Book cover: "Riches and Fame and the Pleasures of Sense"

• Title: Riches and Fame and the Pleasures of Sense
• Author: Kathy Black. I can't find any biographical information about her online, a search that isn't helped by how common her name is.
• Cover illustration: Gail Burwen (1945-2017), Cloud Studio. Most of her cover illustrations were for science-fiction books.
• Cover design: R.D. Scudellari (1933-2022). The Library of America website notes: "One of the foremost book designers of his generation, Scudellari created the distinctive Library of America series jacket in the early 1980s, bringing in Swedish calligrapher Gun Larson for a hand-drawn, artisanal touch that would distinguish each book." Another remembrance, by Janet Odgis, can be found on Odgis.com.
• Back cover photographer: Ellen McNeilly
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf (a Borzoi book)
• Back cover price: $3.50
• Year: 1971
• Pages: 151
• Format: Hardcover with no dust jacket
• Typography: Set by Fototronic CRT in the Garamond typeface
• Dimensions: 5½ inches by 8¼ inches
• From the "Prefatory Statement": This book forced itself on me while I was trying to write something else, and it probably still bears the marks of the reluctance with which a great part of it was composed. After completing my shopping at the A&P (1947), I determined to apply the categories for shelving which I had learned there to the problem of the novel. (The statement also mentions and thanks the Lower Merion school board. Was Black from Pennsylvania?)
• Opening paragraph: We've been pretty happy, Susan and I said George settling down into his sofa and smiling. the room was dusky at six o'clock in summer. David Brinkley was talking on the tv with his mouth closed.
• Random passage from the middle #1: I interviewed Stephanie while she was putting egg cups on her wall. They were pink purple and salmon-colored plastic egg boxes she had stolen from the supermarket.
• Random passage from the middle #2: Paul says that making love is the most overwhelming activity in the world, I say, Yes. (Since if I had said no he might think I didn't like sex and you can't have anyone thinking that about you. You would rather have them think you are stupid. Sometimes I tell men I don't like sex but that's wicked, like telling your father you don't like money.)
• Random passage from the middle #3: Andrey had curly blond hair blue eyes and was Polish. It was a relief to realize that you could live in Israel even if you disapproved of the government policy to the point of being sick from it. You could help transform Israel into a socialist country and try to make it recognize the Palestinian people as humans with a right to their lands, he said, as a people wanting self-determination just as much as the Jewish people wanted self-determination [...] She had seen lots of death, bombings and fires she said and that's why the Israeli army was necessary, to prevent things like that, and yes she said reprisals did lead only to more violence but what then was the solution? she said.
• Online reviews and ratings: Almost nothing.
• Best (only?) place for insight: A fascinating 2023 article on The Neglected Books Page notes that Riches and Fame and the Pleasures of Sense was part of a short-lived early 1970s series by Alfred A. Knopf: "dust jacketless, shiny-covered hardbacks that championed the work of young American writers playing around with fictional forms and styles — a series referred to as 'Borzoi puppies' after Knopf’s legendary Borzoi Books." There were only eight books total published before the series was abandoned after 1972. All eight books are reviewed in the article and this is an excerpt of what it states about Black's effort: "[The book] is about a Barnard graduate named Betty who’s trying to get a book called Riches and Fame and the Pleasures of Sense published — that is, once she’s written it. In search of material, she interviews friends and old classmates and spends time in Paris with her boyfriend Arnold. The book is filled with snippets. Snippets of the interviews, of Betty’s notebooks, of a play she wrote in elementary school, of letters to editors, of thoughts on such topics as 'Modern Youth Searches for an Identity.' ... All this would quickly grow insufferable were it not for Kathy Black’s winning acknowledgement that since we’re following along with her wanderings, she owes the reader a chuckle or accurate insight every page or so." From my perspective, I add only, and rather lamely, that Black's writing style reminded me at times of Richard Brautigan. And that was before I even got the mention of mayonnaise.

Photos: A trio of Tucson-area Little Free Libraries

On the heels of my visiting a Little Free Library in West Virginia earlier this month, our whole gang visited several libraries in the Tucson area during a fun outing this past Sunday. It's neat to see how creative and inclusive some of these boxes and their surroundings are. Here are some snapshots that convey some of that.

A little Wednesday night headline humor

Fake rocks to appear on local radio show 

Billions of years ago, I clipped this headline and short article from my college newspaper. It was an amusing and harmless cautionary tale about the importance of proofreading headlines carefully.

For awhile, I had it posted on a bulletin board. Then it eventually went into an manila envelope, from which it emerged many years later to be taped into a scrapbook that I retroactively labeled Papergreat: Volume Zero. Some of the Relics blog posts (Papergreat's predecessor) came from that scrapbook.

Anyway: Journalists and copy editors, please proof your headlines. Fake rocks are no laughing matter.

1933 QSL card to Loring Daniels from Succasunna, N.J.

It has been — are we sitting down? — 10½ years since my last post about the QSL cards of Loring A. Daniels (1907-1995). When I last wrote about Daniels and his QSLs in February 2016, Barack Obama was still president, Donald Trump had just picked up his first GOP primary win in New Hampshire, and Bartolo Colon was still an active Major League Baseball player, who, at age 42, had never hit a home run. (That would change in a few months.)

You can read my 10-year-old research about Daniels' life in that February 2016 post. Pretty obviously, I haven't done any additional work since then. I guess I get too easily distracted by the next pretty thing.

But for now I still have a small stack of QSLs that were mailed to Daniels, mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, when he lived in Delaware and before he moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Featured today is a QSL that Daniels received from Jack Lee (W3CWG) of Succasunna, New Jersey, in autumn 1933. (The ham radio contact was made on Sept. 29 and the QSL is postmarked Oct. 2.) Succasunna is an unincorporated community in Morris County that takes its name from the Lenape peoples. It was, according to Wikipedia, the location of the world's first electronic switching public telephone exchange.

As for the card, I love the illustration of the ham radio operator and wonder what "The Voice of Prosperity" printed above it, right in the rough middle of the Great Depression, means. I'm also super curious about the red stamp that's been applied to both front and back and states "3CNS-3CWG SPECIAL $8.50." If any radio enthusiasts or historians could provide some insight in the comments, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Lake Illustrated Classics editions of Shakespeare, circa 1994

I spied but didn't buy (even though they were just $2 apiece) these Lake Illustrated Classic graphic novel versions of William Shakespeare's plays at a Bookmans in Tucson. I think these are the 1994 reprints of the Pendulum Press editions that were originally published circa 1980, right before Pendulum ended that particular series. The covers are mostly identical, in terms of artwork and design, just changing "Pendulum Illustrated Series" to "Lake Illustrated Classics."

Mostly, I thought the covers were intriguing, especially Macbeth with its colorful portrayal of the Weird Sisters. The King Lear cover is OK, but it mostly just makes me want to rewatch Kurosawa's amazing Ran (see article and photos by American Cinematographer).

Apparently these books and other classics adapted by Pendulum were largely targeted for classroom purchase and use. In a paper titled "Educational and Public Information Comics, 1940s–present," authors Christopher Murray and Golnar Nabizadeh state: "Pendulum was headed by David Oliphant and received funding from the US government in the 1970s to produce comics with a focus on education. They hired Vincent Fago, an experienced comics writer, artist and editor, to oversee the production of a series of comics adapting literary texts in a similar vein to Classics Illustrated, in what they terms [sic] the ‘Now Age’ illustrated series, which ran from 1973 to 1980." Pendulum Press also offered audiobook cassettes to go along with these condensed, illustrated versions.

In a 2021 post for My Reader's Block, Bev Hankins recalls discovering Dracula through the original Pendulum series in the classroom: "I didn't meet Dracula in the classroom, however. Unless you count receiving the Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde three-pack of illustrated classics through the Weekly Reader book order form at school. ... I loved reading these adaptations then — there was just enough of the books' creepy storyline to give me the shivers without thoroughly freaking me out. Rereading Dracula now over forty years later, I'm impressed with how much of the story [Naunerle] Farr managed to pack into this condensed version."

Scholastic book: "Mystery of the Green Cat"

• Title: Mystery of the Green Cat
• Author: Phyllis A. Whitney (1903-2008). Yes, she lived to age 104! I briefly wrote about another of her books, Mystery of the Haunted Pool, way back in 2014. The official and robust website about Whitney is still up, and I urge you to go there to learn more.
• Illustrator: Leslie Goldstein. She illustrated a number of children's books in the 1950s and 1960s, but I can't find any biographical information about her. I absolutely love her cover illustration for this book! 
• Publisher: Scholastic Book Services (TX 222)
• Cover price: 60 cents
• Year: 11th printing, May 1972 (first published in 1957)
• Pages: 188
• Format: Paperback
• First sentence: Without leaving his place by the wide living room window, Andy could hear angry sounds coming from across the hall.
• Last sentence: How good this crab tasted, Jill thought, and knew it was because happiness gave everything added flavor.
• Random passage from the middle #1: Jill took the book, looking first at the title. It was called New Century in San Francisco and had been published in 1903. As she began to read the paragraphs Andy had pointed out, her eyes fell upon the name "Furness."
• Long random passage from the middle #2: "Lotus sometimes helped her father in the store and she was waiting on a customer when the girls went in. She was a pretty girl, neatly dressed in a skirt and sweater, her black hair drawn back and held by a silver barrette. She had been born in San Francisco, Hana said, and had never been to China. As soon as the customer left, Lotus came to greet the girls, her accent plainly American. Hana explained about the finding of the green cat, and Lotus seemed fascinated by the story. When Jill took the strip of paper, carefully wrapped in tissue, from her pocket and gave it to her, Lotus examined it carefully. She not only went to a regular American school, she explained, but also attended Chinese classes and had learned the language and written characters of her father's country."
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.97 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: Jackie wrote: "My 3rd grade teacher read this to our class, and I absolutely loved it then. This book, and a picture on the back cover of a little cat, inspired me to make a little ceramic cat in college that I still have."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.7 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review: In 2017, Olivier Dunrea wrote: "Loved this book when I was 11 years old. Reread it 53 years later and still love it! Just an excellent mystery with believable characters — including the city of San Francisco."
• Comments from a recent Vintage Paperback Books post on Facebook: "Still have my copy!" ... "I can still remember a few passages verbatim! I almost always re-read books I liked multiple times. A tendency I retain to the present day!" ... "Love this book, read it in the summer of '72, home recuperating after a lengthy hospital stay. As an adult I found it online and bought it."
• Availability: As of this morning, there are about two dozen used copies on eBay, with prices, including shipping, starting around $14. There has not been a modern reprint of the book.
• Not really related but interesting Papergreat post: Mystery RPPC: Girl holding a cat