerosis, Xerotic, Xeruses, Xiphoid, Xylenes, Xylidin, Xylitol, Xyloses, Xysters, Xebecs, Xenial, Xenias, Xenons, Xylans, Xylems, Xylene, Xyloid, Xylols, Xylose, Xylyls, Xyster, Xystoi, Xystos, Xystus, Xebec, Xenia, Xenic, Xenon, Xeric, Xerus, Xylan, Xylem, Xylol, Xylyl, Xysti, Xyst, Xerostomia, or Xylophone into the narrative. 

No excuse.
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WRIGHT, Ernest Vincent. Gadsby. A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter "E." Los Angeles, Wetzel Publishing Co., (1939). First edition. Octavo. 267 pp. Original red cloth stamped in black on upper cover and spine. Dust jacket.

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Image courtesy of Rulon-Miller Books, currently offering this title, with our thanks.
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The Glorious Future Of Detroit Under Glass, Including Television And The Hyperloop, In 1884

by Stephen J. Gertz

Poetical Drifts of Thought or, Problems of Progress. Treating Upon The Mistakes of the Church - The Mistakes of the Atheist Infidel and Materialist - God Not the Maker of the Universe - Progress the Evidence of a Merciful But Not All-Powerful God. Reconciliation of Science and Christianity. The Formation of a Solar System - Evolution - Human Progress - Possibilities of the Future - Including Spicy Explanatory Matter In Prose. Embellished with Nearly 200 Illustrations. Together with a Number of Fine Poems on Popular Subjects. Including Sketches of the City of the Straits - Past, Present and Future.

Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus (We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes”) - Motto of Detroit.

Current reports of Detroit's collapse are premature. Lyman E. Stowe, a citizen of pre-Motor City, saw the present in 1884, was pleased, and predicted a future for the metropolis that makes anything H.G. Wells ever wrote seem the product of a pedestrian mind completely lacking in imagination.

The first three of fifty-five stanzas to be recited to the tune of Yankee Doodle.

It's a future based upon electricity, chemistry, the abolition of ignorance, and the reconciliation of science and religion. It's a future told, for the most part, in poems that threaten the very existence of poetry. Scansion, smansion, who needs it? When you write fifty-five quatrains in praise of Detroit's present and direct that they be recited to the tune of Yankee Doodle, Erato sticks a feather in her cap, calls it macaroni, gets buried in poetical snowdrifts of thought and prays for a St. Bernard to find her beneath the avalanche.

Detroit in 1884.

Poetical Drifts of Thought is one of the many eccentric self-published works of American 19th-century imaginative writing yet it stands out from the usual crowd of crazy texts by sewing utopian literature, futurology, freethought, Swedenborg, Darwin, and social engineering into a crazy quilt that just won't quit. Lyman E. Stowe was a rugged individualist in the sea of rabid individualists that emerged during the Second Great Awakening in the United States, when the American ethos of individualism met evangelicalism and singular opinions and beliefs were tossed into a Christian fruit salad to present to the world a medley of motley ideas, many radical, in search of acceptance by someone, anyone - please listen!

The Flying Machine of the near Future.

Amongst the many visions Stowe has of Detroit in the year 2100 are air travel; television (“Seeing Distant Friends by Electricity’s Aid”); control of global weather patterns...

Elon Musk's Hyperloop.

...and travel by cars through underground pneumatic tubes. And you thought Elon Musk's Hyperloop was futuristic?  Late!

Food inhaled, not eaten, with acid-reflux vanquished.

Inhaling nutriment in gaseous form via electrical and chemical process.

How 'bout the replacement of solid foods with “nutritive gasses”? Combined with nitrous oxide for belly laughs?

Manufacturing clothes by gathering the particles direct from
water, earth, and atmosphere by electricity and chemistry.

Clothes may make the man but in Detroit's future man doesn't make the clothes. In a stunning blow to the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, clothing will be manufactured using a combination of electricity and chemistry to process particles of water, earth, and atmosphere into a three-piece, custom-made 100% merino wool canvassed suit with structured waist, single vent, hand-rolled lapels, padded shoulders, and handsome silhouette.

Preface as excuse for the book.

Typical in books of this nature, the author has his own ideas about book format and punctuation. Since he believes that a preface is nothing more than an excuse for a writer to rev-up before mouthing off, he calls it like he sees it. Then makes his excuse for writing the book.

Super-sized quotations marks lest the author forget them,
to be inserted by the reader where appropriate.

Stowe makes every attempt to be scrupulous with crediting other writers "but for fear that I might sometimes miss, I place these large quotation marks, large enough for all to see, and ask the fastidious reader to place them where they belong." In short, he leaves the copy editing to the reader.

Eden on Lake Michigan in the year 2100.

Current denizens of Detroit will be pleased or piqued to learn that in the year 2100 they will become peasants under glass, sharing life with hothouse flowers and exotic fruits in a greenhouse gotham where it's sunny, warm, and wonderful all year 'round.

Detroit in the year 2100, the City covered in glass and iron for
20 square miles. Heated by the internal heats of the earth, lit up
with electricity, with perpetual summer days and tropical fruits and
flowers growing all year 'round.

La dolce far niete aside,

All have a certain work to do,
Yet all are gents and ladies too;
All free from strife and toil and care,
They float and breathe the perfumed air.
Sweet music's swelling chorus rings,
And soothing echoes outward flings,
From cheering bands, their sounds inspire
Like sweet Aeolian harp or lyre

Here, Stowe apparently references The Funk Brothers, the uncredited and largely unheralded studio musicians who were the house band hand-picked by Berry Gordy in 1959 for Detroit's Motown Records.

The Battle of the Future.
Detroit's favorite son, Ted Nugent, at upper far right
(of course), attacks those at left (naturally)
who would undermine the Bill of Rights.

You'd think that one who envisions a paradise city under glass would avoid war - the results would be shattering - but no. Aeriel ballets with bullets n' bombs will still have their place as long as man has an immortal soul.     

"The mind is but organized matter, there's no immortal soul.

In a blow, however, to Christianity as we know it, Christian Lyman E. Stowe asserts that "the mind is but organized matter, there's no immortal soul," a strange sentiment from an anti-materialist but "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines" (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

"

Discovery of the Art of Renewing Life.

 

Then again, who needs an immortal soul when life can renewed as if a subscription to LIFE magazine? I see Ford's River Rouge factory repurposed, renewing life on an assembly line.

In what will be major news to the faithful of all monotheistic religions, Stowe asserts that God didn't make the universe and God's not All-Powerful. Then who, Henry Ford? (Ford thought so). 

Other books by Lyman E. Stone include: My Wife Nellie and I; a Poetical Sketch of Love and Fancy with Other Poems, Including Blank Lines for Autograph and Remarks (1895); What Is Coming is a Wonderful Exposition of the Prophecies and Comparison with Ancient and Modern Historical and Political Events Together with an Ample, Though Concise History of Money from King Solomon's Time to the Present (1896); Stowe's Bible Astrology: the Bible Founded on Astrology (1907); Astrological Periodicity: A Book of Instructions, Showing Man, Beast and Plant are Subject to the Influences of the Planets ... [which gives good and evil periods, which can be taken advantage of and be a benefit, not only to the individual, but to all classes of people (1907); Right Hours to Success (1907); Karmenia; or, What the Spirit Told Me, "Truth Stranger Than Fiction" a Series of Short Occult Stories, Real Experiences During the Life of a Man 72 Years of Age, Garnished in the Clothes of Fiction (1918).

All to be read to the tune of Yankee Doodle.

As for Poetical Drifts of Thought, "The book is what the title implies - 'Drifts of Thought.' You say you don't believe it or agree with it all. Well, I don't blame you, for I don't know as I do my self. Yet my theory is grounded upon logic that seems indisputable within the bounds of anything come-at-able.

"We all have a right to express our thoughts, and by free expression of our thoughts we learn from one another, but I must now say for the present, Good By. Good By."

See you later, alligator. Bankruptcy? Don't have a goiter, you Detroiter. This, too, shall pass - like that gaseous meal you just inhaled.

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STOWE, Lyman E. Poetical Drifts of Thought or, Problems of Progress. Treating Upon The Mistakes of the Church - The Mistakes of the Atheist Infidel and Materialist - God Not the Maker of the Universe - Progress the Evidence of a Merciful But Not All-Powerful God. Reconciliation of Science and Christianity. The Formation of a Solar System - Evolution - Human Progress - Possibilities of the Future - Including Spicy Explanatory Matter In Prose. Embellished with Nearly 200 Illustrations.. Together with a Number of Fine Poems on Popular Subjects. Including Sketches of the City of the Straits - Past, Present and Future. Detroit, Mich.: Lyman E. Stowe, Publisher, 1884.

First edition. Tall octavo. 319, [1] pp. Illustrated throughout with woodcuts. Publisher's gilt-pictorial green cloth over beveled boards.

Not in Negley, Utopian Literature, nor in Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature. 
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Rare Ten Cent Book Will Improve Your Face

by Stephen J. Gertz

As the nine-year old prodigy qualified to perform an appendectomy using a radio-knife because I studied the instrument and procedure in All About Great Medical Discoveries by David Dietz (1960), and as the man twenty-six years later responsible for marketing Lindsay Wagner's The Accupressure Facelift while head of Karl-Lorimar Video's How-To division in 1986, I am uniquely qualified to discuss all manner of surgical and non-surgical interventions to alter facial topography and return the skin and subcutaneous muscles from passé to pristine as a baby's butt.

That's why I'm so excited to tell you about Professor Anthony Barker's Improve Your Face By Making Faces (1903). 

Mea culpa.

Are you depressed because your depressor septi, depressor supercilii, depressor anguli oris, and depressor labii inferioris muscles have let you down and are making you look inferior to your once superior visage?  Begone double-chins and puffy eyes! Say sayonara to those irrigation canals once fine wrinkles, let crow's feet take wing never to return, and bid fare-thee-well to the face that now horrifies when it stares back at you in the mirror.

Professor Barker, principal of New York City's School of Physical Culture (110 W. 42d St.),  provides five exercises (with halftone examples of each) guaranteed to banish all that blemishes your facial appearance.

“If you want to improve your face, make faces. That is the best way to treat it to upbuilding physical culture exercise. It sounds simple enough and silly enough, but it is neither. A short trial will prove that the right kind of faces cannot be made in a jiffy, although, with a little patient practice they can be executed…The benefits that accrue to both men and women from making the faces herein described ten or fifteen minutes a day, either upon rising or before going to bed, are manifold.” 

"Bride of Wildenstein."

Prof. Barker, apparently projecting into the future with New York socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein's reported $4 million worth of procedures in mind, includes a brief cautionary tale about the perils of facial plastic surgery - particularly if performed by a nine-year old with radio-knife, botox, silicone, and a satchel full o' implants.

Originally published at 25¢ but discounted to 10¢ if you time-travel back to 1903 and act at once while it's on your mind yet $100 if you return to 2013 and Garrett Scott Bookseller still has a copy, your Occipitofrontalis, Temporoparietalis, Procerus, Nasalis, Orbicularis oculi, Corrugator supercilii, Auricular (anterior, superior and posterior), Orbicularis oris,  Risorius, Zygomaticus major, Zygomaticus minor, Levator labii superioris, Levator labii superioris alaeque nasi, Levator anguli oris, Buccinator, and Mentalis muscles will thank you. As well as romantic partners.

Never again will you freak-out when teased with the mysterious elementary school taunt, "Your epidermis is showing!" - though you may be overcome by syncope when you see stuffed derma on a delicatessen menu and imagine against your will Jocelyn Wildenstein on a plate with a side of potato salad.

OCLC notes only a twenty-two page edition of Improve Your Face By Making Faces, at two locations only. But, then again, how many libraries in the world would acquire it in the first place? That said, the plates in this little gem follow in the tradition of Louis-Léopold Boilly's Recueil des Grimaces (1823-28), his series of ninety-six hand-colored lithographed plates that caricatured human facial expressions.
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BARKER, Professor Anthony. Improve Your Face By Making Faces. (New York: William R. Robinson, Printer, 1903). Third edition. Sixteenmo. 31, [1] pp. Five half-tone photo-illustrations. Original printed green wrappers.

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Exercise images courtesy of Garrett Scott Bookseller, currently offering this book, with our thanks.

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Into Africa: A Ventriloquist Dummy's Divine Mission

By Stephen J. Gertz

"This is Gabby, Rod's alter ego, speaking. I wanted to write the whole book, but Rod wouldn't let me. There have been many (at least two) requests for this book. It deals with Rod's early life (no requests for that), with my own beginnings (the best part of the book), and most of all, the missionary work of the Camerons with the Batonga tribe of the wild Zambezi Valley - the most primitive tribe in Central Africa" (From the Introduction, 1962).

Ed Sullivan: Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, right here on our stage, we have a really big show for you, a really big show. Just back from an extended 5 to 10 year engagement at San Quentin after slaying the audience in Las Vegas, the mouse with the most, Topo Gigio; hapless infant angst in a soiled diaper featuring their new baby, Ben, let's hear it for Stiller & Meara; the astonishing hand shadow-puppets of Australia's only Unusualist, Raymond Crowe; Señor Wences; performing the death aria from La Lollipalooza by Porcini, She Wore An Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, internationally acclaimed opera star, soprano Joan Sutherland ; and just out of Africa after six socko weeks in the Safari Room at the Zambezi Mirage where they converted the native Batongas to Christianity and belief in a talking piece of wood, ventriloquist  Rod Cameron & Gabby.

Frontispiece: Gabby & Rod.

An account of a missionary who traveled to Africa with his family and ventriloquist dummy, A Dummy Goes To Africa is the tale of two dummies, one the oaken alter ego of the missionary, the other the missionary who confesses to being a dummy, too - simply a mouthpiece of the Lord, His hand within him.

Note Gabby's assimilation into African culture: septum spike piercing.

Gabby in Pee Wee Herman drag.

Don't let Gabby fool you. Inside the hard wood lies a cellulose heart as big as Mt. Kilimanjaro and an evangelical spirit as broad as the savannah. He writes inspirational poetry and camp songs. 

To the tune of If I Only Had A Brain:

Yes, I know that I'm a dummy,
with sawdust in my tummy,
and splinters in my head.
Even so, I'm presumin'
that I must be partly human
Or I'd otherwise be dead.

I have finally got the notion,
I owe all of my devotion
to where I get my life.
So I think I would advise you
if you'll do the same as I do
you'll avoid a lot of strife.

You and me, we both agree
there's more to life than stuff,
Simply living's not enough.
There's a goal
for the soul.

So I can't do any walkin'
nor do any talkin',
without the help of Rod.
So this word to you I'm givin',
if you want real joy in livin'
you must do the will of God.

This is actually a very rare book.  OCLC records only ten copies, each in Christian institutions. There is only one copy currently in the marketplace.

Cameron & Gabby additionally authored A Dummy Goes To Church Camp. They also produced  A Dummy With An Attitude, an audio tape. No matter how closely you listen you can't see Rod's lips move.

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CAMERON, Rod. A Dummy Goes To Africa. Joliet, Illinois: Mission Services Press, 1962. First edition. Octavo. 297 pp. Black & white photo-illustrations throughout. Green cloth, black lettered. Presumed issued without a dust jacket.

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Images courtesy of Between The Covers, currently offering this volume, with our thanks.

If I Only Had A Brain adaptation ©Rod Cameron.
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18th C. Book Has A Story Without Head Or Tail, Wit or Humor

By Stephen J. Gertz

What maketh thee of this, dear Reader, a trifling little Booke of Great Raritee but who careth? A nonsense Fairy-Tale satire, with the aim of "his Royal Lowness," Prince Toadstool, to win the Rose that rests betwixt Princess Tricolora's lower limbs. Yea verilee, it is a forgotten little bagatelle, of its details Don't ask, Don't tell, a witless wonder wittily told, with whacked-out philippic at end the story sold: Of Vice and Virtue, Mice and Men, and ugly Toadstool with brain a-mold.

Allow, I prithee, the Table of Contents to present this facetious fiction:

Chapter I: Which Promises More Than It Performs.
Chapter II: A New Form of Interviews.
Chapter III: Unexpected.
Chapter IV: In Which There Is Not Much.
Chapter V: In Which the Prince Does Not Know What To Think.
Chapter VI: So Much the Better.
Chapter VII: Worse and Worse. Is That Possible?
Chapter VIII: The Inspector-General in a Terrible Undertaking.
Chapter IX: There Never Was a More Foolish One.
Chapter X: Try To Break an Enchantment.
Chapter XI: More Nonsense; Which Will Surprize Nobody After What Has Gone Before.
Chapter XII: A Touch of the Pathetic.
Chapter XIII: A Leading One.
Chapter XIV: Beware the Colic!
Chapter XV: A Remedy For Gripes.
Chapter XVI: Pretty Pictures!
Chapter XVII: The Best Being the Last.

And now, our story unfolds:

Chapter I

"The Prince Toadstool answered the idea of his name; the Prince Discreet was a charming fellow; the Princess Tricolora was more fair, more shining than a fine day in spring: she detested Toadstool, adored Discreet, and was forced to marry Toadstool. So much the better.

"There is no art in this manner of telling a story. The unravelment is given at the same time as the exposition: but no-one is the more for that in the secret of that fame, so much the better; and this is what I am about to unfold, with all the pomp becoming the gravity of the subject.

"ToadstooI though infernally ugly and a fool, was not for all that lawfully begot. His mother was so execrable that no man had had the courage to take her for better or worse but her money supplied the place of charms: she bought her gallants, and had just arithmetic enough to pay them according to the number of their jobs. Toadstool was the fruit of one of her laborers at that hard work.

"He had a monstrously great head, and nothing in it: his legs were as short as his ideas, so that whether thinking or walking, he always lagged behind. But as he had heard that men of wit, though they do not say foolish things, often do them, he took it into his head to be a man of wit upon the plan of doing a foolish thing, and resolved to marry.

"His lady, mother of the fairy Burning-Sprite, mused a good while about what family she should prefer for this plague..."

Alloweth thy imagination to cut to the chase; voila! a furious finish:

Chapter XVII

[The Final Musings of a Harangue-Utan in a Lather]

"...The so ridiculously called Great have shewn themselves so miserably ignorant, that they seem to have taken it for an admirable improvement arid distinction to invert the order of things, by kicking Nature out of doors, and delivering themselves wholly up to the false refinements of Art which was never designed by Taste for any thing but Nature's very humble servant. Thus sentiment stands banished by them from Love, from everything. 

"But what has this senseless depravity produced? View the actual face of things, and deny it if you can; a destruction to the very foundations, of honor, worth, wit, taste, after which it will be but in course to add, of true pleasure; a chaos of infernal stupidity; a mass of rottenness, which must turn all concern or respect for themselves into such a joke, as must justly and necessarily fink them below the lowest and the vilest of the mob.

"It matters not then as to them whether this tale is purely the work of imagination or not. But it is plain that the author had in view the dressing up Vice in a fool's coat, a way of treating it, towards extirpation, not perhaps less effectual than those austerer preachments, which may be styled the dry-shaving of sheer morality: morality which always does Vice infinitely too much honor, and much less harm than it is aware of, in painting it as an object rather of terror than of scorn and ridicule.

"As to any ludicrous situations in the story, which may have required too strong or too gay a coloring, the author would not, I presume, pay his reader so wretched a compliment as to offer an apology. Nothing. surely but the meanest and most contemptible of all understandings, with the most naturally vicious of all inclinations, could dread or asset to dread the corruption of morals, or any danger from Vice in so grotesque a habit.

"Virtue, nobly secured in a just superiority of taste, feels nothing but what must rather confirm than alarm her for herself, in that monitor, whether presented in the loathsome nakedness of rank obscenity, or less disgustfully and consequently more dangerously wrapped up: in which last form indeed, though it may serve even for a salutary medicine to the never more than a few people of sense; yet as it may also prove a poison to those classes too numerous not to be respected and even tenderly guarded, the young, the unexperienced, the ignorant, the weak and the foolish; any want of having considered enough the consequences to them must render it justly execrable to none more than to whoever may have been unfortunate enough to lay the fumbling block or give the offense.

"In the present however ready-cut-and-dry piece borrowed, as being the first at hand for the purpose, Nonsense never but a volunteer against itself, is pressed into the service of its capital enemy judgment; and may it happily for once, and contrary to its nature, have a little of that power to produce a good effect, of which it has had flagrantly so much to produce the worst!

"If then in this decoy, formed as it is with the most innocent intention on the trite maxim, that "Extremes "touch," any reader should find himself, by what carries the air of the lowest levity, betrayed unawares into a serious train of thinking; if that thinking produces even indignation at any one's amusing himself no better than with reading such damned filth; or what is worse yet, with writing it, in what times  than which never any could more loudly proclaim the [?] of exploding the abandoned futility that so strongly marks them, and of restoring that once so justly admired solidity of the British Genius, which has seen itself so infamously supplanted by dullness, by folly, false wit, false taste, false interests, false politics, and what is there not false among us?

"I say, if I could catch any reader daring to think in this manner ...... 'What  then?' I  would, say -- 'So much the better for him.'"

Within that jeremiad lies the theme, licentious fluff bereft of wit a threat to British lit. supreme; so quoth the raven, "Mama mia!" as if in a bad dream. So much the worst, an 18th century  culture warrior hocks a loogie to the cursed - those who shun Fox News and thus remain unversed.

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[Anonymous]. Did you ever see such damned stuff? Or, so-much-the-better: a story without head of tail, wit or humor. Rantum jantum is the Word, and Nonsense shall ensue. London: C.G. Seyffert, 1760. First (only) edition. Small octavo. vii, 168 pp.

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When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Write Books

by Stephen J. Gertz

We devote this post to Weirdiana, a genre of rare book collecting that falls under the general category of Dangerfieldiana, books that don't get any respect, I'm tellin' ya, no respect at all. ("For her birthday, I gave my wife  a 300 year-old book with foxing, damp-stains, toning, sprung signatures, shaved margins, and spine issues in a beat-up and dried-out goatskin binding. She looked at it, looked at me, and said, 'Twins!'").

Despite being off the wall they show nicely on shelves. We've harvested a grab bag of goodies from the vaults of Ann Arbor, Michigan's almost, not quite, maybe favorite son, Garrett Scott, Bookseller, who has an eye cocked for material of this ilk.  Corrective lenses have been of no help whatsoever.

Logo, Garrett Scott Bookseller.

Scott is the self-described Bibliophagist; he eats honey bunches o' books  for breakfast. His firm's motto is, "Interesting Books by Unusual Authors," the understatement of the year. The logo for Scott's business tells you all you need to know. It's a portrait of strange poet from another planet, Richard Griffin (1857- ?), "The Bughouse Poet," author of the timelessly twisted collections of verse, The Lobster's Gizzard (1916), The Melancholy Yak (1917), and The Camel's Last Gasp (1931), here posed with an unidentified companion. The poesy road from invertebrate parts to depressed Tibetan cows to dromedaries on death's door was buggy, indeed. A sample, crazy quatrain from The Lobster's Gizzard:

"Put on your thinking cap,
Scorn the notched ear lobe.
Go run another lap -
What a botched queer globe!"

Now, take off your thinking cap, bless the notched ear lobe, sit down, and enjoy this botched queer globe of books. Then meditate on what the hell a "botched queer globe" is.

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BAIR, L.S. Naturopsychoism: The Hope of the World by... The Study and Practice of Naturopsychoism Leads to Perpetual Health and Eternal Happiness. This book is published for the purpose of helping build men and women physically, mentally, and spiritually. Kokomo, Indiana: L.L. Bair, [c.1918]. 16mo, original printed blue wrappers, 20 pages).

 "I fearlessly and courageously make the broad and comprehensive claim, that if the alimentary canal and the mind were kept in a state of normal purity, and if there were no poisonous drugs, violent scrums, deadly antitoxins or vaccine virus ever forced into our blood, there could be no disease in any part of the body." Bair, Kokomo's naturopsycho,  prescribes a whole grain diet, spine alignment, and frequent evacuation of the bowels. Bair counsels that children "should also form the habit of trying four or five times a day for a bowel movement and ALWAYS before retiring," with an olive oil enema to follow if they do not (extra-green pure virgin presumably tops for tots). Includes a recipe for Bair's Naturolin Syrup (Epsom salts and sugar) and a few hints on preparing whole wheat coffee, retaining potato skins, ad cardboardum.

Rare bookseller Lorne Bair, of Winchester, Virginia (a mere 562 miles east-southeast from Kokomo,  Indiana), disavows any familial relationship to Naturopsychoism  author L.L. Bair, and denies all knowledge of the precepts of Naturopsychoism. Yet his interest and commerce in the literature of Politicopsychoism makes him an individual ripe for suspicion. Psychoism, no matter its prefix, is the "ism" of the perturbed.

Do-It-Yourself Gynecology.

Anonymous. Enfermedades de las Mujeres. (Barcelona: Casa Editorial Maucci, [ca. 1910]. 12mo, original color pictorial wrappers, 126, [1] pages. Illustrations).

Published in the series "Conocimientos para la Vida Privada," this newsstand pulp on home gynecology includes a few recipes for home remedies and diagrams of pessaries. It does not appear to include Casanova's DIY use of a scooped-out lemon-half as contraceptive cervical cap, a bitter omission.

Bad news for those who eat air.

AARON, Charles D. Aerophagy. (Chicago: American  Medical Association, 1914. 16mo, original printed blue wrappers, 20 pages). 

"Neurotic persons are known to have a habit of eating or swallowing air (aerophagy)." Then they digest castles made of sand and pipedreams, lose a lot of weight, become a wisp of oxygen, and excrete a gentle zephyr. 

Aerophagists are advised - I kid you not - to stick a cork in their mouth to facilitate belching of pre-digested nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, neon, helium, methane, krypton, hydrogen and xenon gas - the breath of life. Now that you know what's in it, don't choke. My gag reflex is shot.

The Cave-Dwelling Hermit.

WILSON, Amos. The Sweets of Solitude! or, Directions to Mankind how they may be Happy in a "Miserable World!" and Insure a Glorious Inheritance in That Which is to Come. By Amos Wilson, who Lived 19 Years in a Cave, Secluded from the Society of Man. Annexed is a Sketch. (Boston: Printed for John Wilkey, 1822. Octavo, remnants of one-third of the printed front wrapper neatly silked onto later blue sugar paper wrappers, 26 pages. Woodcut frontispiece portrait of Wilson).

An account of the celebrated Pennsylvania Hermit, who went into seclusion after his unmarried sister ("Deceived and shamefully seduced by a wretch") was convicted of the murder of her twin infants and sentenced to death. Wilson managed to secure her pardon from the Pennsylvania governor but was delayed in his return by a flooded river and so, alas, "arrived at the place of execution just in time to  see the last struggles of his unfortunate sister!" Brain fever and two decades in a cave were the sequelae. 


A traveling salesman's tricks, no joke.

CREWDSON, Charles N. The Experiences of a Traveling Man. (Chicago: Thompson & Thomas, 1909. Octavo, original color pictorial wrappers, 352 pages).

First-hand stories of life on the road for a salesman, with small tips and tricks of the sales trade as well as colorful anecdotes, i.e. the time the drummer (the guy who drums up business) closed a sale by playing Irish airs on a slide trombone. This success a documented fact, I predict that dealers playing Irish airs on a slide trombone will be the next big thing at the next big book fair, Yiddish, British,  German, and French airs on a sousaphone a close second. That'll be me wearing a clown suit in a corner booth playing Flight of the Bumblebee on a tuba until I pass-out. In the rare book trade, low-key merchandising is the watchword; the books speak for themselves and multi-cultural airs played on brass and reed instruments will set the proper tone of cosmopolitan sophistication. They'll scream erudition and fine taste in a cacophony of High Kultcha.

The farmer's daughter is, alas, nowhere to be found;  she, evidently, was cloistered when word got around that a traveling salesman was in the area. And a joke's right to life was thus extinguished before  it had a chance to breathe its set-up, much less punchline. Had it not been killed, it would have killed, surely, though Shirley was innocent.

Scratch a person, reveal a printer.

HALL, William E. We Are All Type-Setters. Hall's Lectures Containing the Best Thoughts From the Lectures, Sermons, and Writings of William E. Hall. (Philadelphia: William E. Hall, [c. 1886]. Small octavo, original printed wrappers, 7 pages).

An extended metaphor on serving in God's print shop: "All proof must be corrected before the final 'lock-up' when the columns of our characters are emptied from the 'sticks' of habit into the galleys of our daily lives, and when these are transferred into the 'chases' of life's possibilities it is too late to correct the proof. Death with ponderous mallet drives the 'quoins' until the pulse stops beating and the eyes of the worn-out compositor are touched with the death-glaze. All revisions of proof are forever closed." 

My oil-based black-ink blood bleeds to the edge of the sheet, then stops and coagulates on the colophon where the Big Gripper holds me as I pass through the press of eternity to become a ghost-image. My epitaph: "Kiss die cut."

This sermon originally appeared in the English typographic trade journal Hailing's Circular (Spring, 1886) with the sub-head, "A sermon delivered to Philadelphia Printers, on Sunday Evening, January 31st, 1886, in the Central Christian Church."

Think your way to riches.

Anonymous. The Wealth-Producing Power of Thought: A System of Occult Exercises for the Attainment of Power, Wealth and Success, founded upon the Philosophy of Symbolic Influences (Chicago: Published by the Psychic Research Company, The Auditorium, [1901]). Octavo, original glazed black wrappers, gilt lettering, 15 pages).

Not exactly Nichiren Shoshu buddhism but as close to endlessly chanting "Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo" until it rained simoleons as you could get in the U.S. in 1901.

The 29" singing star of the age.

DUTTON, David. History of “The Little Fairy,” Miss Dollie Dutton. Also Containing the Songs  She Sings. (Buffalo, N.Y.: Published by David Dutton, Buffalo Commercial Advertiser Steam Press, [1860? 1861?]. 16mo, original printed glazed orange pictorial wrappers, 16 pages. Illustrated).

This  promotional pamphlet for the once celebrated performing midget child from Framingham, Massachusetts,  nine-year-old Dollie Dutton (who in 1860 stood 29 inches high), provides favorable press notices, verses composed in her honor, examples of songs she performed, and brief anecdotes of her life, written by the man who sired her, the rare example of a stage-father prior to Joseph Jackson screwing up his five+ kids.

The Squirting Ring was a laff-riot in 1874.

Anonymous. The Budget of Novelties, Containing a Catalogue of Valuable Books and all the Latest Novelties and Curiosities for Everybody. (Ashland, Mass.: Union Purchasing Agency, 1874. 16mo, original decorated yellow wrappers, 48 pages. Extensively illustrated).

This detailed catalog of cheap novelties conclusively demonstrates that the passion for squirting rings, novelty serpent eggs (a kind of firework), special whistles for ventriloquists, card trick and magic books, novelty tobacco boxes designed and built with a hidden needle to prick the fingers of the unwary (a “capital thing to have where sports are always beating tobacco”) and, of course, the secret of clairvoyance  was not confined to pre-pubescent boys living on 80th Street in Queens, NYC during the 1950s.  After all, it was the teen emperor, Elegabulus the Wacky, who invented the whoopee cushion in the third century C.E. (thus stimulating my life-long interest in ancient Roman history), the modern version (for those who, as I, must know) re-invented by JEM Rubber Company of Toronto, Canada in 1930.

'Tis a botched queer globe of books, indeed.

__________

Weird lit. is a close cousin to, and reinforces, The Case For Nutcase Literature.
__________

Images courtesy of Garrett Scott, Bookseller, with our thanks. Mr. Scott's inventory is not exclusively weird. "Interesting Books by Unusual Authors" is broad and fertile (and affordable) ground.
__________
__________

"I Smote Him on the Boko With My Whangee"

Often, I'll be walking down the street minding my own business when a complete stranger will come up to me and declare, "Steve, I desperately want to be a book collector but I have little money and no idea what to collect."

"Are you attracted to the strange, the bizarre, and the off-beat?" I'll inquire. (This is the standard line I use when meeting anybody for any reason).

"Why yes, I am!"

"Well, then," I'll say, "I have good news for you, my off-beat, bookish friend."

The good news is that for most of their adult lives, Russell Ash and Brian Lake have been collecting strange books from another planet that looks astonishingly like Earth. They compiled what amounts to an annotated checklist of their area of interest, Bizarre Books,  originally published in 1985.

The books within are not expensive to collect and provide further evidence that when it comes to collecting categories, the only limit lies within the collector's imagination.

Here's a sample of bizarre books that Ash and Lake have amassed. Though it agonizes me, I'll refrain from providing rude or otherwise humorous captions. I'll leave that to you, gentle reader, for the Comments section below this post.

Scouts in Bondage by Goeffrey Prout. (Aldine Publishing, 1930).

The Oldest Trade in the World, and Other Addresses for the Younger Folk by George H. Morrison. (Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1898).

And I Stood There With My Piccolo in My Hand by Meredith Willson. (Doubleday, 1948).

A Treatise on Madness by William Battie. (London, 1758).

Anatomy of the Brain by William W. Looney. (F.A. Davis, 1932).

I Knew 3,000 Lunatics by Victor Robert Small. (Farrar & Reinhart, 1935).

I Smote Him on the Boko with My Whangee. (Wm. Hyde, n.d.).

Octogenarian Teetotalers. (National Temperance League Publications, 1897)

Moles and Their Meaning by Harry de Windt. (C. Arthur Pearson, 1907). Clarification: the skin, not spy, sort.

Also and Too: A Corpus-based Study of Their Frequency and Use in Modern English by B. Fjelkestam-Nilsson. (Almquist & Wiksell, 1983).

The Loathsomeness of Long Haire by Revd Thomas Hall. (n.p., 1654).

The Inheritance of Hairy Ear Rims by Reginald Ruggles Gates. and P.N. Bhaduri (Mankind Quartely, n.d.).

A Toddler's Guide to the Rubber Industry by D. Lowe. (De Montfort Press, 1947).

How To Fill Mental Cavities by Bill Maltz. (Marlbro, 1978).

Movie Stars in Bathtubs by Jack Scagnetti. (Jonathan David Publishers, 1975).

The History and Romance of Elastic Webbing Since the Dawn of Time by Clifford Richmond. (By the Author, n.d.).

The Romance of Holes in Bread by I.K. Russell. (1924).

The Romance of Leprosy by E. Mackerchar. (1949).

The Romance of Proctology by Charles Elton Blanchard. ((1938)

Careers in Dope by Dan Walford. (Prentice-Hall, 1973). Note: Prentice-Hall publishes textbooks.

Rock Stars in Their Underpants by Paula Yates. (Virgin Books, 1980)

Rubbing Along In Burmese. Anon. (1944).

Who's Who in Cocker Spaniels by Marion Francis Robinson. Mangrum (n.p., 1944).

The Muck Manual: A Practical Treatise on the Nature and Value of Manures by F. Falkner. (John Murray, 1843).

Animals As Criminals by J. Brand. (1896).

Carnivorous Butterflies by Austin Hobart Clark. (U.S. Gov't Printing Office, 1926).

The Art of Faking Exhibition Poultry by George Riley Scott. (T. Werner Laurie, 1934).

Teach Your Chicken To Fly Manual by Trevor Weekes. (Kangaroo Press, 1983).

A Pictorial Book of Tongue Coating. Anon. (Yukonsha, 1981).

Clarification: diagnosis of disease by tongue-exam, in full-color. Suffice it to say, "Deep red tongue with a slippery moist 'moldy sauce paste' fur" is trouble, though I've had Scallops with Bok Choy and Moldy Sauce Paste - quite good, actually.

Old Age: Its Cause and Prevention by Sanford Bennett. ((1912).

Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life by George Catlin. (Trubner & Co., 1869).

Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured by Charles Cluthe. (Chas. Cluthe & Sons, 1915 - 71st edition).

How To Be Plump by Thomas Cation Duncan. (Duncan Bros., 1878).

How To Get Fat by Edward Smith. (Johm Smith & Co., 1865).

Grow Your Own Hair by Ron MacLaren. (Heathway, 1947).

Why Bring That Up? A Guide To and From Seasickness. (1936).

Sex Instruction for Irish Farmers by Charles McSherry. (Mercier Press, 1980).

How To Boil Water in a Paper Bag. Anon. (n.p., 1891).

Teach Yourself Alcoholism by Meier Glatt. (1975).

Living Without Eating by Herbert Thurston. (1931).

How To Cook Husbands by Elisabeth Strong Worthington. (Dodge, 1899).

The Fangs of Suet Pudding by Adams Farr. (Gerald G. Swan, 1944).

Clarification: The Fangs of Suet Pudding is not a cookbook recipe revenge story but rather a WWII potboiler featuring a master Nazi spy and a young and comely British lass.

And, finally, four must-have volumes appropriate to our passion:

A Bibliography of Water Pollution and its Control by Hugh Fish. (Gothard House, 1972).

Selective Bibliography of the Literature of Lubrication by Nathan Van Patten and Grace S. Lewis. (N. Van Patten, 1926).

An Essay on Diseases Incidental to Literary and Sedentary Persons by Samuel Auguste Andre David Tissot. ((1768).

Sweet Sleep. A Course of Reading Intended to Promote That Delightful Enjoyment by Charles J. Dunphie. (Tinsley Brothers, 1879). I encourage readers to provide a list of their favorite slumber-inducing volumes.