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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, November 6, 2000
Rare bounty awaits fans of old books
Like most of the rest of you, I must own up to my share of human failings. More than my share, actually.
I have been accused, for instance, of having a propensity for procrastination. (And I intend to do something about it . . . later.) I have a weakness for, uh, problematic motor vehicles: Where others see a disreputable wreck, I see a car loaded with personality and . . . potential.
And so on.
But we'll leave those to another time. Today's musings are on another vice with which I continue to grapple, and none too successfully: a weakness for second-hand books.
Not that I have anything against new books, you understand: I've been known to spring for new books on any number of occasions. For whatever, reason, though, it is the dusty old volumes, the dog-eared paperbacks, the cast-off classics that exercise a genuinely powerful pull on me. I find myself walking out of the store with, oh, say, the first volume of Henry Kissinger's memoirs . . . or "Louie, Louie," which tells the true story behind the song of the same name . . . or a novel by a favorite writer that has unaccountably wound up on the remainder table. (In most cases, it turns out to be because it just wasn't a very good book. Live and learn.)
I have contracted, moreover, a mutated rogue version of this malady - one that, if anything, makes even less sense to those prosaic, clear-eyed souls who have never experienced the thrill that goes with treasure-hunting in the stacks: the joy of reference works, and the more outdated, the better.
These volumes often offer the kind of entertainment value you'd never expect from such purportedly serious efforts. Consider if you will the Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary of Proper Names, which has been hanging around in my bookshelves for decades. I think it must be a bequest from my predecessor here, the late James Rowe, an editorial writer and reporter who is one of the few people in this profession I still hold in awe.
You can catch the salty, sardonic flavor of the book from the dedication by Geoffrey Payton, the man who compiled it: "To Mary, without whose constant encouragement and advice this book would have been finished in half the time."
Most of the entries are scholarly and straightforward, but here and there you pick up flashes of sardonic wit: The "Kama Sutra," he writes, is "An ancient Indian treatise on sex, with no conceivable bearing on modern life but, judging by the placing of advertisements for it, bought by intellectuals."
Of James Joyce's all but impenetrable "Ulysses," our host observes, with a touch of asperity, that it is written "in language replete with symbolism, allusion and portmanteau puns which demand a knowledge of several languages and all folklore to unravel."
Just as rewarding are chance encounters that can lead you on all manner of entertaining (if not particularly meaningful) chases. For instance, a while back I had consulted my Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (the 1968 version - the current one is far too hip, happening and politically correct for me) in search of a line from Francois Villon, the 15th century French poet, cutthroat and wastrel . . . and my glance fell on the entry for the next notable, one Gabriel Biel.
Here is the first of his four citations: "To be crushed in the winepress of love."
Crushed in the winepress of love: What an incredible turn of phrase: Has anyone ever put it better? It's so primal, so graphic, so . . . French. Who is this guy?
So: I turn to another venerable reference work, Webster's Biographical Dictionary (1957 edition) and learn that Monsieur Biel was . . . a German (italics mine) scholastic philosopher, author of "an exposition on the nominalistic teachings of William of Ockham."
This is the guy who turned that indelible, steamy phrase? What did they do - spike his gruel with locoweed?
And so it goes: Back in the bargain racks, captured between the tattered covers and fractured spines of these repositories of forgotten but not invalidated lore, exotic new acquaintances and subtle riddles await . . . if, that is, you can tear yourself away from the tube long enough to go exploring.
(Brooks Peterson can be reached at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com.)
Brooks Peterson
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