15th NYC Collectable Paperback & Pulp Fiction Expo

This show just keeps getting better and bigger. I’ve been exhibiting here for the past four years, and sporadically attending for a little longer than that, and it’s become one of my favorite bookselling and collecting venues. Not because it’s the most lucrative – but it is often far and away the most interesting.

Impresario Gary Lovisi managed again to keep things lively on two fronts – the 35 dealers ranged from relative newcomers to longtime paperback specialists like Chris Eckhoff (who’s forgotten more about adult paperbacks than I ever hope to find out, and has authored a useful checklist on the subject), and the guests’ table was a great mix of authors and illustrators. Between checking out all the gems on the tables and garnering signatures from the guests, attendees were packed in throughout the day. The show drew collectors from far and wide (we noticed, for example, Tom Lesser, who produces the Paperback Collectors Show and Sale in Los Angeles, making the rounds).

This year’s featured guests were Ann Bannon, who wrote a number of groundbreaking lesbian novels for Gold Medal, and Julie Ellis, who (as Joan Ellis and Linda Michaels) wrote over 100 softcore novels for Midwood in the 1960s. They were joined by authors Julius Fast, Ron Goulart, Barry Malzberg, Walter Wager, Dan Sontup, John Norman, Howard Schoenfeld and Morris Hershman, and cover artists Robert Maguire and Mitchell Hooks. Now that’s a line-up. (Marijane Meaker — aka Vin Packer, Ann Aldrich and M.E. Kerr — was also slated to attend, but unfortunately had to cancel for personal reasons.)

Partly as a tribute to the female guests, Lovisi also made available the long-running show’s first souvenir T-shirt, which featured the imaginary cover of Book Show Girl (“Men bought her books at their peril!”). I bought two; one as a back-up in case the need for emergency biblio-apparel comes up. (There are still a few available from Lovisi; check out his Gryphon Books website.

Because of the smaller size of the books, and because the vivid cover art is such a factor in the appeal of paperback collecting, it’s easy to burn out early with eye-fatigue at this show. I’ve found it best to take a lot of time, alternating short shopping expeditions to a few dealer tables with visits to the authors and artists with whatever handful of their books I’ve been able to accumulate. Lovisi’s guests seem always to be ready to sign whatever’s at hand and to take the time to talk about their work (although my pet peeve is the semi-civilized collector who invariably hauls up two shopping bags of 50 books, assuming the author will sign them all).

This show is particularly welcome when I’m hunting up specific titles, especially given the vagaries of Internet-dealer grading, and the heightened importance of condition in paperback collecting. There’s nothing like actually handling the goods. This year, I’ve been trying to assemble a “Kerouac in paperback” collection, and managed to get quite decent copies of both the first U.S. and first U.K. paperback printings of On the Road. To have a show that allows one-stop shopping like that is a treasure indeed. The next Expo is sheduled on Oct. 3, 2004, again at the Holiday in on West 57th Street in Manhattan. See you there!

Bob Riedel Printmat@aol.com 

31st Annual Rochester Antiquarian Book Fair

The sighs of relief from organizers were palpable. The 2003 Rochester Antiquarian Book Fair was under new management, in a new location, and had a new sponsoring agency. But the fair exceeded expectations, drawing a significantly higher number of patrons than it did in 2002. You could almost hear the fingers uncrossing.

The recently formed Rochester Area Booksellers Association had had its hands full. Following the 2002 fair, the Friends of the University of Rochester Library announced that they would no longer be able to sponsor the book fair. Add that to dealers’ disaffection with problems at the former site at St. John Fisher College, and there began to be some question as to whether the fair would continue. But RABA members ponied up front money and divvied up the tasks of finding a new location (the Genesee Valley Ice Rink), securing dealers, sending out contracts, advertising, and obtaining a new not-for-profit sponsor (the Rochester Historical Society). The Rochester Bibliophile Society provided staffers for the admissions table, and the ABAA graciously funded the hiring of two musicians, who soothed savage bibliomaniacs all afternoon.

The result was a well-attended, well-lit book fair, in a congenial atmosphere that brought little but praise from 600 paying customers and fifty dealers alike. There was a brisk dealer-to-dealer trade on set-up night, and the commerce on the day of the fair, judging from the amount of change-making I observed at various booths, was very good as well. In addition to the many fine offerings of regional dealers, attendees were treated to some breathtaking literary firsts brought by Royal Books of Baltimore, Between the Covers of New Jersey, Peter Stern of Boston and Rob Rulon-Miller of St. Paul (who won the longest-haul no-prize). Thomas Benton’s boothful of rare Americana (featured in a recent issue of Book Source Monthly) also generated a good deal of interest. I spotted some nice out-of-the-way items, including a 1915 first printing of the Boy Scout scoutmaster’s handbook, a set of page proofs from William Strunk’s original 1918 Elements of Style, and a gorgeous pre-Civil War territorial atlas, all at extremely reasonable prices (giving the lie to the misconception that, because of Internet comparison-pricing, there are no longer bargains to be had at book fairs).

Refreshments ran out early as the manager of the food-vendor service confessed he’d had no idea how big the turn-out was going to be, and had only stocked a rudimentary supple of snack food. “But next year,” he said, “we’re gonna have calamari.”

Vendors interested in exhibiting at next year’s fair can contact Franlee Frank at Greenwood Books (franleef@aol.com). And keep an eye on the RABA website for details early in 2004.

A Michigan undertaker/poet deals with the humor and pathos of death

(Ed. Note: It is appropriate to take a retrospective look at Thomas Lynch’s first non-poetry book, as he is now completing his latest work, a book on Ireland. His collection of essays,The Undertaking-Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, reviewed below, won The Heartland Prize for non-fiction, The American Book Award, and was a Finalist for the National Book Award. It has been translated into seven languages. Ken Fermoyle, who has followed Lynch’s work for some years, will review the new book when it is published – and possibly interview the author – for a future Standard issue.

Lynch also exhibits the traditional Irish inclination to find humor even in the deepest throes of sorrow. Ironies abound in this work. His career as an undertaker has made him familiar with death, perhaps too familiar for his liking at times. He can be matter-of-fact about it, but never callous, look on it as a natural part of existence, but still feel the sadness death brings.

The man’s writing has some of the qualities of the prototypical Irish wake, at once keening for the loss of friends and neighbors, and celebrating the lives of those left behind.

He writes frankly and with great insight about his father, mother, siblings, and friends. His essays are not confined to Milford, his home in Southern Michigan, but were written in or about Ireland, the West Indies and California. His subjects range widely, too. One, titled Crapper, recounts an incident in Galway, Ireland, during which Lynch and fellow poet Don Paterson get into a discussion about Thomas Crapper, inventor of the flush toilet. The author muses about the similar roles of Crapper’s invention and undertakers. “We are embarrassed by [our dead] in the same way we are embarrassed by a toilet that overflows on the night that company comes. We call the plumber.” Or the undertaker, as the case may be.

This kind of sardonic humor abounds in Lynch’s work. But it is tempered by kindliness, an obvious empathy for people. He may treat life and death with little sentimentality, but never with disrespect.

Those are the qualities that make this little volume (4-3/4 by 7-3/4″ pages) such a valuable work. For this reader, at least, it provided a new perspective on death and “the dismal trade” that Lynch practices. It well deserved its spot as Runner-up in the National Book Awards. I recommend it to you.

The Undertaking, by Thomas Lynch; $25; W.W. Norton; 1997; 202 pp.

Ken Fermoyle’s career as a writer, editor and journalist spans 56 years. He has written more than 2,500 articles for publications ranging from Playboy and Popular Science to PC World, McCalls and the L.A. Times Book Review. An avid reader since childhood, he has been reviewing books off and on for nearly 50 years.