Allan Milkerit, 1945-2007

"How about 20% off?": Allan remembered

Joe Marchione, who partnered with Allan for several years as Valhalla Books and now is proprietor of Shelf Indulgence Books at 2141 Mission St., contributed the following, which was too interesting to run just as a comment:

The Laura Riding/Robert Graves entry the other day makes this as good a place as any to chronicle my first meeting with Allan, which must have been in the early '90s. In those days I used to make a great deal of fun of "collectors," figuring that the only thing that mattered was the content of the book. Always a passionate reader, I found even more time to read during a "'transition" job as an airport shuttle driver. On the recommendation of another shuttle driver (Hi, Jake!), I found myself reading The White Goddess by Robert Graves. Subtitled "A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth," I felt the book was grappling with something important but freely admit I didn't (and still don't) fully understand it. I began to pick up as much Graves as I could in hopes of better appreciating what he was getting at.

Graves was a prolific writer (a glance at the bibliography over my shoulder shows 146 "A" items as of the 1987 second edition) and while The White Goddess has never been out of print, many of those other titles came out in only one or perhaps two (US & UK) editions. To acquire the more obscure stuff inevitably led me to used and collectible book stores (remember, this was pre-internet). Now, I was no stranger to used bookstores. I was a regular in nearly every bookstore in every city I've ever lived in, though budgetary issues kept me for the most part in the pocket paperback section. Graves pulled me into the hardcover section and, as the hunt became an obsession, into the "rare" bookstores.

My first big purchase ($100 for a copy of "The Nazarene Gospels Restored") was at Black Oak Books in Berkeley but the purchase that sealed my fate was a $6.50 first U.S. printing of "King Jesus" (I already had a perfectly acceptable paperback copy but come on, $6.50 for a dust jacketed 1st printing? That's a good deal! ... in retrospect, I equate this with the apocryphal drug dealer mantra: "The first one's always free.") Serendipity Books in Berkeley induced the book equivalent of vertigo (or perhaps an almost Sartrean nausea?). And rumors of a book nirvana tucked away on the third floor on Mission Street in San Francisco were filed away for future exploration.

I had been to The Gull in Oakland while it was in its death throes, but not often and before I had picked up the collector disease. Many of the dealers who ended up at Tall Stories had displayed at The Gull. Unfortunately, a) Tall Stories did not have the easy entrance access of The Gull and b) not knowing the history, I had no idea what kind of book dealers I would be encountering at Tall Stories. "Third floor, ring for admittance," the sign said. Intimidating for a person with virtually no money and no sense that I was anything other than somebody who wanted books to read. Ever the optimist, I imagined being denied admittance in my shoddy jeans and thin wallet at worst, being watched like a hawk as some sort of thieving intruder in this exclusive rare book world at best.

For months, I tried to ratchet up my courage and ring that bell. Each time I came down Mission by car or bus, I'd look up at the big letters on the third floor that spelled out U S E D   B O O K S and try to decide if I would be welcome there. I can't remember if I actually walked up to the door and pulled in hopes of getting in without having to announce myself, utter some secret password that I'd never know. But knowing me, I probably did. And more than once.

One day I found myself ringing the bell and stammering something about wanting to look at some books. "Come on up, we're on the 3rd floor" said the tinny, nearly static-obliterated voice. I waited for the door to buzz. It didn't. It still doesn't. Whether on my own or with help from the voice, I finally got in and made my way upstairs. Past Meyer-Boswell on the right, Bolerium on my left, down the hallway and into Tall Stories. Stacks and stacks of books (in both the library and literal sense). Somebody sprawled out on a couch. A person who I would later discover was Allan was behind the counter, holding court among friends and scouts.

I mumbled something about Robert Graves and Allan came out from behind the counter, showed me his Graves section, and returned to the front. Forty-five titles, easy. More Graves in one place than I had ever seen in a bookstore. Expensive, but nowhere near as high as I had seen in other stores. I quickly lost myself in the titles, calculating how to maximize the money I had with me as I browsed. If I buy these two, that will leave me with enough for this one.... and on and on. All fear and concern gone as I soaked in the ambiance. Somebody came in with a later Steinbeck to sell. The guy at the front  (Allan) took off the dust jacket protector, gave it a good smell, said it was too musty, but not in an insulting or bad way. Just a statement of fact. The prospective seller trusted him. So did I, just watching the whole transaction from a distance.

Finally made my decisions, maximized my cash and came up to the front with 4 titles. He took one look at the stack, another look at me and said "How about 20% off?" I tried not to let my excitement and shock show too much as I ran back to the stacks and grabbed another title.

I'd get back to Tall Stories as often as my budget would permit which, unfortunately, wasn't that often. Always made the big Christmas sale. Maybe a couple of other trips. Allan wasn't always there and I never quite felt as welcome or comfortable with other counter folks. Some would try to "sell" me (something I abhor), the vibe from others just wasn't the same. Still, a new book place had opened up for me.

A year, maybe two, later, Anthill books (next to Aardvark... get it ?) was going out of business. I am shopping the bare shelves on the last day, 90% off. I find a couple of decent, not great, titles and the O'Brien bibliography of TE Lawrence, priced at $50 but 90% off, a great deal. Take my stack up to the front. The proprietor, Steve, holds the book up to the guy next to him and says, "All this time and a good title like this is still available."

I am not paying much attention when the guy next to Steve says, "probably some Robert Graves connections, huh?" I look up and it is Allan, smiling. I shake my head in amazement that this guy even remembers me (in spite of my somewhat, oh, how shall we call it, distinctive look, I imagine myself as blending in).

In retrospect, and based on my own experience in the world, I think he remembered the Graves connection first. (This, by the way, is yet another peculiar trait of a certain kind of book person, one that I share: I am far more likely to place a face with the author they collect than their actual name.) And I think he was impressed with the fact that I found something good on the final day, in the slimmest of slim pickings.

Laura Riding, A Trojan Ending

Random House, 1937.

Laura Riding had a vogue a few years ago but seems to have slipped away again. The one-time muse of Robert Graves, and a curious figure in her own right, Riding lived until 1991 but did all the work for which she is remembered in the 1930s. Unfortunately she isn't remembered for this, her first novel.

Maybe this tale, where Cressida and Triolus are used to fill out the Homeric legend, is unfairly neglected. As the world began shaking in the late 1930s -- Riding wrote this novel after the Spanish Civil War drove her and Graves out of their Majorcan exile -- the Trojan battles seemed to take on greater resonance.

"My pleasure is the discovery, amidst all those agonies, of a readiness to be alive prophetic of our own: they meant to live, in the long sense of the word," Riding writes in her preface. "What we are now is what they meant; even these patched lives of ours. For I think that we have learned to be happy: to live and yet be happy. Can I call this present wilful chaos of a world a scene of happiness? Its miseries are vindictively colossal ... And yet I am happy, in the certainty that what we now live has the essential taste of life -- that this is what life verily tastes like. That the tasting holds many a salty sting is irrelevant; we are tasting what we hungered to taste. This is the due meal. And in the War of Troy the due hunger wracked the premature world."

If you really wanted this title, you want the Seizin Press/Cassell edition, which precedes and is of course scarcer. The copy at hand is also in the second binding, which is red, and is marred by a bookplate on the front pastedown. It also, weirdly, has a first edition sticker from the previous owner on the spine, outside the mylar. Dunno why Allan never removed that.

With all that, it's an attractive copy of a 75-year-old book, with just a little loss at the top of the jacket spine. Yet the Web has probably rendered it unsalable. There are 12 jacketed copies of the Random House edition online. One of them, from Reese, is a similar copy (minus the bookplate), for which they are asking $100. But no collector aside from the most maniacal would want or need a second state copy when he could buy from Argosy a near fine first state for $150.

Allan, for the record, wanted $50. My guess is this would find a buyer for half that to someone who wanted a nice 1930s book to leave lying around on the coffee table as an artifact of the era.

Gore Vidal, The City and the Pillar

Dutton, 1948.

More than once, I was in the august presence of Hunter Thompson. During these meetings, which occurred over the last 20 years of his life, his motor control was not the best. Writing with a pen required extreme effort. In 1989, when a publicist asked him to sign a book for her, he found it so difficult he flung the pen across the room with such force he shattered a wine glass. Even when his body seemed to be working his mind would instantly wander to some other topic and the book would rest undisturbed. He did very few signings for new books, often only one. Even then, sometimes the books had to be laboriously presigned or came with a signed label.

Yet just about every day, I get an Ebay alert for a signed Thompson book. Almost always it's a common later book, usually The Rum Diary or Generation of Swine. Almost always there is no inscription, just what purports to be Thompson's initials. These copies rarely turn up on the bookselling sites -- there are only three signed copies of The Rum Diary on vialibri.net now, and two of them are bookplates, which in the context practically guarantees authenticity. I guess the happy buyers keep them to themselves. But I fear the market for Thompson material has been irrevocably poisoned. Just this week, a copy of Swine was auctioned for $133 -- very low for a real Thompson signature, but obviously many potential bidders shyed away. 

All of this is preamble to the book at hand, Vidal's ground-breaking novel of homosexuality. Most jacketless books are found worn -- the point of a jacket, after all, is to protect the book. But this one has kept its lustrous deep black boards, as if the cover were just slipped off moments ago. But it still needs a jacket, and despite the book having gone through at least six printings, there are no later printings with jackets online.

More problematic is the endpaper, which has a "Gore Vidal" signature and then, added in another hand, the words "by" above the name and the words "at age 19 yrs old? or thereabouts" after it. There's also a name, "Sylvia Wright," tucked in the corner. It's messy, to say the least, but Allan thought enough of the package to price it at $300.

Who would fake Vidal's signature here? Yet it doesn't look right. Authors' signatures tend to get looser over the years, the inevitable consequence of signing thousands of books as fast as possible. I would need a contemporary signature to be sure. But it looks nothing like the real thing. So we have a book that will never have a jacket with a signature that will never be proven real. Ugh.