Bookmark of the Week: No. 5

Edna O'Brien was born in Tuamgraney, County Clare, Ireland in 1930. This bookmarker was issued for the release of her book, Casualties of Peace (1965) published as a Penguin paperback in 1968. Her previous books were The Country Girls, Girl with Green Eyes, Girls in Their Married Bliss, and August is a Wicked Month. These books were often banned in Ireland during the 1960s for they dealt openly with the sexuality of the characters.

Her most recent book was published in 2006, The Light of Evening. For an interesting interview with the author originally published in the Spectator, May, 2002, look here.

For more on Irish Literature see the following Luminarium site.

Bookmarker: Special: International Women's Day

Today being International Women's Day, these websites are great sources of information: at IWD's website, and at PEN.

Bookmark of the Week: No. 4

When in New York a few years back, we popped into the Coliseum Bookstore after exploring the nearby New York Public Library, and I picked up this very large bookmark. The scanned image above is but a section. Although we could fit the bookmark in our bag, we couldn't fit the international literary evening into our schedule. We had missed it. It took place on Monday, March 22nd, 2004, at 7 p.m. at the Alliance Francaise, Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, (tickets were $10, free for students), the same evening our train, behind schedule, sallied into Penn Station with many a tired and rumply passenger. To listen to and see Walter Mosley, Alfre Woodard, Salman Rushdie and Chris Albani would have been a delight for us. Now, it is but a remnant memory of what might have been attached to this very large bookmarker.

However, there is another memory attached to this bookmark. One evening as we walked towards Lincoln Centre, we made way for a group of people coming our way on the sidewalk, and I looked up to see a very attractive woman with beautiful eyes and visage, and we shared eye contact as we passed. The beautiful woman was Alfre Woodard. It remains one of those special memories of New York. It was only later that I saw she was starring in Drowning Crow, a play by Regina Taylor which ran at the Biltmore Theatre from February to April of that year.

Salman Rushdie had recently been elected to the position of President of the PEN American Center, March 9, 2004, and over the years he has brought much to the table. Check out the PEN American Center and their audio archive.

Bookmarker: Special: Henri Troyat

A life force in French Literature died in Paris on Friday March 2nd, 2007. Elected to the Academie Francaise in 1959, Henri Troyat (1911-2007), Russian born author of Armenian descent (born Levon Aslan Torossian), saw his first books in print in 1935, with Le Vivier and Faux Jour, and wrote to the end, his last publications in 2006 being a novel, La Traque, and a monograph on Boris Pasternak.

This book mark was issued in 1971 to promote his biography of Gogol published by Flammarion.

Such energy, tenacity of life and productivity is always impressive. He was the author of over 100 books.

Bookmark of the Week: No. 3

This is the reverse side of a bookmarker promoting a book by French author Daniel Pennac, Comme un Roman, originally published by Gallimard in 1992. It is a book about books and reading. When I showed this bookmarker to my wife, she went to her bookshelves and handed me her copy of the english translation by David Homel published in 1994 by Coach House. Figures. As her Indextrious Reader blog shows, she is a certified book lover.

The english translation was entitled, Better Than Life. We both used to see the translator, David Homel when we worked together at a Montreal Library, for he taught evening writing courses in the office of the Quebec Writer's Federation which rented space at our old library. My wife said he was the most polite and interesting of all the teachers there. She also said that he is married to the Quebecois children's author Marie-Louise Gay . The bookish connections continue.

The editor of Coach House at the time of this translation was Alberto Manguel. That figured too. He is also a certified book lover. He probably read the book in french and sought out David Homel to do a translation for Coach House. All conjecture on my part, but it all seems to weave together.

The translation of number 6 does not have the weight of the french original, but the term 'bovarysme' has such psychological and philosophical resonance in the French language that there really is no equivalent.

The Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read.

2. The right to skip pages.

3. The right not to finish a book.

4. The right to reread.

5. The right to read anything.

6. The right to escapism.

7. The right to read anywhere.

8. The right to browse.

9. The right to read out loud.

10. The right to not defend your tastes.

Bookmark of the Week: No. 2

Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau (1912-1943)
This important modernist poet of Quebec was the great grandson of the historian Francois-Xavier Garneau, the grandson of the poet Alfred Garneau, and the cousin of Anne Hebert. Literature was very much a familial affair.

These images seem to capture two facets of his character. The pensive and sensitive visionary poet, and the handsome, urbane artiste.

During his short life time he published but one collection: Regards et jeux dans l'espace, 1937. Interestingly enough, 1937 was the year the publishing house, Editions Fides, started. This bookmarker advertising the poet's complete poems (277pp., $2.50) was probably issued around 1957. On the reverse of the bookmarker is a list of their suggested titles, including the complete poetry of Emile Nelligan, complete poetry of Robert Choquette, and the wonderful memoir, Testament of my Childhood by Robert de Roquebrune. The bookmarker on the extreme left was issued by Villeray Musique to promote a recording of 18 of the poet's poems set to music by 12 invited musicians.
Posthumously there came his journal, additional poems and prose.
The following poem comes from the collection Les solitudes, first issued in 1949. It is unusual for him, for it does make use of rhyme.

Leur coeur est ailleurs

Leur coeur est ailleurs

au ciel peut-etre

Elles errent ici en attendant

Mon coeur est parmi d'autres astres parti

Loin d'ici

Et sillonne la nuit d'un cri que je n'entends pas

Quel drame peut-etre se joue au loin d'ici?

Je n'en veux rien savoir

Je prefere etre un jeune mort etendu

Je prefere avoir tout perdu.

Pour chapeau le firmament

Pour monture la terre

Il s'agit maintenant

De savoir quel voyage nous allons faire.

Bookmarker: Special Number: Happy Chinese New Year

This delicate bookmarker depicts the extraordinary landscape of the Lijiang River with its unusual mountains rising up to the sky. The pagoda in the foreground seems to organically emerge from the rock in this aesthetic blend of man-made architecture and the wonders of nature. The Tang Dynasty author Han Yu, is often quoted when referring to this river:

The river is a beauteous winding ribbon,
The mountains are as emerald hairpins.

This image may very well be an early depiction of the city Guilin, which translates as "the forest of sweet osmanthus." Certainly makes me want to reacquaint myself with Chinese history and description.

Bookmark of the Week: No. 1

Between the years 1910 and 1914 was the period that Insurance Companies began to advertise using bookmarkers. The Scottish Widows' Fund was originally conceived in an Edinburgh coffee house in 1812, and its object was to secure the financial stability of female relatives who lost loved ones in the Napoleonic wars. It was officially founded in 1815 and has continued to this day with marketing much removed from this rather classic and conservative bookmarker. Today, using a woman in a black cloak as the marketing image, the Scottish Widows' Fund is the most recognized brand of all the financial services in the UK. This seems to work most effectively as can be seen by the rather romantic, if not gothic photographs of the most recent advertising campaign with Hayley Hunt as the woman in black, and David Boni, photographer.

It is well known that Sir Walter Scott was one of the first investors, but what is less known, perhaps, is that a friend of his, a member of that extraordinary Clerk Maxwell family, also had a fairly important connection with the Scottish Widows' Fund. John Clerk, later Lord Eldin, was the son of James Clerk Maxwell's great uncle. He became a a well known and successful advocate and was instrumental in helping the SWF by serving on a committee which saw that the first bonus distribution of 1825 was made proportional and fair. The Scottish Widows' Fund and Life Assurance Society presented John Clerk with a gold snuff box in appreciation for his advice. Upon John Clerk's death, the snuff box came back to the Society and is now part of their much treasured, no doubt, archival history.
An unfortunate occurence, however, also connects John Clerk with the Scottish Widows' Fund. John Clerk was a connoisseur and collector of art and rare books, and upon his death his collection was sold. In fact it was sold in his very own house where close to 150 avid buyers crowded together for the chance at acquiring art work from his collection. So many people, in fact, that the floor collapsed killing a banker by the name of Mr. Alexander Smith. John Clerk's old friend, Mr. McKean, the Manager of the Scottish Widows' Fund, was also in attendance, but wisely chose to stand on the hearth stone. As it was left standing, so was he.
This bookmarker was designed by Walter Crane for the Society. These issues are fairly common and the amount of the funds provides a clue as to the year it may have been printed. This one is probably from the 1920s. Walter Crane designed a more collectible set of bookmarkers for the Society when he was commissioned to create one for each month of the year. These were issued between the years 1910 and 1912 I believe.

The Meaning of Night

We have been having English weather of late. The overcast grey and mild temperatures with a hint of moisture on the way. Quite far from the -30 degree weather people in western Canada are experiencing now. This weather, though drab and dreary, is rich in character, the kind of weather that an M. R. James short story or a Wilkie Collins novel evokes, or an Atkinson Grimshaw painting can depict. If one would like to curl up with a great victorian-like read, one might want to turn to the recently published novel, The Meaning of Night, by Michael Cox. Though the footnotes seem more obtrusive than necessary, the story and the writing is of enough interest to carry one through the 600 page plus novel. John Bayley in his review of Michael Cox's 1983 biography of M. R. James, M. R. James: An Informal Portrait (Oxford University Press), writes: "Among the many pleasures to be got from Michael Cox's excellent book is the sense of a vanished world. . .Cox's wholly admirable book is a treasure-house of vanished lore, atmosphere and personalities." This could equally be said of The Meaning of Night. A good holiday read to be sure.

Forty Eight

This afternoon I locked the door to Chumley and Pepys Secondhand Books at 48 Albert Street, Stratford, for the last time. I put two garbage bags out and handed the keys in to the owners of the building. It was a good feeling. We were ready to move on.

After two months of wretched weather, it was a glorious day. We finally had a taste of Indian summer with the sun shining benignly and the temperature reaching 14 degrees. Cats were enjoying the warmth and squirrels were nervously busy but with a lighter bounce to their hops. The river Avon's water level had been lowered for the winter and the flocks of Canada Geese looked rather perplexed. Yes, it was a good day for closure.

Last Friday, stressed and exhausted, my wife and I were busy with last minute packing of odds and ends. We were removing the contents of an old wooden filing cabinet I had brought with us from Montreal, business files, christmas decorations, old audio cassettes, and junk, when upon opening the second drawer we looked down to see two large wooden numbers, a 4 and an 8, which I had bought long ago and painted the store colours, blue and gold, but had never used on the exterior signage. Last Friday was my 48th birthday. We both smiled at each other and remarked on the coincidence of closing the 48 Albert Street Bookshop on my 48th birthday. We had been so busy, we never thought about it until those wooden numbers played their part. It was a deftly cut jig saw piece that fit right in place.

c'est le paysage longtemps...

Dust motes and bare shelves, tired thoughts and diminshed energies; hard to think I shall close the door and never return. Today, after almost a week of packing and moving boxes of books, my resolve and my ability to rise to the required challenge were at their lowest ebb. It was at the close of day, the light fading into a steel november dusk, that I came across an old audio cassette which had fallen behind a cabinet. An audio cassette I had taped of an interview with Joseph Campbell in 1981. On the other side I had taped the countertenor Alfred Deller singing John Dowland's songs with Robert Spencer, lute, and the Consort of Six. Holding this old "Intermagnetics" 60 minute audio cassette, was like finding a lost thread of light directing me out of the of the bibliographic labyrinth I had entered three years ago. I sat on the weathered oriental carpet and my thoughts travelled back to conversations on philosophy, literature, art and music with a friend in the cafes of Montreal on la rue St. Denis and boulevard St. Laurent. The friend who lent me his old slightly scratchy album of Alfred Deller singing Dowland, and the one who told me of Joseph Campbells work. The days of haunting secondhand bookshops for Kierkegaard, Donne, Conrad or Durrell; and record shops in search of those Angel Records of Freni, Baker, or Schwarzkopf, or Blue Note Records of Miles Davis and other giants, or those ECM albums which were so in vogue...

At home, I showed my wife the cassette and we listened to it together. It was a pleasure to be able to share a part of my life of 25 years ago, but saddening, for the world seems to be running further away from the philosophical truths Campbell believed in.

At the beginning of the day, however, I turned on CBC radio as I usually do when I enter the shop, and the classical request show Here's to You with Shelley Solmes . She was introducing a piece of music requested by someone who said he had had a dream of listening to this piece of music with a friend, and so would like to hear it on the show. It was the villanesca by Granados from his Danzas Espanolas. Angela Hewitt on the piano. That alone was interesting. A dream of listening to a specific piece of music. With someone. Unusual. But what had me transfigured into a statue of apprehension was that the piece of music was important to me as well. In fact, last night I had rumaged through some old video-cassettes and discovered a film I had taped off the television, one of my favorite French films of the 80s, Peril en la Demeure(1985) with Richard Bohringer one of my favorite actors who also appears in Diva, another favorite film of the 80s. This piece of music by Granados traces a thematic thread through the film. I watched the movie and was reliving that late 1980s and early 1990s period of my life.

Coming to the end of one pursuit I seem to have been shown the past, as if the recent three year section of my life had just shifted into puzzle position, interlocked with past events to reveal a larger picture. A final piece for the middle panel of the triptych of my life. This makes me think of Bohringer again, playing an interesting character in the film Diva, working on a very large puzzle, listening to ambient music and finding that last piece.

C'est le paysage longtemps, c'est une cloche,

c'est du soir la delivrance si pure-;

mais tout cela en nous prepare l'approche

d'une nouvelle, d'une tendre figure...

Ainsi nous vivons dans un embarras tres etrange

entre l'arc lointain et la trop penetrante fleche:

entre le monde trop vague pour saisir l'ange

et Celle qui, par trop de presence, l'empeche.

-R. M. Rilke

Dans la multiple rencontre

Dans la multiple rencontre

Dans la multiple recontre

faisons a tout sa part,

afin que l'ordre se montre

parmi les propos du hasard.

Tout autour veut qu'on l'ecoute-,

ecoutons jusqu'au bout;

car le verger et la route

c'est toujours nous!

-R. M. Rilke