SummerTimeLand

In SummerTimeLand you have vine-ripened, perfect watermelons and endless rows of soft-shell crabs on ice. It's a great place to visit, but it takes a certain type of person to live here. Asbestos-based blood helps.


It doesn't take a Native Texan to know what's in store when the mercury heads north of 100 degrees in June. Summer heat down here is a fact of life, but temperatures over 105 before August do not bode well. 109 at Austin Bergstrom International Airport is beyond ridiculous -- it's giant-squid scary.

The five months of Summer drive my book hunting activities indoors; instead of driving around checking my traps, I dig through my storage boxes looking for neglected uncataloged gems from days past.

I have a closet whose alchemy resembles a wine cellar -- long-stored items emerge from the darkness, finally reaching their prime, releasing a sweet bouquet and the perfect mixture of tannins. There's also a good percentage that ends up as vinegar.

Who's On First?

While indulging in the Austin tradition of live music and adult beverages at a venerable spot well-known for excellence in both categories, I was queried about my occupation by a fellow patron. My instinctive response in these circumstances is to keep it as simple as possible: "I sell rare books . . ." immediately followed by ". . . on the Internet." This is a good conversational gambit, since I leave it up to my interrogator whether or not more attention is warranted. I'm comfortable leaving it at that, since bars aren't the best place to talk shop. This time was different. "First editions? I can dig it," came the immediate response. Human nature. There's no getting around it.

". . . Humans are wired to rank things," said Dr. William Pollack, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "Caring about who is best comes from a function that originally has to do with survival," he said. "You would want the person who represented you in your tribe to be the best at it -- because without them being the best, or winning, you might starve to death or be attacked. That part is neurologically set in. We are ranking and ordered animals." [Alan Schwarz: "'The Greatest': What a Concept" The New York Times, June 14, 2009] Or anything Tom Wolfe produced under the new Journalism label.

The First Edition is the foundation on which the Rare Book field rests. This isn't likely to change, since the immutable law of the First Edition is like gravity, immune to technological advances. Like the Dude, it abides.

The siren call of the First Edition led me to collect books in the first place: Kerouac, Burroughs, Willeford, etc. The physical work collecting and harvesting these editions was great, but intellectually it left something to be desired. Other than the colophon and the design of the jacket rear panel, is there any difference between a First Edition of ON THE ROAD and the second (or third) edition published in September 1957? I've got copies in front of me and physically there ain't no difference. But here's the thing that drove me crazy back in the day -- the First Edition generates an "aura." That Aura is as tangible as the slowly fading magenta on the Dust jacket spine.

Walter Benjamin in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" used the word "aura" to refer to the sense of awe and reverence one presumably experienced in the presence of unique works of art. According to Benjamin, this aura inheres not in the object itself but rather in external attributes such as its known line of ownership, its restricted exhibition, its publicized authenticity, or its cultural value. Aura is thus indicative of art's traditional association with primitive, feudal, or bourgeois structures of power and its further association with magic and (religious or secular) ritual. With the advent of art's mechanical reproducibility, and the development of forms of art (such as film) in which there is no actual original, the experience of art could be freed from place and ritual and instead brought under the gaze and control of a mass audience, leading to a shattering of the aura. "For the first time in world history," Benjamin wrote, "mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual."

Since I am a lot more comfortable discussing my beloved San Antonio Spurs than Walter Benjamin in a bar, I took the easy way out. "I sell Design Books, so First Editions really don't hold much sway," I replied. I further explained that Design Books tend to exist primarily in singular editions, so the distinction is pretty much moot. At that point the talk veered toward architecture and how the glut of high-rise construction in the West Campus area was forever destroying the fabric of the neighborhood. Then we rocked out and everybody went home.

Afterwards I thought about my simplistic, slightly misanthropic response and vowed to do better next time. The spectre of the First Edition does that to me, alighting like a jeering masturbating raven on my shoulder, making me defensive about my vocation, like a slowly drowning Southerner extolling the virtue of Nathan Bedford Forrester. I don't traffic in First Editions, I sell Design Books, darn it.

Elaine Lustig Cohen once dismissed the whole First Edition subculture with a wave of her hand, bracelets softly clinking, underscoring her point -- "THOSE people don't care about books." Ouch.

Are we kidding ourselves? By and large, First Edition culture doesn't intrude too far into the Design Book field (PhotoBooks excepted of course), but my ON THE ROAD comparison makes me want to take the Pepsi Challenge. Let's do it.

Here's a first edition:


Walter Gropius: THE NEW ARCHITECTURE AND THE BAUHAUS. London/New York: Faber and Faber/the Museum of Modern Art [n.d. circa 1936]. Octavo. Cream cloth stamped in red. 80 pp. 16 plates. Dust jacket design by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. The first U.S. edition features an introduction by Joseph Hudnutt, while the true first (U. K.) edition is introduced by Frank Pick.

The dust jacket features an example of Moholy-Nagy's "Rhodoid" technique: photographing a composition through glass or other transparent material to catch the shadow cast on the background. Very cool indeed. This book looks and feels like a true artifact of the age, properly English and suitably Avant-garde.

Here's a second edition:


Walter Gropius: THE NEW ARCHITECTURE AND THE BAUHAUS. Newton, MA: Charles Branford [Faber and Faber], 1956. Octavo. Black cloth stamped in white. 80 pp. 16 plates. Dust jacket is a fairly mediocre, one-color variant of the original 1935 Moholy-Nagy design. "In the style of" seems the best sobriquet for describing this jacket. Third impression, (first American edition thus), bound from Faber sheets, including the English Preface by Frank Pick. This edition has a trimmed Branford label pasted over the Faber information on the title page.

This edition feels Americanized, with the monochromatic jacket and the binary severity of the decorated cloth. The MoMA first edition wins on style points, that's for sure. The collector naturally prefers the earlier edition, but both have their particular merits. The variant of the later printing is certainly interesting in its own right. Completists take note.

But at the end of the day, either of these editions holds a candle to my 1935 English First Edition. And not because it's the TRUE first edition. Not at all. Virtually the same as the above-referenced 1936 MoMA edition, my copy was inscribed to Julian Huxley in February 1937, the month before Gropius left England to head Hudnutt's Graduate School of Design at Harvard. Trust me on this -- this book has an Aura.

Eye Of The Beholder

Terence Riley noted that the early tastemakers at MoMA understood their job was to separate "the wheat from the chaff." Few people rose to that challenge with more vigor than the young Philip Johnson, the first head of the Department of Architecture and Design, circa 1932.

After Johnson's 1928 visit to the Bauhaus Dessau his role as a proselytizer for the new architecture was set. "We were proud to be avant-gardists; we wore our enthusiasm as a badge of honor that distinguished us as culturally superior to those around us." Johnson said.

From this plateau of cultural superiority, Johnson and his MoMA collaborators Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and Henry-Russell Hitchcock labeled this architecture "The International Style" in the MODERN ARCHITECTURE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION catalog [New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1932].

But by 1940, Johnson had moved on to learn a vocation at the Harvard Graduate School of Design under Gropius and Breuer. In his absence, the Mandarins of MoMA couldn't always control the debate, but they kept a stranglehold on the terminology.

After Johnson's departure, John McAndrew headed the Department of Architecture. McAndrew and his staff identified and cataloged 297 examples of Modern Architecture in Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont, and published their efforts in August 1940 as GUIDE TO MODERN ARCHITECTURE - NORTHEAST STATES [New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1940].



I bought a copy of McAndrew's GUIDE in Cherry Springs, NY during my last book hunting trip. This was the first copy I had actually ever found; for a book published in an edition of 10,000 copies, it is surprisingly uncommon. I paid $4.00 for my Ex-Library copy. I love a bargain.

As an historical document, it is invaluable. The GUIDE can be used to settle any argument about the Who, What, Where, When and Why of pre-war Modernism in the Northeast States. This 128-page book overflows with information.

As a Guidebook however, it has one serious flaw. McAndrew freely admits the word Modern is controversial in the cultural dialogue of 1940. He draws an irreconcilable distinction between Modern and the "Modernistic." That pejorative separation is historically interesting, but rather problematic. If I had attempted to use his guide on my travels through Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Manhattan, etc., I would have missed the architectural highlight of my week-long trip.

In his foreword to the 60th Anniversary Edition of MACHINE ART [New York: Abrams/Museum of Modern Art, 1994], Philip Johnson wrote, "The battle of modern architecture has long been won. Twenty years ago the Museum [of Modern Art] was in the thick of the fight, but now our exhibitions and catalogues take part in the unending campaign described by Alfred Barr as "simply the continuous, conscientious, resolute distinction of quality from mediocrity -- the discovery and proclamation of excellence."

They missed their mark.

Jackson Pollack Walks Into a Bar . . .

. . . carrying a paint-splattered canvas under his arm. Displaying it to the bartender, he says, "Look what I almost stepped in!"

Man, this is a tough room! How about this one: I walk into a used bookstore and, hours later, come out with a box of books.

In this box are three Roth [The Book of 101 Books] true first editions:



The punchline: how much I paid for the box of books.

Never mind, you probably wouldn't think it's very funny.