Subject
Fwd: a first edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita ...
From
Date
Body
----- Forwarded message from spklein52@hotmail.com -----
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 08:49:35 -0500
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
Subject: a first edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita ...
To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
[1]
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Books/The-treasure-hunter/2005/03/24/1111525274033.html[2]
The treasure hunter
Sydney Morning Herald (subscription), Australia - 35 minutes ago
... Hughes, which he sold, in 1992, for £5000 - he would happily pay
£25,000 ($60,600) for it now; and a first edition of VLADIMIR
NABOKOV\'S Lolita, inscribed to ...
The treasure hunterMarch 25, 2005
PHOTO: Stephen Baccon
Photo: Steve Baccon
Catherine Keenan meets Rick Gekoski, whose quest for ever more rare
and wonderful books has led to the Booker prize.
The questions everyone wants to ask a Man Booker Prize judge are:
how many books do you have to read? And do you really read all of
them?
The answer to the first question is 130-odd, in five or six months.
"But of course, when they hit the long list, you read them again. And
when they hit the short list, you read them again. It's a book a day,
day in, day out." says one of this year's judges, Rick Gekoski, with
a casual shrug. Formerly an English literature academic and now a
rare book dealer, Gekoski is used to reading a lot. "If you send me
to Tahiti with a box of books of my choice, I'll read a book a day
for years. That's my idea of absolute bliss. But these are not books
of my choice. And I would presume that a certain number of them will
not be of my taste either."
Which begs the second question: will he really read all of them? The
already controversial chairman of this year's judging panel, academic
and columnist John Sutherland, recently got himself in trouble by
announcing it was unlikely that any of the judges would do so. "I
think the way you would say that if you were trying to be careful and
judicious" - not things one immediately expects of Gekoski, whose
gifts as a raconteur include his fine sense of fun and fabulous
indiscretion - "is you say that you try to do justice to all of them.
But you don't get to be my age and have my background and not know a
bad novel when you've read 150 pages of it. And you have a fail-safe,
because if you say to your other judges, 'Boy, that was a stinker' and
two of them say, 'What are you, stupid? That's a terrific book,' then
you would go back and look at it again."
Scruffy and enthusiastic, Gekoski is the first book dealer appointed
to the panel, though he trails a string of other credentials. After
arriving in Britain from America in 1966 to do a doctorate at Oxford,
"under the illusion that it must be a great university", he went on to
lecture at Warwick for over a decade, when Germaine Greer was there.
"Have I told you my Germaine story?" he says. This is typical
Gekoski - he has stories about many of the great contemporary
literary figures, and tells ripper yarns about Salman Rushdie and
Graham Greene.
"It's probably inappropriate over lunch," he says, then launches
into the Greer anecdote anyway. (To cut a long story short, he met
her in the corridor with the department's old-style, nay-saying head
and she announced: "Do you realise I've just shit my pants?" It was
all a lie, he expects, designed to shock the older academic. Which it
did.)
After such a promising start, however, Gekoski found there was not
nearly enough fun in academia, and he quit full-time teaching in 1984
to ramp up his rare book dealing and start a small press. He published
very limited editions of signed books by authors including Salman
Rushdie, William Golding, D.M. Thomas and Paul Theroux. Despite being
beautiful objects, very few sold. "The rest became a source of
Christmas presents for years."
Happily, he met with more success dealing in very rare and expensive
20th-century books by writers he had studied and admired, such as T.S.
Eliot, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence.
"I'm one of the people in the world - and I'm by no means the only
one - who tries to have things that are genuinely scarce," he says.
Hence, he has handled a signed first edition of Ulysses (value
$450,000); a first edition of Sylvia Plath's The Colossus and Other
Poems, with a dedication to her husband Ted Hughes, which he sold, in
1992, for £5000 - he would happily pay £25,000 ($60,600) for it now;
and a first edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, inscribed to Graham
Greene, which he sold once for £9000, then again for £13,000. He
watched, appalled, as it sold at Christie's in 2002 for $US264,000.
He tells this story, and a number of astute anecdotes about writers,
in Tolkien's Gown and Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books,
published last year. The small and witty book grew out of his BBC
Radio 4 series, Rare Books, Rare People, and details the publishing
histories of 20 great modern books, from The Hobbit to On the Road.
The book is also, Gekoski claims, what got him the gig as a Man
Booker judge, as Martin Goff, chairman of the prize's advisory
committee (which makes the appointments), read it and gave it as his
Christmas present last year. Then he phoned Gekoski up, asked him out
to lunch, and popped the magic question. Gekoski reckons there is no
literary person who hasn't already asked themselves if they'd judge
the Booker, so he gave the answer he'd always given in his own head:
yes. "I wasn't allowed to tell anybody as the thing hadn't been
announced, so I only told about 20 people."
The other judges on this year's panel are the literary editor of the
London Evening Standard, David Sexton, the author Josephine Hart, the
Times Literary Supplement fiction editor, Lindsay Duguid, and John
Sutherland as chairman. The winner will be announced at a dinner at
London's Guildhall at 8pm on October 10, and to prevent leaks the
final judges' meeting doesn't start until 4pm that day. (One year, it
went on so long that judges had to change into their outfits in taxis
on the way there.)
Gekoski hasn't received any books he has to read yet, so he's toning
his "reading muscles" by reading past Booker winners, each one in a
day. He's also trying to get a head start by reading heavily favoured
contenders, such as Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Ian McEwan's
Saturday. So what does he think of the McEwan? "I have to be
careful," he says, then goes on to give a long, considered and
perceptive analysis of it, anyway, calling it very interesting and
engaging. Look out for it on this year's long-list.
Links:
------
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/
[2]
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Books/The-treasure-hunter/2005/03/24/1111525274033.html
----- End forwarded message -----
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 08:49:35 -0500
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
Subject: a first edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita ...
To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
[1]
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Books/The-treasure-hunter/2005/03/24/1111525274033.html[2]
The treasure hunter
Sydney Morning Herald (subscription), Australia - 35 minutes ago
... Hughes, which he sold, in 1992, for £5000 - he would happily pay
£25,000 ($60,600) for it now; and a first edition of VLADIMIR
NABOKOV\'S Lolita, inscribed to ...
The treasure hunterMarch 25, 2005
PHOTO: Stephen Baccon
Photo: Steve Baccon
Catherine Keenan meets Rick Gekoski, whose quest for ever more rare
and wonderful books has led to the Booker prize.
The questions everyone wants to ask a Man Booker Prize judge are:
how many books do you have to read? And do you really read all of
them?
The answer to the first question is 130-odd, in five or six months.
"But of course, when they hit the long list, you read them again. And
when they hit the short list, you read them again. It's a book a day,
day in, day out." says one of this year's judges, Rick Gekoski, with
a casual shrug. Formerly an English literature academic and now a
rare book dealer, Gekoski is used to reading a lot. "If you send me
to Tahiti with a box of books of my choice, I'll read a book a day
for years. That's my idea of absolute bliss. But these are not books
of my choice. And I would presume that a certain number of them will
not be of my taste either."
Which begs the second question: will he really read all of them? The
already controversial chairman of this year's judging panel, academic
and columnist John Sutherland, recently got himself in trouble by
announcing it was unlikely that any of the judges would do so. "I
think the way you would say that if you were trying to be careful and
judicious" - not things one immediately expects of Gekoski, whose
gifts as a raconteur include his fine sense of fun and fabulous
indiscretion - "is you say that you try to do justice to all of them.
But you don't get to be my age and have my background and not know a
bad novel when you've read 150 pages of it. And you have a fail-safe,
because if you say to your other judges, 'Boy, that was a stinker' and
two of them say, 'What are you, stupid? That's a terrific book,' then
you would go back and look at it again."
Scruffy and enthusiastic, Gekoski is the first book dealer appointed
to the panel, though he trails a string of other credentials. After
arriving in Britain from America in 1966 to do a doctorate at Oxford,
"under the illusion that it must be a great university", he went on to
lecture at Warwick for over a decade, when Germaine Greer was there.
"Have I told you my Germaine story?" he says. This is typical
Gekoski - he has stories about many of the great contemporary
literary figures, and tells ripper yarns about Salman Rushdie and
Graham Greene.
"It's probably inappropriate over lunch," he says, then launches
into the Greer anecdote anyway. (To cut a long story short, he met
her in the corridor with the department's old-style, nay-saying head
and she announced: "Do you realise I've just shit my pants?" It was
all a lie, he expects, designed to shock the older academic. Which it
did.)
After such a promising start, however, Gekoski found there was not
nearly enough fun in academia, and he quit full-time teaching in 1984
to ramp up his rare book dealing and start a small press. He published
very limited editions of signed books by authors including Salman
Rushdie, William Golding, D.M. Thomas and Paul Theroux. Despite being
beautiful objects, very few sold. "The rest became a source of
Christmas presents for years."
Happily, he met with more success dealing in very rare and expensive
20th-century books by writers he had studied and admired, such as T.S.
Eliot, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence.
"I'm one of the people in the world - and I'm by no means the only
one - who tries to have things that are genuinely scarce," he says.
Hence, he has handled a signed first edition of Ulysses (value
$450,000); a first edition of Sylvia Plath's The Colossus and Other
Poems, with a dedication to her husband Ted Hughes, which he sold, in
1992, for £5000 - he would happily pay £25,000 ($60,600) for it now;
and a first edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, inscribed to Graham
Greene, which he sold once for £9000, then again for £13,000. He
watched, appalled, as it sold at Christie's in 2002 for $US264,000.
He tells this story, and a number of astute anecdotes about writers,
in Tolkien's Gown and Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books,
published last year. The small and witty book grew out of his BBC
Radio 4 series, Rare Books, Rare People, and details the publishing
histories of 20 great modern books, from The Hobbit to On the Road.
The book is also, Gekoski claims, what got him the gig as a Man
Booker judge, as Martin Goff, chairman of the prize's advisory
committee (which makes the appointments), read it and gave it as his
Christmas present last year. Then he phoned Gekoski up, asked him out
to lunch, and popped the magic question. Gekoski reckons there is no
literary person who hasn't already asked themselves if they'd judge
the Booker, so he gave the answer he'd always given in his own head:
yes. "I wasn't allowed to tell anybody as the thing hadn't been
announced, so I only told about 20 people."
The other judges on this year's panel are the literary editor of the
London Evening Standard, David Sexton, the author Josephine Hart, the
Times Literary Supplement fiction editor, Lindsay Duguid, and John
Sutherland as chairman. The winner will be announced at a dinner at
London's Guildhall at 8pm on October 10, and to prevent leaks the
final judges' meeting doesn't start until 4pm that day. (One year, it
went on so long that judges had to change into their outfits in taxis
on the way there.)
Gekoski hasn't received any books he has to read yet, so he's toning
his "reading muscles" by reading past Booker winners, each one in a
day. He's also trying to get a head start by reading heavily favoured
contenders, such as Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Ian McEwan's
Saturday. So what does he think of the McEwan? "I have to be
careful," he says, then goes on to give a long, considered and
perceptive analysis of it, anyway, calling it very interesting and
engaging. Look out for it on this year's long-list.
Links:
------
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/
[2]
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Books/The-treasure-hunter/2005/03/24/1111525274033.html
----- End forwarded message -----