Cyberflanerie: Rare Books Entrepreneurship Edition-- Double OO Books

So my dear travel writing amiga, Peat O'Neil, has opened a bookshop, Double OO Books--the Os standing for Oh Li Ping and Peat O'Neil. She is specializing in crime, espionage and mystery.

Speaking of espionage, two fabulous books I hope she will carry:

Heribert von Feilitzsch's bio, In Plain Sight: Felix A. Sommerfeld, Spymaster in Mexico

and

Sara Mansfield Taber's memoir, Born Under an Assumed Name: The Memoir of a Cold War Spy's Daughter

I am all about collecting rare books these days, and just recently in Mexico City I found a few humdingers related to / about the Mexican Revolution... one with an absolutely astonishing inscription. Stay tuned for the videos. Meanwhile, some more surf-worthy links:

William Reese's fascinating and eye-opening talk for the Grolier Club: Books in Hard Times

Once again I point you, dear reader, to Michael Suarez, SJ's talk on books, "The Ecosystems of Book History" (don't miss it)


Allen and Patricia Ahearn, owners of Quill and Brush, offer Book Collecting Tips

Ken Lopez shares "Some Thoughts on the Maturing of the Rare Book Market at the Start of the 21st Century"

Sarah, a painter and used book dealer in Maui recommends So You Want to Open a Used Bookshop

Rick Lugg on A Spa for Books
(Hey somebody open this service for private collections? Maybe like those wine storage services?)

Richard Goodman blogs the love for his books.

Just finished reading Alessandro Marzo Magno's delightful Bound in Venice: The Serene Republic and the Dawn of the Book, which makes my top 10 list for 2013, hands down.

COMMENTS

Cyberflanerie: New (and Not New) on the Blogroll Edition

New:

Heribert von Feilitzsch's Mexican Revolution Blog
By the author of the deeply researched paradigm-smasher In Plain Sight: Felix Sommerfeld, Spymaster in Mexico.

Marginal Revolution by economists Tyler Cowan and Alex Tabarrok
Nerdy surf candy galore.

Richard Goodman's Geezer Journal
(He's a writer and uyy, he moved into the French Quarter.)

Kurt Hollander's DF Death Blog

Not New (But I am Reminding You):

Querétaro's Own Burro Hall
Hot tamale (and sometimes just evil) sense of humor, Mexican beauty contestants in bikinis, Franci the super-perisistent Mexican photo dude, and the cutest, sweetest little 'ol pug.

Burro Hall's Soulful Señor Pug

Nicholas Gilman's Good Food in Mexico City
Like the title says.

Leslie Pietrzyk's Work-in-Progress for writers
Check out her online magazine Redux's 100th piece, a superb and riveting essay.

Nancy Marie Brown's God of Wednesday
All things literarily Icelandic.

Rachel Laudan: A Food Historian's Take on Food and Politics
Always thought-provoking. Check out her recent post, "The Grain Chain."

Rice Freeman-Zachery VoodooNotes
Zingy and zany creativity plumper.

COMMENTS

Links Noted: Katrina in Vermont, Mrs Easton, Richard Goodman, Pix of Pyongyang, BibliOdyssey, and More

Just back from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Their very interesting Historical Museum has just moved into spiffy new digs.

James Howard Kunstler's blog, Clusterf*ck Nation
Check out what he has to say about Katrina in Vermont

Mrs Easton
Industrial design blog

Richard Goodman's Bicycle Diaries in the New York Times
P.S. Read Goodman's guest-blog post for Madam Mayo.

Design Your Own Cat Tree
Because... why not?

Pix of Pyongyang
Grayly creepy and creepily gray

The History Blog
16th Century Bronze Found on Baja California Coast

BibliOdyssey
An ever-amazing blog, Check out this post on the Chikanobu woodblock prints.

Bookworm on KCRW: John Sayles interview

Cute Overload: How to Find the End of the Universe

Katrina Denza
Literary blog of note

Guestblogger Richard Goodman on 5 Favorite and Unexpected Literary Figures in NYC

Twin Towers image by Gaylord Schanilec is from New York Revisited, The Grolier Club, 2002

One of the things I find most fascinating about publishing now is the trend toward the ephemeral, on the one hand (e-books), and on the other, increasing material quality (collectors' books). So the very same book could appear as an e-book, and as a limited, autographed, letterpress edition with, say, handmade marbled paper. The first could cost only a few dollars, while the second could run into hundreds of dollars. (Where's the still big fat middle? Ye olde paperbacks shipped from amazon.com and packing the shelves in your local bookstore.)

Collectors' books, 19th century style, are often sold by subscription. This is the case with travel writer, essayist and writing teacher Richard Goodman's latest, or rather, forthcoming, The Bicycle Diaries: One New Yorker's Journey Through September 11th, which will feature original wood engravings by noted fine printer and wood engraver Gaylord Schanilec, to be published by Midnight Paper Sales. (Read the prospectus, a PDF, here.)

Apropos of this, I invited Richard to contribute a guest-blog post about literary New York. He's an expert on the city, having lived there for many years (check out his recent book, A New York Memoir.) Over to you, Richard.

MY FIVE FAVORITE (AND UNEXPECTED) LITERARY FIGURES WHO SPENT TIME IN NEW YORK CITY
by Richard Goodman

The list of literary figures who have visited or lived in New York is long and, sometimes, quite surprisingly delightful. Here are some of my favorites from that list. I’m always eager to hear about more, so if you know of any surprises, please post a comment.

Henry David Thoreau in Brooklyn
(The link is to a video in which a librarian at the Library of Congress discusses the day in Brooklyn Whitman and Thoreau exchanged books).
The famed naturalist and solitary dweller at Walden Pond did step foot in New York City—where, as we know, most of its citizens lead lives of quiet desperation. In 1850, he came to Fire Island—today, summer playground for young Manhttanites—to look for the effects of a drowned friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s. In 1856, he was in Brooklyn where he met, and walked two hours with, Walt Whitman. Whitman gave Thoreau a copy of Leaves of Grass, which, it turns out, Thoreau liked very much. “We ought to rejoice greatly in him,” Thoreau declared in reference to Walt.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on Central Park South
(The link is to a New York Times article about a walking tour, "In the Footsteps of Saint-Exupéry")
The aviator-author of such lyrical classics as Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight lived briefly at 240 Central Park South in the early 1940s where he began his children’s classic, The Little Prince. He also lived on Beekman Place and in a rented mansion on the North Shore of Long Island before returning to France and a fateful rendezvous with a German fighter plane south of Toulon over the Mediterranean Sea.

Simone Weil on the Upper West Side
(The link is to Francine du Plessix Gray's biography, Simone Weil.)
In 1942, the wonderful, severe, brilliant and difficult French writer, Simone Weil, settled briefly with her family—including her equally brilliant brother—in an apartment at 594 Riverside Drive. The author of The Need for Roots eventually died in England, at age forty-four, later to become, in T.S. Eliot’s estimation, a saint.

Frederick Garcia Lorca in Harlem
(The link is to a New York Times article about his year in New York City.)
The celebrated Spanish poet, author of the plays, Yerma and Blood Wedding, spent 1929-30 in New York City where he attended, for a while, Columbia University’s School of General Studies — essentially, its school of continuing education. Out of this sojourn came his book, Poeta en Nueva York with its powerful poem, “El Rey de Harlem,” The King of Harlem.

Lorenzo da Ponte at Columbia University
(The link is to information about his grave in Queens)
The librettist for Mozart’s operas, The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, da Ponte was born in 1749 near Venice. After a long and colorful career as a librettist working with Mozart and his nemesis, Salieri, da Ponte came to New York to escape his creditors. He became the first teacher of Italian at Columbia, opened a bookstore, and introduced the works of Rossini to America. He died in 1838, and is buried — where else? — in Queens.

--- Richard Goodman.

P.S. Read more of Richard Goodman's guest-blog posts:
Five Wondrous Works of New York Art
Five Favorite Books with Soul

--> Click here for the complete archive of guest-blogs posts at Madam Mayo.

Guest-blogger Richard Goodman on 5 Wondrous Works of New York Art

It's an honor and delight to once again host my amigo, Richard Goodman , founding member of the New York Writers Workshop and author of French Dirt and The Soul of Creative Writing, apropos of his latest, A New York Memoir. Over to you, Richard!

A New York Memoir is, essentially, a long love letter to New York City. It covers a period of thirty-five years, beginning with my knock-kneed arrival at Port Authority in 1975 down to the present day. The book consists of fourteen essays that chronicle people I've met and the inspiration I've received as a writer living here. It shows what it's like being young here, growing here as an artist and person, and growing old here. The author Susan Vreeland said the book is "a heart laid bare." I hope so.

Now comes the hard part. Maybe even harder than writing the book. Five links to....New York? This produced some intensive head scratching, and I can't afford that with what little hair I have. Just thinking of five books about New York (no movies? no plays?) would make me bald. So, I'm resigned to the fact that any list I create will seem insufficient. Given that, I decided to list five links to works of art about New York, regardless of genre, that express what was, and continues to be, one of my chief, valued reactions to New York City: a sense of wonder. Here they are:


1. Weegee's photography
Born Usher Felig, he became, simply, Weegee. As a professional photographer, he literally covered the waterfront in the 1930s, '40s and '50s. His black and white photographs of basic New York City street life are raw, real and intimate. Henry Miller called Brassaï "the eye of Paris." For me, Weegee was the eye of New York.

2. Paul Mazursky's 1976 film, Next Stop, Greenwich Village
The wonderfully romantic vision of 1950s bohemian New York is obviously autobiographical. It's suffused with a protective tenderness. It's also passionate and, when the main character's-- a young actor, of course-- mother, Shelley Winters, is on screen, terrifically funny. I don't know of a better expression of what it's like to "embrace New York with the intense excitement of first love."

3. E. B. White's Here is New York
Which brings me to the author of those quoted words above, E.B. White, and his little gem of a book, Here is New York. I don't claim to have read even a quarter of the books written about New York, but of the books I have read, this is by far the best, the most true. White captures the soul of New York City. Though he himself describes it as "a period piece," he is, for once, wrong. See for yourself.

4. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
I read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man at the perfect moment: when I first arrived in New York. I identified with it totally. Yes, it's about a young black man who arrives in the city twenty or so years earlier than I did and who lives in Harlem and becomes involved with a white-directed socialist cause, but those are just details, details. The book is about the great impact New York has on a young man's psyche and how he contends with new emotional realities he never could have imagined.

5. Eloise
Finally, on an entirely different note, I offer you Eloise. Yes, that six year-old, obviously wealthy, privileged little girl who lives in the Plaza Hotel where Fifth Avenue meets Central Park. Not the kind of existence I have even remotely had here. So, why Eloise? Because for many a child-- and I would suppose more girls than boys, but not exclusively so by any means-- Eloise is New York. This is probably true much more for my generation, and I really have no idea of how many kids still read Eloise, but I would bet that she, and Holly Golightly, have been responsible for the purchase of many a train and plane ticket to New York by eighteen year olds.

--- Richard Goodman

---> For the archive of Madam Mayo guestblog posts, click here.

New Guest-Blog Archive Link for Madam Mayo

Solveig Eggerz, Richard Goodman, Leslie Pietrzyk, Isabella Tree, David Taylor, Sandra Beasly, Jane Kinney Meyers, Nani Power, Dan Olivas, David Lida, Kim Roberts, and many more...check out the new archive of Madam Mayo guest-blog posts. More anon.

Guest-Blogger Richard Goodman's Five Favorite Books with Soul

While I wind down pre-judging the Flannery O'Connor Award (must write comments on the selected seven for series editor Nancy Zafris), travel writer and writing teacher Richard Goodman guest-blogs again! His latest book is The Soul of Creative Writing. He is also the author of French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France, one of the founding members of the New York Writers Workshop, and teaches creative nonfiction at Spalding University's Brief Residency MFA in Writing Program in Louisville, Kentucky. Over to you, Richard!

My Favorite Five Books With the Word "Soul" in the Title.

Yes, I know five. And they are all very good books it turns out. While this may seem a bit gimmicky, it actually reveals something about the intensity and depth of the word "soul." I chose it as part of my own title with a great deal of respect and some trepidation. It's an august word, and meaningful, and, to be truthful, I still have my doubts as to whether or not I've used it in vain. But it was too appealing to resist. The five books are all very different, but what connects them, I think, is an attempt to get at something intangible, essential, elusive, unique and powerful. I left out some well known "soul" books (Dead Souls comes to mind), but five's the limit.

Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver.
For those readers who have never heard of the Black Panthers, and for those who have simply relegated them to a dusty corner of their memory, this book, published in 1968, will be a stern enlightenment. Cleaver was one of the founders of the Black Panther party. He spent time in prison. Eventually, he fled to Algeria to avoid criminal prosecution. This is a brutal, hard book, with a bitter taste, but he pulls no punches.

Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life by Thomas Moore.
This book was given to me by the great editor Hugh Van Dusen. Hugh, who has worked at Harper Collins for years, and edited some of the world's most famous authors, is a wonderfully urbane, elegant and generous man. When he gave me this book some years ago, I was skeptical. The title seemed a but new-agey for me. I was wrong. It's a powerful book, and one of the most important things it does is to make a distinction between the heart and the soul.

The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder.
This book, told at a breakneck pace about a breakneck race to build a new kind of computer, is a brilliant look at the huge pressures involved in trying to stay one step ahead in cyber technology. What makes this book especially wonderful is its sense of irony, and ultimately, of disappointment.

Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross.
This sixteenth century Spanish monk, and friend of St. Teresa, wrote stirring poems about the soul's effort to unite with God. Whether you're a believer or not, it's hard to resist verses like: When the breeze blew from the turret / as I parted his hair / it wounded my neck / with its gentle hand / suspending all my senses.

The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois.
This seminal book begins, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." Now, as we move steadily into the twenty-first century, has anything really changed? This book, by the "Bard of Great Barrington" and one of the most influential black thinkers who ever lived, is a favorite.

--- Richard Goodman

---> For the archive of Madam Mayo's guest-blog posts, click here.

Blogging the Flan, Part III

Back blogging next Wednesday with another fun guest-blog post from travel writer and writing teacher extraordinaire, Richard Goodman (read his first guest-blog post here). I'm still plowing down the ohmygod pile of manuscripts for the Flannery O'Connor Award.

Guest Blog Posts at Madam Mayo

THIS ARCHIVE HAS BEEN MOVED TO:

http://www.cmmayo.com/madammayo-archive-guest-blog-posts.html

PLEASE UPDATE YOUR LINKS, THANKS!





--->Travel writer and writing teacher Richard Goodman
5 Favorite Books on Soul
--->Travel writer and power walker L. Peat O'Neil
5 + Links on Walking
--->Writer Nani Power
5 Interesting Facts About the Monarch Butterfly
--->Poet Sandra Beaseley
5 Poets Turned Prose Writers--->Sociology Professor Clara Rodriguez
5 Latino Stars of Early Hollywood
--->Writer and Mexico City Aficionado David Lida
5 Secrets of Mexico City
--->Visionary librarian Jane Kinney Meyers
5 Links About Lubuto
--->Novelist, Anthologist and Blogger Daniel Olivas
5 Influential Writers in "Latinos is Lotusland"
--->Baja Buff and Business Writer Greg Niemann
5 Favorite Websites
--->Novelist Gayle Brandeis
5 Works of Fiction that Explore the Senses in Fresh Strange Ways
--->Writer and editor Jennifer Silva Redmond
5 Favorite Baja California Writers's Websites
--->Historical novelist Sandra Gulland
Top 5 Research Sites for Historical Novelists
--->Mexico historian Tasha Tenenbaum
"Kahlo de Rivero" and the Long List of World-Class Mexican Artists
--->Novelist and blogger Leslie Pietrzyk
3 Dos and 3 Don'ts for Writers's Blogs
--->Writer, editor, translator, graphic designer Tom Christensen
3 Dos and 3 Don't for Writers's Blogs
--->Poet and playwright Grace Cavalieri
5 Favorite Venturesome and Vivid Movers of the Earth
--->Writer Paula Whyman
5 + 1 Sites on Baking for Writers--- and Other Breadheads
--->King of the Baja Buffs, adventure travel writer Graham Mackintosh
5 Favorite Websites
--->Novelist and lit-bloggerLeslie Pietrzyk
5 Favorite Guest-Blog Posts on Work in Progress
--->Travel writer and Mexico expert Isabella Tree
5 Favorite Books About Mexico
--->Journalist and highway historian Steven Hart
5 Sites at the Crossroads of History, Industry, Commerce and Art
--->Writer, musician, composer, philosopher David Rothenberg
5 Whale Music Links
--->Poet Cathleen Calbert
The 5 Members of the Providence Area Writers Group
--->Novelist Eric B. Martin
5 Links On the Next Roberto Bolaño: Guillermo Fadanelli
--->Travel writer and essayist Richard Goodman
5 Favorite "Collected Letters of..."
---> Medievalist and author Jeff Sypeck
On other writers's blogs
---> Writer and documentary film maker David Taylor
Top 5 Books Read in 2007
---> Children's book writer Nancy Levine
5 Favorite Pug Websites
---> Playwright and writing coach Roy Sorrels
5 Reasons San Miguel de Allende is a Writer's Heaven
--->Poet, writer and teacher Sheila Bender
Top 5 Books On Writing
--->Short story and nonfiction writer John Kachuba
5 Spooky Sites
--->Short story writer and novelist Janice Eidus
5 Favorite (mas o menos, directly or very indirectly) Mexico-Related Websites
--->Comedy writer and stand-up comic Basil White
Top 5 Laugh Links
--->Poet and visual artist Christine Boyka Kluge
Top 5 Websites for Hybrid Writing, Collaborations, and Experimental Work
--->Travel writer Jim Benning
World Hum's Representative 5
--->Short story writer Kate Blackwell
5 + Summer Reading
--->Poet Kim Roberts
Top 5 Litblogs
--->Feng Shui Expert Carol Olmstead
5 + 1 Feng Shui Tips for Writers

--->Want to guest-blog for Madam Mayo? Guidelines here.

Guest-Blogger Richard Goodman's Top 5 "Collected Letters of..."

We've gone to the blogs, guys. But back in the days, they tossed off letters, some so soulful that they have been collected into books to treasure--- and to turn to for inspiration. Apropos of his forthcoming The Soul of Creative Writing, Richard Goodman, author of the cult-favorite travel memoir, French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France, and an astonishingly wide variey of articles and essays for the New York Times, Harvard Review, Vanity Fair, Saveur, Creative Nonfiction, and the Michigan Quarterly Review, among many others, offers his five favorite epistolary collections.

#1. The Letters of Giuseppe Verdi
Alas! out of print, but available at abebooks.com At the conclusion of the 1972 New York Times review of these letters, the reviewer could only say, "What a man." And indeed, Verdi was. This is a book not only for music lovers, but for any artist, of any kind. Listen to Verdi berate his librettist: "You talk to me about 100 syllables!! And it's obvious that 100 syllables aren't enough when you take 25 to say the sun is setting!!!"

#2. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, vol. 1 and vol. 2
Wonderfully translated letters of the author of Madame Bovary. These books are just jammed with gems. For Flaubert, writing was agony, and he wrote about his search for the exact word so eloquently, "I am the obscure and patient pearl-fisher, who dives deep and comes up empty-handed and blue in the face."

#3. One Art: Letters, Selected and Edited, of Elizabeth Bishop
The letters of one of America's greatest poets. Reading them is a course in courage and ethics. It's worth getting the book just to see how she takes Robert Lowell to task for exposing the private lives of others in his poetry.

#4. The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
(Check to see if you can get a good price on the three-volume Bulfinch set. It's got it all.)
Letters by this great artist who was, as it turns out, perhaps the best-read painter who ever lived. He loved books, and many of his letters are about the writers he admired. It's difficult to read these letters as they approach the inevitable end to his life. You feel the sad resignation of a man who knows he's drowning. Still, his passions stay with you.

#5. The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, vol. 1 and vol. 2
It's amazing how he did it. What a hardscrabble life he led before he hit the big time. It seems like a quarter of the letters in the first volume are to his agent asking for twenty or thirty bucks so he can get his typewriter out of hock. But what resolve!

---> For the archive of previous guest-blog posts, click here.