Looking Ahead

Wednesday, March 29, 1995

Tales of the Bookseller's Row - Miss Adelaide de Groot 3/29/95
The Museum of Modern Art has always been a fascinating place, for the acquantanceships one could make. Whom am I kidding - it was a good place to meet girls: students with notebooks, hip women who might respond to a "Did you know that night fishing at Antibes is a totally nonexistent sport?" with a:" who told you that, Gertrude Stein?" and some really grand people.
I was sitting, reading, near the birch trees in the garden, near the closing time in June, in the 1960s, when the elderly gentlewoman next to me asked me for an insignificant favor. Only after she struck up a conversation did I realize that I was being picked up. It was not a pickup type of pickup; as it transpired, she needed someone to walk with her to her house up North, off 5th Avenue, and I was the nearest trustworthy-looking male.
Having been gently solicited, I agreed. It was only then that the lady gave me her full name, and I was stunned. It was Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot, a famous collector of the French Impressionists, whose name was on numerous acknowledgemets of loan exhibits at the MOMA and the Met. My interest was pricked: would I be invited to see some momentous masterpieces in a museum-like residence? It did not seem likely; the lady stopped at the Tripler's window to express gentle disapproval of the prices of neckties, her nephew's birthday was coming up, and she was shopping for gifts.
I had told her that I knew of her collection, and after some back-and-forth she revealed that the paintings were in storage. She could not afford the insurance, and her premises were not sufficiently watched. It was truly sad; she spoke lovingly of the paintings, she would adore to see them once more entering and leaving the house. For the past years she had seen them only in reproductions and old museum catalogues.
That was sad - the old gentlewoman, no progeny, no close people, and no art to warm her spirits. I invited her to have a bite on East 52nd Street, a nice restaurant that I could scarcely afford, and she declined, it was out of her way. I have a suspicion that she had a hot plate at home, and some spaghetti and sauce.
Miss de Groot and I met a very few times at the MOMA afterwards; then I became a husband and left the Bohemian drift, acquiring a more purpose-full lifestyle. It was only years later that the news came through that Miss Adelaide had passed away and left her Impressionists to the finest repository in the land, the great Metropo;itan Museum, in care of its Director, the charming and innovative Thomas Hov ning. Then, in future years , came the story.
It seems that Miss de Groot's collection of magnificent French Impressionists was duplicating the Met's own, and could be safely deaccessioned, that is, exchanged and sold in the collector market. Since the gift was without reservations (a warning to you, my wealthy collector readers), the paintings could be moved out into the open market, quietly. Mr Hoving came in for some criticism.

When Fourth Avenue was Book Row of America - part 2
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis May 2004

This installment completes the review of a history of our area, Book Row, An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade, by Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador, 2003, $28.

To continue recollections of the book people of my generation, some Book Row (Fourth Avenue, 14th Street to Cooper Square) stalwarts managed to hold back the gentrifiers and real estate developers until the 1970s, before moving or giving up the business. The scholarly Wilfred Pesky, of Schulte’s Books (across from the coop building on the site of the burned down Wanamaker’s, also known as terrorist victim Leon Klinghoffer’s home) was the heir of the avenue’s flagship store, known for its huge stock, low prices and extensive theology collection. Following his untimely demise in 1966 a group of employees took over and concluded, after a few years of struggle, that the humongous stock had become quite outdated. The location was taken over by the late George Voss, a well-known liquidator of bookstores in distress, who himself eventually ended up selling from card tables laden with books, kitty-corners across from the Strand.

Biblo and Tannen, who owned and occupied a narrow five-story building on Fourth Avenue near Ninth Street, was known as a rare fiction house, with a huge stock of novels on the second floor, their rare book room. They, as Canaveral Press, also reprinted out-of-copyright books and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels. As a personal aside, our friend Charlotte, widow of a legal and Aristotelian scholar, had found out that B&T had reprinted his chief work, and complained, whereupon Alice, the kindly bookkeeper, sent her periodic statements of sales and small checks, and made herself available for chats.

Another reprinter of scholarly works was Pageant Book Company, owned by Chip Chafetz and Sidney Solomon. WWII vets, they learned the trade by working for Henry Rubinowitz’s Fourth Avenue Bookstore at 138. The Pageant was a known auction buyer of imperfect incunabula rich in woodcuts and engravings, particularly copies of Hartmann Schedel’s 1496 Nuremberg Chronicles and old Psalters, which they broke up and sold by the page, suitable for framing. Their reprint house was Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., through which they republished I. N. Phelps Stokes’s Iconography of Manhattan Island and, in 1961, a two volume facsimile edition of the Gutenberg Bible. Guided by daughter Shirley Solomon, Pageant survives in Soho, and has a booth in the annual Union Square Christmas Shop.

George Rubinowitz, who died in 1997 at the age of 98, had studied for the rabbinate but switched to reading books about books at the Brooklyn Library. His Fourth Avenue Book Store had a second-floor rare book room, housing treasures purchased at auctions by his former schoolteacher wife Jenny. George was easy on discounts, but Jenny ferociously held her ground. It was a pleasure to listen to their back-and-forth, thick accents flying.

One would hear pure New York speech from Ernie Wavrovics, who with his seldom seen twin brother Louis (or did he confuse us by also answering to the name of Ernie?) ruled over a book basement at 530 East 14th Street, edge of Alphabet City. They lived on a barge and were famous for buying unclaimed suitcases at hotel auctions, and particularly, for their 1947 purchase of the condemned Homer and Langley Collyer mansion. They were granted it for the purpose of clearing it out, after the hoarded treasures collapsed and killed the reclusive brothers. Whether they rescued any really valuable books is unclear.

Another adventurous reprint publisher was Jack Brussel, of the United Book Guild at 100 Fourth Avenue. He reprinted both the Gutenberg Bible (1960, 3 vols) and the Nuremberg Chronicles, as well as classic works of erotica, then illegal. An annual transoceanic traveler, he brought back from Britain stacks of ukiyoe, old Japanese color prints, many of which ended back in Japan. An irrepressible book enthusiast and acquirer, he was constantly on the search for editions of Aesop’s Fables and Napoleana for his collections, and would lead us, a small group of like-minded people, on Saturday expeditions in lower Manhattan, Harlem (Smith’s Books), Brooklyn (Binkin’s bookstore) and out of town, looking for finds. For the record, the group’s permanent members in the 1960s also included Sunny Warshall, whose Business Americana collection is now part of the Smithsonian, Dr. S.R. Shapiro, founder of the1940’s Cumulative Book Auction Records, Sam Orlinick, a dealer in social sciences and an admirer of Mozart, Paul Cranefield, PHD and MD, editor, historian and heart researcher at the Rockefeller University, who was on an unending search for his Grail, William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis (1628) , and Milt Reissman (much quoted by Marvin Mondlin), a button manufacturer and children’s book expert who eventually turned professional and opened Victoria Books.

Sometimes we had the pleasure of Jack’s scholarly brother I. R. Brussel, author of rare book bibliographies and an inveterate storyteller, recounting his personal experiences with the literary greats, such as the womanizing adventures of Theodore Dreiser.

These reminiscences were prompted by the marvelous collection of anecdotes and facts in the Mondlin and Meador book. I have tried not to steal their thunder, there are many more stories to read (you can buy a discounted and signed copy at the Strand). T&V country people are New York’s greatest readers - look at all the Barnes & Noble stores we have been blessed with – and they remember the Book Row. My 1995 tales about the book people on the Avenue elicited more street-corner comments than any other subject matter that I covered. Feel free to send your recollections, c/o T&V, or e-mail Mdobelis@glic.com.





# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:20 AM 0 comments

LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis 8/8/96???
How does a Fourth Avenue book scout like the notorious Bruce (of whom youv'e read in prior stories) acquire his superior knowledge of scarce editions? Is it long exposure to books? If so, then the bookdealers of Fourth Avenue would never throw a rarity, such as H.L.Mencken's "Ventures Into Verse" (Baltimore, 1903), out on their 50c tables, for a scout to snap up. I was actually there when this book was picked up by "sleeper" hunter, on the West side of 4th Ave, outside one of the smaller stores. I tried to offer the finder a premium if he'd let me buy the book. If recollection serves, he simply stuck his tongue out at me, speechless in the face of the enormity of his good luck. (Mencken, incidentally, was so prolific that he wrote under 44 pen names, from George W. Allison in the Baltimore Sunday Herald, 1902, to Robert W. Woodruff, in his Smart Set magazine. One was the exotic Seumas LeChat, not to be confused with the Monsieur LeCoq of George Simenon's - who wrote under 17 pen names.)
The answer is that the scout learns constantly, by reading, talking and lifelong enthusiasm. Book scouts devour antiquarian bookdealer sale lists and auction catalogues, they study author and subject bibliographies and may even visit the Berg Collection of Rare Books in the NYPL. Many antiquarian bookdealers are too busy to do that kind of studying.
I remember having a strange copy of Robert Browning's anonymously published "Pauline, A Fragment and a Confession" (1833), in a beautiful binding, with the Ex-Libris of H. Buxton Forman, a XIX Cent. authority. I bought it at the value of the binding from a New York dealer, who knew books. I knew that it had to be a spurious edition, particularly because Forman had been associated with Thomas Wise, the great bibliographer and forger of Browning and other first editions, and acquired it as a curiosity. There might be a story behind it.
There almost was. I brought the book to the 42nd Street Library, signed it through the guards at the entrance, and took it to Dr Gordan, the librarian of the Berg Collection, where they have two of the real first editions. We agreed that my copy was a forged first, and Dr Gordan very kindly permitted me to take pictures of the title page of the real first edition with my precious Honeywell Pentax single-lens reflex, while he held the book - and then the book got lost! It had been signed out by an attendant, I gave it back to the good doctor - but somehow it disappeared. Dr Gordan became truly excited and called for help. I could not help to overhear that "this man came it, took pictures with his little snap box (what an insult to my best camera), and now the book is gone!" I was politely asked to remain in the reading room, I think they put a guard, discretely, outside the door. In a short while the embarrassed librarian found the book, I was given a perfunctory apology and left Berg Collection feeling that I had exhausted my welcome in these quarters.
I did not return to researching the source of the forgery for a few years, when Marjory Wynne of the Beinecke Library at Yale offered to help. She asked me for photocopies, and determined, in short order, that my book was a part of a known reprint. The venerable Buxton, or more likely someone else, had taken a Browning Society pamphlet, reprinting the text of the even then rare book of poems, then stripped off the front matter, and had the poems expensively bound. Who was behind the the charade is moot, but since the pamphlet was printed by Thomas Wise in 1886, who had passed off other pamphlets printed by him as first editions, it may be that this copy was meant to fool people. Forman's bookplate would have added authenticity.
In scouting for books I've had to fool people too, not illegaly. When my group of book scouts visited the East Coast dealers on Saturdays, looking for good buys, bookdealers would study our purchases carefully, and sometimes renege on price, claiming that the marked amounts for certain books should have been updated. This was not fair, but in order to keep our welcome green, we would submit to it.
Once my group of Saturday collectors went out of town to an advertised sale by a dealer who had bought a private library and was trying to get rid of the chaff. There were tables of 10 books for $5, 10 books for $10, constantly being replenished. I was looking through the better books, when my eye caught a German title, "Koenig, Dame, Bube," by W. Nabokoff-Sirin, published by Ullstein in Berlin, 1930. This was certainly a find, an early book by the author who signed such later books as "Lolita" with the name of Nabokov. I carefully picked 19 other books at that table, including more foreign-language titles, all worth the money and some of them quite flashy, and walked over to the cash register. The dealer examined most of my purchases practically with a magnifying glass, and gleefully withdrew four titles, graciously letting me pay $16 without insisting that I pick four more items. Nabokov's second non-Russian book passed without a second glance.
My triumph was short-lived. When I happily examined my great find at home, it turned out that the front end-paper, the folded page which holds the binding and the book together, had been carefully detached. It probably held the author's inscription to a Lotte Brandenstein, whose ownership stamp is in the book, maybe too intimate to be left in the book when she disposed of it.
If you think I'm too fanciful, here's a story told by Ike Brussel, the great bibliographer of Anglo-American books. It seems that Theodore Dreiser, who was a big chaser, would ask every woman he met to sleep with him, counting on the fame of his name and on the law of averages for a supply of bedmates . A young girl in the office of his British publisher succumbed, and at the end of the brief encounter humbly asked the great author to inscribe a copy of "Sister Carrie" for her, hoping that this would make a nice souvenir for later years. Dreiser inquired for her full name, and wrote:"To Mary Smith, in memory of a certain wall in London." He grandly handed her the book, she thanked him, and, upon reading the inscription, burst out in tears. But the author would not waste another copy on a short relationship, and the girl tore up the inscription. So Ike was told.

Computers have truly changed our lifes, simplifying and eliminating jobs such as typesetting and final proofreading. They have also enlarged the scope of human errors, making it possible for a whole page of text to disappear. That is what happened last week with my description of the Friends Fair, and the volunteers, such as the doctors and other overworked professionals who give up a Saturday to sell books. Hence the segue from Jan Hird Pokorny, the architect of the Dvorak statue pedestal, to the barber-surgeons of yore. But the Fair is over, and you'll have to wait for the story of how to get a free medical diagnosis while buying old books until the next Fair, in May 1996. But, if you'd like a hundred or more brightly jacketed, or conversely, scholarly looking books for a studio background, leave a message for me at Friends Seminary, c/o Susa n Malin, 979-5030.

Booksellers Row XII - The Ultimate Booksellers' Tool 10/16/95

1995 is the 100th anniversary year for American Book Prices Current (ABPC), the thick red annual guide to prices realized by books and manuscripts in auctions.
It is the ultimate tool, because auction buyers are largely book dealers, and thus it gives the collector an idea of what his rarities might fetch, when sold to a dealer or in auction - but discount the latter for a 25 percent commission and 10 percent buyer's premium. The collector who uses the prices in guides based upon dealer catalog prices must discount them by 40-60 percent, the dealer's margin (it is even larger for lesser books). ABPC is pricey, and if you need to use it, I will give you my secret. Go to Room 315 at the Public Library, 42nd Street and 5th, the set is on open shelves. There is one at the Bobst Library too, if you have an NYU pass; none at Baruch and New School.

ABPC was started by Luther Livingston whose first job was cataloguing seeds and who subsequently became the Librarian at Harvard, and has gone through the hands of many publishers - Dodd, Dutton, Bowker, no doubt because of the dedication required to keep up, year after year, the tedious job of transcribing auction data in excruciating detail and with great precision.
Bowker's early ABPC editor was Jake Blank, of later who caused great consternation by listing book titles, under author, in publication date order, a practice soon abandoned. Before WWII ABPC was edited by Ed Lazare, who dod it patt-time for Bowker while working at Max harzoff's famed G.A.Baker and Co antiquarian book store, of which he became President when Harzoff died, 12/31/1939, at 7 West 46 Street . (Harzoff was about 14 during the Blizzard of 1888, when he got out of hsi house in queens by sliding off the roof, the snow was piled up that high. He caught a milk wagon to the 23rd St Ferry and got to work at Baker &Taylor (then on 23rd St, now in Hillside, NJ, before hs boss). Ed (1904-1991, with Baker 1925-42) knew books. He had appraised the Folger Shakespeare Library while it was still in a bank vault in NYC, before it was moved to its newly built home in Washington, DC. When Ed went into the Army in 1942, Carlton and Nancy Storm helped out, and took the task to U.Mich, where Carlton became Curator of Maps. "It's yours, when you get home," he wrote Ed, and so it was 1945-53, when Bowker wanted out and sold ABPC to Ed and Ramona Lazare. They ran it until 1970, when it was sold it to Columbua University Press, and Ed went on to edit Parke Bernet-Sotheby's index volume for the monumental seven-volume Streeter Americana sale catalog (sales dates), his last major effort.

The series was purchased by Daniel Leab, labor historian, and his wife Catharine,whose enthusiasm for books was inherited from her father Roger Kyes, a book collector, i Michigan. In the interim, 1940-1952, ABPC had to fight off a competitor, published by my friend the late Dr. S.R.Shapiro, who tried to include yet more titles, with realized prices of $3. and up. When, ten years later, I complimented him on the precision of the minutia, he threw up his arms: "Don't talk about this. The book is full of errors, it's an impossible task!"

The Leabs computerized the tedious sorting, alphabetizing and typesetting and proofreading job in 1975, using the then new Digital Equipment PDP134 and a proprietary program from Inforonics. The computer eventually was given to New york Historical Society, wher they did not know how to work it. The Leabs went on, and eventually added Bambam, an online data base for lookup of stolen books and manuscripts, operated in conjunction with the Rare Bk Dealers Asso?? Unfortunately, the ABPC is a great shopping guide for library thieves who want to steal valuable books for resale. There have been many - just recently sevsral security people were fired at the Library of Congress for ... A faccinating rogue, James Shinn, who used electronic detection equipment to bypass library metal detection equipment, was nearly caught by Bill Moffett, the librarian at Oberlin, (later at Huntington Library in California. He also made a splash when he opened the Dead Sea Scrolls microfilms to scholars). Shinn was eventually caught at Muehlenberg College, and sent to the Leavensworth, KS pokey for crooked businessmen.

ABPC is now not only a red-bound annual book ($95) but also a CD/ROM, costing a formidable $2,000 or so, and containing all book auction sale prices 1975-1995,
the life work period of the Leabs. It comes with software, and if needed, one can extract information by consignor, that is seller, by buyer and by topic (e.g., what Americana books did Goodspeed's of Boston buy in 1990).

He who calls the tune, pays the piper, there's no free lunch, and you must put your money where your mouth is. Unfortunately, often in public life it is someone else who pays the piper, etcetera.
These thoughts crossed my mind while reading some recent news items. These remarks are not very focused, but they have to do with my general thesis of responsibility. Irresponsible criticism must pay for its mistakes. Responsible criticism must include potential solutions. The key to my attitude is formed on what Winston Churchill said about democracy (loosely paraphrased): it is ineffective, but it is the best form of government that we have, and don't attack it it until we have something better.
First item, the one about Yale University having to refund $10 Million to a donor.
Four years after giving $20 Million to Yale, to expand its Western civilization curriculum, and after extensive negotiations about its implementation to satisfy the requirements of the faculty multiculturalists, the donor, Lee M Bass, got tired of the runaraound and has requested a refund. Yale has agreed, even though it has spent some of the money, and has a $12 Million deficit. A Prof. of comparative lit, Michael Holquist, states that: "I think Mr. Bass made a great mistake. I think that the possibility for a creative and innovative program...for new ways to negotiate Western heritage has been lost." He reminds me of the statements of the negotiators of the baseball strike. Nothing was said about whether the multiculturalists made a mistake. Holquist further states that he had always held out hope that a compromise curriculum could have been designed. Nothing in the article shows whether his people contributed to the working out in the four years, or essentially contributed to protest. Nothing in the article indicates that the protesters are raising a fund, or taking a cut in pay, to help defray the loss.
On the same page, John L. Loeb is giving Harvard $70.5 Million in directed funds, for population issues, preventive medicine, advanced environmentl studies, and a "humanist chaplaincy" at the Memorial Church, as well as general teaching and financial aid support. No funds to expand the Western civilization curriculun, hence no protest.
Next story. SUNY trustees have announced that they will close eight of the SUNY 34 campuses and raise tuition by $1,600 a year, to $6,250, to meet the Governor Georce E. Pataki's proposed 31.5 percent budget cuts of $290 Million, out of a total budget of $1.5 Billion. The Chair of SUNY, Frederic V. Salerno, forecasts that this action would cause a drop of 20,000 in the 159,000 student body.The Gov and Speaker Bruno have reponded by offering to get rid of the trustees, for using scare tactics. This is an issue that would hurt the Governor politially, since most of the SUNY campuses are in upstate Republican areas, and provide employment.
Speaking from personal albeit anecdotal knowledge, the SUNY campuses, which were expanded to accomodate the baby boom, have been underutilized for years. This is a classic case of duplication of facilities and administrative overheads. To justify their existence, some community colleges have been recruiting prisoners in local jails and welfare recipients, offering them free tuition and transportation to attend classes, without having to meet performance requirements. The courses offered to this group of students have not been specifically geared to teaching trades and skills that would facilitate the students' return to mainstream. Thus, much waste. Consolidation of SUNY facilities is indicated. As to the Governor's disingenuous reaction, it would be inconceivable that he expected the 31.5 percent budget cut to go through without some closings.
Another story. The Congressional axe aimed at the National Endowment for the Arts has its origin in such NEA-sponsored shows as the Richard Serrano sculpture, featuring Christ in urine, Karen Finley's image-mutilating self-exhibit, and Maplethorpe's homosexual/sadistic photographic fantasies. These anarchistic shows in themselves are part of our 1st Amendment rights; were we to abrogate them, God knows what next would fall.
And so we go on, throwing out the baby with the bathwater and shooting ourselves in the foot.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

A collector/dealer whom one would often see on Saturdays and late weekdays at Weiser's Bookstore on Broadway was the mysterious Mr. Kline, a short elderly stoutish gent, bent forward and peering through a magnifying glass in an art book, muttering. Mr Kline had a loft on the East side of Union Square, in which he and his brother, whom no one had ever met, manufactured leather goods. The purse-making was relegated to one long wooden table with some machinery. I once actually saw an older woman stitching at the table. Otherwise the loft was filled with stacks of paintings on their edges along the walls, statues big and small on antique tables, old glass-door bookcases filled with objets d'art and decaying art reference books in five languages. And old frames, lots of them.

"Look, I want your opinion on a painting I bought last week, I think it is a Pisarro," he would say, and I would obediently trot along to the loft, hoping that some unexpected treasure might reveal itself by serendipity, besides the spurious Pisarro.
On one such occasion Mr Kline started telling tales about an unknown Leonardo da Vinci drawing of Isabelle d'Este, and ended up digging into a trunk and unweiling a Renaissance drawing with the unmistakable features of that beautiful lady. "Look, look, look," he would open an old monograph and show the versions of the sketch in the Louvre and the Uffici Galleries. It was definitely a master drawing, after the Louvre, and when I pointed out the tracing pinholes in the paper, he shouted: "Look, they all did that, even Leonardo, to make sure that the copy was exactly like the original!" He then commissioned me to research the piece at the NYPublic Library for him, claiming failing eyesight. I did that gladly, because the posssibility of unearthing a lost Leonardo was thrilling. In the Art Room indeed there were references to more than one copy of the drawing, including one that might have gone astray during World War One. When I brought back the news to Mr Kline, he thanked me perfunctorily and gave me a gift of some lithographs as a reward. The Leonardo was never mentioned again. Some years later, upon my inquiry, he told me that he no longer had it. However, during the intervening years Mr Kline showed unmistakable signs of prosperity. He gave away all his wild thrift-shop neckties, - I took some, as a good will gesture - and would travel to Biarritz and the Riviera, seemingly whenever it pleased him. He had acquired a lady-friend, a woman of a certain age, whom I would automatically address as Madame whenever we met on the street. She was not a bookstore frequenter.

Whenever we entered his loft, Mr Kline would take off his coat and don a paint-covered artist's smock, then pick up a painting that he was currently "sophisticating," and go to work. He was a crude restorer, and would clean and warnish paintings without much regard to damage. He would also reframe them, and seal the backs of the paintings. "Look, look, a Sargent!" he would shout, showing me an early XX Century flashily stroked portrait, bought at a small country auction sale. When I would suggest, with ill-concealed scepticism, that it was more like a Boldini, he would smile: "That's wonderful!" and consider the possibility. One great name or another, all his paintings were wonderful. His enthusiasm was contagious, and never flagged. Every disappointment, every painting dumped or auctioned off at a low price was superseded by a new find, a new hope of a discovery. And they were there.

One day he invited me in and unwrapped an interesting package of Renaissance-looking green papers, masterly fantasy drawings of people and scenes. "Look, look, a Piranesi suite!" I was stunned and had no words. "I shall sell it to Brooklyn Museum, they are goood!" The drawings were indeed museum quality, though whether by the great etcher of the XVIII Century I could not judge. That too was the last time the etchings were seen and talked about. "Theyr'e gone," the usually talkative Mr Kline stated, when I later inquired about their authentication.

Kline alerted me about a dealer of remainder books, particularly strong in art books, the Metropolitan Book Store an 23rd St., across the street from the insurance giant. He used this store it as his library, silently browsing for hours. I was impressed when, upon walking in for the first time, I heard the owners, a husband and wife and another relative, discuss the qualities of Canaletto vs. Guardi, the XVIII Cent. Venetian landscape artists, then much seen in reproductions. They obviously had more than a nodding acquantainceship with the arts. Kline had me also search for some books for him, particularly a set of a German four-volume art encyclopedia. The books were not to be found; I tried Hacker, Weyhe and Wittenborn, the big specialists, of which only Hacker survives. Wittenborn's owner was Gabriel Austin, whom I knew as an information librarian at the New York Public Library, answering the phone inquiries in Room 316a. I held him in high esteem because of his encyclopedic knowlwdge, he could answer arcane inquiries without touching a reference book. He eventually moved to the Parke-Bernet (pronounced Bernet, not Bernay) auction house, now Sothebys, then took over the big art book store on the Upper East Side.

Anyway, eventually I found a set of the art books by advertising in the trade paper, the Antiquarian Bookman. It was in the hands of a part-time dealer in Brooklyn. When I came to the dealer's rooms, a small apartment, he dug the the set out, from under his bed. In the same place he also had a Benezit, the then eight-volume French encyclopedia of artists, which he offered to me at cost. I bought for myself and it ended up under my bed for a while.
It was not TB, maier?graef 4v

The finding of the art reference books gave Klein great joy. There was apparently a reproduction of a painting he had, and he gave the set as authentication to the buyer of the art. I never found out what great treasure exchanged hands this time, it may have been a German Expressionist, a Kirschner or a Schmidt-Rothluff.

Mr. Kline is no longer with us, I gave his wide ties to a thrift shop. Today they probably adorn the neck of a fancier of Jerry Garcia. And my photocopies and research notes on the beautiful Isabelle d'Este are gone, victims of a Spring cleaning years ago.

Tales of Booksellers' Row - Jack Brussel 6/20/1995
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

Jack Brussel, my friend at United Book Guild, 100 Fourth Avenue (in the shadow of Grace Cathedral, as a British bookdealer would advertize), was a great guide for starting collections. He vaguely suggested to me that there were many forgeries and piracies of D.H.Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (Florence, 1928), and I should look into it. The book had then been considered indecent, forbidden to be published in England and the US, and Jack's sometime associate, the great James Joyce pirate Samuel Roth had alone been responsible for several pirated forgeries. The theory was simple. Roth would clean up the text, and sell the piracy to the gullible, capitalizing on the notoriety. D.H.Lawrence could not sue him for pirating an illegal book.
That was enough for me. Roth was well known for printing and binding books in whatever cloth the binder had on hand, as money came in, and variants abounded, Fourth Avenue was fertile grounds for finding copies of the book that were not even listed in Warren Roberts' then brand new bibliography of Lawrence (London 1963). While Roberts knew three alternate copies of the Lady, plus three different roth/William Faro editions and two Roth/esor Publishing editions, I mustered up 20 varieties, over a period of time.
Jack Brussel, my friend , had gone to jail in 1940 as a pornographer, for publishing an uncut version of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer." Jack was a friend of Henry Miller's who came back to the US from Paris in 193x, after the success of the notorious Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.
"Tropic of Cancer" was published in Paris by Jack Kahane's Olympia Press. A son of a Manchester shipschandler (1887-1941), Kahane was gassed in WWI, recovered and stayed in France, where he started supplying the English-speaking tourists with risque books, a time -honored ploy. Around the turn of the century it was gainfully employed by Charles Carrington, who varied pornography witha little forgery and piracy, particularly by creating spurious Oscar Wilde books. When Kahane ran short of authors, he wrote his own as Cecil Barr and xxx Carr
Kahane took the risk of publishing the first Cancer book, in 1934, with a cover showing a crab drawn by his then 16 year old son Maurice Girodias. (Maurice in turn continued the family tradition,printing scads of trash, but making literary history with Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" in Travellers Library, in 1960.) The $600 Kahane needed to produce the book were procured by the sex-obsessed Cuban-American poetess and novelist Anais Nin, then Arthur Miller's (and her psychiatrist Otto Rank's, and Antonin Artaud's, and other people's) lover, from her long-suffering banker husband Hugo Guiler. At first the book was issued with the crab and title on the cover, then in blank covers, with the crab legend on the jacket. The idea was for the tourists to discard the jacket so as to be able to smuggle the titleless binding into the USA, or UK, without the Customs questioning it.
In the US there was a pent-up demand for the "Tropic of Cancer." Jack Brussel got together with the great Joycean defender Frances Steloff of the Gotham Book Mart on 47th Street, and Ben Abraham of the Argus Book Shop in Chicago, arranging that Jack would publish 500 copies of the book for each sponsor. But money was short, and Samuel Roth, the well-established pirate of James Joyce and D.H.Lawrence books, was willing to advance some funds, provided some signatures would be made available for him too, to be bound as seen fit, for his faithfuls, on the mailing list. Miller was in, to get 10 percent of the retail, to be $7.50. This is per Gershon Legman, the great folklorist of limericks and dirty jokes, who whel last heard from was in Provence, and has told the story to xx, Miler's bibliographers. Robert Ferguson, author of "Henry Miller, A Life," (NY 1991), tells substantially the same story, except that the printing was 1000 for each sponsor, and Miller was supposed to get $1000 from each of them. Ferguson notes that there are no references to such windfall in Miller's letters, and deems the story apocryphal. However, Legman quotes a Miller letter .....
In 1961, Barney Rossett of Grove Press acquired American rights to the "Tropic of Cancer," and printed 68,000 copies at $7.50, followed by a 1m paperback edition at 95c. He was sued, and defended by Charles Rembar and trial attorney Elmer Gertz. Judge Samuel B. Epstein of the Cook County Superior Court (Chicago) rendered a n 18-page decision on Feb 21, 1962 that declared Cancer not obscene. Later. in 1964 the US Supreme Court reversed an adverse Florida decision and Miller was home free. He never gave Jack credit, and early biographers spoke in disparaging terms of the NYC printing. He may have been somewhat right, the Roth printings never paid any royalties, but the others did , according to Jack, as remembered by this family members.

Roth knew how to get around the smut laws, and in 1957 won a case in the Supreme Court of the USA, for distributing indevent advertising, publ xxx, and offering for sale a salacious hardcower magazine, the American Aphrodite.From there on in, Roth could have made it to the top of publishing heaven, but the real beneficiaries were Heffner, Guccione and the various crotch magazine publishers, who earned megabucks. Roth just puckered out

LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis


The other day, walking on 9th St., East of 4th Ave, across from Cooper Union, I was thunderstruck to see that Pageant Bookstore had disappeared from the face of the earth. I don't know why I should have been - rising real estate values have driven out all of the 20-odd antiquarian booksellers who flourished in the early 1950s in our area, mostly along the 4th Ave Boooksellers' Row, south of 14th Street. Pageant was the one which stubbornly clung to the territory, moving only around the corner from 59 Fourth Ave, where Sid Solomon and Chip Chafetz had originally held sway in a unique operation. They purchased, at auctions, damaged copies of incunabula (books printed before 1500 AD) and other typographical rarities, tore them up and sold them page by page for framing. Ditto pages of missals on vellum, maps and picture books. I still have somewhere pages of the Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicles (1493-97), a particularly beautifully printed and woodcut-illustrated folio, of which Sid and Chip must have chopped up a dozen copies.

The partners cleverly recognized that there was a living in reprinting out-of-print scholarly books in limited but steady demand by college libraries. New colleges were springing up to accomodate the baby-boom generation. They studied want lists of titles and generated a compendium of books worth reprinting, as soon as they would be out of copyright (many of them were already). That was in the days when publishers did not guard their back-lists. The boys formed Cooper Square Publishers, and their bibliography series editor for a while was Dr. S.R.Shapiro, a scholar of firm opinions, who once tried to buck the venerable American Book-Prices Current, auction price publishers, by issuing a mammoth rival, showing all books sold in auction for more than $3, of which I have the one 5-year volume (1940-45) that was published.

Up the block from Pageant, at 57, was Biblo and Tannen, who specialized in fiction and also had a major scholarly and Edgar Rice Burroughs reprint series publishing house, Canaveral Books. I remember my wife's aunt, who lived on limited funds, once discovered that B&T had reprinted one of her late husband's Dr. Max Hamburger's books on Aristotelian philosophy. She called them, and Alice, the office manager, thereafter faithfully sent her minor royalty checks. She had less luck with the other American and German publishers who reprinted Uncle Max's works.

On the next block, between 10th and 11th Sts, was Ben Bass' Strand Bookstore, a smallish room. Ben and his son Fred really had to be brave to move, late in 1963, to the cavernous sales room and basement that they presently occupy at corner Broadway and 12th. But it worked, and they now have more floors, more workers (160) and more books (2 1/2 Million) than all the members of 4th Ave Booksellers Association combined had in their heyday. It is also one of the two NYC bookstores with a 3rd generation member of the founding family on staff.

The other one is Samuel Weiser's Occult Books, now on East 24th St. near Lexington Ave., once one of the 4th Ave. mainstays. Their space on 4th near 14th St. was tiny, and the dapper Sam, never seen without a small cigar between his lips, bought heavily, so books had to be turned over fast, and many an 18th Century calfskin volume of Addison and Steele's essays as well as older French and German books ended on the 35c stand outside, bookscouts' favorite hunting grounds. Someplace I have a small disbound German woodcut book of saints, with a rhyme for each, which I think could be an incunabulum, bought for 35c from Weiser's. But that purchase was around 1952.

The construction of an apartment house forced Sam to move to a huge, main floor and mezzanine store on Broadway between 13th and 14th Sts, with a basement from which his son Donald conducted their Occult book reprint and catalog business. The store stayed open late, and it was there that we after-work book afficionados gathered to shoot the breeze and exchange book arcana with Sam's brother Ben. It was there that I lost a nice "sleeper" - a thin appreciation of Ezra Pound (N.Y., 1918), written anonymosly, which I knew to be the second published book of T.S.Eliot's. I had left it by the cash register, and it was gone. I fussed no end, and one of the regulars, Bruce, an older man, commiserated with me, and helped me look. Bruce had once lost consciousness, due to anemia, while browsing in the Americana section on the Mezzanine, and greeted Ben downstairs the next morning. A year later Robert Wilson of the Phoenix Bookshop on Cornelia Street published a letter in a trade publication, The Antiquarian Bookman, about a knowledgable thief of first editions, and the description fitted Bruce, who had meanwhile disappeared. This explained my Eliot, and certain losses that Ben had experienced. But that was not the last of Bruce, as you will read in another installment.

The Booksellers Row was a wonderful institution, a bazaar, a school in book lore. Bookdealing attracts a lot of offbeat people, ranging from savants to hucksters. I came to the world of books as a youngster, and stayed close to it, but not as a real part of it, for many years. Tales abound of H. P. Kraus and A.S.W.Rosenbach buying expensive books from impoverished European monasteries and noblemen and reselling them to rich collectors. That is not the environment of the collectors, book scouts and rascals I'll write about. My peers were there for the thrill of arcane knowledge, discovery and possession; to match wits with the pros, and to make incidental gains when they could bear to part with some minor rarity. But the romance! Consider accidentally discovering in a thrift shop a copy of the anonymously printed Tamerlane and Other Poems by a Bostonian (1837), Edgar Allan Poe's first book, and paying off the mortgage with the proceeds from selling it! By the way, beware, Tamerlane has been reprinted in exact facsimile, and copies found today are from that source.

Wally Dobelis adds that the Pageant, run by Sid Solomon's daughter Shirley, has moved its pages of incunabula to 110 East Houston St.

LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis
How does a Fourth Avenue book scout like the notorious Bruce (of whom youv'e read in prior stories) acquire his superior knowledge of scarce editions? Is it long exposure to books? If so, then the bookdealers of Fourth Avenue would never throw a rarity, such as H.L.Mencken's "Ventures Into Verse" (Baltimore, 1903), out on their 50c tables, for a scout to snap up. I was actually there when this book was picked up by "sleeper" hunter, on the West side of 4th Ave, outside one of the smaller stores. I tried to offer the finder a premium if he'd let me buy the book. If recollection serves, he simply stuck his tongue out at me, speechless in the face of the enormity of his good luck. (Mencken, incidentally, was so prolific that he wrote under 44 pen names, from George W. Allison in the Baltimore Sunday Herald, 1902, to Robert W. Woodruff, in his Smart Set magazine. One was the exotic Seumas LeChat, not to be confused with the Monsieur LeCoq of George Simenon's - who wrote under 17 pen names.)
The answer is that the scout learns constantly, by reading, talking and lifelong enthusiasm. Book scouts devour antiquarian bookdealer sale lists and auction catalogues, they study author and subject bibliographies and may even visit the Berg Collection of Rare Books in the NYPL. Many antiquarian bookdealers are too busy to do that kind of studying.
I remember having a strange copy of Robert Browning's anonymously published "Pauline, A Fragment and a Confession" (1833), in a beautiful binding, with the Ex-Libris of H. Buxton Forman, a XIX Cent. authority. I bought it at the value of the binding from a New York dealer, who knew books. I knew that it had to be a spurious edition, particularly because Forman had been associated with Thomas Wise, the great bibliographer and forger of Browning and other first editions, and acquired it as a curiosity. There might be a story behind it.
There almost was. I brought the book to the 42nd Street Library, signed it through the guards at the entrance, and took it to Dr Gordan, the librarian of the Berg Collection, where they have two of the real first editions. We agreed that my copy was a forged first, and Dr Gordan very kindly permitted me to take pictures of the title page of the real first edition with my precious Honeywell Pentax single-lens reflex, while he held the book - and then the book got lost! It had been signed out by an attendant, I gave it back to the good doctor - but somehow it disappeared. Dr Gordan became truly excited and called for help. I could not help to overhear that "this man came it, took pictures with his little snap box (what an insult to my best camera), and now the book is gone!" I was politely asked to remain in the reading room, I think they put a guard, discretely, outside the door. In a short while the embarrassed librarian found the book, I was given a perfunctory apology and left Berg Collection feeling that I had exhausted my welcome in these quarters.
I did not return to researching the source of the forgery for a few years, when Marjory Wynne of the Beinecke Library at Yale offered to help. She asked me for photocopies, and determined, in short order, that my book was a part of a known reprint. The venerable Buxton, or more likely someone else, had taken a Browning Society pamphlet, reprinting the text of the even then rare book of poems, then stripped off the front matter, and had the poems expensively bound. Who was behind the the charade is moot, but since the pamphlet was printed by Thomas Wise in 1886, who had passed off other pamphlets printed by him as first editions, it may be that this copy was meant to fool people. Forman's bookplate would have added authenticity.
In scouting for books I've had to fool people too, not illegaly. When my group of book scouts visited the East Coast dealers on Saturdays, looking for good buys, bookdealers would study our purchases carefully, and sometimes renege on price, claiming that the marked amounts for certain books should have been updated. This was not fair, but in order to keep our welcome green, we would submit to it.
Once my group of Saturday collectors went out of town to an advertised sale by a dealer who had bought a private library and was trying to get rid of the chaff. There were tables of 10 books for $5, 10 books for $10, constantly being replenished. I was looking through the better books, when my eye caught a German title, "Koenig, Dame, Bube," by W. Nabokoff-Sirin, published by Ullstein in Berlin, 1930. This was certainly a find, an early book by the author who signed such later books as "Lolita" with the name of Nabokov. I carefully picked 19 other books at that table, including more foreign-language titles, all worth the money and some of them quite flashy, and walked over to the cash register. The dealer examined most of my purchases practically with a magnifying glass, and gleefully withdrew four titles, graciously letting me pay $16 without insisting that I pick four more items. Nabokov's second non-Russian book passed without a second glance.
My triumph was short-lived. When I happily examined my great find at home, it turned out that the front end-paper, the folded page which holds the binding and the book together, had been carefully detached. It probably held the author's inscription to a Lotte Brandenstein, whose ownership stamp is in the book, maybe too intimate to be left in the book when she disposed of it.
If you think I'm too fanciful, here's a story told by Ike Brussel, the great bibliographer of Anglo-American books. It seems that Theodore Dreiser, who was a big chaser, would ask every woman he met to sleep with him, counting on the fame of his name and on the law of averages for a supply of bedmates . A young girl in the office of his British publisher succumbed, and at the end of the brief encounter humbly asked the great author to inscribe a copy of "Sister Carrie" for her, hoping that this would make a nice souvenir for later years. Dreiser inquired for her full name, and wrote:"To Mary Smith, in memory of a certain wall in London." He grandly handed her the book, she thanked him, and, upon reading the inscription, burst out in tears. But the author would not waste another copy on a short relationship, and the girl tore up the inscription. So Ike was told.

Computers have truly changed our lifes, simplifying and eliminating jobs such as typesetting and final proofreading. They have also enlarged the scope of human errors, making it possible for a whole page of text to disappear. That is what happened last week with my description of the Friends Fair, and the volunteers, such as the doctors and other overworked professionals who give up a Saturday to sell books. Hence the segue from Jan Hird Pokorny, the architect of the Dvorak statue pedestal, to the barber-surgeons of yore. But the Fair is over, and you'll have to wait for the story of how to get a free medical diagnosis while buying old books until the next Fair, in May 1996. But, if you'd like a hundred or more brightly jacketed, or conversely, scholarly looking books for a studio background, leave a message for me at Friends Seminary, c/o Susa n Malin, 979-5030.










LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis
Tales of the Booksellers Row - Part VI
A book scout on 4th Avenue had to know authors' handwritings. Not only the distinctive copperplate of George Washington, or the bold A. Lincoln signa ture, not just the well-known, easy to remenber letter styling of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. For instance, when examining an XVIII Century tome, British or American, it is a good idea to check page 100, looking for Thomas Jefferson's initials. To foil people who did not like to return borrowed books, the great book collector put secret ownership marks on his copies. Not all the books in Jefferson's second collection ended up in the Library of Congress (the first burned up), there are still some floating around. But watch out if the book with the Jefferson markings is dated after July 4, 1826, the day when the author of the Declaration of Independence shared the sweet chariot with his early-life enemy and late-life friend, John Adams. You will have a forgery in your hands.
Forgeries of Presidential documents showed up now and then on Fourth Avenue. A friendly bookseller would show me a payment order signed by George Washington: "They tell me it is a Spring forgery, but I don't believe it. Looks too perfect." I would nod affirmatively and politely keep quiet about the fact that Robert Spring, the first American autograph forger of distinction who started work in the 1870s, had a supply of genuine printed forms from the Office of Discount and Deposit at Baltimore. He did Washington forgeries so expeditiously and without the normal hesitation marks that it takes an expert who knows Spring's handwriting to detect them. Joseph Cosey, in the early XX Century, was the most prolific forger. While specializing in A. Lincoln letters, he could and did imitate the hands of other statesmenof the Revolutionary period, and was very careful with his paper. Button Gwinnett, the rarest signer of the Declaration, was a challenge to forgers. A farmer who died soon after the signing, his signature is the hardest to get, and new findings are immediately suspect. I have heard a story of a contemporary storekeeper's credit book, in which a forger made an entry on a free line for Button Gwinnett's purchases. Not exactly an autograph, but ...
In our bookcase there is a document signed by George Washington at Valley Forge, May 12, 1778, abjuring allegiance to George the Third, and swearing allegiance to the United States, as the commander in chief. The document is fill-in, with name, title and the word "swear" (permitting "aver," preferred by non-swearers) written in. I know that this is a XIX Cent facsimile, framed by an art dealer on Madison Ave (the phone number is Ashland 6348) but that does not stop me from annually taking it out of the bookcase and re-looking, just in case old George's signature should magically have turned to blue ink.
Not all forgers were just mercenaries, looking to sell phoney letters. Among the Brits, Thomas Chatterton, who killed himself at 17, wrote a whole body of highly regarded poetry, purportedly by a 15th Cent monk, Rowley. William Henry Ireland wrote poems, correspondence and a whole drama, "Vortigern and Rowena," all attributed to Shakespeare. On the other hand, Major George Gordon Byron pretended to be the son of the poet and was so convincing that he sold forged Byron letters even to the poet's publisher.
In my bookcase also sits a carefully repaired two-volume set of Harriet Beecher Stove's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the less-likely-to-survive paperbound edition, dated Boston, 1852, the year of the 1st edition. It looks precisely like a first, except when one examines the verso of the title pages against the light. There are two light spots, where someone carefully erased the notices of the 2nd printing. I'm keeping my George document, but I may let you have this set inexpensively.
Back to handwritings. Browsing in the 4th Avenue bookstalls sometime in the 1960s, a nice clean volume in a green cloth binding called out at me. "Annals of the Poets," by Chard Powers Smith, it contained amusing literary anecdotal observations. I picked it up, and saw a long pleasant inscription to Dear Gertrude, in pencil. Sorry that you are in the hospital, hope this book will help you pass the time, your friends miss you, words to that effect. The signature of Thomas Wolfe was hard to decipher, but the Smith book was published by Scribners in 1935, the year when the great editor Maxwell Perkins helped to reduce the second ungainly suitcase full of papers brought in by the former NYU teacher into a thousand-page book, under the title of "Of Time and the River." Wolfe could easily have picked up the Smith curio in Perkins' office.
I take the Smith tome out periodically. Tom Wolfe says he got a good deal of entertainment out of this book, and I check through it reverently, looking for notes. Except for a foodstain or two (Tom's or Gertrude's?), there is nothing to indicate that this "omnium Gatherum," chockful of arcane bits (S. Johnson, Hood and Henley were sons of booksellers, lower middle class) has been seriously read by anyone. But at least Wolfe has held it, dipped into it somewhat, and I have promised myself to read it. One of these days.
One of these days Wally Dobelis will come back to current events.























Margery Wynn

LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis
Tales of the Booksellers' Row Part III
The demise of the Luchow's building on East 14th Street brings back memories from nearly 40 years ago, when that restaurant was the pride and joy of our neighborhood. I had lunch there every Saturday, for years, with my bookhunters' crowd, eating creamed herring appetizers and swapping tales. Creamed herring with onions and slices of black bread was enough food to hold even a growing youth.
In the late 1950s I was invited to join a small group of knowledgeable book collectors and dealers who met weekends to lunch, to travel the East Coast, looking for "sleepers," as underpriced book rarities are known, and to renew old friendships. We visited bookstores from Maryland to Massachusetts, and were greeted with mixed emotions by the dealers. We were sure to bring in money, but we would also deplete the shelves of the better stuff, and leave the dealer wondering about the magnitude of his mistakes. But mostly we brought good cheer, particularly Jack Brussel, the mailbox of the trade, who knew everybody.
Jack, then in his 60s and past a major heart attack, was our undisputed unofficial leader. He had a store at 100 4th Avenue. the Jack had a great history, as book scout, writer of a math textbook, publisher of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and other sex-oriented classics. It was part of his myth as to whether he was exonerated or went to jail for the printing of the Miller book, not permitted under our then sanitized law, only partly softened by Judge Woolsey's 1933/4 decision exonerating James Joyce's Ulysses. I met Jack when he imported Japanese color woodcut prints (ukiyo-e). He claimed that they were in such a low esteem as to be used to wrap fish in Yokohama. The legend is that the Japanese gainer some respect for this form of their own national heritage when they saw them exhibited in the U.S. museums. I bought a few original Hiroshiges and Utamaros, which I eventually lost to a scammer.
Jack's brother was the renowned Ike R. Brussel, who then lived in the Jewish enclave of Seagate, and ventured out rarely. He was the author of the scholarly British-American First Editions bibliography (separate East-to-West and West-to-East volumes), and spoke with a thick East European accent. I remember telling him how I had found a first edition of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms (1929), worth $100, and he gave me a lesson in book scouting: "Bubbele, I had a book like that. El Dieff had it in his catalogue for $100, so I called him. 'Lissen, Lou, I have the book but no jacket, so I'll give it to you for one half, $50. And it's a trade deal, so I'll cut it one half again, to $25. Now, it is not mint, so I'll reduce it further to $10. And since you are my friend, you can have it for $5.' And he told me: 'No deal.' So, don't expect money, but you can have fun."
Jack had a comfortable rebuilt Checker cab, but his eyesight was not the best, so we traveled mostly in Milt Riessman's car. Milt was a button manufacturer, struck by the collecting bug. His interest was in children's books, and eventually he sold the button business, to open Victoria Bookshop, competing with Justin Schiller, then a young prodigy dealer, for the expanding kids' book collector market.
Sunny Warshaw, a lively gnome of a man, had his start buying junk paper from firms that went out of business or were moving. He found out that old files contained valuable stamps, autograph material and historic memorabilia, and built up a huge collection of Business Americana, from which he rented out illustrations and documents.It was eventually bought by the Smithsonian for $100,000, a bargain.
Sam Orlinick, who had a store off 4th Avenue, dealt in science and music. A Mozartian, he asked me to see my wife's uncle's Dr. Max Nachman's manuscript on the Aristotle/Mozart connection, and pronounced it unreadable. Since he was a reader for Dover Publishing, that was it. The late Uncle Max, a lawyer/philosopher/concert pianist, never pursued the publication of this book, holding it to be above the comprehension of the marketplace, and the manuscript now rests in the Leo Baeck Institute Collection. Sam's proudest possession was a Mozart manuscript of an early composition, in need of authentication. We would concoct elaborate schemes for verification of its authenticity without giving away its contents (I believe it was an unpublished variant), Sam would listen courteously and dismiss the harebrained ideas with gentility.
Not surprisingly, our best hunting for books was in New York City. Irving Binkin, in the back of Brooklyn Heights and the courthouse, on Willoughby Street, had a four-story building, the ground floor of which was devoted to making a living. Irving's heart was relly in ballroom dancing, of which he was a champion. He liked to go to Hispanic dances, and had a small Spanish book stock for his dance partners. Upstairs, he held residues of good Brooklyn estates, unpriced and unevaluated, books, paintings and ephemera. After much negotiating, Irving had decided that we were trustworthy and would not stuff our pockets, and could be permitted to make selections and bring them down for pricing. Irving was not knowledgeable, but prided himself on being able to divine, from our body language, things about the value of our selections. It did work out, since he asked for our scholarship, and we were not out to steal high value items for pennies. It was fun. I found some Elihu Vedder lithographs, which somehow had drifted down from the Houghton publishing company estate in Boston, and many small brown buckram-bound books from Ticknor & Co., the publishers of Hawthorne.
Next time i'll tell you about the experiences with the two scientists in our group, Dr. S.R.Shapiro and Dr. Paul Cranefield.


LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis
Tales of the Booksellers' Row Part IV
The truly professional bookman in my Saturday book-collectors' club, otherwise known as "Jack Brussel and friends," was, according to his own lights, the knowledgeable Dr. S.R. Shapiro.
I learned a lot from him. The good Doctor supplied the scholarship to our bookhunting expeditions, whether we wanted it or not. A man of towering bibliographic recall and decided opinions, he was not on speaking terms with a number of Fourth Ave dealers, which limited his quest, and explained his enthusiasm for our trips. He liked me, and since we were both members of the Bibliographical Society of America, he brought me up with him to the 4th opening celebration of Herman Liebert's Beinecke Library at Yale, in the early 1960s. This was a truly regal series of celebrations. We stayed in the Taft Hotel of fond memories, and had martinis every night, enough to float a small boat, in the President's reception hall. I remember meeting the Provo, Utah, university librarian, a Mormon, who confided to me how shocked he was to see all the great names in bibliography and library science swilling gin.

Our main speaker was John Sparrow, the Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, but the most fun was John Carter, who, with Michael Pollard, discovered the forgeries of first editions by the highly respected bibliographer and Browning collector, Thomas J. Wise. Carter's 1952 book, "ABC for Book Collectors," in its seventh 1995 edition, is still a basic source of book terms. Carter traveled with two strangely shaped duffel bags, which he claimed had served as his gun bags during WWII, when he was in the British intelligence.
Our other scholar member was Dr Paul Cranefield, both a PHD and MD, a medical historian and a cardiac researcher. Paul, who has had a major lab at the Rockefeller University since 1966, researching arrhythmia and the electrical system of the heart, was mostly interested in pursuing a dream - finding a first edition of Harvey's "De Motu Cordi" (printed in Germany in 1628), the most important heart book ever, first to explain blood circulation. Paul knew the Garrison-Morton medical book bibliogaphy by heart, practically, but was very selective in his choices. He was good to have around, considering the geriatric makeup of our crowd. I recall once, in Luchow's, Sam Orlinick getting caught up in a Sunny Warshaw joke while swallowing some creamed herring, and choking for seconds until Sunny's hefty pounding on his back dislodged the morsel and brought Sam back. At this point we noticed Paul, who was sitting at the opposite side of the table, surreptitiously folding his razor-sharp pocket knife, with a sigh of relief. He had been ready for a tracheotomy, as a last resort. This was in pre-Heimlich movement days.
Dr Cranefield, who chairs the Kesselring Awards Committee of the National Arts Club (for new playwrights), at that time was the editor of the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. His collaborator and successor was Dr Saul Jarcho, an internist and also an eminent paleopathologist, a physician who could determine from the bones of prehistoric men what they died from. Saul was also a medical humorist, writing under the pseudonym od S.N. Gano (it's a joke, in Spanish) in the venerable JAMA (Journal of American Medical Association). His mother was a Wallerstein, a sister of Nathanael West's mother. As many know, in 1927 West clerked at the then Kenmore Hall Hotel. It was owned by his uncles Jacob and Max Jarcho, and Saul's mother persuaded them to give Nat the easy job. West's sister was married to Sid Perelman of New Yorker and Marx Brothers fame, a resident at the Gramercy Hotel, and you are getting a whole article on the families, sometime. Dr Jarcho was my family physician, and saw my wife through her pregnancy, coming in to watch her tum late at night. There are not many physicians like Saul Jarcho.
Back to the education of the bookhunter. Most dealers whom we visited would scrutinize our choices with great care, and some few would reserve the right to withdraw some titles, stating that their stock was priced a long time ago, that they had had no time to update, and that we were taking an unfair advantage. Others were proud to match book knowledge even with the exuberantly loud Dr. Shapiro. The quiet Peter Lader of the small Martin's Book Shop on West 4th Street off 6th Avenue had the best literary scholarly books, and decent prices. He did the same thing as our group, on a truly professional basis, twice a year leaving his tiny wife in charge of the shop while he traveled the country, buying selected stock. He offered advice only when asked.
Mr. Pine of Dauber and Pine, 66 5th Avenue, had Americana stock still from the days of their partner Charles P. Everitt, a farmer's son from Peekskill and a great book scout. His book, "Adventures of a Treasure Hunter," (Boston, 1952) is a most fascinating work, and got me initially intrigued with book-scouting, though I never met anyone that could claim such finds as the famous Charlie. His book is still a good startup text. Similarly chatty are the several books by A. Edward Newton, such as "The Greatest Book in the World," (Boston 1925). A book collector, his articles started appearing in the Atlantic Monthly during WWI. He describes rare books that we will not easily find. "Gold in Your Attic," (1958) and "More Gold in Your Attic" (1961), by Van Allen Bradley, a set of easy-to-enjoy price guides, are more for the contemporary American browser and garage-sale addict. They evolved into his "Book Collector's Handbook of Values," (1972-79-82), and were continued by Allen and Patricia Ahearn as "Collecting Books - A Guide to Values" (Putnam, 1991).
Eventually my studies progressed to the reading of the heavy tomes of auction catalogues - Parke Bernet (pronounced Bernet, Otto was a German), Anderson and American Book Auction. I had bought a lot, in four big cartons, from Leo Weitz, who was closing his good art and illustrated book store way uptown at 1377 Lexington Avenue, and put them up in a cheap storage space with a broken floor that I rented in the old Hotel Albert on University Place. The restaurant of the hotel had an Eiffel Tower logo and advertised "All the Steak You Can Eat for $4.00" in the New Yorker, The clientele was rock and roll musicians, some of the best groups, but my recollections are bad. My storage room was entered and robbed, and I lost, most importantly, an eight-volume small paper first American edition of Audubon's "Birds of America," (N.Y., 1840-44) in a green cloth binding. That had been my most expensive purchase ever - bought with a borrowed $700, from the old Isaac Mendoza Book Company, a rabbit warren at 15 Ann Street, South of City Hall. Today that would be valued in five figures. I had to produce a certified check, and the next morning I ran into Mr Mendoza at 9 A.M., waiting for my bank to open. We were both embarrassed.
As recollection serves, I wrote a letter to the Antiquarian Bookman, the weekly bible and want-list source of the trade, describing my loss, but to no avail. The AB is published in Newark, NJ. It was founded by the late Jacob Blanck, who in 1950s started the compiling of the "Bibliography of American Literature." The opus was published by Yale in nine volumes over a long stretch of time. Anyway, the AB is where most of the book search people whose ads you see in the back page of the New York Times Book Review advertise your requests for out-of-print books. This is not the book-searchers' only resource, but it is a starting point. A hint: the AB is expensive, aimed for the trade, and not a one-shot advertising vehicle for the collector.
Wally Dobelis thanks Dr Paul Cranefield for his recollections, and sends best belated 88th birthday wishes to Dr Saul Jarcho, from the Dobelis family and T&V.

Jacob and Max Jarcho were plumbing contractors. You can still see their Siamese connections outside CPW buildings. Son Arthur living in bk. Sauls mom persuaded the uncles to give the job to Nat.The Weinsteins were builders Anne and Max Weinstein. Soul jarcho was Harv '25, Col MA in Lattin and MD. In his jr yr 1924 the ceremony on chas elliotts 90th had chas, who remenm Pres Jackson, and a patient at Barb hot remem ALinc funerak at Union sq. Amenities 1918
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Tales of the Booksellers Row, Part VII - Bloomsday.
LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis 6/19/95
In honor of Bloomsday (June 16), I dug into our bookcase and took out the first edition copy of James Joyce's "Ulysses," and the two pirated excerpts that we own.
The novel deals with the events in one day (June 16th, 1904) in Dublin, when Stephen Daedalus (Telemachus) meets Leopold Bloom (Odysseus, or Ulysses) and his wife Molly (Penelope). It is a fantasy, first to employ the stream-of-consciousness technique and word pyrotechnics that turned the book-writing world upside down. There is some explicit sexuality in Bloom's visit to a whorehouse and Molly's dreams that made it subject to censure. Parenthetically, while on characters, my favorite, whose name appears within the first four words of the novel, is Buck Mulligan. He was based on Oliver St. John Gogarty, a surgeon-writer and Joyce's friend. Gogarty's last book, "While Walking Down Mulberry Street," appeared in the 1950s.
The first edition of "Ulysses" was published by Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company Bookshop in Paris, 1922. It is a fragile book and leaves paper dust and tiny particles whenever touched. My well-worn copy is the 4th printing (4th and 5th printings were on thick inferior paper), and has been used extensively. I bought it from Johnny O'Connor. Johnny was an Australian Irishman who dealt in periodicals and rented basement warehouses all along Irving Place and Broadway. He also had an aerie book and journal loft in the attic of the the Broadway Central Hotel in the late 1950s, where they had a huge basement plaza with carriages that used to bring in the visitors from the railroad stations. A trip to the loft in the summer heat would kill you unless the visitor took off his shirt. But the place had a dormer leading out to the sloping roof, and a wonderful view of New York. Johnny sold me his Joyce when he had the shorts and the landlord wouldn't wait.
Next to this memorable book in my bookcase are two copies of the Two Worlds Monthly, published by Samuel Roth in New York, 1926-1927, containing chapters of the original. These came from Strand Bookstore on Broadway and 12th Street, where I found them in the outdoors stalls, some years ago.
The publishing history of "Ulysses" is well-known but worth retelling. The Egoist, a London avantgarde journal, run by Joyce's friend and benefactress Harriet Weaver, was forced by its printers in December 1919 to stop publishing "Ulysses" after the 5th installment of the book (in Britain the printers as well as the publishers could be prosecuted under the obscenity laws). The Little Review, edited by Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap in New York, was forced to close by prosecution brought on by the Society for Suppression of Vice, after publishing 23 installments, printed between March 1918 and December 1920. Then Sylvia Beach in Paris "asked for the honor" to publish "Ulysses" in small printings. It waw a labor of love, because Joyce never ceased rewriting. One chapter was lost when the volunteer typist's husband, a British embassy type, threw the unspeakable filth into the fireplace.
Eventually, there were 11 Paris printings of 28,000 copies, 1922-1930. Copies were smuggled into USA and the UK. The typography and printing was done by Maurice Darantiere in Dijon, who has entered the English-language literary history by working throughout the 1920s for the English and American publishers of avantgarde books in Paris, using typesetters who did not speak the language and could not be shocked by the words. It was not until 1933/4 that Judge John M. Woolsey of the U.S. Court lifted the ban, calling the the effect of the book, in places, "an emetic but not an aphrodisiac." It made Morris Ernst aas a lawyer, and earned Random House a lot of money. Sylvia made nothing. Joyce, blind, died in in 1941.
He too has earned his place in literature, and in Bartlett's Quotations.
Samuel Roth, a poet and novelist who ran a bookshop in New York, and also wrote and published scads of erotica - more of him in the forthcoming articles about my friend Jack Brussel - capitalized on the notoriety of "Ulysses" by printing 12 expurgated installments in his short-lived Two Worlds Monthly (July 1926-October 1927). Whether or not he paid Joyce any monies is debatable. Roth claimed he did. This piracy resulted in an "International Protest" signed by 167 writers and artists, and an injunction aginst Roth by Joyce's New York lawyers in 1928.
Roth had already pirated excerpts of "Work in Progress" ("Finnegan's Wake") in another ephemeral literary journal, Two Worlds Quarterly, September 1925-September 1926, copied from such European journals as Criterion and This Quarter. Roth went to jail for piracy when he in 1927 boldly reset the 9th Paris printing of "Ulysses" in its entirety and printed it in New York, by the Loewingers at 230 West 17th St. It was so good that Joyce gave a copy to Bennet Cerf to set the first legal, Random House edition.
Jail did not stop Sam Roth. When the notoriety of D.H.Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (Florence, 1929) generated demand, he wrote and published an expurgated version, and even wrote sequels to it. Roth had a sense of humor. Late in life, when appearing before the Joyce Club which met in Frances Steloff's Gotham Book Shop, he described himself as a lion in a den of Daniels. That is my recollection of a tale told by Prof.Leo Hamalian of City College, a Joycean who was fascinated by Roth and wrote two biographies of the rapscallion, in essay form.
Roth is a romantic figure, a pirate out of Raphael Sabatini, and, in his own way, a fighter for the First Amendment. Eventually there was a Roth case and decision before the Supreme Court of the U.S.
More Roth to come, in conjunction with D.H.Lawrence, T.S.Eliot, Henry Miller. Nancy Gross.

LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis 3/17/95

The Rolling Stones were at the Academy of Music, and we, members of the impromptu Washington Square Photographers Club, left the Park to check out the scene. The mobs around 14th street were stupendous, and the best view was off the parking lot on 13th. People there stood for hours looking at a dressing room window, where Mick, Keith, Brian Jones and Charlie Watts would take turns sticking out their heads and waving at the crowd every ten minutes. Girls would scream and go crazy ("Did you see, he wavved at me!"), and in between you could make conversation and take pictures. Soon we got tired of the groupie atmosphere, and moved back to the Park, where life went on. Bo Diddley was playing on McDougal, the Cafe Wha' had poetry readings, and the best bluegrass was around the fountain, where Roger Sxxxtaub held forth, nose in the air, playing clawhammer and progressive bluegrass banjo, as his fancy dictated. The air was charged with energy. Rawbone guitar people walked around, boots still dusty with Texas cowdung (I was gonna write a song about that), looking for groups to sit in with. It was the hot August of 1964. The Beattles had landed in February, and had a concert at Carnegie Hall, and would play the Shea in 1965 and '66, but the Stones were not at that level, yet.

On a side path Italian Joe held forth with his mandolin, singing songs of Sorrento and Napoli, surrounded by the old Ginzos from Mulberry Street, one eye out for the cops. When they approached, he would duck behind his supporters, who would engage the uniforms in loud banter. In later years Joe became more brave and greeted the guardians of order with his song:"Viva,viva,viva,va, viva la polizia!" Fred McDarrah was around, with his camera, recording the scene for the Voice.

Guitar groups played, on and on, around the fountain, dawn to dusk. Today you would pay though the nose to hear this quality. "There was a house in New Orleans, the house of Rising Sun," another Brits' (Eric Burdon and the Animals) smasher crossed with "If I had a hammer." "Wanna do hamburger?" was a neat way to get started on a sequence. The kids came from all over, not just Canarsie but also Ivy League. Keruac was a topic. Flower children were there - the young girls, not knowing but sweet. Street theatre - Big Brown held us enthralled, when he marked off a huge circle on the street near Judson Church and harangued, cajoled and bewitched us with his monologue. I wish I had taped some. It was magic.

Dave the banana man had a shtick, to make fun of drug control. "Smoke bananas" was the general theme. He kept it up for several years, and had a band which marched in parades, Hippy Hill Easter celebrations, and eventually cut a record on an adventurous label. I used to run into him in subsequent years, at the Strand Bookstore, when he worked in Wall Street bucket shops, in the orange crate act, gulling innocent dentists into daring penny stock investments.

I hung around in the Three Walls Impro Theatre club on 9th Street run by Hilly Diamond, who for many subsequent years has been the king of CBGB/OMFUG, a cultural citadel and a historic feature of the city. I haven't been in touch with Hilly for 25+ years, but the memories of the past are sweet. There was a beautiful lovelorn girl at Hilly's whom I took on a double round-trip on the Staten Island ferry to cool her mind. (Those were the days when I could clean my senses by either a Staten Island ferry trip, or a visit to the Rose Garden in Prospect Park Botanical Garden, or by letting myself be surrounded by the dancers at Bougival, a Rodin picture at the Met. There is an aura about some Impressionist paintings, make no mistake about it. Some day I will tell you about others who have it, such as Karl Knaths. When we returned to Hilly's, another friend, the chef and a partner at Penguin, a fine restaurant, decided to treat us to a dinner. Long Island duckling is a good antidote to sorrow.

I had some limited skills at the guitar in those days, so Hilly bought one and I strummed it at the bar, "To the tables down at Morey's" being my thing. We used to do a smartass version of "On top of old Smoky" with Hilly's little boy. And when the kitchen was low in potatoes, I'd walk over to Balducci's, which in those days was a canvas covered outdoor market on 6th Ave, and sling a 100 lb. bag on my back and bring it in. Oh, the simple pleasures of the poor people, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot.

My high-class hangout uptown was Pierre's Au Tunnel, on 49th St., where I drank burgundy and exchanged witticisms with the off-duty Breton hotel people of NYC.
Once, a drunkie from the Midwest asked the hostess where she's from, and the bar exploded when she told him "Cas-cuyette," which I had translated to me as "breaker of the testicle, you understan'."

I have not walked to and fro, talking of Michelangelo, but I have rolled my trousers and walked on the beach (more fractured T.S.Eliot, not a great husband but a hell of an image maker).

LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis 150 Lex 212-683-3950

A refugee from the Booksellers Row, The Old Print Shop on Lexington Avenue, West of 29th Street, next to the former Coffee Pot for the homeless run by the First Moravian Church until 1993, has a history that dates back to the XIX Century. Established by Edward Gottschalk in 1898 on 4th Avenue and 12th Street, it was an institution before Mr. Gottschalk moved to Lexington Avenue in 1925. It was purchased in 1928 by Harry Shaw Newman, an importer of linens, who found some Currier and Ives prints in his mother's attic and sold them. Harry T. Peters, the cataloguer of Currier and Ives worked with Newman; Bernice Abbott, one of the earlier American women photographers, produced illustrations for the shop's catalogues. These thin booklets, The Old Print Shop Portfolios, now in their 55th year, in themselves constitute a reference library of America's past in paintings, lithographs, prints and maps. The large showroom, filled with tables and deep-drawered cabinets, contains some 100,000 graphics, not limited to Americana. Then there are paintings.

Three generations of Newmans have been connected with the Old Print Shop - Harry's son Kenneth M., president since 1949, and his sons Robert K. and Harry Shaw II.

Most popular of all the graphics are the Currier and Ives and Audubon Prints.
The firm founded by Nathaniel Currier in 1835 in New York was joined by James Ives, its bookkeeper, in 1857. They produced lithographs of over seven thousand subjects, on every phase of American life, taking the buyer not only into familiar bucolic New England scenes but also showing fights with the Indians, wonders of Yellowstone Park and adventures on the rails and at sea. Such pictures as "Awful Conflagration of the Steamboat Lexington" illustrated daily events and were immediate best sellers. They were made in three sizes, 8 1/2"x12 1/2'; 10'x15',15'x20'. Today, hand-colored lithographs are priced from $100 to $10,000, with some selling for $40,000. Be aware of restrikes. Currier and Ives are very popular Christmas card subjects.

John James Audubon painted birds, and the pictures were reduced to engravings, printed and then colored by Robert Havel. The 435 elephant folio prints, published 1828 (size 25"x38") are worth upwards of $1,000 to $80,000, mostly coming from broken volumes of the four-book set (though some sets were sold unbound). The pictures in the seven-volume octavo-size set (prints 10 1/4"x6 3/4") were lithographed and hand-colored by J.T. Bowen, and sell at $30 to $200. Audubon's Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (1845-48, 22"x28") are upwards of $250, and Quadrupeds (1849, 7"x10 1/4") up from $30, all done by Bowen's firm. Audubon prints appreciate well.

There are few Anerican flower and herbal prints; collected are such largish prints as those from Dr. Robert John Thornton's Temple of Flora, London 1799-1807, which in the 1940s when prints sold for pennies were worth $30, and now range in four figures, as do Pierre Redoute's Les Roses, Paris 1824.

Of New York City views, a very popular one, painted and engraved from nature in 1854, shows the view South of Union Square, all the way to the harbor The only recognizable feature remaining today is Grace Cathedral. The row of eight houses on East Union Square between 15th and 16th Streets was built by Samuel B. Ruggles before he moved on to plan Gramercy Park. One, No. 52, was demolished as late as 1904.

The better known New York city view artists include Charles Mielatz (1864-1919), a German -born etcher, who produced about 90 images of the city from 1890 on, with more than one state in each edition run, redrawing portions as he went along, using a multi-plate imprint method. His city views are heavy on reflections, and , and the prices range from $275 to $1,500.

A more recent city artist, Anton Schutz, also German-born (1894-1977), became friends with etcher Joseph Pennell, whose works sell in the $250 plus range. Schutz founded New York Graphic Society, which was the largest producer of reproductions in the world by 1946. Schutz's work, very architectural, is priced under $1,000.

Armin Landeck (Crandon, WI, 1905-84) did dense dry points, engravings and etchings, priced from $500 to a high of $42,000. Me worked with Australian-born Martin Lewis (1881-1962), a successful illustrator, water colorist and painter turned graphic artist (147 prints). prices range from under $1,000 to $15,000.
John Sloan the painter also turned out 80-90 prints, walued in low to top four figures.

The lover of cityscape can do very well by buying hand-colored prints from Valentine's Manuals, annuals recording city events. The books were published 1850-57 and ins ubsequent series, t0 1920s. The prints from broken volumes and sell for under $100. They are of better quality than the prints clipped from Harpers Monthly and hand-colored. Reproductions abound.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

This may seem too early to talk composting, but Spring is just around the corner, when birds do sing, hey ding a ding ding!

To leave Shakespeare and return to earth: composting our vegetable, fruit and garden refuse will reduce the need to find space to dump garbage, for this nation, by 20 percent. This fact has been known for years, and many suburban and rural communities, the people with lawns and trees that drop leaves, are acting on it, providing within their regular recycling programs (newsprint, glass, plastic and metal - just like us scorned NYers) a separate pickup of compostables. Unfortunately, that still involves plastic-bagging, and unbagging. Home composting is much better, but many suburban householders resist it, particularly those with small properties, because of the perceived odor. This ignores the fact that composting goes on, on their own properties, continually. It is nature's own way of recycling leaves and dead plant life into fertile soil. By sending the autumn leaves out to the town compost heap, the householder is robbing his own soil of potental natural nutriments for the plants. We have a potted palm in the office, and have had to replenish the soil twice over the years, that is how plants rob the soil of nutriments.

You may now well ask - what has this got to do with me? I'm an apartment dweller, and have no garden and no soil to replenish.
True, but let's think for the city, for the country, for Planet Earth. An average NYC household throws away two pounds of organic waste daily - fruit and vegetable scraps..bread..coffee grounds.. tea bags.. egg shells..old potting soil. 27,000 tons of garbage go to the Fresh Kills in Staten Island daily, creating mountains larger than the Cheops Pyramids. These dumps are reaching their capacity and will have to be closed within the next 10 years. If we New Yorkers don't generate a recycling plan for the compostables, that day will come so much sooner.

The Lower East Side Ecology Center will take your compostables on Wednesdays (8AM to 5:30 PM) and Saturdays (9AM to 5PM) at the Union Square Greenmarket. Or bring them to the Center (East 7th St between Aves B and C), Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 8AM to 5PM, Wednesdays 4PM to 7PM. Please do not bring meat, chicken, fish, greasy scraps, dairy items, kitty liter and feces, diseased plants and potting soil. To avoid smells and fruit fly invasion, it is best to accumulate the scraps in a closed plastic bin (available at the Greenmarket with a 50c deposit), or in your refrigerator in a single plastic bag or used waxed milk or juice carton (one bag only, please!). I know many of us are shuddering, just thinking of this mess - but think a bit further. The Center's compost piles can nohow accept all our compostables, but if we show that New Yorkers are amenable to the composting inconvenience, we may get the city to add composting to its recycling stream.

The Department of Sanitation is already sponsoring composting demonstration projects in the four Botanical Gardens in the outer boroughs. These are aimed at homeowners who can compost in their back yards. I will give you the 25c tour, in case you have a back yard ar know someone who has one. Persuading your neighbor to compost is as valuable ecologically as doing it yourself. Two persuasions will give you two good deed (or mitzva, if you wish) points.

A simple compost heap can be built by tying four wooden pallets together with wire, or cutting holes in a big green garbage can and removing its bottom. Filling it with proper care - avoiding meat and greasy scraps, and mixing in equal proportion green (vegetable, grass clippings, high in nitrogen) and brown (autumn leaves, brush, wood chips and garden dirt, high in carbon) compostables, odor is cut down. Keep the heap moist but not soggy, and compressed, and heat will form. Compost will be ready in as little as three months, if you keep aereating by turning the material once a month, but it may take a year. Two piles are best - one to add on while the other is composting, but if you do not have that luxury, build your pile with interspersed twigs and brush, so that air can enter and speed the oxidization process. No air, no compost. Then, you can remove the ready compost from the bottom, while building new compost and letting it oxidize above. You can use your new compost crop as the brown content for the continued process (who has the luxury of much mixable garden dirt?) until you are ready to replenish your garden plot with your own homebrewed compost, full of nutrients. A nice feeling when you do that, sort of like being Mother Nature's surrogate.

The Lower East Side Ecology Center operates with volunteers and has limited funds from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and some discretionary funds from Councilmember Antonio Pagan and Borrough President Ruth Messenger. If you want to think about volunteering at the Center, call 420-0621. For those of us who once upon a time liked the idea of an ant farm, the Ecology Center has a worm farm, for your own apartment. Shudders, shudders again! But it can be odorless, if you dont overfeed the earthworms, and it is interesting to watch the broccoli stems disappear. If you film the process, maybe National Geographic will buy your product, or Channel 13. You can harvest the worm castings every two months. And think of the conversation piece you will have for cocktail parties, and for your children's friends!

If you think I'm trying to get you all out of the city and into the country, to live off the farm - wrong, we need all our readers right here, to participate and help make this city a better and safer place for the future, for both us and our children.


Wally Dobelis thanks Christina Datz, Director of the Lower East Side Ecology Center (420-0621), for info. Visit her and the worms at the Union Square Greenmarket, Weds & Sats.











To close, a couple of hints for the Good Guys. If your'e clearing the snow or ice in front of your building (or restaurant or store) and you have a corner property, think of clearing the crosswalk too. It is a neighborly thing to do, and think of the good will for your thoughtfulness that you will generate with your neighbors (or clients). And how about clearing the access to the bus stop and shelter along the Ave for the polloi? Not to put too heavy a point on any one thoughtless neighbor, I did have in mind the Onion, er, Union Club.