Everitt’s Adventures

Charles P. Everitt handled an inestimable number of books during his career as a rare bookseller, but this collection of memoirs is the only one he published (he did compile a number of auction catalogues). It has become a classic that is read, and re-read by the relatively tiny contingent of used and rare booksellers and those who have dreams of joining the tribe, but it is almost unknown outside that circle.

Why do I own it? Like so many of my books I’m re-discovering, it was a gift. This one came to me from Margot Cross, proprietor (1988-ca2003) of Athabasca (Used) Books in the Old Strathcona district of Edmonton (8228 – 105 Street, just north of Whyte Avenue; the shop has been closed for several years). At the time, I was an employee of Margot’s, moonlighting at Athabasca to get experience selling and buying used books. My plan was to learn if I was sufficiently interested in and had any aptitude for the used book trade. In the end, I decided that it would be wiser not to take the plunge (as it almost certainly would have been), and instead do something more likely to produce a steady income on which two could live. I am very grateful to Margot for assisting me in making the right decision!

Photo Credit: John Lucas, Edmonton Journal, 12 Jan 1992.

Charlie’s book was one of several books that Margot passed to me as part of her informal instruction of Bookselling 101.

One of the first features of Adventures that I noticed is that Everitt didn’t spend much time setting up the context of his tales. He correctly assumed that anyone who picked up his volume would want quickly to get to the good stuff; in other words, his great strength throughout the book is his recounting of bookselling anecdotes and he recognized that and concentrated on it. He tells these tales with proper attention to what most of us are keen to know: how much he spent to acquire a book, and what he ended up getting for it when he sold it. Everitt addresses these questions with grace (unlike, say, A. S. W. Rosenbach in his many books on the same subject which seem to me to be more crass) that makes his stories not only more palatable than many others in the genre, but delightfully engaging.

The fact that Everitt focused almost exclusively on American books in no way dilutes my enthusiasm for his book . . . strangely. I have very little interest in or patience, typically, for books on the subject of the history of Canada’s southern Elephantine neighbour. But in this case, I not only endure Everitt’s subject, I almost revel in it!

Here are four pages from Adventures – picked almost randomly – which I think offer a pretty good idea of Everitt’s story-telling style:

Everitt, pp. 34-35.
Everitt, pp. 36-37.

The text is available online or as a free download at archive.org. Or, if you prefer (as I do), to go old school, it may be had from ABEBooks for the cost of about $CDN20.

I’ve acquired a small collection of used booksellers’ memoirs (1) since moving on from Athabasca and Edmonton. Some are tedious, most are interesting to me but would not hold the interest of a general reader.

The Adventures of a Treasure Hunter is the only book I’ve read in the genre which I’d recommend without reservation to anyone. Everitt’s style is infectious and he includes just the right dose of grumpiness and greed in his stories which – accurately or not – many of us attribute, with affection, to used booksellers.

In short, Charlie’s book is great fun to read!

Notes

(1) These include: Booking in the Heartland by Jack Matthews; The Side Door: Twenty-Six Years in my Book Room, by Dora Hood; A Book Hunter’s Holiday, by A. S. W. Rosenbach; Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books, by Paul Collins; and A Passion for Books by (consummate bookman) Lawrence Clark Powell.

Davies’ Finest

The book under discussion today is Robertson Davies’ (1913-1995) final novel of the Cornish Trilogy. My favourite. It isn’t that I didn’t enjoy the other two novels in this literary triptych. On the contrary, I love all of them. But The Lyre of Orpheus – from my first reading of it in 1988 through the most recent (just finished) – is the best of the Cornish novels, in my judgement. And the Cornish trilogy is the best of Robertson Davies’ fiction (I’ve read – in addition to the Cornish Triology – his Salterton and Deptford Trilogies as well as The Cunning Man; the only fictional work of his which I haven’t really enjoyed was Murther and Walking Spirits).

If you want to get as much as possible out of The Lyre and to fully appreciate the gems of characterization within, you should begin at the beginning. So I suggest starting by reading each of Davies’ earlier novels in the trilogy: (1) The Rebel Angels and (2) What’s Bred in the Bone.

What is the principal task that brings the central characters together in The Lyre? In a word: Opera. The members of the well-funded Cornish Foundation decide to accept a proposal from Hulda Schnakenburg – aka Schnak – who wants to complete an opera started, but unfinished, by E. T. A. Hoffmann – aka ETAH. Schnak proposes to flesh out the music of one of ETAH’s operas as the means of completing her doctor of music degree. The Foundation, however, takes things a step further, and decides to stage the completed opera (the fictional ‘Arthur of Britain’) before a live audience.

The person through whom Davies relates most of the story is Simon Darcourt. He is an Anglican priest who has taken on an academic life teaching Greek in Ploughwright College. He is kept busy in the novel serving as the opera’s librettist and with researching and writing a biography of the Foundation’s namesake, Francis Cornish. During the course of the story, Darcourt comes to see himself as “The Fool”, and that proves to be a worthy realization. Enough said!

Here is Darcourt’s first impression of Schnak (as she prefers to be called):

Schnak’s dirt was not a sign of feminine protest, but the real thing. She looked filthy, ill, and slightly crazed. Her dirty hair hung about in hunks about a face that was sharp and rodent-like. Her eyes were almost closed in squinting suspicion, and on her face were lines in improbable places, such wrinkles as one does not often see today, even on ancient crones . . . . If it is possible to say so, Schnak was distinguished only by her insignificance; if Darcourt had met her on the street he would probably not have noticed her. But as someone on whom large sums of money were to be risked she struck chill into his heart.

Welshman, Geraint Powell, directs the opera. He is silver-tongued and good-looking. Here he is in the early pages of The Lyre, as described by Maria Cornish (nee Theotoky), a central character from The Rebel Angels, recently married to Arthur Cornish – a nephew of Francis (after whom the Foundation is named):

Geraint knew a lot about the Arthurian legend, though Maria suspected that it was coloured by Geraint’s lively fancy. It was he who insisted that Arthur’s determination that the Foundation should take an unusual and intuitive path was truly Arthurian. He urged his fellow [Foundation] directors to “press into the forest wherever we saw it to be thickest” and would emphasize it by repeating, in what he said was Old French, la ou ils la voient plus expresse. Maria did not like Geraint’s theatrical exuberance. She was in flight from exuberance of another sort and, like a real academic, she was wary of people outside the academic world – ‘laymen’ they called them – who seemed to know a lot. Knowledge was for professionals of knowledge.

The ‘exuberance of another sort’ from which Maria was in flight was her Gypsy background (through her mother, whom you get to meet in both The Rebel Angels and in The Lyre). I don’t think I’ll say anything more about Maria, nor her husband, Arthur (nor, for that matter, Maria’s colourful mother!)

Most of the characters in the novel speak to the reader through Davies in the Third Person Omniscient point of view. The single exception, however, is ETAH, who speaks in the First Person Omniscient (because he is a Spirit in the novel). ‘ETAH in Limbo’ typically appears at the conclusion of the major sections of the Lyre. Here he is in his first such appearance:

[I have] been wide awake in Limbo, for ever since I died I have been aware of people reading what I wrote about music, and now and then seeing Undine, my best completed opera, on the stage, and never forgetting my tales of wonder where, the critics say, the fantastic meets the everyday . . . . We were not sinners. Just artists who, for one reason or another, never finished our work on earth and so must wait until we are redeemed, or at least justified, by some measure of human understanding. Heavenly understanding, it appears, is what brings us to Limbo; we never really did our best and that is a sin of a special kind . . . . Can this be my great chance? Is this extraordinary waif Schnak to be my deliverer? . . . . I shall stand at Schnak’s shoulder and push her in the right direction, so far as I can . . . . [I]f my luck enables me to be Schnak’s Luck, I may have a chance to sleep eternally, my work accomplished.

Two of the delights of The Lyre, for me, are the author’s development of complex, fascinating, and memorable characters and in being taken behind the scenes of a theatre production by someone who knew a thing or two about it. Davies was a notable playwright and actor and was a founder of the Stratford Festival.

It seems fitting to conclude this post with one of my favourite quotes in The Lyre – about the value of reading books. Schnak complains to Powell that he, Darcourt and others involved in the opera “seem to live out of books. As if everything was in books!” Powell replies:

Well, Schnak, just about everything is in books. No, that’s wrong. We recognize in books what we’ve met in life. But if you’d read a few books you wouldn’t have to meet everything as if it had never happened before, and take every blow right on the chin. You’d see a few things coming.

I highly recommend The Lyre of Orpheus!

Parker’s Spenser

Parker’s photo from the dust jacket of The Godwulf Manuscript, his first published Spenser novel.

I will likely be accused of gross understatement by those who read this and know my reading habits when I say that I’m a fan of the Spenser novels of Robert B. Parker (1932-2010). I’ve read all of the Spenser novels not once but uncountable times (most of them, at least 12 times, it is safe to say). I rarely tire of them. (I cannot say the same of those written by Ace Atkins since Parker’s death.)

Instead of singing Parker’s praises (nobody wants to hear me sing these days – trust me), I’m going to reproduce some of my favourite Spenserian excerpts. Nobody – nobody – writes better, sparer prose! (Okay, I might be a little biased.) Enjoy.

Spoiler Alert: I’m including links to the sources of each of the quotes shown below as a courtesy to those who are interested in the plot lines of each book. But please note that in most cases, the Wikipedia (and occasionally other) writers are not concerned about spoiling the plots for readers. So if you plan to read the books linked below, I would suggest you not read the plot summaries.

On Knowing Stuff (or not)
School Days

“I am finding out more and more about less and less,” I said. “I will eventually know everything about nothing.”

“Like law school,” she said.

“But with a better class of people,” I said.

That Long Distance Feeling
The Judas Goat

Talking on the phone from 5000 miles away was like the myth of Tantalus. It was better not to. The telephone company has lied to us for years, I thought. Always tell you that long distance is the next best thing to being there. All those people call up and feel swell afterward. I didn’t. I felt like beating up a nun.

Hawk (Spenser’s Black Side-Kick) on the Delights of Airplane Food
Chance

“You ever wonder why they don’t just serve you couple nice sandwiches on an airplane, ‘stead of trying to microwave you a five-course meal that tastes like a boiled Dixie cup?”

Winning Ways with Clients
The Godwulf Manuscript

The phone woke me again. I squinted against the brutal bright sunlight and answered.

“Spenser?”

“Yeah.”

“Spenser, this is Roland Orchard.” He paused as if waiting for applause.

I said “How nice for you.”

He said, “What?”

I said, “What do you want Mr. Orchard?”

“I want to see you. How soon can you get here?”

“As soon as I feel like it. Which may be awhile.”

“Spenser, do you know who I am?”

“I guess you’re Terry Orchard’s father.”

He hadn’t meant that. “Yes” he said. “I am. I am also senior partner at Orchard, Bonner, and Blanch.”

“Swell,” I said. “I buy all your records.”

“Spenser, I don’t care for your manner.”

“I’m not selling it, Mr. Orchard. You called me. I didn’t call you. If you want to tell me what you want without showing me your scrapbook, I’ll listen. Otherwise, write me a letter.”

On News Presenters
Taming a Sea-Horse

The five o’clock news ended. The six o’clock news began. The guys who read the news at six had deeper voices. Authoritative. If that trend continued, the guys who read the eleven o’clock news would sound like Paul Robeson.

Vinnie (another Side-Kick) and Hawk
Walking Shadow

With Hawk and Vinnie behind us, Jocelyn and I strolled through the misting drizzle to the theater next door. She went in to rehearsal, and I went up to Christopholous’ office on the second floor. Vinnie and Hawk lounged in the theater lobby, blending in to the theatrical scene like two coyotes at a poultry festival.

In Hospital After Being Shot
Pastime

“We push this to sit up,” [the nurse] said. “And this one turns on our television. And if we need a nurse, we push this one.”

I said, “Are you going to get into bed with me? Or is this we stuff just a tease?”

She looked blankly at me for a moment. Then she grinned.

“Let’s wait until your leg is better,” she said.

“That’s what they all say.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” she said. “My name is Felicia. You want me” — she grinned — “for medical reasons, press the button.”

The Racial Gap
Back Story

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll get out here and walk down that hill past the pond toward the field house. You pull away up past the library and into the quadrangle. Park on the other end, closer to the field house, and see what’s up. If they come after me, you come lippity-lop to my rescue.”

“Lippity-lop?”

“Yeah. Like Br’er Rabbit. I’m trying to bridge the racial gap.”

“Let it gap,” Hawk said.

Susan (Spenser’s Love Interest) Trying on Clothes
Thin Air

Susan was standing in front of the full-length mirror in the hotel room wearing black-and-white striped silk underwear. She had a short black skirt with a long black jacket held up in front of her, and was standing on  her toes to simulate high heels as she smoothed the skirt down over her thights.

“L’Orangerie is very dressy,” she said.

“Yes.”

She tunred a little, watching how the jacket fell over the skirt, and then went back to the closet and got a pale gray pants suit and took it to the mirror.

“When we get to the restaurant,” I said, “won’t it be hard to eat holding your clothes in front of you like that?”

Susan’s powers of concentration could set driftwood on fire. She ignored me, and in fact, may not even have heard me.

Susan’s Sense of Timing
Hugger Mugger

Punctuality was not Susan’s strength. She always intended to be on time, but she seemed to have some kind of chronometric dyslexia, which thwarted her intent, nearly always. Had she been predictably late, say  fifteen minutes every time, then you could simply adjust your expectations. But she was sometimes a minute late and sometimes an hour late, and on rare and astonishing occasions, she was five minutes early. Since I had no way to guage her coming hither or her going hence, I accepted the fact that readiness is all, and remained calm.

Lincoln Centre
Taming A Sea-Horse

Lincoln Centre looked like an expressive complex of Turkish bathhouses, a compendium of neo-Arabic-Spanish and silly. It did for the West Side what Trump Tower did for the East, offering the chance for a giggle on even the drabbest day.

On Having an Exit Plan
Cold Service

We [Hawk and Spenser] sat and looked at the house. It sat high on some sort of ledge. The ocean was below it in the back. There was land on both sides, between it and its neighbors.

“Got an entry plan?” I said.

“No.”

“Good to be working with a pro,” I said. “Assuming we get in, you got an exit plan?”

“Same as usual,” Hawk said.

“Run like hell?” I said.

“That one,” Hawk said.

Soviet Humor

USSR Humor. Compiled by Charles Winick. Illustrated by Grisha Dotzenko. Mount Vernon, N.Y.: Peter Pauper Press, 1964, 62pp.

In his concise and helpful Introduction to “USSR Humor”, compiler Charles Winick (1922-2015), points out that the Soviets had a bi-weekly satirical magazine called “Krokodil” (this was news to me). Winick remarks that Krokodil mainly directed its “ironic barbs at bureaucrats and the behavior of the average Russian . . . . Its contents are very contemporary but do not satirize leaders.” Needless to say!

Winick continues: “Russians take pride in telling anekdoty [funny stories]. And their pride is justified, because such stories and jokes in the USSR represent a uniquely sensitive and truly folk form of humor. They provide a continuingly available source of informal comment on events, institutions and personalities of the Soviet Union. They also furnish an escape valve for the expression of feelings that may have difficulty in finding other outlets.”

Although Winick doesn’t reveal the sources of any of the funny stories within the covers of USSR Humor, it’s unlikely that many of these came from Krokodil. Too many of them, directly or indirectly, are comments on Soviet leaders and leadership.

In 1963, Winick compiled another little book of humor for Peter Pauper Press. That one was titled Outer Space Humor. I’m assuming that the anekdoty on p. 33 may have been contenders for inclusion in that volume!

I spent an hour reading through this book afresh, as I tried to limit my selection of excerpts to one or two pages. It was a nearly impossible task! There are so many great anekdoty within. None of these are side-splittingly funny, mind you. They are the sort that make you chuckle ruefully with our Russian ‘comrades’ who endured the fools who governed them and the bureaucrats who applied the ‘rules’.

I’m particularly fond of the St. Peter/Krushchev anekdot on p. 39.

I’ve done an online hunt through British Columbia’s public libraries, and cannot find a trace of USSR Humour in any of them! The only Canadian library I could find that still has this book is the library at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Perhaps the people staffing the de-accession committees of Canadian libraries assumed that this volume, like the USSR, is no longer relevant to us! I would argue that if my guess is accurate, our libraries have done us a disservice. The bureaucratic mentality continues to exist everywhere there is sizeable government — and that certainly includes Canada and its provinces at both civil service and political levels!

Not all of the anekdoty in USSR Humor are completely accessible to us in 2019. Some, as with the one at the bottom of p. 61, don’t have enough context for me to ‘get it’. Such examples are, however, in the minority.

Do your inner Russian a favour. Beg, borrow, or otherwise lay hands on this book. It will do your heart good. To say nothing of your anekdoty-bone!

Welcome

This isn’t a book review site. I’m not interested in presenting well-balanced, positive and negative, aspects of a book. If a title appears on this site, it’s safe to assume that I’m enthusiastic about it.

The feeling that I hope to create with this blog is akin to that of a friend who comes to our home and curls up in a cozy chair, while sipping hot apple cider, and is transported to another world – a world of books.

I don’t want to have too much of my own prose in this blog. I’d rather present you with generous excerpts which hopefully will allow you to discover whether the book in question speaks to you.

None of the books in my library is particularly valuable; not, at least, as many people would reckon that. They have value to me because of what each conveys, what is represented, and the memories each conjures.

So come on into my virtual den. And, in the immortal words of Bob Homme, one of my early literary giants, “Here’s one little chair for one of you and a bigger chair for two more to curl up in. And for someone who likes to rock, a rocking chair in the middle.”

The doors to the bookcase are open.

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