FolioDeux Blog

In the June 20 edition of The New York Times Book Review (will FD ever catch up?) Sam Tanenhaus argues that the best novels are written when the authors are young.  Examples are trotted out.

“There are only three subjects for a writer:  love, money, and death” said Faulkner (and Yeats, says something similar, though he only mentions sex and death).  All of these should be of interest throughout one’s life, but perhaps the ideas of young writers on these themes have been given greater weight recently.

Tanenhaus does not discuss who decides what novels get published. There has long been a bias in publishing to take a chance on a young (cheap) writer, and many an older writer has been dropped by his/her agent and publisher, of if starting out at an older age, never gets a contract (things are slightly better in genre fiction).

Then there’s the question of who decides what is great.  Perhaps critics are just more interested in tales of young love, youthful adventure, and so on than they are with the concerns that might center the novels of an older writer.  And perhaps the young have more time to read and gravitate to those books that mirror their own concerns, stamping them with “great” well before they have read the works of older writers, on themes perhaps not so close to the heart of young readers.

FD was reading a several-weeks-old New York Times Book Review and saw a mention of a new book on baseball cards.  Collecting baseball cards, once nearly universal among young boys and kept up by some as they grew older, is now a dying hobby, it seems.

FD collects lots of things:  Books, post cards, cobalt glass (but only very specific items), old cinnabar-like jewelry,  pencils, small glass fish made by Lalique, and more… But this may be because FD is older than the internet.  FD suspects that when all is available virtually, perhaps not much is needed concretely.  And, perhaps collections become virtual, too (FD has a collection of “Astronomy picture of the day” pictures, in her picture folder on-line…).

Mr. FD bought FD a fun book some months ago, The History of Mystery by Max Allen Collins, the Iowa mystery writer.  The book is one of those very large “coffee table” books, with lots of wonderful images of old pulp magazines, old paperback covers, movie posters, and so on, accompanied by some interesting text by Mr. Collins.  Indeed, FD after finishing the book, FD had a new list of old mysteries to investigate, and just finished reading one:  a “Miss Silver” mystery by Patricia Wentworth Called Through the Wall.  A British cosy from 1950, it was a quick and enjoyable read.

Alas, when FD went out to the web in search of more books by Collector’s Press, all that was found were used copies of various books, but nothing about the press itself.  It appears that this is a case of another press gone out of business.  Well, as long as there are used bookstores, all is not lost.