Allan Milkerit, 1945-2007

Edward Abbey, Good News

Dutton, 1980.

Not clear where this came from. Allan had a lot of Abbey at various points but little when he died, and this book has no price on it. This tale of a post-collapse West was Abbey's lone venture into science fiction, although he would not have called it that. It was a simultaneous hard/soft publication, but hardbacks are nonetheless plentiful from about $100 on up. Doubtless the novel's so-so reputation weighs it down. This copy just about fine, except for a near-puncture in the gutter of the front panel, which would make it hard to sell. I've offered it to J.C., who long ago said he needed a copy and might still. Must pass around the riches here.

Robert Musil, Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften 2

Rowohlt, 1933.

Second volume of Musil's masterpiece, published three years after the first. One of five thousand copies. Scarce in jacket, which is white. This copy has a bit of damage on the jacket (worming or perhaps just wear) but is quite nice. So is the pale linen book itself. Unfortunately missing the wrap-around band, which is rare, and the slipcase, which is even rarer.

Peter Stern has a fine set of all three volumes (the scarcest is the third, published in Switzerland during the war in a tiny edition) for $35,000. A European dealer has a set with an inscribed second volume for $18,000, although the condition is unclear. Goldwasser has a slightly restored set for $13,500 with a letter tipped in. Biblion has a fine set for $6,250. That's it, except for a defective, jacketless copy or two from European dealers.

Allan priced this book, which i think he acquired from Germany relatively soon before he died, at $750. A reasonable price, except for the fact that the buyer would never find volume one, let alone volume three, and might therefore put this purchase off indefinitely. In custom slipcase.

Charles M. Russell, More Rawhides

Montana Newspaper Association, 1925.

I don't do Westerniana, so this one's out of my field. It must have been the fact that Allan was asking $300 for this oversized paperback that caused me to take it. This was the last book published before Russell's death in 1926. There's a signed copy on the Web for nearly $4,000, sold by a bookseller who doesn't know how to spell "signature." Quill & Brush has a copy for $350 in a specially made folder. Only a handful of other copies online, most with a problem or two. This one has a name on the inside flap, and yapped edges. i'd say $200.

Caroline Gordon, The Women on the Porch

Scribner's, 1944.

Caroline Gordon (1895-1981) is making the journey from neglected to forgotten. She wrote 10 novels, most of them in the years preceding and during World War II. This, her sixth work of fiction, is as well-known as any of them, which is not very. The plot: a young woman discovers his husband's infidelity, and returns to her ancestral Tennessee home. She is a modern Eurydice, as the jacket notes in the first sentence, who must decide whether to stay in this realm of the dead.

The most striking thing about the book is the jacket, which is uncredited but a lovely art deco job of a woman fleeing. Except for one chip near the bottom of the front panel and a bit of trouble along the flap, the jacket is nearly fine. The book isn't bad either. Allan priced this at $125, which is the price of the two firsts online in equivalent shape. A keeper, for the moment, but only for the jacket.

Fang-Ling Jong, My Love Affair With Bookshops

(Beijing publisher), 1997.

This was the first edition of Fang-Ling's first book on bookshops. I think there are now four or five, depending how you count some of the revised editions. All are in Chinese. Allan used to talk about her, although i didn't meet her until his death. She inscribed this copy "to a wonderful bookdealer." I'll keep this, obviously.

Edward Abbey, The Money Wrench Gang

Lippincott, 1975.

Hard to believe Abbey died over 20 years ago. I'm not sure about his larger influence, but he seems to have peaked in the world of first editions around the time of his death. Sure, the key works -- Monkey Wrench, Desert Solitaire, Jonathan Troy (a weak book but his first) command huge premiums, especially signed -- but I don't get the sense too many new Abbey collections are forming. People aren't talking about him.

There was a proof of Monkey Wrench, which is scarce, and then this advance reading copy in yellow wraps. It was to be his break-out novel, and so they printed a fair number. This one, like many of the surviving copies, is a little soiled and slightly faded on the spine. Once relatively common, this seems to be becoming scarcer.

Allan bought and sold a lot of Abbey in the 1980s. I got my copy of Fire on the Mountain from him, and maybe other books as well. At the moment there are three copies of this advance issue online, one for $750 in fine condition and one for $200 in similar condition to this one. Allan was asking $225 for this for quite a while. If it were signed, or in fine condition, or simply a book i felt close to, I would keep it. But I don't.

William Gaddis, The Recognitions

Harcourt, Brace, 1955.

At one point, Allan had in his personal collection the complete works of William Gaddis, many of them signed or inscribed. While Gaddis became a bit more accessible in his last years, Allan put this material together when the writer was nearly as hermetic as J.D. Salinger, and there was no Internet to make uncommon material seem common. Now there are several dozen signed books on the Web, ranging from about $1,000 (JR) to $200 (the UK Frolic of His Own, of which he signed a bunch on publication). I doubt there are many sales. Gaddis' stock has fallen sharply since his death in 1998, his books seeming too much like hard work. Jonathan Franzen in the New Yorker put the final nail in the coffin a few years ago.

Gaddis certainly cuts against the contemporary grain. In his National Book Award acceptance speech for JR, in 1976, he said, "I feel like part of the vanishing breed that thinks a writer should be read and not heard, let alone seen." He decried the tendency to turn the creative artist into a performer, "to find what a writer says about writing somehow more valid, or more real, than the writing itself." He should see the world now. Smart grad students will always be rediscovering The Recognitions and marveling over how the lovely last sentence, written at the start of a 50-year career, encapsulates what was to come. Stanley is playing the organ in the church, and his music makes the walls crumble:

"He was the only person caught in the collapse, and afterward, most of his work was recovered too, and it is still spoken of, when it is noted, with high regard, though seldom played."

I acquired most of Allan's Gaddis books while he was alive, although I don't recall why I wanted them. This one escaped, probably because it seemed unnecessary. It's a near-fine copy, just a bit of chipping on the jacket, with a mysterious non-auctorial inscription:

"Our friend inscribed our copy: 'The answer must be in here somewhere -- if only "Thank God there was the gold to forge"' ... On p. 373, while indulging in a private joke or two, he says 'My, your friend is writing for a rather small audience, isn't he?' -- Meaning himself (the friend) and certainly both Blishes (the audience); and, I hope, you. With love and luck, this book may be for you, Dean; I send you all those." It's signed Virginia, and dated "April-June 1962."

Allan notes on the page that "Virginia" is the agent Virginia Kidd, while the recipient is science fiction personality "Red Boggs" (although if this is true, why Kidd refers to him as "Dean" is unclear. Maybe it was a nickname).

Kidd was then married to the sf writer James Blish, who sent a letter to Gaddis in 1970 that is in the Gaddis archive, so maybe he and Gaddis knew each other. If "our friend" is Gaddis, which it seems to be, this would become an interesting associational copy -- although not, considering the state of the Gaddis market, a particularly valuable one.

Eudora Welty, The Bride of the Innisfallen

Hamish Hamilton, 1955.

Allan had several early Weltys in English editions for a long time, perhaps a decade, perhaps more. Time was soft in his store. He refused to junk books once they were on the shelves. You never can tell when someone might want something. After his death, we found boxes of duplicate remainders, stuff he hoped would some day be worth something. "You gotta believe in your books," he always said.

In the old days, he was often proven right. He had a cache of Cormac McCarthy when McCarthy first became a sensation with the publication of "All the Pretty Horses." A Los Angeles dealer suddenly wanted the books, and so Allan priced the lot at $600. I never saw them, but it was the early novels in fine condition, maybe a proof or two, perhaps an offprint or something signed. Even then, $600 would have been cheap. But the dealer only paid Allan $480, taking 20 percent off the top. Allan just shrugged.

The Weltys weren't in good enough condition to draw in a real collector, and a Southern writer was a hard sell on the West Coast. I doubt anyone even looked at them. This was Welty's seventh book, and is uncommon in this edition. Three firsts in jacket are online, with only Reese's $200 copy being in anywhere near acceptable condition. This copy has foxing on the endpapers and an abrasion on the slightly faded spine of the jacket. The front panel, however, is nice. Allan was asking $125, although probably would have gratefully accepted a quarter of that. I won't sell it, partly because I think it won't fetch much, but also because I don't want to part with it. You have to believe in your books.