Stamp Out (my) Ignorance, Please....

"Conan The Librarian" wrote in message
oups.com...

Please tell me more.

Well, first of all, Bill was right.

Looks like I was wrong about Basbanes. The only mention of Dobie in "A
Gentle Madness" (at least, according to the index) is on page 346, in a
chapter titled "Instant Ivy," wherein Basbanes mentions Dobie as one of
nineteen notable people (including Erle Stanley Gardner, John Foster Dulles
and the Hoblitzelles) for whom rooms in the HRC at Austin are named. I
won't bore you with the details of what Basbanes has to say about H.H.
Ransom and the HRC......you probably know a great deal more about it than I
do......or than Basbanes, for that matter.

As for "A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion
for Books," the subtitle says it all.......well, or SHOULD anyway. In a
book of 533 pages (minus what Kevin Jackson refers to as "invisible
forms"{*}), you'd think a competent and conscientious author could pretty
much cover the material. Unfortunately (at least from my perspective),
Basbanes restricts himself, with one glaring exception, to serious
collectors of means and purpose. Aside from brief mentions of a few
noteworthy examples, he mostly ignores the crackpot TRUE bibliomanes (not to
mention bibliphages) in favor of a fuller treatment of those who have
collected with a passion, more or less good taste, and a good deal of focus.
The intriguing and adorable basket-cases who are found rotted or dessicated
under a collapsed stack some two to five years after their last sightings by
the neighbors are given short shrift. To give him his due, Basbanes does a
good job with the material he covers, but I was hoping for more of the lurid
stuff.

That said, he somehow manages to botch the one REALLY scandalous case he
deals with in detail......the notorious case of Stephen Blumberg. I'm going
to guess this name is already familiar to you, in which case I don't need to
elucidate. If not, I won't spoil the surprise. Suffice it to say that the
interjection of Blumberg's story in this volume is something akin to jamming
a bit of Stravinsky into Mozart......or vice-versa. I don't know what
Basbanes was thinking......and I suspect he doesn't either.

Chuck Vance (and if that sort of thing interests you, you should
check out Mody Boatright; my mom took classes with him at the U of T,
and got to know his daughter, and she says they were a delightfully
disfunctional family :-)

Boatright......o.k., that's a new one for me. I'll be watching for him.


He's not as well-known as Dobie, but he holds his own as a
folklorist. Here's a little more about him:
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/...s/BB/fbo1.html

Wolfgang
great......that's all a ****in' junky needs.......another pusher!


I can't speak for Claspy, but I'm just trying to help.


Chuck Vance (yeah, I know ... that's what they all say)

Yeah, that's what they all say.

Wolfgang
{*}"Invisible Forms: A Guide to Literary Curiosities", Kevin Jackson, Thomas
Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, 1999. [From the dust jacket fly-leaf:
"Dedications, titles, epigraphs, footnotes{**}, prefaces, afterwords,
indexes{***}, these and other 'invisbile' literary necessities form the
skeletons of many a book..."]

{**} If you love footnotes.....or hate them.....(it's one or the
other.....or you are no real bibliophile), you might want to have a look at,
"The Devil's Details: A History of Footnotes* Chuck Zerby, Invisible Cities
Press, 2002.

*"Being a concise and definitive account of the footnote, from its murky
birth to its fertile middle years to its endangered present, beset as it is
by careless writers and indifferent editors and thoughtless readers and
penny-pinching publishers, an account, moreover, enhanced by copious
documentation, enlightened by countless quotations from wise councilors,
lightened by many passages of delightful humor, and yet entirely unafraid of
either controversy or sex." [this footnote appears on the front of the dust
jacket]

{***} EVERY book should have an index! "Winnie the Pooh" should have an
index.....fukkin' phone books and dictionaries should have indexes!

p.s. Bill was right.

On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 19:39:40 -0500, "Wolfgang"
wrote:

(snipped)

That said, he somehow manages to botch the one REALLY scandalous case he
deals with in detail......the notorious case of Stephen Blumberg.

I only vaguely recalled Blumberg. So I Googled him. Much more than
I'd remembered was there. And it led me to the fascinating case of
St. Columba, whose bibliotheft helped start a war.
http://www.slis.ualberta.ca/cap03/sandra/columba.html

Thank heavens for modern photocopies, which would let readers like me
see any book they had interest in without doing damage to the
originals.

Cyli
r.bc: vixen. Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli
email: lid (strip the .invalid to email)

On 6/12/05 10:28 PM, in article ,
"Cyli" wrote:


Thank heavens for modern photocopies, which would let readers like me
see any book they had interest in without doing damage to the
originals.

What?

Puzzled,
Bill

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 08:57:52 -0400, William Claspy
wrote:

On 6/12/05 10:28 PM, in article ,
"Cyli" wrote:


Thank heavens for modern photocopies, which would let readers like me
see any book they had interest in without doing damage to the
originals.

What?

Puzzled,
Bill

Oh, I meant that they can lock up all the rare books and put out
photocopies into the regular circulation stacks. This will make it
easier to keep the truly rare copies safe, but let someone like me
look at them anyway. Wll, almost look at them. Look at a clone of
them.

Cyli
r.bc: vixen. Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli
email: lid (strip the .invalid to email)

On 6/14/05 12:16 AM, in article ,
"Cyli" wrote:

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 08:57:52 -0400, William Claspy
wrote:

On 6/12/05 10:28 PM, in article ,
"Cyli" wrote:


Thank heavens for modern photocopies, which would let readers like me
see any book they had interest in without doing damage to the
originals.

What?

Puzzled,
Bill

Oh, I meant that they can lock up all the rare books and put out
photocopies into the regular circulation stacks. This will make it
easier to keep the truly rare copies safe, but let someone like me
look at them anyway. Wll, almost look at them. Look at a clone of
them.

It was the term "photocopy" that puzzled me. I had images of strolling up
to the desk at the British Library, asking for the Lindisfarne Gospels and a
pile of 10p coins for the copy machine.

What is done now makes photocopies look like fish wrappers. For example,
after mentioning the Kelmscott (which, while rare, isn't particularly old),
I dug up our copy of this:

http://www.octavo.com/editions/chkwks/index.html

Which, while nice (very nice, actually), won't be the fix a bibliomaniac is
looking for. (And truly is a *photo* copy, I suppose!) For most of us
though, it'll do. And there are of course online collections of digitized
texts, both free text-only collections (eg. Project Gutenberg) and
subscription based text/image collections (eg. EEBO or NCO).

Bill

William Claspy wrote:
...
What is done now makes photocopies look like fish wrappers. For example,
after mentioning the Kelmscott (which, while rare, isn't particularly old),
I dug up our copy of this:

http://www.octavo.com/editions/chkwks/index.html

Which, while nice (very nice, actually), won't be the fix a bibliomaniac is
looking for. (And truly is a *photo* copy, I suppose!) For most of us
though, it'll do. ...

The library here at Illinois has an elephant folio edition
of Audubon's _Birds of America_ in the rare book collection.
It's one of the rarest of the rare and is treated as such,
but the library had facsimile prints made of the whole book
and displays a different one each week in the main rotunda.
It's worth a trip to the library every week if only to look
at the magnificent copies.

--
Ken Fortenberry

"Ken Fortenberry" wrote

It's worth a trip to the library every week if only to look
at the magnificent copies.

well, i'm sure it's preferable to the only other material of value in
the entire freaking place: archived superman comics.

wayno (the library at the university of north carolina was established more
than fifty years before illinois was a state, for god's sake...)

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 09:19:07 -0400, William Claspy
wrote:

On 6/14/05 12:16 AM, in article ,
"Cyli" wrote:

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 08:57:52 -0400, William Claspy
wrote:

On 6/12/05 10:28 PM, in article ,
"Cyli" wrote:


Thank heavens for modern photocopies, which would let readers like me
see any book they had interest in without doing damage to the
originals.

What?

Puzzled,
Bill

Oh, I meant that they can lock up all the rare books and put out
photocopies into the regular circulation stacks. This will make it
easier to keep the truly rare copies safe, but let someone like me
look at them anyway. Wll, almost look at them. Look at a clone of
them.

It was the term "photocopy" that puzzled me. I had images of strolling up
to the desk at the British Library, asking for the Lindisfarne Gospels and a
pile of 10p coins for the copy machine.

What is done now makes photocopies look like fish wrappers. For example,
after mentioning the Kelmscott (which, while rare, isn't particularly old),
I dug up our copy of this:

http://www.octavo.com/editions/chkwks/index.html

Which, while nice (very nice, actually), won't be the fix a bibliomaniac is
looking for. (And truly is a *photo* copy, I suppose!) For most of us
though, it'll do. And there are of course online collections of digitized
texts, both free text-only collections (eg. Project Gutenberg) and
subscription based text/image collections (eg. EEBO or NCO).

Bill

Yipes. Still too nice for me. Not that I want a smudgy thing on thin
typing paper, but...

Yep. I like Gutenberg. For one thing, they've got Austen (uh, that's
Jane Austen. I don't think she ever flyfished.).

Cyli
r.bc: vixen. Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli
email: lid (strip the .invalid to email)

Wolfgang wrote:

"Conan The Librarian" wrote in message
oups.com...

Please tell me more.

Well, first of all, Bill was right.

Looks like I was wrong about Basbanes. The only mention of Dobie in "A
Gentle Madness" (at least, according to the index) is on page 346, in a
chapter titled "Instant Ivy," wherein Basbanes mentions Dobie as one of
nineteen notable people (including Erle Stanley Gardner, John Foster Dulles
and the Hoblitzelles) for whom rooms in the HRC at Austin are named.

If I'm not mistaken, Dobie is also one of a handful of folks for
whom the HRHRC (not a typo; it was re-named the "Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center" back when I worked at UT in the early eighties) has
created a replica office, complete with original ephemera.

I
won't bore you with the details of what Basbanes has to say about H.H.
Ransom and the HRC......you probably know a great deal more about it than I
do......or than Basbanes, for that matter.

Oh please do. :-) From what I've read about him, it appears that
above all else he was determined to bring immediate academic credibility
(similar to an "instant classic" :-) to the center and the university.
He was ruthless, calculating, driven, eccentric and possibly a bit
mad. In other words, he was the perfect man for the job.

[little snip]

The intriguing and adorable basket-cases who are found rotted or dessicated
under a collapsed stack some two to five years after their last sightings by
the neighbors are given short shrift.

I have nothing to add here, I just wanted to re-read that phrase
again. :-)

(Bill, are you paying attention?)

That said, he somehow manages to botch the one REALLY scandalous case he
deals with in detail......the notorious case of Stephen Blumberg. I'm going
to guess this name is already familiar to you, in which case I don't need to
elucidate. If not, I won't spoil the surprise. Suffice it to say that the
interjection of Blumberg's story in this volume is something akin to jamming
a bit of Stravinsky into Mozart......or vice-versa. I don't know what
Basbanes was thinking......and I suspect he doesn't either.

How does he botch the Blumberg case? I would think that's one case
that is pretty open and shut (so to speak).

{**} If you love footnotes.....or hate them.....(it's one or the
other.....or you are no real bibliophile), you might want to have a look at,
"The Devil's Details: A History of Footnotes* Chuck Zerby, Invisible Cities
Press, 2002.

Thanks for the citation. And as to your previous point: There is
another option. You can love *and* hate them. I love them for what
they contain, but I hate them because I can't resist being immediately
drawn to their content; I always jump directly to the footnote.

*"Being a concise and definitive account of the footnote, from its murky
birth to its fertile middle years to its endangered present, beset as it is
by careless writers and indifferent editors and thoughtless readers and
penny-pinching publishers, an account, moreover, enhanced by copious
documentation, enlightened by countless quotations from wise councilors,
lightened by many passages of delightful humor, and yet entirely unafraid of
either controversy or sex." [this footnote appears on the front of the dust
jacket]

I *must* read that book, thanks.

{***} EVERY book should have an index! "Winnie the Pooh" should have an
index.....fukkin' phone books and dictionaries should have indexes!

p.s. Bill was right.

I already knew that. :-)


Chuck Vance

"Conan The Librarian" wrote in message
...
Wolfgang wrote:

I won't bore you with the details of what Basbanes has to say about H.H.
Ransom and the HRC......you probably know a great deal more about it than
I do......or than Basbanes, for that matter.

Oh please do. :-) From what I've read about him, it appears that
above all else he was determined to bring immediate academic credibility
(similar to an "instant classic" :-) to the center and the university. He
was ruthless, calculating, driven, eccentric and possibly a bit mad. In
other words, he was the perfect man for the job.

Basbanes was much kinder (while giving good account of Ransom's critics),
but that's about the gist of it. I can't really give you much more from
memory and, as I guessed, you already appear to know more about him than I
do.

[little snip]

The intriguing and adorable basket-cases who are found rotted or
dessicated under a collapsed stack some two to five years after their
last sightings by the neighbors are given short shrift.

...he somehow manages to botch the one REALLY scandalous case he deals
with in detail......the notorious case of Stephen Blumberg....

How does he botch the Blumberg case? I would think that's one case
that is pretty open and shut (so to speak).

Poor phrasing on my part. Basbanes actually did a good job of reportage on
Blumberg. What he really botched was the inclusion of Blumberg's story in
this book. In retrospect, it looks to me like Basbanes couldn't decide what
he wanted to do. In the first place, the word "madness" in the title
suggests that he is going to treat bibliomania in the sense of
pathology....a ripe field as anyone who pays much attention to books and
bookish people knows. As I stated, he glosses over this with little more
than a nod and then goes on to a relatively brief look at serious collectors
through history, finally settling on an in depth examination of (mostly)
nineteenth and twentieth century American and British collectors, with a
great deal of emphasis on their relations with dealers and the ultimate
disposition of their collections. And then, at the very end of the book, he
includes this Blumberg stuff. It's looks very much like Basbanes, a: is
saying "I know that a lot of this is boring and it's not what I promised,
and, b: decided on including Blumberg because he was available (and a pretty
hot topic in the book world) and would jazz the whole thing up a bit. The
whole thing is a discordant note in what is otherwise a competent (if
unexciting) look at modern book collecting on a grand scale and/or a tacit
confession that he hadn't done what he led the reader to believe he would.

{**} If you love footnotes.....or hate them.....(it's one or the
other.....or you are no real bibliophile), you might want to have a look
at, "The Devil's Details: A History of Footnotes* Chuck Zerby, Invisible
Cities Press, 2002.

Thanks for the citation. And as to your previous point: There is
another option. You can love *and* hate them. I love them for what they
contain, but I hate them because I can't resist being immediately drawn to
their content; I always jump directly to the footnote.

Yeah, I was aware of that third option, but the whole love/hate thingy gets
messy......not the sort of thing we want to go into in depth in a family
newsgroup.

*"Being a concise and definitive account of the footnote, from its murky
birth to its fertile middle years to its endangered present, beset as it
is by careless writers and indifferent editors and thoughtless readers
and penny-pinching publishers, an account, moreover, enhanced by copious
documentation, enlightened by countless quotations from wise councilors,
lightened by many passages of delightful humor, and yet entirely unafraid
of either controversy or sex." [this footnote appears on the front of the
dust jacket]

I *must* read that book, thanks.

It should come as no surprise that Zerby appears entirely unapologetic about
making it a tricky read.

{***} EVERY book should have an index! "Winnie the Pooh" should have an
index.....fukkin' phone books and dictionaries should have indexes!


p.s. Bill was right.

I already knew that. :-)

Masochist.

Wolfgang