TEXTBLOCK | MARCH–APRIL 2022
Weller Book Customers

By Tony Weller
This may be the first newsletter in 30 years without a feature article by me. I am glad in this busy time that other Weller Book Works booksellers stepped forward to cover for me. Between book collections and the reorganization of our rare book department, February disappeared. 

Nonetheless, here’s a timely thought. 

Censors of books: You fight losing battles. Censorship is practiced by authoritarians who mistrust others, themselves, and human nature. Even if censorship were intelligent, fortunately it is mathematically unachievable. Would-be censors, crawl back into your holes where you can hide from the troubling light of diversity.
Rare Book Acquisitions
By Tony Weller
Herbert E. Bolton’s thick 1949 volume, Coronado on the Turquoise Trail, was the first title in the Coronado Cuarto Centennial Publications series edited by George P. Hammond. The original edition of this well- written history is hard to find in its dust jacket. $500
All seven 1986-1990 Walt Disney/Carl Barks Gladstone Giant Specials featuring Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, and Mickey Mouse. $90
A jacketless 1st edition of Amelia Earhart’s 1932 book, The Fun of It: Random Records of My Own Flying and of Women in Aviation, with the small square brown 78 rpm “audio autograph” in the envelope mounted inside the rear cover. Ex-libris Sam Weller. $400
First edition of Zane Grey’s 1928 biographical book, Zane Grey, the Man and His Work: An Autobiographical Sketch, Critical Appreciations & Bibliography. This thin brown flexible leather volume contains Grey’s 19-page autobiographical essay and his 14-page “What the Open Means to Me,” along with five essays about him by others. Inscribed by Grey to previous owner on front free endsheet. $175
The London Folio Society editions of classic works are among my favorites. Their 2008 edition of The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James is illustrated brightly with historic art. Fine in slipcase. $95
It is not too late to get your copy of the Secret and Original Pogo Poop Book containing the latest poop on Jack Acid Society, Prehysteria, Kluck Klams, Mouse into Elephant, Computer Commuter, and Whose God Is Dead? This nice 1966 first edition is signed “Happy 1967” by Walt Kelly. $225
“Hapworth 16, 1924” is the last published story by the reclusive J D Salinger, best known for Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey. The lengthy story was printed in the June 19, 1965 issue of The New Yorker. Our copy is a bit worn with taped spine and some simple math notes on the rear cover Coke ad. The previous owner has made a few notes in Salinger’s tale. You could find a nicer copy with a bigger price tag. Ours is a bargain at $300
Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage by Elizabeth Siegel is a very fun history and collection of images of this playful and sometime subversive art form. This attractive jacketless (Yay!) oblong hardcover from the Art Institute of Chicago was published in 2010. $75
March-April Best Wellers' Pick
Receive 20% off when you purchase during March & April
BY ART SPIEGELMAN
Pantheon Books
Hardback
Sale price $28.00

Reviewed by Salem Rogers
Maus is widely credited as one of the first comics to be taken seriously by academics, and to challenge the public's popular conception of comics as cheesy genre trash. Spiegelman's artful blend of visual symbolism, personal narrative, and history defies genre and demands dissection. While Spiegelman's influence on the medium cannot be overstated, Maus is often written about as an anomaly that elevated a supposedly juvenile art form. I maintain Maus is not effective in spite of being a comic, but because it is a comic.

The way comics, and Maus in particular, are structured engages the mind in a way that is totally unique to the medium and requires active participation from the reader. In comics, the negative space between panels is called, “the gutter.” The gutter does more than simply divide one frame from the next; it exists as a liminal space in the reader's mind that prompts them to fill in what happens between panels. When Spiegelman transitions from interviewing his father, to recreating his father's experiences, the reader is forced to pause and readjust their perspective accordingly. Maus simultaneously offers a first and second hand account of the Holocaust. By tying his father's memories to his own depiction of them in the present day, Spiegelman also ties the events of the Holocaust to the present day in the reader's mind, showing the two are intrinsically connected. These shifts in perspective occur seamlessly; panels often bleed into each other in a skillful manipulation of time and space, the gutter giving the reader room for inference while allowing them to effortlessly follow the narrative thread.

The pairing of words and images also layers meaning in a way unique to this art form. Visual arts, of course, have a language all their own, and the visual symbolism in Maus is one of its greatest strengths. One of the things that makes Maus so accessible to younger readers is its usage of immediately recognizable cat and mouse imagery. Though Spiegelman's exploration of political power dynamics, identity, and nationalism is by no means facile, the cat and mouse iconography condenses these broader themes into a visual metaphor that can be understood before a single word has been placed on the page. Most striking to me is Spiegelman's inclusion of masks at key points. At one point, Spiegelman draws himself in his artist's studio, reflecting on the unexpected success of the first volume. Here, he does not draw himself as we've seen him before, with a mouse head. He draws himself wearing a mouse mask, a subtle but significant difference that raises questions both about identity and whether art can or should be truly representative of the life it imitates. 

Another excellent display of Spiegelman's artful questioning of representation and identity comes when his father recounts his time at Auschwitz. While the prisoners line up to be counted, a man steps out of line, claims to be German, and begs for mercy. In one panel, Spiegelman draws him as a mouse. In the next panel, he is depicted as a cat. Cat or mouse, German or Jew, neither Spiegelman, his father, nor the officers at Auschwitz could tell, and the man is beaten just the same. In the span of just two panels, Spiegelman is able to articulate the oft overlooked fact that under fascism, no identity remains safe for long, and no matter who you are or what privilege you hold, your life will be deemed just as disposable given enough time.

While Maus has long been upheld as a classic, I'm sure you know as well as I do that in recent months, public interest has skyrocketed following a Tennessee school board's unanimous decision to remove Maus from their curriculum. This decision has unsurprisingly evoked nationwide outrage. In the wake of modern-day fascist movements and widespread acceptance of white supremacist ideology, it is deeply disturbing to consider educators would choose this particular climate to challenge one of the most seminal works of Holocaust literature, and it doesn't read as a coincidence. Luckily for Maus, there’s one thing many Americans seem to agree on: it really pisses them off when a book gets challenged or banned. Sales for Maus have seen an unprecedented uptick. 

Granted, I am not an educator, nor do I have children. I am a reader who was once a child myself, however, and it feels almost laughable to suggest a Holocaust narrative is too violent or vulgar. The collective trauma of genocide should be hard to look at, and any retelling of history that would seek to sanitize this trauma is at best effectively useless, and at worst, fascist propaganda. Whether you choose to examine history or not, it still has lasting repercussions, and trauma, whether personal or intergenerational, can never truly be erased, only obscured. You can choose to look away, but the monster remains.

* * *

I owe an enormous debt to Scott McCloud's 1994 graphic work, Understanding Comics, which completely blew my mind, and gave me a whole new appreciation for a medium I already loved. After nearly 30 years, it's still an invaluable resource to anyone who cares about comics, and feels as fresh and funny as anything published today. 

While you're checking out Maus, I also recommend you seek out Rebecca Hall's graphic history and memoir, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts. Her book also examines intergenerational trauma, history, and representation, and is a stunning piece of research and art.
Bookseller Recommendation

By Andrew DeYoung

Keylight Books
Hardback $27.99
Out March 29, 2022

Reviewed by José Knighton
To say that Jacob Eliot’s first day of work for tech giant Delphi Enterprises does not go well would be a grotesque understatement. As an overqualified, underpaid temp, Jacob is an “everyman” (though the gendered term may be archaic, the archetype is not) and a member of the best educated minimum wage workforce American capitalism has ever had the opportunity to exploit. 

Whether threatened by the end of a whip or the end of a homeless soup line, or whether a culture identifies an exploited class as temps, interns, serfs or slaves, they are no less victimized by an unjust social system that permits—even encourages and enshrines—a malignant concentration of wealth and power. CEOwner of Delphi, Tristan Brandt is “everytyrant.” Just close your eyes; you can’t help but visualize the icon of preening self-infatuation that you've already seen too many times. 

Once Jacob gains admittance to Delphi’s high-security office complex and gets his temp ID—but before he finds the mailroom where he’s destined to labor or even has a notion what Delphi makes or does—he witnesses an ecstatic gathering of employees in an outdoor courtyard enclosed by the office complex. The great man himself is expected to speak. Jacob is dismayed that his temp ID does not allow him access to the “all-company” audience. But his disappointment is quickly expunged as a sudden outbreak of chaos in the courtyard escalates to violence and deadly mayhem: the corporate apocalypse has begun. 

Within minutes, the interior of the high-security complex that had already begun to feel like a high-security prison becomes a high-security sanctuary for survivors. Of what? As Jacob gathers a few strays, he begins a quest to find answers. Just what kind of sociopathic experiment has Brandt’s megalomaniacal cartel unleashed? And where is the aforementioned malefactor lurking? Do you dare find out?

The Weller Zodiac
Roll for Your Fortune!
By Mary Fluker

Astrology is written in the stars. Most people are aware of the etymological connection of “astro” and “star” already. “Zodiac,” however, has no such linguistic constraints, though it almost exclusively associated with how the stars and the path of our planet reveal our paths through life. The Weller Zodiac is not astrology.

Your sign, one of six, is determined by the roll of a single, common six-sided die. Once it is cast, your fate is decided. Your horoscope is in effect as of April 1. For best results, seek out Tony Weller himself and have him roll for you with one of his always-ready dice. There is no inherent power in this, but it seems appropriate, does it not?
1. Libremount, The Endless Task

The Libremount is stacks and stacks of books awaiting their place in our store. As we live, so too do we toil. Much of a what we must do is never done. Life depends on a repetitive cycle to continue until it very finally doesn’t. The Libremount is a task, yes, but a sign of the continued health of the Book Works.

Those who have fallen under this sign are hard workers, often just for the sake of keeping busy.

A small decision is going to have unexpected consequences. Snowballing consequences. So the next time you’re asked what you want for dinner, really think it through. Is there any way your decision could end with you stranded on the side of Mount Olympus during a blizzard? Don’t do that one.
2. Our Lady of Whiskers, The Bookstore Cat

Needing little introduction, the Bookstore Cat is a cat that resides in a bookstore. This one in particular lounges in our shelves in spirit rather than physically. You can hear her purrs if you listen closely.

Under the sign of the bookstore cat, you are well-liked by most people. Perhaps not through your own merit. You are non-confrontational, valuing the status quo above the unknown. It’s an easier life and a worthy life, but you can’t help but wonder what you may be missing out on.

You’re going to make a very special friend this week. It will be odd that he’s never around when anybody else is and it’s going to be weird how you keep running into each other, but you’ve never had better company and he’s a damn fine ukulele player. You could do a lot worse.
3. La Belle Venimeuse, The Poison Book

What cost are you willing to pay for knowledge? What are you willing to allow into yourself for beauty? It’s is enticing, yes; an emerald hue unlike any other. Arsenic has many uses, after all.

If you have found yourself under the influence of The Poison Book, you are a risk-taker first and foremost. What others pass up is readily available to you. Just remember: not all knowledge is truth.

You are going to be rich beyond your wildest imagination. If you can find the coordinates to where fate has buried the treasure for you. The instructions are painted on the bottom of a river rock. You have until April 19 before the treasure is relocated. Fate’s kind of a jerk that way.
4. Biblichor, The Scent of Books

It greets you when you cross our threshold. Many have remarked on its appeal. Though I agree that is a smell of comfort, it is also the smell of decay; the passage of time taking away what you now hold dear.

If chance assigned you Biblichor, you are a passive go-with-the flow kind of soul. You are largely content with things the way they are and the way they will be.

April 10 promises romance and only romance. If you wish to avoid roses, candles, and the inescapable whisper of sweet nothings, perhaps you should stay inside that day. The disembodied whispers won’t be able to get through your door.
5. Jules, The Browser

Are they lost? Do they know where they should be? Where they want to be? Perhaps they are overwhelmed by choice or perhaps the delight in exploration. The Browser may not know what they’re looking for. The best we can hope for is that they’ll know it when they see it.

Those with the sign of The Browser are frequently aimless. In our modern world, this has negative connotations but I tell you that an aimless life is one filled with potential. You may have no dreams or you may have too many dreams, all that means is that every corner you turn to may be the one that changes your life.

You’re going to win the lottery! Well not the lottery. A lottery. Well, actually a raffle. For Crocs. They’re yellow. Your lucky number are 8 15 12 62 and 8 again.
6. Verbacaesa, The Book Cutter Ant

A fabulous pest, these insects carefully extract words from the pages of a defenseless book and rearrange them in order to create found-word poetry for their queen.

Those of this sign have energy best suited to creation and destruction.

You’re going to get fired from your job at the trout packing company because you never showed up. Really, you shouldn’t need a horoscope to know that you lose jobs when you don’t show up to them. I’d leave this one off your resume.
The Unrolled

You somehow resisted temptation and now your fate is your own. Do as you will, I can tell you nothing of what the future holds for you. Enjoy your freedom from the constraints of certainty. You rebel.
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We host both virtual and in-person events, and we look forward to seeing you soon.

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