Shedding Books...Reluctantly

For everyone who collects, accumulates or hoards books, there eventually comes a point where you have to shed books. No doubt, if you fall into one of those three categories, you have changed residences at least once in your life, meaning you already know what it's like to lose friends and/or family. The last time I moved (which was the last time I moved), my father was one of the people who foolishly volunteered to help. After about the twentieth, maybe it was the twenty-fifth, box of books, he looked at me and said: "If you move again, Chula Vista is going to see its biggest bonfire...ever." Maybe he was just kidding, or maybe his back was hurting and he was feeling a little cranky--well, he is slightly older than I am, or used to be before my last birthday--but I decided not to take a chance, and have not moved since. Of course, losing friends and family is one thing, but losing books is another.

Arimintha's Complaint

Regular readers of this blog (I'm sure there must be a couple) will remember a similar complaint from Arimintha, our favorite playwright and game designer. Her reasons were valid and her solution very much a product of 21st Century technology (Kindle), but she did have to shed some real books, a process repeated very recently when she moved yet again, this time to beautiful and quiet Panorama City. The upside to all her moves is that with each relocation I receive books she previously "borrowed," and some new ones as well. I figure, two or three more changes of address and I might actually get back almost all the "borrowed" books. And, then, there's that whole Man, Myth & Magic set that takes up so much room...hint.

There have been two times in my life in which books have flowed out of my library rather than in, both a long time ago, the first time involuntarily, the second...well, not exactly voluntarily, but I had no other choice. The first time was when I enlisted in the US Army. I stored all my books with my mother (books [bunches], sci-fi & mystery magazines [lots], and comic books [lots more!]) and thought they were safe. Little did I know then, but not long after I boarded the bus for Los Angeles, Chula Vista was the site of an epic yard sale. Yes, painful when I found out, but you can't hold a grudge, not against your mother...well, not for more than two or three years.

The second time was in the 1980s, and was actually more painful than the first because I had to do it myself. I suppose if I had to describe it, it would be, maybe, self-surgery, like hacking off a limb or plucking out an eye, no anesthesia. If you've had to get rid of books, you already know what it's like, so there's no point in rehashing it. How did it happen? Hired away from a book company by firm of naval architects, only to be laid off six months later, and there you go. You think another job is around the corner, then the next corner, and the next, and the next...well, as it turns out, it's just corners, no jobs, and then you're standing on a corner with a tin cup. Nope, didn't do that...too much pride, same as what keeps a person from tying his life to the government dole (once they have you, they don't let go). Times were tough, I didn't have any prospects, but I did have books, lots of them (I restocked after that whole mother-yard-sale thing) and some were collectible.

By the time I finished going through my shelves, I had two paper bags full of books that I could lose without pain...well, not unbearable pain. All I had to do to follow through with my plan was to think of my family. Despite my rampant bibliomania (a "gentle madness" it's called) I really do value my family more. With my two bags of books in arm, I took the bus downtown and made my rounds of the bookstores. My first jaunt to downtown San Diego had been more than twenty years earlier to find several dozen bookstores, from vast emporiums to tiny hole-in-the-wall places sandwiched between sleazy bars and gritty tattoo parlors. This time, however, I found only a handful of survivors of those halcyon days, most being kept afloat, not by the reading public but by the collecting elite. Somewhere along the way, reading had become a lost art, a trivial and foolish waste of time.

Since reading was no longer a recreation of the masses, a few "common" books went back home with me. The others were collectible enough to warrant offers from booksellers, some of them at least. Most sellers were no longer buying because the marketplace was dying, but a few stores justified my long and depressing trip downtown. By the time I finished, I had three checks in my pocket and a half-dozen books I was glad to take home. I cashed the checks at a bank downtown, took the thirty pieces of silver, and waited for the bus home. Of course, things have changed downtown over the ensuing three decades, most notably in number of bookstores. Now, there are none; they have all gone under, though one did go up in smoke. And to make the transformation of downtown complete, the bank where I cashed the checks (showing my library card as a second ID) is now a hotel and most of the bars and tattoo parlors have been replaced by parking lots and empty government-subsidized buildings.

But, as I wrote earlier, if you yourself are a collector, accumulator or hoarder, you already know what this is like, the pain of shedding books, the depression as you look at the small stack of bills in your hand. No matter what you received, it isn't enough, and will be gone far too soon. Personally, I try not to think about how much money I did or didn't receive. Instead, I choose to console myself with the knowledge that two bags of books (minus a half-dozen) bought eight bags of groceries...but I still do miss the books.

My Silver Age Primers

Everybody who enjoys reading loves books, but why did you learn to read in the first place? You might have learned to read because you had an innate love of books as intrinsic objects, but I do not think that would be common. I think most people learned to read, then developed a love of books and the printed word. You might have learned to read, as many people did, in a schoolroom from a primer for a good grade or just to graduate so you could leave your teacher behind; or you might have learned at home from parents. Me? I sorta taught myself before I started school, and my reading material was intertwined with why I wanted to read: I wanted to read comic books by myself and not depend upon Uncle Bob.

Don't get me wrong. I loved my Uncle Bob dearly and appreciated that he took the time to read to me, and that he did not mind reading about the adventures of Superman, Batman, and the other DC superheroes of the Silver Age. At the time, it never occurred to me that Uncle Bob read the comics to me because I was a handy excuse for reading them himself. However, as much as I appreciated his efforts, I thought he was long on enthusiasm but short on skill--he didn't do the voices, he read in a sort of hesitant monotone, and how he handled sound effects left much to be desired. I had probably just turned four when it occurred to me that if I learned to read myself, not only could I enjoy a comic book whenever I wanted, but I could give the four-color heroes and villains the voices they deserved. So I did.

Of course, once I started reading, I discovered there were comics beyond just the few Uncle Bob would sneak home when Aunt Joyce wasn't looking. My first introduction to written science fiction and mystery came courtesy DC's space-oriented titles and their weird fiction comics, such as House of Mystery. I also learned, to my amazement and enjoyment, there were more comics in the world than just DC's line. I don't want you to think I was rotting my mind with just comic books, for once I was hooked on reading I had to move on to children's books like Go Dog Go and The Whales Go By (two of my favorite), then the series of juvenile fiction books like Tom Swift Jr, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.

   

In the years that have passed my life has been one that could as easily measured in books as it could be in the events that make us who we are. There was the discovery of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and Ray Bradbury, who influenced me as a writer, and HP Lovecraft and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who influenced me more. There was James Bond and Philip Marlowe, Joseph Conrad and William Shakespeare, and the Bible (especially Job and Jonah) and various encyclopedias (yes, I read them). There have been spies, detectives, world savers, clever dogs, London fogs, alien worlds without number, narrow Arkham streets, the biographies of great men and women, smoke-filled pubs, men without a country, villains who found comeuppance or redemption, courage and cowardice,  exotic Chinese ports, Cairo bazaars, opium dens, the gleaming towers of Science City, and men who overcame fear to do far better things than they have ever done before.

But it all started with comic books...

 

Two enduring traits came out of learning to read because I loved comic books and did not love the way Uncle Bob read aloud. First, when I read aloud to my grandchildren or the dogs (the dogs actually seem a bit more appreciative, but they are easier to please) I use different voices for each character, complete with appropriate accents, and I am really great at sound effects. Second, I still love comic books, still read comic books and still have comic books...and refuse to call them graphic novels. However, the comic books I have are not the ones I grew up with, but ones I've accumulated since the 1970's. What happened to the old ones, you ask, the ones I cut lawns, recycled bottles and did not spend my milk money to buy? As anyone who has joined the Army knows, you can't take anything with you to basic training except your clothes and the last good haircut you'll have for the next six years; you leave your stuff at the old homestead knowing that your parents value your treasures just as much as you do...I wonder how long I was gone before Mom had her first yard sale. Nuff said!

Doc Savage: Arch-Enemy of Evil

The time: the middle part of the last century.

The place: A swap meet in a small town hard upon the western sea.

The mission: To boldly discover brave new worlds.

A much younger version of me searched for books that day so long ago. Since paperbacks cost a whopping 35-45 cents each, it made sense to haunt swap meets, used book stores and charity shops. Though I was not as far from the cradle then as I am now (which, unfortunately, now puts me closer to the gave), my reading habits were not any less catholic. I was too young to have been poisoned by a government education system that stigmatizes great writers by labeling their works "literature" or "classic," surely the kiss of death; by the same token, I was too young to scorn "trashy" or "hack" novels...though I did have the good sense not to leave I Walk the Bloody Boulevard or Murder Most Foul where my mother would stumble across them. In my search I encountered a novel featuring a painting so photorealistic I did not at first realize it was a painting, but it was the subject of the painting -- the most extraordinary man I had ever seen -- that held my attention, mesmerized me even as I handed over a Mercury dime. The book was The Phantom City, and the man was Clark Savage Jr, otherwise known as DOC SAVAGE!

I had found an adventure of pulp hero Doc Savage, whose exploits began began in 1933, in an eponymous Street & Smith magazine, which endured 181 issues. This was not the magazine but a reissue by Bantam. Doc Savage of the pulps (right) differed vastly from the book cover painted by James Bama, but to the shortest, roundest kid in class both images were godlike. In the story Doc penetrated the Arabian Desert by submarine (!): non-stop action, exotic characters and not too much mushy romance. More exciting was the number "10" on the front cover -- there were at least nine others to track down. I found those nine, but I also found much more.

Although written under the pen name Kenneth Robeson, most of the stories appearing in the monthly magazine were the work of prolific writer Lester Dent (1904 - 1959), and it was he who created Doc Savage and his five assistants, the "brain trust" that helped him save the world, solve mysteries and smash crime. In a time of lawlessness and chaos, when bullets and blood filled the streets of America, when dictators were rising all around the world and we had a chance of getting our own (i,e, America as usual), Doc Savage was just the hero for the job. The advantage held by those who lived during that long ago government-caused Depression over those who now endure a government-caused Depression is, they still believed in heroes who were heroes; still believed in law and order, and the possibility of justice in the legal system; and also in the existence of good and evil (as opposed to appropriate and inappropriate), as well as the triumph of the former over the later. The cynical sophisticates of the 21st Century put up with none of that old-fashioned flummery and naivety. Modern heroes, such as they are, are just badder-assed versions of the bad guys. So, how to explain the continuing popularity of a relic like Doc Savage?

I think it's because hope is not entirely dead in American society, even now. We know superheroes cannot exist in our world (despite antics in Seattle and New York City) but they still remain a popular fixture, and a lucrative one, in print, electronics and film. Because Doc Savage was, and is, a literary hero, he has lagged visually behind those who sprang directly from the graphic world. The one successful attempt to bring Doc Savage to the big screen was the economically disastrous Doc Savage: Man of Bronze in 1975, starring Ron Ely and produced by George Pal. The film could have been much better, but all funding collapsed, and Pal had to rely on anything cheap or free; it's amazing it was finished at all, though some have unkindly claimed it would have been better if it had not. The main trouble, for me, was the portrayal of Doc Savage, but what can you expect when you rely on actors? And here the actor gets no help from tights, cape or mask. He must have muscles, attitude and presence. Pity the poor actor. Besides, Doc's fans already had an image, and it was not Ron Ely. Sorry, Ron.

Well, George Pal and Ron Ely got the shirt right, more or less. That torn and tattered khaki shirt was vintage Doc Savage (below-right) and  artist James Bama reused it (left) for the first Bantam reissue, The Man of Bronze, in which the origin of Doc Savage, his fabulous wealth and his organization are explained; it's also where Doc goes a little berzerker on the murderers of his father...in subsequent stories Doc doesn't kill his enemies, though they are quite often hoisted on their own petards, with survivors usually ending up in Doc's upstate hospital where a little brain surgery rids them of their evil tendencies. Bama's model for his mid-century visions of Doc Savage was actor Steve Holland, who, among other roles, played Flash Gordon on television. With Bama's image in mind, bolstered by Dent's rousing text, it's easy to see why Ely fell a bit short. On the other hand, Doc Savage did quite well on radio (theater of the mind) and in comics.

Of all the many pulp heroes birthed in the turbulent social and economic era of the Great Depression, only The Shadow can claim to have experienced the same sort of enduring fame as Doc Savage. It was the success of the Bantam editions of the Savage stories that caused Pyramid Books to reissue adventures of The Shadow under the pen name of Maxwell Grant (aka Walter Gibson). Though Pyramid's books did not have the same success as Bantam's, they did better than other attempts to resurrect Depression-era heroes: others made the mistake of trying to "modernize" the heroes, a fatal error. Recently, though, another hero, The Spider, is making a comeback in oversize omnibus volumes, and, wisely, the flavor of the era, warts and all, is being retained.

While catching up with the volumes already published by Bantam, I also started purchasing the books as they came out, or tried to...sometimes I missed them, but more often I just could not afford them. Unfortunately, when the government sets minimum wage at less than a dollar an hour employers have no incentive to pay more. I guess I could have told my employers I needed more so I could buy Doc Savage books, but I really don't think the compassion (or the raise) would have been forthcoming. As people grow up, priorities have to be set, and my life was no different. Much later, I lucked out when I lost my job as an editor of nuclear submarine tech manuals at a naval architecture firm...the luck came not in being fired (they say "laid off" but we all know what it really means) but in having a guilt-ridden managing editor; included in the boxes of books he gave me was a mostly complete run of the Bantam Doc Savage.

Guilt is a wonderful thing! Anybody with a mother already knows that, but it's nice not to be on the receiving end for once. Between what I already had and what I was given, I had it all.  "On top of the world, Ma, on top of the world!" Now, years later, I also have new novels by writers other than Lester Dent, comic books (b&w and color editions), radio programs, magazines, the film, new audio productions, fan publications, and lots more. I also have something you don't usually get for a fictional character, a biography, this being Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life. The book is by science fiction writer Phillip Jose Farmer, and in addition to telling the stories of Doc Savage and his men, he also links Doc Savage to other literary lives, such as Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and Wolf Larson. It is a great read in itself, even without reading a single novel.

Though the Bantam books are now out of print, they are not at all hard to find, and they are definitely worth collecting because of the Bama covers. New editions of Doc Savage's pulp-era adventures are currently being published by Nostalgia Ventures, two novels in a single oversized volume. Not only do you get the full text of the stories, but also articles about Lester Dent, Doc Savage, pulp magazine publishing and the times which gave birth to such a larger-than-life hero. In many ways, Doc Savage is more popular now than ever.


Maybe Doc Savage still inhabits the imagination because we still need him. Government fails us at every turn, not just because our leaders have feet of clay and serve "principalities and wickedness in high places," (Ephesians 6:12) but because governments are best at failing...it's what they do, and do well. And real-life heroes reach an apex for only a moment -- after rescuing someone from a fire there is the day after, and the day after that, the tedium of life that does not tolerate heroics; or the hero is corrupted by money or fame. We need heroes to be heroes day after day, and incorruptible. I think that is why Doc Savage remains popular enough for writers and editors to devote lives and fortunes to ensure the fantastic adventures remain in the public eye; and it's why people still plunk down their hard-earned dough (by the way, minimum wage still sucks, and government should stop holding people back) to obtain the books, magazines, artwork, recordings and fan publications. Have no fear, Doc Savage is here!

The Code of Doc Savage

Let me strive every moment of my life to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it. Let me think of the right and lend all my assistance to those who need it, with no regard for anything but justice. Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and my associates in everything I say and do. Let me do right to all, and wrong no man.

Run! The Martians are coming!

Today the Martians stopped by my house for a visit. I had not seen the leathery little devils in quite some time, not since their last attempt at world domination, so I was really quite pleased to see them, and we had a pleasant time, which will not end since the Martians decided to move in with me. As Nero Wolfe, a personage for whom I am at times mistaken, would have said, "Quite satisfactory!" My house may be crowded, but there is always room for more.

The Martians were transported over by my friend Charles, with whom I used to work at the Library. Charles and I have as much in common as we don't -- in a workplace of 800 people, we were the only veterans; we don't care for rhesus monkeys, rabid weasels or snakes-in-suits; we have no tolerance for fools; we both have a soft spot for the Insane Clown Posse; we both like weird films (his are far weirder than mine); and we both have a strong nostalgic bent. It was this last commonality that caused Charles to bring over the Martians.

Yes, a comic book, of course. After all, it's not as if anyone visiting me is going to see a real Martian -- you need special glasses for that. But I digress. The gift was a special 50th anniversary reprint of Classics Illustrated No. 124: The War of the Worlds By H.G. Wells. Originally published in 1955, the comic appeared at a time when American society was down on comics...had a Comic-Con been held at that period of history, it would surely have been raided by the FBI, the Vice Squad and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Classics Illustrated tried to legitimize comics and introduce kids to classic literature, and was the brainchild of publisher Albert Lewis Kanter, who is profiled on the reverse of the reprint.

For millions of kids, Classics Illustrated provided a doorway into a world of great literature. Most kids didn't even realize they had passed through that doorway; all they knew was that they were reading comic books that had great plots and interesting characters...the lack of tights, masks, capes and superpowers was nary a problem, certainly not when the stories kept you turning pages like crazy. Though I dearly loved The War of the Worlds, I must admit my two favorite Classics Illustrated issues were Jules Verne's Off on a Comet and Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea; and I also read and re-read another Wells tale: Food of the Gods.

I was quite touched that Charles gifted this book to me, as I have very fond memories of the comics published by Classics Illustrated, this issue in particular, which I read prior to seeing the George Pal film, but after reading the book. Although the book and the film had a particular impact on me, there's just something about reading a comic with a flashlight in the dead of night that makes the idea of Martians lurking in the shadows, or under the bed, quite believable...and probable.

The artists, editors and production people at Jack Lake Productions Inc., did a wonderful job in restoring the art and text of The War of the Worlds. Even though this edition is printed on much better paper than a comic book publisher would ever have dreamed of in 1955, with the resulting increase in color quality and clarity, the artwork still retains the flavor of the times, before artists convinced themselves they were the stars and that it was absolutely necessarily to depict not only every muscle in the human body but a hundred more muscles that don't really exist in an actual torso. The permanence of hard covers, enhanced artwork, and special articles about Classics Illustrated and its creators -- superior to the original.

Still, as good as the commemorative edition may be, the original still outshines it, even a fifty-year-old copy that looks as old as it is. The smell of the paper, the stark power of the artwork, the impact of seeing it for the first time...can't beat it. Oh, and there's one more thing: the reprint cost $14.99, and the original only 15 cents; on the other hand, the reprint was a gift (Thanks, Charles!) and 15 cents was a fortune.