The 48th California International Antiquarian Book Fair

It was the Bay Area’s turn for The 48th California International Antiquarian Book Fair. It’s held every year, but it alternates between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. This year it was at the Marriott Convention Center in Oakland. This was a unique chance to browse. There aren’t even that many bookstores left to haunt, and walking the aisles here is a feast for the eyes of any book lover.   

The convention center is a large room in the Marriott. There’s plenty of space for many booths and treasures. The Concourse in San Francisco had been the home of the Antiquarian Book Fair for many years. It held a certain nostalgia for me after going to the fair there for years, but once inside the Oakland Convention Center, it was the same show. 

This event may sound a bit dry to most people. One friend told me it was stupid to see such expensive books that I can’t afford to buy. Why not just browse online? Like anything else, it is better live. I have new interest in the world of collecting, but I’m certainly not a buyer or accumulator right now. The details and stories about book collecting can be endless and fascinating. 

There are almost two hundred vendors. The layout is dazzling for any bilbliomaniac. There are dealers from around the world. There are very high profile book sellers from Europe. Their booths display museum quality incunabula, illuminated manuscripts and other tomes. This is a bit of a hodge podge and read more like a list,  but hang with me for the Jack London lecture. 

  Here are some of the dealers who were there. Most of them are titans in the antiquarian book world: Thomas Goldwasser, Philip Pirages, John Winkleman, Peter Harrington, Bernard Quaritch and an Antiquarian Book Fair stalwart, Ken Sanders. 

The Kelmscott Bookshop is here from London. Philobiblon, Antiquariat Botanicum, Blackwell’s, Liber Antiquus, and Sokol Books are here. Looking for maps or prints? Check out Antipodean Books. Sorry if I left anybody out.     

It’s interesting to scan the covers and prices of these rare books. There are sinister looking medical texts from the dawn of medicine. Most dealers look serious, especially the ones from Europe. This is a big business opportunity for them.

I’m content just to look at the books in the glass cases. It’s exciting to see books that are worth a fortune, but today I’m drawn to more modern, colorful works. There was plenty of them around. The last I heard, Bolerium Books still had a store in the Mission district of San Francisco. They have some great Robert Crumb stuff. There are posters that he had made for events before he became famous. There were small poetry books that Charles Bukowski had printed himself before he gained game.  

One of the first things I saw in the Special Exhibits area was the Patti Smith Collection from the nearby Mills Library. There was a hand written page from the manuscript for “Just Kids” and some hand written poetry. There were photos of the Punk Rock icon with Robert Mapplethorpe. It’s always exciting to see something written by an idol in long hand. 

Several companies at the fair specialized in autographs. You could find the autographs of figures in history and entertainment. Some famous, and some infamous.  

A friend had given me a copy of the Charlie Hebdo magazine. It was the tribute issue that came out after the killings. I saw a copy of it at the F.A. Bernett Books booth.  “Are you selling those?” She said that it was there to call attention to a blog posting, “Charlie Hebdo’s Ancestors.” (http://rectoversoblog.com/) It’s an entertaining look at the history of satire in France. Satire was banned in France until the 1800’s. Even after the ban was lifted libel suits and their penalties were severe.

Maybe I just noticed it more, but there were first editions of James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake at various booths around the floor. One first edition of Ulysses was offered at $150,000. Another Ulysses first edition was offered for $36,000. The difference must have been the dread condition issue. 

I always see copies of John Steinbeck’s “Cup of Gold” at this fair. It’s his second book. There was a first edition for $48,000. It got me thinking of something that may be obvious to veteran book collectors. The early works of great authors go for big bucks. They weren’t discovered yet, and the print runs had to be smaller. Some of the early novels from a writer were duds. When an author proved he could sell books, they printed more. Sometimes the early, usually inferior books, demand a higher price.  

There’s always great Beat literature here. The dealers know there’s more interest in the Beatnik era in the Bay Area. I saw a copy of John Clellon Holmes’ “Go.” It predated Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and some consider it a more accurate portrayal of the Beat scene. John Fante’s “Ask the Dust.” There were obscure, early works by Allen Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, and even some Gregory Corso.

Another reason I go to this event is that you see books you just won’t see anywhere else. There was a volume by one Sam Clemens entitled “The Curious Republic of Gondour.” A copy of “To A God Unknown” by John Steinbeck. “Beyond the Wall of Sleep by H.P. Lovecraft. There are always Science Fiction classics. An original manuscript for “R.U.R.” A script from the movie “Metropolis.”  

The Lux Mentis booth had fetish scrapbooks that were made in the Fifties. It was someone’s personal work. Lux Mentis has a great blog.   

There was what looked like a complete run of an historic San Francisco poetry magazine, The Lark. Some of San Francisco’s legendary writers appeared in it. In another booth there was a complete run of early Star Trek comic books. 

The Douglas Stewart Fine Books booth offered a hand out advertisement on a book they were selling. “Aurora Australis” was the first book printed in Antarctica. They brought printing presses onboard for these expeditions. They printed scientific works, but it was also for the amusement of the crew. They did print poetry and other writings of the men on board. The book can be had for $108,000 American dollars or $135,000 Australian.

Another regular feature of the Antiquarian Book Fair is the Discovery Day appraisal event. Exhibitors would do up to three appraisals for free. It was like a small Antiques Road Show.   

Today’s big lecture event is “Jack London, the Photographer.” It was presented by Sara S. “Sue” Hodson. There was a small, but attentive audience. I had heard a few vendors comment that they were glad anyone showed up today after the rainstorm that morning. There were about fifty people filling about half the room. It was a fitting topic for Oakland. London had grown up here. A bar he frequented, Heinhold’s Last Chance, is still standing in Jack London Square.  

Hodson is a small woman and conservatively dressed. She’s the Curator of Literary Manuscripts at the Huntington Library. A screen shows us some of London’s photos while Hodson talks.  

“Everyone is familiar with Jack London the writer,” but few know that he took thousands of pictures. London called photography, “writing in light.” 

Hodson shows us two photos that Jack London did not take. They are stiff and formal looks at two natives. One is a side view of a native’s head, emphasizing his long skull shape. The other is a photo of a victim of elephantiasis. His arm has swelled up so badly that he has a forked stick supporting it. His arm is almost bigger than his torso. These were typical photos taken for their shock and medical value.

London had a different eye. He liked to take pictures of individuals. He said his photos were “human documents.” He saw people as people, not just the subjects of a photograph. London didn’t consider his photos a look at a freak show or primitive people. He looked at them as equals. He was looking for the soul and spirit in people.

In 1902 London went to London, England. He had been hired as a war correspondent, and he would ship out from there to the Boer War. The newspaper editors called him back. Apparently the war would be over before he would get there. There would be no story. 

London stayed in London. He visited the notorious slum in the East End. London wore shabby clothes. He could certainly pass as working class after growing up on the rough streets of Oakland. He noticed that those greeting him went from “Hello, Sir, or Governor,” to “Hello, Mate!” He lived in the East End for a while. He ate what they ate, and slept where they slept. 

The residents of the East End were in a constant struggle for survival. Some said the conditions were worse than those described by Dickens. It was subsistence living. London took pictures of them sleeping on park benches. In one shot bodies litter the lawn of a public park. People just dropped in their clothes and slept in the park. It looked like the aftermath of a battlefield. 

London called them, The People of the Abyss. He described the horrid conditions in letters home and in a later book. One thing that struck him was that most people had no hope. They couldn’t imagine a way out of the abyss.

A photo shows us one of London’s new friends, Bert. London did make friends wherever he went.  

An upbeat photo is of a group of children dancing in the street when an organ grinder went by. It was a rare bright spot in their day. London said that it was especially sad that the children showed little hope of escaping the East End. They could not see a way out.   

Another photo shows a woman staring off into space. Hodson points out her despair: “There is nowhere for her to go. Nothing to do.” 

London said that people were entities. They rose above their situations and their spirits shone through in his photographs. He returned home to his ranch in Sonoma and wrote Children of the Abyss. 

In the early morning of April 17, 1906 Charmian London was writing in her diary. “We know what happened that day.” We’re shown the page she was writing when the earthquake hit. In large red letters it says, “Earthquake!” The couple headed to San Francisco. London’s description of the ruins from the quake and fire would be published later in Collier’s: “Story of an Eyewitness.” “The fire raged for three days and nights.” 

We’re shown a series of London’s photos of the ruins: The shattered remains of the Crocker mansion. The ruins of the San Francisco Stock Exchange on Pine Street. It was one of the first descriptions of the destruction from the natural catastrophe. 

Did London’s celebrity status help him gain access to the ruins of San Francisco? Things were pretty tense there with martial law. Men were pressed into cleaning the wreckage. Did his celebrity keep him off the chain gang? 

In 1904 London was in Korea waiting to cover the Russo-Japanese war. He was also escaping “women troubles.” Hodson tells us that, “London was good at that.”  London was often the subject of cartoons. His celebrity overshadowed any news story he was doing. There was more interest in London’s adventures than there was in whatever story he was covering, and London knew it. He exploited it to sell more books. Then he’d use the money to have more adventures. What a life he had!

Both Japanese and Russian military authorities tried to keep the foreign war correspondents far from the action. London used the time to photograph the locals. Most of the photos were taken in Seoul. London took photos of the everyday people in the streets of Seoul. Beggars. An opium pipe salesman. He loved to take pictures of the children. The Korean people of all ages had a shining innocence about them. 

When London took pictures of people he went down on one knee. We are always looking up at them, into their faces. Most other photographers at that time used an angle at which they looked down on their subjects. London never considered people as just the subjects of a photo. He wanted to capture and show their spirit to the world. 

London had respect and admiration for the Japanese soldiers. Most of them had come from farms where they had never worn shoes. During training they were issued military boots. London saw their sore, blistered and bleeding feet. He was impressed that they never complained.  

London was also impressed by how little the Japanese soldiers in the field could live on. Rice was boiled down to small size to make it easy to carry into battle. The soldiers lived for days on the chow that they could carry. London was amazed that they did not complain.  

There are pictures of a village that had been taken and retaken by each side several times. “Imagine the suffering of these people,” Hodson said. It had to be a very unfortunate spot to be in.

London did get some pictures of the Russian side. He took a picture of a Cossack sitting on his horse. To Western eyes the horse looks small compared to his owner, but this was one of the biggest horses the Russians had. The horse was named Bell. London bought it, and brought it home to his ranch in Sonoma. 

London and his fellow correspondents did get to see some of the naval battle at Incheon. They’re shown looking over a battlement at the action. They look like quite a crew.

At the Battle of Yellow River London got some photos of the Japanese artillery in action. He also got photos of the aftermath of the battle. Exhausted and wounded soldiers are shown marching back from the battle. Some have to be carried. 

When London returned home he bought the ranch in Sonoma. The plan was to settle down and stop traveling so much. So of course, after a couple of months London started making plans for a trip around the world. They would start by sailing across the Pacific. His wife Charmian was into it. They were true life partners and she gladly joined in his adventures. 

London had a sailing ship built, The Snark. The earthquake hit during its construction. The ship suffered some damage in the quake. It wasn’t able to turn or maneuver. It was repaired at a much greater cost than expected. Building materials were scarce and expensive after the quake and fire. The cost to build The Snark was eventually $30,000, a very large sum for the time. 

Charmian’s uncle, Roscoe Eames, had been in charge of getting The Snark ready. They finally left on April 7, 1907 and headed to Hawaii. After a couple of days out London asked Eames were they were. Not only did Eames not know, but he admitted he had no idea how to navigate! 

London had brought four hundred books with him on the ship. Hodson says that, “God saves fools and Jack London.” London found books he had on navigation and started studying. He learned how to use a sextant. London believed he could learn anything if he could find something to read about it. There was great risk that they would get lost in the Pacific Ocean. London not only got them to Honolulu, but it was “like threading a needle.” Roscoe was sent home.

They visited the leper colony on Molokai. It was considered very dangerous to go there. He and Charmian stayed for a week. They participated in the daily life of the lepers. It was the week of the Fourth of July and photos show them enjoying a parade and donkey races. The lepers had been shunned by society and separated from their families. They not only survived at the leper colony, but they built new lives for themselves.  

The next stop was the Marquesas islands. There were three routes from Hawaii and of course London chose the shortest and quickest. “The route that nobody takes.” Nobody took it because it was the most dangerous. “They courted disaster on much of the trip.” This was not just a luxury cruise. Even the first leg to Hawaii had risk on the wide and wild Pacific.

A big danger was being caught in an area of the sea with no breeze to sail with. They were “becalmed.” This was another example of Hodson’s saying: “God saves fools and Jack London.” They were stuck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Food and water had almost given out when they chanced upon a rainstorm. It gave them water and a breeze. 

They survived and got to the Marquesas. London took photos of the natives and we see some of them gathered around an old gramophone. The natives were fascinated by the sound. There’s a picture of Ernest Darling, The Nature Man. Darling had gained some fame by rejecting Western society and “gone native.” 

London was the de facto doctor and dentist on board The Snark. The crew was reluctant, but London was confident that if he could read something about it, he could do it. He did pull some teeth. London had brought a mini-pharmacy with him. “He was always ready and willing to dose someone.” 

The only picture the newspapers refused to run was one of Charmian smiling as a group of naked natives passed by her on the Solomon Islands. it wasn’t censored because we could see the natives bodies. It was censored because Charmian looked relaxed, and didn’t have the shocked look on her face that the editors expected. Victorian morals were still strong. London insisted the picture was printed and eventually it was. 

It wasn’t a luxury cruise but Hodson tells us that they still partied their way across the Pacific. “They tried hash!” We see a shot of a masquerade party they had on Guadalcanal.  Among their friends in the picture is George Derbyshire, dressed in drag. He liked to dress in women’s clothes and was fascinated by Charmian’s lingerie and stockings. Martin Johnson, The Snark’s cook, is also in the picture.

Martin Johnson desperately wanted to be hired for the voyage. He wrote London and convinced him to hire him as the cook, even though he admitted he had never cooked anything! “He wanted to try something new.” Somehow London went for this. 

The photo of Johnson shows him with a huge bandage on his leg. He had yaws. It’s a nasty disease caused by a spirochete that digs into the flesh, sometimes all the way to the bone. Everyone on the trip got yaws and other tropical diseases. Hodson says London used mercury on the yaws, which draws a laugh from the audience.   

In the New Hebrides London took a photo of some natives surrounded by tobacco leaves. Almost every one has a cigarette in their hand or mouth. Tobacco was a status symbol. They were displaying their wealth.

Hodson ends by praising London’s humanity, caring and trust. He treated the people he met around the world as equals. She’s given us a great look at an adventurous man and his time. 

The Q&A. 

When did London start using a camera? Hodson tells us that they know he didn’t have one on his trip to the Yukon. Other writers did take photos, but they were not as perceptive as London’s. “London was always interested in something new.” He did his own developing in the dark room at first, but later he was too busy and had to give that up. 

Did he sell the photos? There’s no evidence that he sold any photos. Hodson does point out that often the newspapers would run a huge headline with a head shot photo of London underneath. They knew his celebrity would sell papers. They couldn’t wait for the photos he had taken for the story. They couldn’t be wired in. Text could be wired in. Editors knew a photo of London on the front page would sell papers.  

Were the photos numbered or cataloged? No, but many had captions on the back. Most of them were kept in albums and the curators at the Huntington were afraid to take them out. They feared they might get damaged. 

A woman says, “Tell us about the book.” Hodson says that she and her colleague at the Huntington Library, Jeanne Campbell Reesman, were getting many requests for pictures of London that had not been published before. This got them wondering why a coffee table book of London’s photos had never been published. At the Huntington they had access to some four thousand of London’s photos. There are four hundred more in the archives of the California State Parks.   

The book took ten years because they did it in their spare time. It was a labor of love, but it also became “a logistical nightmare.” Hodson praised the University of Georgia Press for doing a great job on the book. 

An audience member makes a comment on London’s use of mercury to cure yaws. At the time mercury had been used against syphilis, a similar disease, so London wasn’t “far off the mark.” The same guy asks, “What is the best biography to read?” Hodson says there are two: Earl Labor, Jack London - An American Life, and a biography by Jay Williams. She says Williams book, “Author Under Sail,” is more challenging. It’s a history of London’s imagination and the way he thought. 

London had been in ill health for some time. He had an appendectomy and learned his kidneys were failing. Hodson does not believe that he was suicidal or that he killed himself. A medical doctor, Dr. Philip Klemmer, has written a book theorizing that London died of mercury poisoning. Hodson adds that London had been studying Carl Jung and had been planning to use some of his theories in his writing. “He showed no signs of despair.” 

London had a short life, but he crammed many lifetimes into it. His books still sell, and he still has fans around the world.