Special Connections and Association Copies

This comment to my post, It's Who You Associate With, is far too informative and interesting to be buried with the asides.  Association copies is an issue far broader than I described.  Goddard expands on it.

"Harmony Junction" referred to in the article is Goddard Graves'  work in progress.

His compliments to me are embarrassing (a tiny bit - I love the flattery).

-- Florence

Comment:
For me to challenge Florence on anything bibliographic is a bit like a four-year old facing Roger Clemens in a real ball game. But full of the love which casts out fear, I must offer some constructive dissent-- or should I say "amendments"? -- to her discussion of association copies. While I hardly feel the need to cower behind other booksellers -- none of whom are worthy enough to sweep her front stoop -- I must say that the following remarks derive from decades of reading antiquarian book catalogues, & from many years likewise of buying & selling (albeit on a modest level). The definition as offered is simply too narrow, in actual practice. While it is inevitable that book-selling, like any other trade, should have its jargon, it is sad & unnecessary for that jargon to fly in the face of a straightforward, common sense understanding of a simple word like "association." To me, & to many others, an association copy is simply a book which establishes a special connection which might not otherwise exist without that particular volume.

Let me cite four examples which, completely without conventional autographs or inscriptions, seem fully qualified to be association copies.

In my own collection I have a history of the Paris Commune, a copy once owned by George Schilling, a once-famous but now forgotten labour militant who grew up in the historico-ideological backwash of that great movement, and for whom, I am convinced, this voume would have been a secular equivalent of what others might consider Holy Writ. For historians and/or radicals, this association would set this particular copy apart from others otherwise identical to it.

Second, in a university collection to which I will not call unfair attention, I found Aleister Crowley's copy of some book -- after forty years I cannot recall exactly what, though it doesn't really matter -- in which "The Great Beast" had marked a passage & made a marginal note comparing it to one of his own works. Isn't that an association fully as interesting as a simple autograph?

Third, how about the situation of an artist in one medium who has a book which s/he has used as the basis for another creative effort? Certainly the volumes from Thomas Hardy's library which found their way into the library of the great composer Gerald Finzi have a special association value because of Finzi's unsurpassed musical settings of these texts.

Finally, how about a book which might belong to somebody cited in the book, as distinct from its the author? In the forthcoming novel HARMONY JUNCTION, a collector has rounded-up some of the interview-subjects from one of Studs Terkel's many books, and had them sign a copy with their true names as well as the names behind which Terkel veiled them. If that isn't association, I'll change light-bulbs for you for the next decade, Florence -- not that I haven't already had the pleasure.

It is a delight and a privilege to be associated with you, dear Florence, in your blog, and in the love of books. -- Goddard Graves

Comments

[Richard Cameron-Wolfe]

With gratitude to Goddard Graves and to his honoree, I offer the following: Bibliophiles will accept ANYTHING which makes their copy unique. "Association" certainly need not be limited to signatures. If pipe-smoking famous writer X has signed his copy [now mine] of famous writer Y's book, and if there is tobacco residue [subject to brand identification and carbon-dating] within its pages..... need I say more? Another example: I have a signed copy of the score of Noel Farrand's "Time's Long Ago" Symphony, its cover adorned with cat-food footprints. Cat lovers continue to ponder: "Was it Mister Mister, or Koschka, Old Yeller, or...?" Two more examples: Israel Citkowitz's copy of of Faure's opera Penelope, a signed, inscribed gift from Aaron Copland, dated during Copland's first period of study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger - and - a copy of Anna Kavan's novel Who Are You? - bearing the authentic "from the library of" stamp of Anais Nin and Ian Hugo, made even more relevant by my discovery of a reproduction of a hand-written note from Kavan to her publisher [requesting a copy of Who Are You? to send to Jean-Luc Godard], in which she complains, "Anais Nin has written to me again but gives no address - Could you let me have it? I suppose I should answer."