Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

By The Erudite Redneck

Step 1 of any 12-step program is: "We admitted we were powerless over (alcohol, or using credit, or tiddlywinks, or buying books, or whatever), that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Welp, put me down as a social book buyer then, because I am as pleased with myself for what I didn’t buy as what I did at Larry McMurtry’s store, Booked Up Inc., Saturday in Archer City, Texas, the novelist's hometown.

This ability to control myself did not come easily. It is a change that came free with my it’s-still-in-the-mail master’s degree in history. Fact is, you can’t read all the books you want to read once you get snake-bit by the history bug – so why buy the dang things?

From where I’m sitting, in my home office (home “junk pit” is more like it), I can count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, NINE grocery sacks of books in the floor that make up the biggest part of my to-read list. In the closet are two shelves of more books I aim to read. And in the bedroom are a few more grocery sacks of books I aim to get to eventually.

So, although I slid seven books off the shelves at Booked Up Inc., I only made it home with four of ’em, and one of them a gift for Dr. ER. It still came to $97 and change – but hey, I didn’t go off on a book-buyin’ bender.

Used to, I’d buy books like a 20-year-old sneakin’ coldbeer at a neighborhood kegger, hurryin’ to drink as much as he can before somebody thinks to check his ID. Not that I personally have any experience at anything like that. Ahem. Now, I’m more into the 12-year-old-single-malt-scotch sort of book buying. Quality, not quantity.

First, the ones I decided not to buy – and I mean I sat at an old table and studied each of my selections all careful like, skimmin’ the indexes and the chapters, and thinkin’ about whether I wanted to own THIS VERY BOOK and pay what McMurtry wanted for it, or be satisfied with a cheaper reprint from somewhere else.

Lots of the books at his bookstore(s) are first editions, or early ones at least, and they ain’t cheap. If all you want is the text of an old book, if all you want to do is read it, in other words, chances are a reprint is available. If you want to own the first edition, or an old hardcopy, then you will pay for it.

The losers were a thick 1970s history of Habsburg Spain and a ’70s biography of Erasmus (note that he is quoted in Latin above in the “masthead” to this blog.) I would like to read both those books, but not at $35 and $25 a pop, respectively. Don’t want THOSE books, I just might would like to read them.

Coming home, somewhere around Chickasha, Okla., I realized that somehow I had gotten away without actually buyin’ this one book that I did want to own, precisely because it WAS a cheap reprint paperback ($4) of a book first published in 1899: Our Red Brothers and the Peace Policy of President Ulysses S. Grant, by Lawrie Tatum. Misplaced it somehow, dadgum it.

What I did make it home with was the following:

Numero uno. John Francis McDermott, ed., The Western Journals of Washington Irving (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1944).

It's a second printing, 1966, and still cost $35. It’s a companion to Irving’s Tour on the Prairies – it’s the personal notes he used to write the book, in fact, after his 1832 tour of what was then wild, unexplored country and is now eastern and central Oklahoma.

Numero two-o. Jack Beeching, The Galleys at Lepanto (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983).

This is a blow-by-blow account, with appropriate historical context, of the sea battle on Oct. 7, 1571, between the Moslem Ottoman Empire and the Christian Holy League that was a watershed of sorts in the struggle for the Mediterranean and western Europe. Some 30,000 men died. Europe hooted and hollered because, while it didn’t beat back the Turks for good, not by a long shot, the battle did prove that they could, in fact, be whupped. $25.

This next one I bought for the title alone:

Numero three-o. Donald Ogden Stewart, A Parody Outline of History: A Curiously Irreverent Treatment of American Historical Events Imagining Them as They Would Be Narrated by America’s Most Characteristic Contemporary Authors, Together with Divers Delightful Droll Drawings Pencilled by Herb Roth (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1921).

Is that a hoot, or what? Funny guy Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show," author of the recently ballyhooed America (the Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction, just acts like he was the first one to write a funny book about American history. The 1921 book is a comic answer to H.G. Wells’ serious nonfiction tome, An Outline of History, which came out the year before to wide acclaim, although it has never been highly regarded by professional historians. I own a copy of the Wells book, so now I have the set. $15.

And, for Dr. ER, I picked up the following, a pamphlet, which she will enjoy, believe it or not (I must admit I like havin’ it in the house, myself):

Numero four-o. "The Nature of Concepts, Their Inter-Relation and Role in Social Structure, Proceedings of The Stillwater Conference, Conducted by The Foundation for Integrated Educated Inc. and Co-Sponsored by Oklahoma A&M College, F.S.C. Northrop and Henry Margenau, Co-Chairmen, June 6, 7, 8, and 9, 1950, at Stillwater, Oklahoma."

Dude. Heavy.

It's cool to me to have such an artifact with Henry G. Bennett's name on it (inside). He was president of Oklahoma A&M then (now Oklahoma State). He is the namesake for Bennett Hall, where I lived back in the day and Bird lives now. Bennett was a big man who did big things right up until he and his wife died in a plane crash in 1951. They were on a trip to Iran at the behest of President Truman, attempting to employ the principles of agricultural extension so successful in this country within the sphere of nation-building and international relations.

END