The London Library, 14 St. James Square.(Image Courtesy Of The London Library Website.)Remember the hedge maze in Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining? Acres of impenetrable green walls, artfully arranged to bedevil intrepid explorers determined to find the calm, cool center of a secret, secluded space. Each new corner promises one more step towards the goal, but more often that not results in yet another dead end. But even those dead ends have a certain beauty. Each is a quiet oasis among the leaves, often with a marble bench on which to rest and reflect before continuing the journey to the...
The Biggest Jew in Chicago Part 2
Julius Rosenwald wasn’t the only one keeping an eye on Ed Gertz.Concurrently, Chicago was in the midst of bitter Taxi Wars. The taxi business was still developing, wholly unregulated, and competition amongst growing cab companies and independents was fierce, endangering drivers, riders and pedestrians who had to dodge the pack of cabs that would descend upon potential fares en mass with contesting drivers invariably getting into fights. Poppy supplemented his income working as a schtarker – muscle - for John D. Hertz, whose Yellow Cab company was asserting dominance.In his youth, Hertz (b. Sandor Herz, Slovakian Jew) hung out in...
"Sex Life of a Cop" Chows Down Big Donuts at Paperbacks Show for Record $
Saber Books SA-11, true first edition, first printing. In 1959, a trashy paperback was issued by Saber Books. Thirty years ago, when I began to take a collecting and scholarly interest in soft- and hardcore erotic pulp literature, if I paid 50¢ for it I was under the influence of something.Yesterday, I saw a very attractive copy of the true first edition, first printing of Sex Life of a Copy by Oscar Peck (pseud.), Saber Books SA-11, at the Paperbacks Show in Mission Hills in Southern California.The asking price was $200, a record for this book. Ten years ago, copies...
The Biggest Jew in Chicago
The following six-part series is excerpted and adapted from The God and the Ghost: Two Grandfathers, a work in progress.*** The author's grandfather, Edward M. Gertz, c. 1949.My father dreams about his father. Dad’s ninety. Poppy’s been dead for thirty-four years.In these dreams, Dad and Poppy, both adults, have a great, feel-good father-son relationship, man to man, as equals. Things were not, in reality, quite that way. Poppy’s shadow fell over my father like a sheet of lead. A long sheet, too: I’ve spent most of my life wearing it as a suit that felt great to have on but when...
Curious George Escapes The Nazis
Original Artwork Of "Fifi" AKA "Curious George," by H.A. Rey, Circa 1939.(All images courtesy of the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection.)He's the world's most notorious mischievous monkey. A scapegrace simian forever in hot water, desperate for yet another bail-out from his nameless pal, The Man In the Yellow Hat. (Wasn't that guy the hero in a bunch of Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns?) But even rabid readers who have held their breath as Curious George is saved by the skin of his banana in adventure after adventure, remain in the dark when it comes to his greatest escape. Back in 1940,...