“The drug clerk looks sharply at the white face half concealed by the high-turned overcoat collar."’I would rather not supply you,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I sold you a dozen morphine tablets less than an hour ago.’“The customer smiles wanly. ‘The fault is in your crooked streets. I didn't intend to call upon you twice, but I guess I got tangled up. Excuse me."Thus begins Fog in Santone by American short story master O. Henry (1862-1910). Those who know O. Henry only as the author of the classic tale of loving sacrifice, The Gift of the Magi, with its typically O.Henry...
The Scarce First Edition in Yiddish of “Hashish” (1911)
In a recent column, This Is Your Brain On Books, I briefly discussed Fritz Lemmermayer’s Haschische (1898) and the Yiddish translation published in 1911 with its stunning and evocative cover illustration. It is the only drug-themed book to ever appear in Yiddish.Book people of all faiths and faithful tongues have since been hounding me to reproduce that illustration. The original is in color; all I could access was an image in black and white. It remains, however, an intoxicating feast, made all the more dramatic by Yiddish's use of the Hebrew alphabet, which visually lends itself so well to this...
This Is Your Brain On Books
There has been a spate of recent books covering new research upon how our brains work and the human decision-making process. Madeleine Bunting, at the Guardian, nicely sums up the science and its implications. It turns out that just about all of our assumptions about free-will, autonomy, and rationality in our choices and decisions are chimerical.I was reminded of this just the other day when I received the following note from a close friend and rare book collector with a Ph.D,, and who has been certified as sane. His first note limns an extraordinary find in which serendipity smiled upon...