CHAPTER SEVEN

OTHER SOURCES

In addition to specialist dealers and the auction galleries, there are of course other means of adding to your collection. They are by no means as fruitful as the two primary methods, and may often be more frustrating than rewarding. But certain items, while desirable and possibly necessary to the completeness of your collection, may be either too insignificant or too low-priced for a dealer to want to take the trouble and expense of acquiring or stocking them. For these things you must turn to other sources.

One such source is always attractive, always fun—and rarely, if ever, productive. That is the general secondhand or used-book store. A great many beginning collectors—and even some of long experience—have the feeling that they have only to walk into such shops to be rewarded with rare volumes that the owner is unaware of, and which have eluded all previous customers and book scouts. The fact is that virtually every dealer in this country and abroad is aware of the potential value of first editions in general. And no matter how ignorant he may appear, or even pretend to be, he usually has some knowledge of particular titles. Such dealers tend to overprice the items they do recognize, mainly out of ignorance of true values, and to overlook condition altogether. Most secondhand dealers keep a copy of Book Prices Current (and more recently Van Allen Bradley’s biennial compilations of rare-book prices) in order to be able to price, more or less accurately, their out-of-print books. They may also be aware of the auction prices brought by certain first editions. But in their ignorance of the value placed on condition, these dealers are likely to price a dog-eared copy of a rare book at the figure a fine copy would be expected to fetch under more sophisticated circumstances.

Despite these hazards, careful searches in secondhand book shops can still be rewarding. Many books give few hints about what they really are. Quite often a rare or important translation by a much collected author will not display his name in any obvious place on the book. For example, one of the most difficult items to find for any Ezra Pound collection is his 1923 translation of Edouard Estaunié’s novel The Call of the Road, which nowhere bears Pound’s name. Such an obscure novel by an obscure writer may surface in any secondhand bookshop. Likewise, esoteric journals and magazines containing otherwise unpublished articles by major authors can often be found in such places.

Another source, which is sometimes more profitable, is the charity bazaar. I include in this category garage or “tag” sales. Very worthwhile books are sometimes donated to the local charity, and some quite spectacular items have turned up at such affairs. The lucky early bird gets many a prize. These book sales, often conducted for the benefit of various universities, have become annual or semiannual affairs, and attract swarms of customers, some of whom travel hundreds of miles and stand in line for hours to be in the forefront when the doors open. Since the donors are usually college graduates and other presumably literate persons, the quality of the books tends to be a bit higher than that of books generally encountered in the ordinary thrift shop, where the likelihood of making a halfway decent find is remote, But do not despair, even in a thrift shop. A few years ago, in New York City, one of my scouts ran across not just one book, but a treasure trove of superb items. A retired copy editor who had worked all her life at Scribner’s died with no known heirs, or at least none who were interested in her library. Her books had been stored in cartons in the basement of her apartment building along with her furniture and other unwanted items. The superintendent of the building eventually took the whole lot to the thrift shop. There they remained all one summer, occasionally thumbed through by apparently ignorant browsers, until my scout finally saw them. There were approximately one hundred books from the thirties, all in superb condition, in their dust jackets. All had long, generous inscriptions from the authors, who ranged from Clarence Darrow to Ernest Hemingway. And in one of the Hemingway volumes was the rough draft manuscript of a chapter of the book!

Now obviously such windfalls seldom happen, but the fact that they sometimes do is sufficient reason to keep these sources in mind. Even as I write this I am arranging for sale by auction of an album of original photos of the San Francisco earthquake and fire, found in a trash can in a New York suburb by a couple of eleven-year-old boys. It can pay to do a little judicious trash-picking.

In the United States still another place to be watched is the type of bookstore specializing in publishers’ remainders —that is, books that, for a variety of reasons, the publisher is willing to dispose of at a fraction of their original price. While you will not find older books in such places, it is quite common to find many worthwhile first editions of books issued within the past few years, priced at a dollar or two. Sometimes even signed limited editions appear on these bargain tables. The copies you find will quite often turn out to be later printings, but a careful sifting of the entire stock may well reveal a few first printings mixed in. It pays to check remainder shops regularly and frequently, as their turnover is rapid, and if a particularly desirable title appears on these tables, the entire supply is likely to disappear within a matter of hours.

Church bazaars, roadside stands, garage sales, country auctions, antique stores, junk stores, and other such unlikely places have all been known to yield the occasional treasure. It doesn’t happen often, but the true collector, if only to satisfy his curiosity, will never pass up the most unlikely place. Who knows, he might find an unrecorded copy of Poe’s Tamerlane, one of which sold at auction in New York in 1974 for $123,000—though I’m fairly certain it did not come from a thrift store.

A group of dust jackets: TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934); THE SOT-WEED FACTOR by John Barth (1960)—jacket is by Edward Gorey; IN HIS OWN IMAGE by Baron Corvo (1901); and THE RAINBOW by D. H. Lawrence (1915). From the author’s collection.