Why Does This Blog Look Like It Does

Why Does This Blog Look Like It Does?

            Our books (and this blog) are written and produced by ourselves.  We have never bothered to get anyone interested in helping us in anyway.  We know our books (and this blog) are filled with spelling errors, grammatical errors, bad prose and an open treasure chest of other blatant flaws suitable for extensive discussion by… who?

By people who know nothing about rare Americana, that’s who.

            Our books (and this blog) are written and produced fully within the grand tradition of Rare Americana, the rarest, most desirable and most valuable of all rare books in the world.  This is because for over a quarter (now nearly a half) of a century I have been a dealer in Rare Americana.  Do you think I am going to turn my back on the very essence of what feeds my family?  Do you think I am going to sell short the fantastic, vibrant and rock solid traditions of American prose and printing by selling out to the monolithic publishing empire and their stuffed-shirt and dreadfully boring editorial staff?  No!

            After reading this book (and this blog) you will fully understand what those GIANT COPORATE PUBLISHING CONGLOMERATES who KNOW NOTHING about dealing in the rarest Americana (books that were miserable publishing failures) would do to these books, (this blog) and its author.  Turn my back on them is what I have done to assure our readers that they get real Americana.  Real Americana is private sector writing and publishing done in a manor that presents raw rough & tumble prose traditionally in a very low budget format that is most often described as “ephemeral in nature”.  The rarest books in the slip cases on the rich collector’s shelves started life as retched throw-away most often classified as “pamphleteering”.

Common Sense

and every other substantive imprint of Americana was and remains to this day BEST as a production that LOOKS AND READS LIKE THIS BOOK (THIS BLOG) DOES.

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            By 1999 I had written four books, numerous short stories and even more vignettes about buying and selling antiques and rare books.   I had written even more than more “rare book catalogs”.  All were ephemerally self published as described above and all eventually needed to have the above “broadside handbill” slipped inside each copy of each production to… clear up and give direction to the confused reader while also …having my word crafting VERY WELL RECEIVED by those “who know”.  My writing is NOT a “written about them”.  It is an “written about us”… and written by an “us”.  I took a hiatus from writing for a decade but I have returned to writing down my antiques and rare books dealer stories  in this “blog”.

            I do not have to be the one who defines or explains Americana.  Many have and do.  For ease, I recommend Charles P. Everitt’s definition in his memoir THE ADVENTURES OF A TREASURE HUNTER.  A RARE BOOKMAN IN SERCH OF AMERICAN HISTORY, Boston, Little Brown & Co., 1952.