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A bibliophile’s joy

Unusually enough, I’ve been looking forward to my postal mail. A few months ago, I wrote to a few booksellers abroad asking for book catalogues, and now they have been arriving one after the other from various countries. Our booksellers have ne ver had a tradition of putting out catalogues (those booklets in black and white don’t count), and so the experience of browsing for books through a catalogue is an unfamiliar one for me. I recommend it; it’s a new bibliophile high.

Book catalogues today are, however, not as common as they once were. The contemporary trend to browse for books on the Net has altered book buying practices everywhere. Once booksellers (and not just antiquarian dealers) regularly printed catalogues and sent them out on request. Today, they mostly post a pdf version online. It still does the job, but in so many ways is a lesser and diminished experience than (as they use to say) perusing a sumptuously done book catalogue.

Making a print-worthy catalogue — writing, illustrating and designing it — is an art. A book catalogue that I have enjoyed spending time with recently is the “Bruce Kahn Collection”, offered jointly by two of the most sought after rare book dealers in modern literature: Between The Covers Rare Books and Ken Lopez Bookseller. Catalogues are traditionally focused on antiquarian items, and so it was a particular delight to encounter an entire catalogue devoted to just modern first editions. And what editions! What condition! How often can you find near-mint copies of first edition high spots? You’re going to find it hard to believe, fellow bibliophile, that this is the collection of just one man. Bruce Kahn, a lawyer.

In his catalogue introduction, Tom Congalton (co-founder of BTC) — who has been book-dealing with Kahn for two decades clues us — in how the lawyer put together such a stunning collection. “He always wanted his books to be in perfect condition”, notes Tom, “and even the slightest flaw would be either unacceptable, or if he finally decided he could overlook some nearly microscopic flaw, it had damn well better be mitigated by being a unique copy or an exceptionally rare book, or an important association copy, or preferably both. What’s a bookseller to do? This set a pretty high standard for selling him books, and to some degree it is amazing that he has managed to assemble a collection of about 15,000 books in beautiful condition…”

Ken Lopez in his introduction notes that Kahn “collected in the style of the old-time book collectors — that is, he collected authors in depth, pursuing all their published titles, variant editions such as proofs, advance copies, and broadsides, and in many cases U.K. editions as well as U.S. ones.”

Among numerous treasures in the catalogue is a limited signed edition of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy ($7500), a near flawless copy of Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice ($27500), a signed copy of Raymond Carver’s scarce first book of poems, Near Klamath ($12500), the nicest possible signed copy of Catch 22 ($12500), On The Road in a perfect dust jacket ($25000), a beautiful copy of Catcher in the Rye in an un-restored dust jacket, and that exceptionally scarce first issue of Raise High The Roofbeam Carpenters lacking a dedication page.

Another fine offering from Between The Covers is “Catalogue 145” focusing on African-Americana. Listed here is an autograph that is even rarer than Shakespeare’s signature. There are six known autographs of the Bard, while that of Cinque — leader of the famous Amistad slave revolt (remember Spielberg’s film?)— is scarcer. It forms the centrepiece of the Elwood Evans Abolitionist Autograph Collection, and is priced at $275,000.

A recent and moving instance of an online book dealer who feels committed to printing catalogues is Howard Prouty of ReadInk (readinkbooks.com). Howard’s ReadInk deals in a range of collectibles, from vintage paperbacks to scarce modern firsts to film-related ephemera.

“Books for the Obsessive or the Merely Curious” is how he describes his store. He’s well established online and yet (with a recession on), printed Catalogue Number 1. In full blown colour, the 124 highly desirable collectible items catalogue is handsomely illustrated with book jacket photographs and described in knowledgeable, witty, engaging detail.

I am grateful to all these booksellers who still take an interest in writing and printing catalogues. The production costs for fine catalogues are obviously high, and they can easily just stay with an electronic version and yet these booksellers print them because both, the aesthetics of such a thing and its place in antiquarian bookselling feel important to them.

And perhaps even more vitally for the reason Howard points out: “There’s a little anxiety about the future of the printed book, especially given the increasing availability of text in electronic form (the Kindle, digitised books, etc.). Printed catalogues are expressions of faith in a future world in which books will continue to be objects of interest to many people, and demonstrations of confidence in the continuing viability of the book trade itself.”

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