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The best portrait of Jay Landesman as a cultural conduit was written by Beat historian John Clellon Holmes, 'Most of the time, Landesman was that unique phenomenon in a status-drunk society: a man who knew that the only really hip style is the next one, the one that hasn't been established yet. In the late forties he shifted his attention to the popular arts without sacrificing his sense of the culture as a whole.' Landesman's significant contribution might be his originally conceived lifestyle which, set against the conformity of the Eisenhower years, places him at the heart of that group of 'movers and shakers' who permanently changed America's personal and artistic values.Tales of a Cultural Conduit takes us from Landesman's life as an antique dealer in St. Louis, to New York and his magazine Neurotica: the Authentic Voice of the Beat Generation and on to the Crystal Palace Cabaret Theater in St. Louis. where he invited then unknown artists to break in their act including Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, and Lenny Bruce. 'The cocktail hour was orchestrated like an opera bouffe - music, booze and just the right mix of jarring people... Landesman produced Waiting for Godot instead of South Pacific and thus heralded the cultural renaissance,' wrote Holmes. After a party that lasted ten years, the Landesmans headed for London, just as the place exploded into the kind of popular culture Landesman thrived on. While putting down permanent roots in England, he sent a manuscript , The Nervous Set, an exploration of life in New York in the 1950s, to Gershon Legman who urged him to publish it: 'It's a perfect portrait of the period which I do not believe has ever been portrayed at all, let alone so well.' And so it has to be included here, along with Landesman's reminiscences from birth to his very latest London tales, bringing his rare style full circle, proving that he continues to be a cultural conduit of an extraordinary kind.
Dibdin's Bibliomania is an anthem to the printed book, a warning to the unwary about the perils of obsessive book-collecting, and the confessions of a rabid book-collector. As a casual glance at the book will show, Dibdin's footnotes predominate over text, and it is in the footnotes that the interest lies. They invite questions as often as they answer them. What is the supposed similarity between 'Orator' Henley's library and Addison's memoranda for the Spectator? What cutting words did Edward Gibbon write about Thomas Hearne? Why should we not be surprised to find a book on American history by a Spanish admiral in the library of the President of the Royal Society? Who was Captain Cox who 'could talk as much without book, as any Innholder betwixt Brentford and Bagshot'? Was Polydore Vergil a plagiarist and John Bagford a biblioclast? What is bloterature? Sometimes Dibdin tells us, sometimes he assumes we know, and sometimes he chooses to tantalise us. The endnotes provide some of the answers and will, it is hoped, lead readers to discover new books and new writers, or, more often and more pleasurably, old books and old writers. This book is based upon Dibdin's first edition of 1809, to which have been added an introduction and eighty-five pages of valuable endnotes, mostly concerned with biographical details of the printers, librarians, bookbinders, writers, book-collectors and Bibliomaniacs to whom Dibdin refers. An appendix contains John Ferriar's Bibliomania, the poem which prompted Dibdin's work. There are also a substantial bibliography and index.This book will be invaluable to bibliographers, librarians, cultural historians and all those interested in books and book people. It gives a valuable insights into antiquarianism in general and book-collecting in particular. Dibdin's book ranges widely, from Juliana Barnes, Wynkyn de Worde, Michael Maittaire and the St Albans Schoolmaster, to Thomas Hope, Edward Rowe Mores, William Hunter and Horace Walpole. Many of his footnotes (which take up far more of the book than the text) contain details of the important book sales of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century to tantalise the reader: Caxton's Boke of Chivalrie selling for 11 shillings in 1756; Grenville's 1800 edition of Homer selling for an astounding £99 15s in 1804.Peter Danckwerts studied Book Publishing at Oxford Polytechnic, Bibliography & Textual Criticism at the University of Leeds, Mathematics with the Open University, and Medieval Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is currently preparing an edition of Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers for Tiger of the Stripe.
This volume presents the life and times of Jay Landesman, author, entertainer, writer and publisher.
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