On First Editions of Old Books
I like to think I’m pretty unsentimental about first editions, autographed copies and all other versions of books that ultimately have no bearing on their content. And I’m not sure what hardcovers do that paperbacks don’t, other than straining the straps of my already exhausted handbag. When I was given a first edition of MFK Fisher’s Consider the Oyster and an autographed copy of Not a Station But a Place (Fisher again, with illustrations by Judith Clancy), I sold them on eBay and used the money to pay for a flight to New York. (I lived in Scotland at the time.) None of this is a comment on my esteem for MFK, many of whose books–in mass-market paperback–I still own.
Two weeks ago, I paid my first visit to Joanne Hendrick’s antiquarian cookbook store in Tribeca. I had seen from her website that she carries the full eight volumes of Grimod de la Reynière’s Almanach des Gourmands (which, as you will no doubt tire of hearing me say, I am in the process of translating), in a combination of first and second printings. I felt I needed to see them.
Well, I turned up, and I didn’t dare ask for them. I took my time in that store, peering into a cabinet containing a Campbells soup can (French onion) signed by Andy Warhol and a ceramic liquor flask made to look exactly like a pretzel, salt crystals and all, and making a show of flipping through Pearl S. Buck’s pan-Asian cookbook and something titled Feed the Brute. Finally, I blurted out what I had come to see.
I expected Ms. Hendricks to disappear into some sort of inner sanctum, but the books were right there in the main room, in a slim glass cabinet that housed the more fragile specimens in her collection. She handed me a volume–the second, I think–and let me flip through it at my leisure, not even peering over my shoulder. I kept expecting it to crumble into dust, but it held up just fine.
There was something magical and vital about holding that little book, more than 200 years after it was published, in a shop right by the West Side Highway. I’m still not shelling out $5000 for the set, but this time, it’s more out of necessity than principle.