The Pathos of Obsolete Reference Books

The library at the academic institute where I work part-time recently had a massive chuck-out.  Scanning the tomes strewn across the tables, I was struck by the high proportion of reference books - encyclopedias, dictionaries, guides, thesauruses,  -ographies of various types. Quite a few of them seemed to be just lists bound between hard covers - an inventory of modernist sculptures made in the UK between 1945 and 1972 along with their current institutional location; a list of works by female visual artists; examples of land art. 

Reference books used to be one of the most reliable generators of revenue within publishing. The sheer number of libraries around the world provided a guaranteed base level of sales, and there were other institutions that might have a specialist interest in particular reference works. Back then, you could  also probably rely on some individuals buying them as well -  people with professional or obsessional reasons. Then with general knowledge encyclopedias, there was the association of owning a set with self-advancement and edification. But it's the specialized reference works that grabbed my eye as I browsed the bargain-price tables in the library. 

It seemed to me that it must have been such a thriving market that publishers of these kinds of work had an incentive to keep coming up with new subjects and concepts for reference works, to the point of inventing needs and desires that didn't necessarily exist until the idea was put out there. How else to explain some of the titles that I saw -  like the Dictionary of Literary Characters. Or like these - 

There were various other kinds of reference works that weren't exactly encyclopedias or dictionaries. I was fascinated by these bound volumes of New York Times theater reviews from just one single year in the early  1970s - attracted by the illustrations printed directly onto the burlap-like cloth covers, instead of onto a dust jacket, but also intrigued by the idea that these compendia even existed.  

But no doubt for a drama school or a university theatre department, having these in book form was much preferable in term of ease of use than having to scroll through back issues of the New York Times on micro-film.  

The stuff in this stacks-clearing sale were going dirt cheap and I was tempted to rescue some of the orphaned tomes - but I was put off by the sheer weight of them (going to my place of work involve a lengthy commute by public transport) and also the knowledge that - after an initial flick-through - I would almost certainly pile them up in some corner and never look at them again, The house is already horribly cluttered  - I must have around 400 unread books. 

Still, there was something melancholy about these bereft books....  I thought of all the effort, diligence, care that must have gone into their laborious construction.  The sense of responsibility felt. The belief that what was being undertaken was of real value. And I'm sure they were valuable to users.  Remember just how hard it was to find things out before the internet. 

Of course, pathos suffuses the objects in any second-hand store - books, records, magazines, whatever. You find yourself imagining the creative excitement behind each object - the labour not just of the authors but of everyone involved in making a project reach fruition and get out into the world: editors,  designers, marketing and promotion people. DJ Shadow's comment about the record store basement as a graveyard of dreams comes to mind. But with music, there is still the possibility of a life in the culture - radio play or streams or YouTube views...  crate-diggers unearthing things and sampling etc. The analogue husk of the music is not necessarily the end of the story. Fiction and non-fiction can get reissued or rediscovered by new readers. But reference books - here, it's the very function that has been voided. The internet has usurped the role of the bound ink-and-paper repository of information. 

Before the internet took over, back in the 1990s, one of my main ways of procrastinating - putting off the work that needed to be done - was to pull a reference book off the shelves and flick through it. Almost always something to do with music. Often it was the Rolling Stone Albums Guide, which had somehow come into my possession - it's not something I would have bought. I'd skim through it and my eye would come to rest on an entry for the Allman Bros, or Bloodrock. Or I'd reread and be freshly bemused by the loathing directed at Sparks, or snort once again at the measly 3 out of 5 stars afforded My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything.

 Chuck Eddy's "guide" to greatest heavy metal album was another thing I'd dip into repeatedly. 

Thinking back to much earlier in my life, certain reference works were revelatory. Take The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction - a thick, full-color book teeming with illustrations and reproduced covers of paperbacks and s.f. magazines, but also crammed with well-written, informative essays on various sub-genres and scenario typologies, and mini-thinkpieces by some of the great writers in the field (there's a terrific one by J.G. Ballard on the cataclysm novel).  

The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction was a present I asked for for my 14th birthday, or maybe it was Christmas 1977 - I'm not sure.  Another present request was a pictorial dictionary - the one below. See, I fancied being able to recognise and name things like, say, all the different parts of a shoe, and to know all the different kinds of shoe as well... basically have at my command the names of appliances and tools and vehicles and garments and plants and creatures and ... every kind of object and substance in the world. 

However although I never got rid of it - and recently was reunited with the book after years of it languishing in storage -  I have never once found myself using The Oxford-Duden Pictorial English Dictionary.  So I still couldn't identify the different bits of a shoe or name many types of footwear.  I guess there's still time... 

Jokes, Novelties and Tricks Catalogue Pages

Struwwelpeter (shock-headed" Peter)

Finally managed to get a very old copy of Struwwelpeter (shock-headed" Peter)
this is a very dark and strange collection of childrens stories. Written in 1845 by Heinrich Hoffman. Hoffmann wrote the book in reaction to what he perceived as a lack of good books at the time for children.
 

In six short, illustrated stories, Hoffman, a physician from Frankfurt, told grisly moral tales: of a boy who wasted away after refusing his soup, another who lay writhing in pain after a mistreated dog exacted revenge, and yet another who had his thumb cut off after he sucked on it one too many times. Struwwelpeter’s sin was that he never cut his nails, bathed, or combed his hair; his punishment was distinct and cruel—he was unloved. Hoffman spared none of his fictional children. When they misbehaved, they were punished. Cruel Frederick, for instance, was nasty to all creatures, pulling wings off of flies, killing birds, and throwing kittens down the stairs. But when Frederick beat his dog without mercy, the dog turned on him. Frederick ends up in the bed, wounded and sick, and the dog is never punished. He gets to eat the boy’s dinner (at the table, no less). Text from Atlas Obscura The 19th Century Book of Horrors

In 1955 Writer/director Fritz Genschow adapted Hoffmann's book to the big screen. Previously he had made film adaptions of Hansel and Gretel and would go on to adapt Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty
and other family films. A stage production of Shockheaded Peter, by Philip Carr and Nigel Playfair, with music by Walter Rubens, premiered at the Garrick Theatre in London on 26 December 1900.

The Comb-Over, over?

 [post formerly at the old Found Objects but reconstituted in honor of Britain's greatest footballer, Sir Bobby Charlton, RIP- and a great comb-over owner]

One thing I've noticed on my visits back to England over the last few years--you will never see a comb over anymore.

They used to be the mark of male middle age.

Bus conductors, men in betting shops, famous footballers, TV quiz presenters.... half the teachers at my school.... they all had comb overs.

At some point sense prevailed and the balding started to shave down their side tufts to near invisible.

Much more dignified (did they really think they were fooling anybody, the comb over squad?)... no need for yucky hair cream to plaster thinning elongated strands across the pate... and unlike the comb over invulnerable to the elements or a football colliding off the bonce. 

However one side effect is that walking through a crowded public space in the U.K. today, it can feel like there's a lot of aging, getting-stout skinheads about.

"Central heating for kids"

What passes for a chilly morning in Southern California (I've grown soft). So I made some porridge for breakfast.

Felt like there was a small bonfire in my belly for an hour or so later. 

Reminded me of these cosy-yet-eerie commercials for Ready Brek oatmeal from back in the day.

They were eerier still in my memory, because I pictured them in black-and-white (but I guess that's only because we had a black-and-white TV - as did the majority of the British population then, still)

This washed-out looking one resembles my memory version more closely.

Perhaps some of the "eerie" is the faint suggestion of radioactivity - like this one lucky breakfast-protected kid is also somehow the solitary victim of post-nuclear fallout. 

 Ah, they carried them on well into the 1980s, here adding some hip hop breakdancing / bodypopping / moonwalk-glide "hepness" to the mix.  Nicely juxtaposed with one of those gasometers.

I assume this 2020 refix is one of those retro-commercials where they bring back the fondly-remembered template for nostalgic reasons. Here the pitch has been expanded from "Central heating for kids" to "Central heating for everyone"

I should imagine part of the success of the original ad campaign - alongside its appeal to mums, the idea of protecting your child from the elements in your absence, like an invisible blanket of TLC,  or internal hug even - part of it must have been because central heating was a relatively recent thing, with many UK home getting it for the first time.  (An alternate pitch could have been Double Glazing for Kids, or Loft Insulation for Kids). 

We never got central heating - our new-built estate house may have been one of the last built in the 1960s that didn't routinely have it as a fixture. Instead, we had a coal fireplace, which in the dead of winter became something the entire family huddled around. (We also had a coal shed, which wasn't big enough, so the whole side bit of the house was covered in a giant mound of coal, delivered by the Coal Board. Increasingly, wood from fallen trees supplemented the fuel). 

We also had an electric bar that was stuck bizarrely quite high up on the wall of adjoining room, most of the heat from which shot straight to the ceiling uselessly. There was also a freestanding two-bar electric fire that could be moved around the house where needed - temporary possession of which was fought over jealously. It was around this orange-glowing device that I curled myself  -  after the trauma of dashing from the bathtub across a draughty landing to my bedroom - in an attempt to absorb as much of the warmth emitted as possible.

I don't remember ever having a hot breakfast - certainly nothing like porridge. 

We were shunted out into the world, walking to school no matter the weather - snow, fog, frost, bucketing rain. Clad in shorts all year round, until the age of 14! 

For some reason, children were not given umbrellas in those days. Not something you saw - a kid holding an umbrella. (Some kids had garments with hoods, like a parka -not me though). Many a school morning, I can remember sitting, dripping, in my desk, vapour-ripples of steam rising off my drenched uniform.  

Central heating for this kid - fat chance.

Wireless World Part 2

 Back in 2019 I posted a number of pages/ads from the 1962 publication Wireless world back then I had every intention of putting more pages from Wireless World on here, but somehow I got sidetracked. So after a few years delay, here are some more pages from the wonderful Wireless World.