Book Seven

We don't particularly like cats (unless they are well-done). Even the favorite pet of another leaves us as cold and uninterested as, well, a cat. But never before had we read a cat's diary.

Our seventh book is Mrs Chippy's Last Expedition, 1914-1915: The Remarkable Journal of Shackleton's Polar-bound Cat, by Caroline Alexander. The subtitle is a bit misleading, because the expedition was Ernest Shackleton's, but the cat was the carpenter Harry McNish's. When it was time to go, the cat loaded himself into his mate's toolbox, and McNish agreed to bring him along. Shackleton approved, knowing the cat would help control the mice that might otherwise damage their stores. The feminine name was given the cat by the crew once on board, because he would follow McNish everywhere like a harping housewife. When Perce Blackborow stowed away, Mrs Chippy took to him immediately. The only known photograph of Mrs Chippy is upon the shoulder of Blackborow. He adopted much of the care and feeding of the cat, freeing McNish to focus on his duties.

Other accounts of this expedition that we have read make scant mention of Mrs Chippy. Most often he is noted for teasing the sled dogs by scampering across the top of their shelters, tantalizingly just beyond their reach. This journal makes Mrs Chippy come alive. Though he lies around and sleeps like most cats, he also assumes a great deal of duties on board the Endurance, and takes them seriously. While his main duties are stern watch, seal watch, and watch below decks, his greatest function is in providing a distraction to the crew and a boost to their morale. Mrs Chippy is a stickler for Ship Routine. The major tribulations suffered by the crew are often overlooked by Mrs Chippy for the smaller details, such as examining the nets as they are brought out of the water, chasing down errant nails from his mate's carpentry work, and even keeping oneself clean. Mrs Chippy's calm and nonchalance are directly attributable to his experience and dedication as a sailor.

The journal leaves off with a delicious meal and the warmest affections from every member of the crew. Mrs Chippy doesn't know the end has come, but we do. When Endurance is lost to the ice, Shackleton plans a 200-mile march to Robertson Island, commanding that the value of every item the men considered carrying with them had to be weighed against their own survival. Even when he hears the Boss say, "Anything that cannot pull its weight or is not useful to the Expedition must be put down," Mrs Chippy remains unconcerned, secure in the knowledge his only things are a bowl and a blanket. The journal ends before Mrs Chippy, and several puppies, are carried away from camp and shot by Second Officer Thomas Crean. Though the fate of these animals stirred little compassion when read in the accounts of Shackleton and others, now, after experiencing the expedition from Mrs Chippy's first-cat point-of-view, we are moved to sadness. Early on, Shackleton called the cat "one of the more industrious members of our crew," which made the tips of Mrs Chippy's wiskers glow with pride. He truly was a fine sailor.

This book makes a wonderful addition to our Shackleton collection. Ms Alexander is curator of a Shackleton exhibition, as well as author of The Endurance. Her extensive knowledge of the expedition perfectly serves the recording of this journal. Inspired by her idea, a life-sized bronze statue of Mrs Chippy was recently commissioned and placed on the grave of his mate, Harry McNish.

From early on Shackleton had reservations about McNish. Though the carpenter served well, and his work was instrumental to the survival of the crew, he became ornery and disobedient to Shackleton following the loss of his cat. Even to his death, McNish resented Shackleton for ordering Mrs Chippy shot, despite the fact that by Shackleton's leadership the entire crew of Endurance was returned home alive.

We give this book two paws up.

Book Six

Our sixth book this year is The Bookman's Wake, by John Dunning. This is the follow-up to his first mystery. Once again we are treated to the adventures of former cop Cliff Janeway in the world of books.

Where the first mystery had its focus on scouting books, this one delves into the finer aspects of making books: designing, printing, and binding as an art. Two legendary printers set out to produce a perfect edition of Poe's The Raven, but desire and jealousy interfere, starting a chain of events over many years that will end when Janeway solves the mystery. Through much of the novel he is searching for either a woman or a book, and the crime is always in the background. Book lovers do it between the covers, and once again Janeway lives up to this maxim. Inevitably there are murders, and Janeway finds ample opportunity to go beyond the boundaries of law once again, certain he must do so else the woman, the book, and the killer all elude the proper authorities. He absolves himself by making friends with the tough cop who is on his tail, and giving him some pointers on dealing in fine books.

To us, the mystery is again second rate, and hardly straightforward. What delights is the passages dealing with books, and the descriptions of how it feels to discover a fine book in a pile of junk, and what makes certain books works of art, desirable more as objects than for their content. Through it all he acquires more fine volumes, and earns himself a handsome finder's fee for putting the owner of a most desirable collection in contact with a buyer of inexhaustible financial resources. One would have to work extremely hard to be unable to earn a living selling books with the amount of ready capital Janeway ends up with. What this book needs is a disclaimer at the beginning: "The success of this book dealer is exceptional; your results may vary." Ours very vary.

We give it three (out of five) pipefuls.

Book Five

The Book-Hunter, by John Hill Burton

This book was long on our list of desirables. Though it is fairly easily found, it usually comes with a price more than we were willing to pay. We used the "Wants" feature at American Book Exchange, and waited. Eventually one came on offer for a price we could live with, and we purchased it.

When the book arrived we discovered that it was not the book we wanted. It had been improperly identified. The book's title page had been removed, and an advertisement for The Book-Hunter had been tipped in. What was inside, though, was The Queer, the Quaint, the Quizzical, by Frank Stauffer. We kept the book, as it appeared interesting, and read it. Our search for the Burton, though, was not satisfied.

Finally another copy within our grasp became available, and we ordered it. It was not perfect, with the backstrip detached from the rest of the binding, as noted, but we wanted to read the book, and if we so desired at a later date the book could always be repair or rebound. So it arrived and has found its place as our fifth book this year.

Our copy is a second edition from 1863. The edges are deckled and the margins are wide. The text is the expected discussion of books and anecdotes from the biblioworld, ranging wide as these books about books usually do. More than its content, though, this book has a good feeling about it, the small size that fits appropriately in one's hand, just as it is meant to be--it feels right simply to hold and carry it, as if it is a sacred volume. Which in some ways it is.

One subject Mr. Burton covers is the resilience of books against censorship, and more specifically their resistance to flame. He makes a truthful and troubling observation:

In the days when heretical books were burned, it was necessary to place them on large wooden stages, and after all the pains taken to demolish them, considerable masses were sometimes found in the embers; whence it was supposed that the devil, conversant in fire and its effects, gave them his special protection. In the end it was found easier and cheaper to burn the heretics themselves than their books.

Lovers of books and freedom do well to remember that it is not so long ago when the United States government was still labeling books as obscene and forbidding their importation. And the practise continues today in other countries. Just visit the USPS website and check out the list of restrictions on international mail.

Another interesting fact Mr. Burton reveals concerns the thorn, or theta. He exposes the common delusion that our English ancestors not only wrote, but pronounced the definite article "the" as "ye." Its use is what he calls the trick of "every blunderer ambitious of success in fabricating old writings...." He explains that the Gothic alphabet had a theta for expressing in one letter our present t and h conjoined. When it was abandoned, some printers substituted for it the letter y, as most nearly resembling it in shape. Hence our "ye" which is sometimes found in old books, but much more frequently in modern imitations of them. The following images, from The Smoot Family Association, illustrate the error. The only time "ye" is not "the" is when it is "you." Who knew?



The surprise of this book came last night, after we had finished reading. Having previously only glanced at the bookplate on the front endpaper, we now examined it closely. The former owner of this book was one Thomas Hovey Gage, Jr., who also inscribed his name and date, in that typically exquisite lettering of bygone days (due, we suspect, to the slower and more deliberate process of writing with a quill or fountain pen), on the half-title. Mr. Gage was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, wrote a couple books about the town and its inhabitants, as well as produced extensive work on the genealogy of the prominent Gage family. He also wrote and edited works on American engraving. He was a lawyer, served as president of the Massachusetts Bar Association and Worcester Art Museum, and served in President Hoover's administration. The American Antiquarian Society has a huge collection of Gage correspondence. And we have a Gage association copy of The Book-Hunter.

We give it three (out of five) pipefuls.

Caution: Falling Books

In case someone hasn't seen, follow the link (at your own risk) to The World's Most Dangerous Bookstore. One will be lucky to come out alive.

Adaptation

Okay. We've been itching to write about Love, the recent release from this hot new band called the Beatles. For such young lads, these guys write some pretty good songs which have a timeless quality. They also perform rather well, with a lovely mix of garage band-style and (for lack of a better contrasting word) big band-style. They can go from grunge to grand without missing a beat.

This album reportedly took over two years to produce, which makes me wonder what Mr. Martin was up to. Some of the tracks are fantastic, while others are simply underwhelming. Mr. McCartney, the bass player for the band, said it best in a comment to his producer: You can go even further.

This aside, what really made us come to mention this music is a film we just recently watched: Yellow Submarine. This film was born from a Beatles song. There were also films of much broader adaptations of songs, such as A Hard Day's Night and Help!.

There have been film adaptations of books for as long as there have been films. After visiting another blog, The End of the Affair comes immediately to mind as a brilliant adaptation of the Graham Greene novel.

Once again, we arrive at the intersection of two matrices and wonder: has there ever been a song adaptation of a book, or a book adaptation of a song? Any examples come to mind? Any adaptations you would like to see?

S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G

I was working in the lab late one night, posting a comment on a favorite blog, when I called upon a word that I wasn't sure how to spell: rebut. One t or two?

Blogger offers a spell check function for their posting creator. Can comments be spell checked? I compose many posts with a word processing program that also has a spell check function. Too often these catch all the wrong words. What is worse is that my spelling is checked and corrected in a vacuum (double u or double c? Or both??). The correct spelling does not become imprinted or implanted in my brain the way it would by careful study, by the deliberate search for the correct word. And at times I will find the word, and check the definition at the same time, and decide I want a different word. This certainly can't happen with a spell checker. They are simply utilities.

The other word I wasn't sure of: unconscionable. I know the root word has a u lurking in it somewhere, so does this derivative--

Stop! Here is the process as it happens: I am typing this and suddenly wonder if derivative is the word that correctly describes a word that has been prefixed and suffixed. And even as I write this digression, I have to check whether prefix and suffix have one or two fs: why does one word have one and the other word have two? Ah, English!

So in all of these cases I turn to the dictionary. Mine resides on a shelf directly behind my chair, and I spin around and grab it: a well-worn Webster's Collegiate Dictionary in the Thin Paper Edition De Luxe, which is the largest abridgement (e or no e?) of Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1936. Why something seventy years old? If one would come here more often to read my ramblings, one would know: it suits me well. It has older definitions. It also tells me that derivative is the word I wanted: 2. Gram. A word derived from another by any process of word development; any simple word not a primitive or root.

So I end these musings with a question: what was the last word you had to check for spelling or definition, and did you check it manually or electronically?

More on Yankee Bookseller

We had several individual notes from our reading of this book, and they became separated, so now this book gets a bonus post.

One of the more interesting things in this book is that Mr. Goodspeed posits handwriting has nationalities. Experts believe this to be true, as well as an historical style that can date handwriting.

There is also an intriguing exploration of the rights of ownership concerning letters and their content. Legally, how do letters compare to books? We were surprised to learn that ownership of the physical letter--stationery, envelope, (and presumably any inserts)--rests with the recipient; or if returned or unsent, with the sender. Rights to the content of the letter, in terms of the specific words and phrases used, are retained by the writer, much as the specific words of a novelist belong to the writer. Basically, book and letter are both copyrighted. Thus, a letter we have written to Tiresias may be sold by him to another, but it may not be published without our permission.

Mr. Goodspeed makes the following observation concerning written correspondence:

It is a pity that the fine art of letter-writing is almost lost . . . now with the employment of the shorthand writer, and the general use of typewriter, dictaphone, and other mechanical aids. . . .

This written more than sixty years before the prominence of email and instant messages, and the similar cries of lament. So what can You, our two Dear Readers, do? We propose to engage a correspondence by letter with any of you who would like to participate. Simply send an email with your name and address to letters -at- madaboutbooksonline -dot- com. Mr. Goodspeed would be pleased.