Sunday Reading
A rainy and windy day drive yesterday through winding rolling roads to visit my favorite used bookstore, Rogers Book Barn in Hillsdale, New York. On the way, I came across not one, but two large snapping turtles, side-by-side, planning to cross a country road. Took it as a sign (a sign of what I don’t know).
At Rogers I decided against buying two different (relatively modern) paperback editions of James Thurber & E.B. White’s Is Sex Necessary and settled on the 1990 Harper Perennial edition (price: $2.00) shown below left; on the right: the first edition, published in 1929, from the Spill‘s library.
This later edition includes, as you see on the cover, “an Introduction by E.B. White.” The introduction first appeared in the 1950 edition. Although I’ve re-read that intro a number of times, until this morning I never grasped four important words in this section where White describes what it was like sharing an office at The New Yorker with Thurber. After White tells us that Thurber was constantly drawing, he adds: :
“…his pictures were so numerous that he and I had both acquired the habit of tossing them in the wastebasket almost as fast as he produced them.”
The four words: “…and I had both…” Until today I did not know that White joined Thurber in tossing the latter’s drawings into the trash. Heavens! (White more than made up for that by rescuing an early version of Thurber’s Seal drawing from the trash, then sending it off to The New Yorker‘s art meeting, lighting a slow-fuse that led to Thurber’s other major contribution to The New Yorker, and to us all: his cartoons).
…
Also found and bought yesterday (the price is shown on the below scan):Making & Collecting Military Miniatures by Bob Bard.
This book bears Robert Andrew Parker’s bookplate, and is inscribed:
To my friend, Robert Andrew Parker. Many thanks for 99% of the ideas in this book.
Bobbie Bard.
Robert Andrew Parker, who passed away in December of 2023 at age 96, was, as the New York Times said of him, a “prolific magazine and book illustrator.”
Among the magazines he contributed to: The New Yorker.
Also in the Times obit: “He [Parker] painted monkeys and landscapes, imaginary battle scenes…”
