Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

The best hunting grounds for book "sleepers" in the 50s was New York City, without doubt. The bookdealers of New York were an interesting bunch of enterpreneurs. Take, for instance, Johnny O'Connor, who rented basements all along Irving Place to store his series of scientific and literary periodicals. I met John in 1959, when he had a loft in the garret of the Broadway Central Hotel, a place so far out of sight and mind that I cannot remember where it was. It had a huge rat-beset lower level to hold the carriages that brought in the guests, and in the Summer when you went to the upper floor and entered the under the roof storage area, you had to remove your clothes or die. Of course, you could step through the dormer window on the roof and enjoy a sunbath, far above downtown Manhattan.

Johnny sold me a 4th printing of the 1st edition of James Joce's Ulysses, printed in Paris by Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company, Nov. 1924, a book so frail tht every time it is touched a cloud of paper dust flies off it. It had lived in that garret, which no doubt added to its fragility. I have lost track of Johnny, an Aussie who played a mean game of tennis on his New Jersey home courts.

I used to call Johnny when a big run of Philosophy or the Polish Academy of Science papers became available at the Strand Book Store, on Broadway and 12th.. It was sad when the Strand became the only game in town for bookscouts. Just a few years earlier there had been Weiser's, on Broadway between 13and 14th Sts, and across from it, Milt Applebaum's Arcadia Bookshop, another late stayout place. I once bought from Milt a small portfolio of the publications of Die Bruecke, German Expressionist group (1905-1913), led by Ernst Kuerchner. Alas, the lithographs had been removed.

But Strand was still a source. In the '60s I found a copy of Robert Duncan's Heavenly City Earthy City with a long poem copied into the endpapers by the poet. It went to a West Coast dealer within the year, at what we jokingly called a 100% markup: from $5 t0 $500. But that was my best gain in all these years. Book scouting is a sport, not a trade.

Across from Strand was Larry's Sylvan Books, a deep store, where the restaurant/antique business now is. It is amazing how low the rents must have been in the early 1960s. Tall Larry, who always stood and read books, and spoke in the softest high voice, never had more than two customers simultaneously. His books were casually shelved, and he never swept the store. Nevertheless this is the place where I found a copy of Vasar Verse (date tc), containing the first appaearance of Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Also across from the Strand there is the University Place Book Shop, run by William P. French, eminent bibliographer of Afro-American poetry and drama (main book pub. by Gale, Detroit, 1979; also others). Founded by Walter Goldwater in the 1940s, University had, beesides the Black literature of all continents, scads of high level scholarly material, including a high shelf of incunabula (books printed before 1500 A.D.) Walter "kept an avuncular eye over the holdings of the Widener Library at Harward," as I recall a trade pub stating in th 1970s. That must have been difficult, as I can attest, having been lost in the 5th underground level, and nearly scared to death when someone activated the aisle compressor machine on me. It is safe but frightening. (To explain - to save space, book racks are placed together. If you want to get inside, you activate a motor that moves what looks like a fifty foot row of shelves apart, to make an aisle where you want to be. It is an archival practice for low-traffic areas. God, do I love Widener! I want to be a student, again and forever!) Walter was the husband of Eleanor Lowenstein of the Corner Book Shop. She was the seminal cookery book specialist in the US, since 1940. She was a wonderful lady, but she kept her store door locked all day.

Coming back to Strand, once upon a time, in the 1960s, the employees of that store were publishing a lit 'zine, "Stranded." I make the distinction that a 'zine is an ephemeral mimeo or xerox product of typed material, a rare and precious thing, sometimes, vs. a professionally produced periodical or journal. The Strandians are so hip, it is surprising that the 'zine has not been rejuvenated.

Way up North from the Strand, on Fifth Ave, was Dauber and Pine, a rare book shop run by Charles P. Everett, up until the 1950s. I never met Charlie, but he was the source for my enthusiasm for books. He wrote the Adventures of a Bookman (NY 1951 verify), a cheerful and inspiring autobiography, chockful of collecing data. When I passed the windows of Dauber and Pine for the first time, in 1949, they had a Chagall painting there, unattributed, priced for under $1,000. I was shellshocked - but I was earning $32.50 a week, and there was no way that I could buy the Chagall. In retrospect, I now wonder - did the prim, tiny Mr. Pine know something that I did not? Did he suspect the signature? In the subsequent years I eventually raised the courage to ask the question; but Mr. pine denied any memory of that event. Charlie Everett died in 1951, at 78, and Mr. Pine was active for one decade or two thereafter, them Maurice Dauber became the mover of the store.

D&P had wonderful stock - I bought Americana and New Yorkiana at low cost. They had, once, a Bible that was set up to be a coffee table, it was so huge. Whether that was sacrilegious I will not pass on; it disquieted me.



Wally Dobelis thanks, once again, Marvin Mondlin of the Strand for information. Marvin is writing the definitive history of the 4th Ave book trade, a long-term project.