The playboy of the Western World at age 16.Jane Sellers and Hugh Hefner, 1943.They dated each other’s best friend when they were in high school together in Chicago. When Jane Sellers moved to California in 1943 her sixteen year-old school pal, Hugh Hefner, began writing to her. Their friendship and correspondence endured for sixty years.July 2, 1943. "When I said I was a man of liesure(I still don't know whether I'm spelling this right)I wasn't kiddin." Many of Hef's letters toJane Sellers at this time were festoonedwith cartoons in the margins.“At 16, I knew he was destined to do amazing...
Biblioburro: Bookmobile Hoofs Books to Rural Nooks
When hundreds of children in the "abandoned regions" of the Colombian state of Magdalena need reading material, a small fleet of bookmobiles makes an arduous trek to provide it. The bookmobiles in question are Alfa and Beto, two donkeys who stubbornly insist that illiteracy is a national enemy and that kids need books no matter how poor or remotely located their village.Luis Soriano, 38, is a primary school teacher living in La Gloria, Columbia. His personal glory is as mule-team driver, leading Alfa and Beto to their destinations in rural Columbia as they tote up to 120 books to children...
Joyce Carol Oates: A Love Letter to Libraries in Longhand
Author Joyce Carol Oates."I try to write in the morning very intensely,from 8:30 to 1 p.m...I hand write and then I type.I don't have a word processor. I write slowly."(By Landon Nordeman for Smithsonian Magazine.) Contrary to Thomas Wolfe's dictum You Can't Go Home Again, in an article in the current issue of Smithsonian Magazine, "Joyce Carol Oates Goes Home Again," the eponymous author begs to differ. Joyce Carol Oates regales readers with a reverie on things changed and unchanged in the town of her birth, and reacquaints herself with the landmarks and buildings of a place that has continued...
Two Experts Talk Literature In Film
Our colleague, Kevin Johnson, of Royal Books in Baltimore, recently participated in a video about literature in film produced by Walter Reuben, the highly respected Los Angeles-based movie poster dealer-scholar. It deserves to be seen by anyone even remotely interested in the intersection of the written word and celluloid.Kevin has been, and continues to be, one of the most respected rare book dealers in the world specializing in cinema-related volumes and books into film. He is also the author of the acclaimed The Dark Page: Books That Inspired American Film Noir, in two volumes covering 1940-1949 and 1950-1965, respectively. Beautifully...
When Jackie Met André: Jacqueline Kennedy’s Gift Book to Malraux
André Malraux (foreground, left) with Jacqueline Kennedyand JFK, state dinner at the White House, May 11, 1962.The personal gift of Jacqueline and President Kennedy to French Minister of Culture André Malraux, in celebration of his visit to Washington, D.C. in May of 1962, has surfaced.It is a book. Not just any book but a perfect copy of the great British caricaturist George Cruikshank's Remembrancer of a Tour on the Continent, a series of eight hand-colored aquatint engravings gently satirizing European travel.London: Published by H. Humphrey, June 30, 1821."[Jacqueline Kennedy] had a degree in French literature and was captivated by the...