We stopped in Niantic on Sunday afternoon and I had an hour to browse the downtown outposts of the formidable Book Barn there. The main multi-building sprawl of books on the hill was just out of reach this trip, but I made some fun finds at the Book Barn Downtown (where the movie, theater and sci-fi books are at) and Book Barn Midtown (the new repository for mysteries and children’s books, less than a block from Book Barn Downtown, which in turn is less than a mile from the main Book Barn).
The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson (Everyman’s Library, two volumes, 1935 edition): Jonson anthologies are plentiful. But his masques, which were at least as important as his poems and full-length plays in terms of what made him cool in his own time, are often left out. This tidy little set also excludes the masques, but lets in a few plays which don’t make many other anthologies. My favorite is The Staple of News, a satire of the then-brand-new newspaper industry; parts of the play began in Jonson’s royal masque News of the New World Discovered in the Moon. Why regional theaters never deign to do Every Man in His Humor, Bartholomew Fair and undeserved obscurities like The Case is Altered and The Sad Shepherd (or A Tale of Robin Hood)—all contained herein, not to mention free online—is beyond me.
The Bookwoman’s Last Fling by John Dunning (Pocket Books edition, 2006): I am blessed in that I have a faulty memory when it comes to how mystery novels end. I simply forget what happens. I have little patience for plot, but I love atmosphere. John Dunning’s novels, set in the simultaneously scholarly and scurrilous world of antiquarian bookselling, tend to have alarming contrived denouements, but everything leading up to those warped endings is smooth and polished and entrancing—especially to book collectors.
Death Stands By and Menace by John Creasey (Popular Library editions from 1966 and 1971 respectively): I love his Toff and Baron series too, but John Creasey’s Gordon Craigie/Department Z books have aged far better. Each begins with an international crisis—a plague, a political assassination, a new strain of fast-acting poison—which must be solved immediately by the quirky agent and the even quirkier assistants he handpicks to help save the world. Creasey wrote over 600 novels, and many of them are quite thin. But the Department Z books have a natural flow and momentum which hustles you through the plot holes briskly. Lots of suspenseful action scenes and face-offs with villains. This is the kind of book I always have with me in case I need to ride a bus or sit on a bench for a while.
The Glob by John O’Reilly and Walt Kelly (Viking, 1952): This is a short story about evolution which was appeared in slightly different form in the Feb. 18, 1952 issue of Life magazine. It was slated to be the magazine’s cover story but was bumped to inside by the death of King George VI. Both the mag and book versions are worth owning since each has artwork not found in the other, and the artist is the genius creator of the comic strip Pogo.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. #13—The Rainbow Affair by David McDaniel (Ace Book, 1967): I was an U.N.C.L.E. collector from a very young age, and at one point had not only a complete set of the novels based on the TV series but nearly all of the much harder to find Man from U.N.C.L.E. digest magazines, and tons of other board games and paraphernalia besides. That stuff’s all long gone now, but I still pick up U.N.C.L.E. material whenever I can get it cheap. That includes the DVD box set once its price got lowered to $100 or so—I’ve had it two years and have only just finished watching season one, but enjoy it thoroughly. I was also extremely impressed by Robert Vaughan’s recent autobiography. Many of the paperback novels, written by decent adventure novelists of the ‘60s, are based on episodes of the series, often with intriguing changes. In the first book, for instance, based on the series pilot, when Napoleon Solo is strung up on a water pipe and left to die from scalding steam or somesuch, the book has him naked.
An Unnatural Pursuit & Other Pieces by Simon Gray (St. Martin’s Press, 1985): I picked this up in preparation for the impending production of Gray’s The Old Masters at the Long Wharf Theater. This book predates that play by some 20 years, but is a fascinating glimpse into a pivotal moment in Gray’s career. It’s a journal about the creation of The Common Pursuit, his follow-up to the major international hit Quartermaine’s Terms (the U.S. premiere of which was at Long Wharf). The diary, which takes you right through to the play’s opening night, is supplemented with context-setting philosophical essays such as “My Place is Cricket History,” which originally appeared in the October 1979 issue of Wisden Cricket Monthly.
The Groucho Letters—Letters From and To Groucho Marx (Da Capo, 1994 edition): No reason to have gotten another copy of this at all. I have an old hardcover edition (the book was first published in 1964) and at least a couple in paperback, and I don’t even have room for this one on the crammed bedroom shelves dedicated to Marxiana. But there it was, and what if I need to lend it to someone sometime?
Groucho Marx, Private Eye by Ron Goulart (St. Martin’s, 1999): I own several shelves of books on the Marx Brothers (see above), but avoided getting Goulart’s series of Groucho Marx mysteries when they first starting coming because he’s so damned prolific and I just didn’t have the money at the time. So I’m playing catch-up now, and have three of the six. Goulart has a good ear for Marxesque one-liners—better than, say, Peter DeVries in his (non-mystery) novel Madder Music or Stuart Kaminsky in You Bet Your Life or even George Baxt in The Clark Gable and Carole Lombard Murder Case (though Baxt’s Algonquin Round Table-based The Dorothy Parker Murder Case is the gold standard for celebrity-starring mysteries).
More Old Jewish Comedians by Drew Friedman (Blab! Books, 2008). I had the delight of engaging in a brief email exchange with Drew Friedman a couple of years ago, for an article about how cartoonists were dealing with the fact that Barack Obama wasn’t very funny. I was struck by how gentlemanly and professional Mr. Friedman was. I wanted to thank him for all that his work has meant to me, but that would have taken hours—I’ve been a fan of his since his National Lampoon days, not just for his pores-and-all caricatures but for the pop-culture cunning behind them. The two Old Jewish Comedians collections are a kind of culmination of his obsession with a certain school of old-world show business. They’re just portraits. He doesn’t need to dress them up with captions and fantasies and set pieces where these icons rail against the world that made them. He shows dim, sparkling contentment on the faces of cuddly (or in some cased bloodcurdlingly ugly), crotchety old men. Volume one had a triple portrait of Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx. This one shows Zeppo and Gummo.
Also got a couple of Encyclopedia Browns to share with Mabel and Sally.
Total cost for the above: around $35. An hour well spent.