I'm weakest on RPW. The amount of time I spend reading and researching to write a few words one would assume I'm ignorant of the concept of efficiency.
He was still writing when I was in high school 1980s. A couple that remain vivid to me have a literary or historical theme. One was a poem called Literal Dream in which he imagines himself as the landlady in Tess of the d’Urbervilles in the scene where Alec’s blood is dripping through the floor. It was shortly after the Roman Polanski movie of Tess was out and RPW had a subtitle to his poem where he boasts about not having watched the film but having read the book a couple of decades earlier. As I type this it feels poignant for a couple of reasons, one is that I’m remembering his poem a few decades later just as he remembered Hardy, and the other reason is that he’s been compared to Hardy in the sense of both being novelists and poets.
Another one I recall, he reaches out to volumes of Gibbon on his shelves, “solid as masonry” and I’ve just Googled enough to glean apparently it’s “Wind and Gibbon” and appeared in the Spring 1983 issue of The Southern Review. Mentioning it since Gibbon was a historian as are you and wouldn’t it be the coolest thing ever if now without moving from where you’re sitting you could reach out to your own shelves and pick up that very issue acquired on one of your Elder’s Bookstore binges?
I meant to comment on this piece a few weeks ago. I was sharing it this evening with some fellow bibliophiles as an example of the pinnacle of association copies. Well done, I was more than a bit envious. Cheers, Brian
Thank you for reading and sharing. I consider fellow bibliophiles my target audience, especially those familiar with the names I drop. I think every From the Shelves essay I’ve written is about an association copy. As I probably repeat too often, I collect books from people I collect to people I collect.
Chase, thank you for this essay, and for your dedication to Southern letters. I’m thinking about a little Robert Penn Warren project, so I’m alert to all things Fugitives. (RPW looms large over bookish people of my generation born, raised, and educated in Kentucky.) As soon as I can get through editorial wrangling on my current book, I plan to re-read RPW’s novels, some of his poems, a biography, and his contribution to I’ll Take My Stand - an impractical amount of work that might result in one 3,000-word essay.
I'm weakest on RPW. The amount of time I spend reading and researching to write a few words one would assume I'm ignorant of the concept of efficiency.
He was still writing when I was in high school 1980s. A couple that remain vivid to me have a literary or historical theme. One was a poem called Literal Dream in which he imagines himself as the landlady in Tess of the d’Urbervilles in the scene where Alec’s blood is dripping through the floor. It was shortly after the Roman Polanski movie of Tess was out and RPW had a subtitle to his poem where he boasts about not having watched the film but having read the book a couple of decades earlier. As I type this it feels poignant for a couple of reasons, one is that I’m remembering his poem a few decades later just as he remembered Hardy, and the other reason is that he’s been compared to Hardy in the sense of both being novelists and poets.
Another one I recall, he reaches out to volumes of Gibbon on his shelves, “solid as masonry” and I’ve just Googled enough to glean apparently it’s “Wind and Gibbon” and appeared in the Spring 1983 issue of The Southern Review. Mentioning it since Gibbon was a historian as are you and wouldn’t it be the coolest thing ever if now without moving from where you’re sitting you could reach out to your own shelves and pick up that very issue acquired on one of your Elder’s Bookstore binges?
I meant to comment on this piece a few weeks ago. I was sharing it this evening with some fellow bibliophiles as an example of the pinnacle of association copies. Well done, I was more than a bit envious. Cheers, Brian
Thank you for reading and sharing. I consider fellow bibliophiles my target audience, especially those familiar with the names I drop. I think every From the Shelves essay I’ve written is about an association copy. As I probably repeat too often, I collect books from people I collect to people I collect.
Chase, thank you for this essay, and for your dedication to Southern letters. I’m thinking about a little Robert Penn Warren project, so I’m alert to all things Fugitives. (RPW looms large over bookish people of my generation born, raised, and educated in Kentucky.) As soon as I can get through editorial wrangling on my current book, I plan to re-read RPW’s novels, some of his poems, a biography, and his contribution to I’ll Take My Stand - an impractical amount of work that might result in one 3,000-word essay.