Well, Darn

Darn Piper, in fact.  Sorry about the mild, very mild joke on an unhappy day.  I'm contractually obligated as DeForest Arnold Piper's friend to make a bad joke today, and that was mine.

DeForest was Arnie to me and my crowd in the Flint area; he was Slyme the beggar when I met him back in the 1980s (there was a flying grovel involved; we got off to a perfectly good start that way, with me playing haughty straight man for the evening), member of House Mendicant; and he was Lord Arnwyn of Pearwyc (also Lady Arnwyn on occasion, because heralds kept assuming his name denoted a female).

He was a fencer, a past seneschal of the Barony of Cynnabar, and a man of unfailingly good humor in spite of some health problems that have now contributed to a far too early demise.  Others will tell of his penchant for bad jokes and whimsical sense of humor, but aside from encounters in the SCA, I saw a side of him that I suspect from comments on Facebook today not everyone saw, or saw as often as I did.  For a regrettably short time over a decade ago, while he lived in the Flint area, he and Lady Terryl MacAodhagain, Lord Skalla Geirmundr Ulfsson, Lord Breac MacFinnean and I met fairly frequently to discuss politics, philosophy and culture over drinks (and milder refreshments).  When that was no longer possible, we continued our conversation by email, a five member, or sometimes four, or for quite a long time three, member symposium.

Mostly we talked politics, but we ranged into popular fiction and culture, and wider issues of ideology and class.  At our maximum, we had two fairly doctrinaire liberals, two fairly conventional conservatives... and Arnie, somewhere in between.  When it came to arguing or debating, Arnie rarely picked fights with anyone but me.  He poked at the weaker logical links in my views, insisted that I give evidence when he didn't like my statements, and challenged me to explain why I thought various things.  If he was satisfied, he said so; if he continued to disagree, he said so; and if I had persuaded him, he acknowledged it.

You know how rare that last part is?  No one does that, or almost no one.  Our egos are too big to admit that anyone has changed our minds.  Most of us will keep up the argument just to play devil's advocate, even after we've been persuaded, and just to refrain from admitting we were wrong.  Arnie had an ego, but it was moderate and well-behaved.

All this is by way of saying that I found Arnie very bright and knowledgeable, a keen judge of people, someone who usually questioned received wisdom.  All highly admirable traits, that tended to make everyone around him better people.  Or so I found.

Today, as I read the news and followed links of interest on politics, economics and popular culture, I came across a number of items that might have interested Arnie, and reflexively began to copy the url to send to my correspondents, and then I had to stop and reconsider.  If it's something that would only interest Arnie, I don't need to send the link any longer, and I'm quite sorry about that.

Goodbye, Arnie.

Why I Love eBay

My ambition to visit the Cloisters, the medieval annex of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has finally been achieved this month. I'll have more to post about that, but before I do, this was a nice prelude. A week or two before departure, I came across this item on eBay... a facsimile of a famous illuminated book owned by the Cloisters.

It was priced at $9.95, plus postage. In my experience, $25.00 is a floor for illuminated manuscript facsimiles on the used market. That is to say, they don't appear to be priced at less than t

hat in a used bookstore that has a clue. And at that price, I would typically buy one that I didn't have on the spot, just on general principles.

On eBay, however, the rules are different. The seller must surely have supposed he would get more bids than this, and I'm not sure why they didn't... but I expect it is related to the fact that the seller didn't use the words "illuminated" or "manuscript" or "medieval". The words "Cloisters" and "facsimile" do appear, but only the latter would have drawn much attention from anyone but me at that moment (my search was on "Cloisters", of

course). The word "Apocalypse" was misspelled in the offer. At any rate, I was the only bidder, and here we are. An auspicious find.

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks

Ethan Gilsdorf

Lyons Press, 2009

In my occasional series of brief reviews of mainstream books which mention or discuss the SCA, I've got two more at the moment. Gilsdorf's examination of the modern world of fantasy escapism discusses his own experiences playing Dungeons and Dragons as a young man, and interviews many gamers and enthusiasts of Tolkien and the like. Chapter 10, "In the Beer Line with the King" discusses the author's encounter with the SCA.

Gilsdorf approaches a visit to Pennsic with appropriate enthusiasm... he sews his own tunic, is unhappy with the result and tries again, with still inadequate results. One likes his approach; he doesn't just borrow some nice garb, he gives the thing a serious try. Once at Pennsic, camping with "engineers and programmers", he describes the experience: "Conversation at the camp was sedate. These were no raucous brutes or lofty knights. Order was paramount. A strict spreadsheet and chore book dictated who did what, when. The night I assisted with the cooking, a flowchart determined how and when to allocate resources like fire and prep time."

That caused me some amusement... I always wanted to organize Pennsic camp like that, but the locals tend to resist order. I'd have run it like a military operation if anyone had let me. Oh well.

The author makes the same point as Benjamin Nugent (below): discussing the matter-of-fact and unapologetic knight he quotes at some length, he adds "He was a geek in jock's clothing."

Gilsdorf's take on the SCA is sympathetic and accurate. It makes for an enjoyable read... enough so that I'm going to buy my own copy of this one.

Science and the Middle Ages

James Hannam has written The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution. In an interview at the Daily Caller, he explains his thesis, that scientific advancement was a continual effort throughout the Middle Ages, and that the notion of the medievals being ignorant and anti-science was an invention of writers in early modern Europe.

Forme of Cury Documentary

I just ran across this documentary about Richard II's The Forme of Cury on YouTube, courtesy of the ever helpful SCA Today website. It is apparently part of a series starring Clarissa Dickson Wright, more famous perhaps for being half of the Two Fat Ladies cooking show partnership. I actually have never seen any of it, but I have one of their cookbooks and have made a lot of use of it. This documentary is quite good... the pickiest authenticity nut might have some acerbic comments here and there, but I particularly enjoyed the swing music during the costumed medieval cooking scenes and the sight of stuck up young Richard watching protests on television and switching them off in a huff!

Wright is respectful and informative about the recipes and altogether fun to listen to and watch; she serves three dishes from the cookbook to a panel of medievalists and others at the end and they're obviously having a great time. I've cooked two out of the three dishes myself, and am anxious to try the Roast Goose with Sauce Madame.

American Nerd

American Nerd: The Story of My People

Benjamin Nugent

New York: Scribner, 2008

Nugent pens a highly readable and amusing tale of his youth and experiences among the nerds: Dungeons and Dragons players, computer gamers... and of course, members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, of whom the author says "...they're nerds who have banded together and found a way to make themselves non-nerds within a separate universe."

The book is quite literate and sophisticated. Nugent does not seem to have been a SCA member but merely to have been aware of the organization. He describes a visit to the Estrella War with evident enjoyment and fairness. "...they've found a way to solve the old problems that Muscular Christianity and the Victorian sports advocates with their physique buttons sought to address."

Time Machines

Time Machines: The World of Living History

Jay Anderson

Nashville, TN: The American Association for State and Local History, 1984

This now rather old volume has a chapter on the Society for Creative Anachronism, from p. 167-172. Anderson, a reenactor who has written at least two more books on living history, didn't seem as impressed with the SCA as he was with many of the more authenticity focused organizations he could observe. But he gives the SCA of a quarter-century ago a fair hearing.

The chapter is titled "Prince Valiants" and the author makes a rather good point when he says

The ladies and gentlemen of the SCA use anachronisms creatively to improve the quality of contemporary life. Their approach to the Middle Ages, the period of history from roughly the Fall of Rome to the seventeenth century, is straight out of Hal Foster's "Prince Valiant." And their premise is that a sojourn into this magical time will help the modern time traveler endure the altogether too obvious examples of strife and pestilence that characterize our modern world, the epoch of 1984.

For those who never read Prince Valiant, especially the great old stuff from the 30s and 40s when Hal Foster was in his prime (it's been reprinted in several formats), the strip was ostensibly set in King Arthur's time, and the author/artist took some care to depict aspects of the Middle Ages and historical events... but in a fun mishmash of twelfth century armor, Arthurian legend, late antiquity historical hijinks and various other anachronisms. The SCA does in fact come to mind to the modern day fan of Prince Valiant.

Anderson goes on to point out the distinction between other reenactor groups and the SCA: "While most other buff groups now make it relatively difficult to join their organizations - the American Mountain men require the pilgrim to do a year's probation, for example - the SCA offers all manner of assistance..."

Time Machine's take on the SCA is fairly brief and a bit superficial, but it lacks the inaccuracies one has often seen in materials written by non members. If one can find a copy, it's fun to see the old early 80s armor in photos... we really used to look like that.

I might mention here that the book also discusses living history museums, research projects and reenactor groups in entertaining detail.

More on "Suburban Knights"

This NPR slideshow and article describes the "Suburban Knights" book I briefly reviewed a few posts ago.

A Serious Look at the Hobby

Medieval Fantasy as Performance; The Society for Creative Anachronism and the Current Middle Ages by Michael A. Cramer

February 2010 from The Scarecrow Press

$39.95

As long as I've been engaged in hobbies or areas of historical interest, it has been my habit to at once seek out books and magazines (for a hobby where such things are available) to get acquainted with the culture and rules of the community I was joining, or considering joining. It seems like an obvious thing to do, but I long ago became aware that not everyone considers that step worthwhile. In the Society for Creative Anachronism, there used to be a strong tendency for the rules and customs of the hobby to be conveyed informally, through person to person contact. Possibly this has changed to some degree with the advent of the Internet, of course.

When I joined in 1982, I was, as far as I could tell, unusual in immediately seeking out every possible pamphlet and document about the SCA and the Middle Kingdom. There was a fair amount available, including the Folump Press publication A Brief History of the Middle Kingdom, (which was invaluable.) And yet often over the years, I was surprised at the short institutional memory of the organization. Even brief and accessible documents appeared invisible to many colleagues. This could be a particular problem during local political disputes, as members were quite capable of dismissing any suggestion of how things were done if these rules conflicted with more convenient assumptions cherry-picked from officer handbooks. (The publication of the excellent but regrettably flexible Seneschal's Handbook for the MidRealm in the mid 1990s was actually a catastrophe for my local branch... the locals all selected the lines from the book they preferred that affected the dispute at hand, and ignored lines that gave different perspectives. When there was no solution for this, the branch suffered a completely unnecessary migration of many of the members to an attempt at a rival branch that was impossible for them to organize as they had envisioned according to the real rules of the SCA... which they had never absorbed.)

In 1982, I would have been overjoyed to have had access to something like Medieval Fantasy as Performance. The book is not a guide to the SCA, or a history of it, I hasten to add. Cramer, a longtime prominent member in the West Kingdom, is also a theatre professional and approaches his topic from the perspective of how members perform the recreation of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He is clear in his description of how the organization depicts the historical period as it pleases rather than as it was.

The utility of the book for me is Cramer's careful and knowledgeable look under the hood, explaining the motivations and interpersonal mechanisms behind the SCA's culture. He explains the origins of the organization, and describes how it gradually evolved the forms of performance it follows today, including court ceremonial, tournament combat and especially what he terms the Summer King and Winter King games. This is quite a lot of fun; I particularly enjoyed his placing the SCA's activities in a larger scholarly context.

I would unreservedly recommend the book. Both new members curious about the organization and old timers who care to reflect on it would enjoy and appreciate it.

Picture Book

Suburban Knights: A Return to the Middle Ages

E. F. Kitchen

July 2010 from powerHouse Books

$35.00

This is a book of full-page photographs in black and white of SCA members posing in their armor (or one page, in garb). The photos are accompanied by text with quotes from many of the recreationists depicted. There is a photo leading off the book of Sir Ranthulfr Asparlundr of the MidRealm (he also gets a photo in Medieval Fantasy as Performance). The book closes with our Baroness Dulcinea Maria Magdalena von Muhlberg y Aguilar. Most of the pictures are of fairly prominent members, many from the western kingdoms, it appears.

The book itself is handsomely mounted and well bound. It's a pleasure to handle and examine, although it is a little light on content, and I'm not sure that all of the members depicted are necessarily coming off as well as they might hope. The black and white works better in some photos than others... one misses the bright colors of heraldry and some of the scenes seem bleak or melodramatic. Some are great photos, to be sure: Duke John Fitzgerald de Clare on p. 39, Sir Gaston Bonneville de la Croix at p. 47 and Sir Tristan Pfalzgraf von Eisig at p. 53 all look particularly sharp.

The black and white photos seem like an odd choice to me. It gives the book an old-fashioned air, to be sure, but an air of the 19th or early 20th century. Color would have been better for the Middle Ages... they didn't have photography anyway. But perhaps others would disagree. Certainly it's all interesting to look at. It also seems to me that the similarity of the poses fails to capture all the possibilities. There are no group scenes, no indoor depictions. Each photo has one subject, usually dramatically posed with a sword or other weapon (Duke John has an attendant with his banner, one of the reasons his image seems more interesting.) This makes the images seem more stiff... they aren't naturalistically depicted. The kind of photos taken for, for example, Embleton and Howe's Medieval Soldier, are a good deal more pleasing and even inspiring.

I'm guessing that the imagery will please and intrigue some other readers. The fact that it doesn't do much for me is perhaps a personal matter.

My principal objection to the text is the author's interest in one of the major motivations for people joining the SCA. Master Waldryk the Firedryk is quoted on p. 12:

"I killed Frank Renn 12 years ago. I didn't like Frank Renn. I killed him and I made Waldryk." The speaker notes his inability to find fulfillment in other ways, name-checking Christianity with disfavor (a frequent and highly ironic motivation for wanting to emulate medieval European figures, I always thought), and concludes that his identity as Master Waldryk is the person he wants to be.

I have never met Master Waldryk and am not knocking him. When I say this, I'm using him as a stand-in for a view of the world that I'm usually sorry to hear about in the SCA. It makes me uncomfortable and puzzles me. And maybe that's my problem, not his, or that of others for whom his comments might seem resonant.

But I just never got this business of using the SCA as an escape from modern society for more than an entertaining weekend. I suppose that's because I'm happy enough with who I am in the 21st century world. I find fulfillment in my profession and other hobbies and interests. My real identity is that person. Balian de Brionne is what, then? A mask, a pose, a role to play? A whimsy on the weekend? Well, not exactly. It is a powerful thing to choose a new identity for yourself, a new name and a new set of allegiances. One can be a new person. There is a great appeal in that. But it has always seemed to me like a momentary escape into another identity, not one that is actually preferable.

Candidly, Suburban Knights is a little pricey for what it is... I'm not even sure SCA members are the target audience. I bought it suspecting from the description it would disappoint; but it is my custom to buy books about the SCA. It's not like there are many, after all. So I recommend it mildly. It's amusing and has some interesting commentary by members of the organization.

Writing Style

At the always interesting A Commonplace Book (my nominee for best title for a history-oriented blog, by the way - wish I'd thought of it first!) the author recently commented on and linked to I Write Like, a site which analyzes writing and suggests which famous author your style most resembles.

With some trepidation, I submitted four of the longer posts from this blog. The results:

1. Dan Brown. (Dear god. Either I should stop writing now or I need to consider a career change to writing thrillers for people with short attention spans.)

2. James Joyce. (Really, I may cry now. Must be strong.)

3. and 4. Cory Doctorow.

Who the hell is Cory Doctorow? Science fiction writer and blogger, apparently. I've never read him, and had to look him up, so I don't know what to make of that.

New Books on the SCA

Books about the Society for Creative Anachronism... not self-published items for internal use, but regular published books sold on Amazon.com... are pretty rare. The only one I know of is The Knights Next Door, by Patrick O'Donnell. The SCA is discussed in a number of books about historical recreation groups and the like, but I don't know of any others that take the organization as a primary focus. There are several books by SCA members, such as Professor Steven Muhlberger's books on chivalric topics and Brian Price's opus on reproducing 14th century armor... but these are books which simply happen to be of intense interest to members of the organization, not books about it.

This, however, two new books have been published: Medieval Fantasy as Performance by Michael A. Cramer, and Suburban Knights: A Return to the Middle Ages by E. F. Kitchen. I will review both in subsequent posts. I heartily recommend the former; the latter is harmless fun.

I should note that it is possible I've missed something. I've been on an almost complete hiatus from participation in the SCA for quite some time now, essentially since late 2007, and while I haven't entirely lost interest, I don't feel like I have the sense of knowing what goes on and what everyone is talking about.

Manuscript How-To Site

The invaluable SCA Today provided a link to this very interesting and useful site.

Facsimile Surprise

I'm fond of illuminated manuscripts. I may possibly have mentioned that at some point on this blog. Back in college, I became aware of very, very expensive facsimiles available from a company in Europe... way beyond my price range. Since then, I've assembled a few facsimiles in slipcases or more conventional editions, and a larger number of books about illuminated manuscripts, their bindings, medieval painting techniques, etc.

But there are two kinds of facsimiles. One is the type where good quality reproductions of medieval manuscripts appear in conventional, if rather luxe, hardcover books. Normally there is an accompanying commentary, and perhaps they reproduce every page of the book, or perhaps they just reproduce the more interesting pages.

The other type is where they literally reproduce the entire book, its binding, every page. If someone penciled notes in, they appear faithfully. Such facsimiles are available from Faksimile Verlag Luzern, a Swiss company.

An aside. I'm not one of those people who fantasizes about being rich, and lies awake nights thinking about Maseratis and super models and flying first class. Just not the sort of thing that jazzes me. I like nice things, and if I were rich I'd buy a Jaguar and eat in nice restaurants all the time and jet over to Europe occasionally, but it really doesn't keep me awake at nights. But there is one thing that tempts me, and makes me doubt my career path, which usually keeps me quite happy: books. If I were rich, really loaded, I'd buy every one of these facsimiles, and keep them in a locked room and gloat over them. Maybe I'd let you see them. If you're nice to me, and wear gloves. That sort of thing. Sue me, I like books.

Well, I ran across the Faksimile Verlag people again late last year, looked at their website, and noted the absence of a price list. Not a good sign, but I'm a somewhat more prosperous academic than I was when I first encountered this concept as a callow youth, so I sent an email inquiring about the price of a volume that I knew was rather modest in size. Some weeks went by, and without any answer, I scouted around the Internet. Some other sites discussed the Faksimile company and gave price lists. The price for the volume I'd inquired about, the Prayers of Anne de Bretagne, was not out of the range I suspected, but it was at the high end of the range. More than I'd hoped. I would like to own one of these facsimiles some day, I thought, but it would have to wait a while. The price I saw was in the high three figures. That sum would fund some bookbinding classes, and plenty of materials, I thought. Owning one of these delightful volumes would have to be planned for carefully.

So yesterday, while working in the home office, I heard the doorbell ring. Shortly afterward, Melisande brought in a sizable package with German language on the label. I was mystified; had I forgotten about a used book or an eBay purchase? She sat down to watch, curious, and I began to open it, finding layers of elaborate packaging inside. Midway through, I remembered the Faksimile Verlag inquiry, and thought "Oh! A very elaborate catalog or brochure, apparently. What an amazing amount of expense to go to!"

You're laughing, gentle reader. No, it really didn't occur to me at first. It had never crossed my mind that asking after the price of the book would cause a company in Switzerland to ship an extremely expensive book to me with a polite invoice. When I got to a handsome presentation case in the center of all this packaging, however, I began to suspect that there was no way this was a catalog.

And it wasn't. It was the facsimile, very beautiful in red velvet, with a commentary volume hidden under a tray and sealed in plastic. There was an invoice: 1276 Swiss francs. At todays rates, about $1100.

Well, I can't keep it, of course. It won't do. I went and read the website much more carefully. Yes, they'll take it back. Yes, they are agreeable about installment plans. No, it isn't responsible for me to do that. I emailed them right away, and if I don't get a reply quickly, I'll call and start making arrangements for it to go back, carefully insured.

I obviously didn't read the inquiry form carefully enough, I realized. It really didn't occur to me at all that they would simply send the actual facsimile without any further communication. I mean, they don't know me from Adam - did they run a credit check, or did they just assume anyone inclined to inquire about the price was also well-heeled enough to buy the book without any further negotiation? I'm rather flattered, I guess.

The photos are borrowed from the Faksimile Verlag website, as I'm not handling the beautiful little object any more. A pity, but it must go back.

UPDATE: A very courteous response from Lucerne this morning - it was indeed a misunderstanding, and they will happily exchange it for the catalogue I was expecting.

Manuscript of Forme of Cury

The University of Manchester's John Rylands University Library is digitising and making available on the Internet images of the pages of 40 important books, including the Forme of Cury, the 14th century cookbook compiled by the cooks of Richard II's royal household. (Thanks to pals Skalla-Geirmundr and Breac, both of whom forwarded the Middlebridge post and link to the Guardian.)

Again with the Books

Mistress Melisande is spending the weekend doing something called "stitching camp". I find this activity remote, inexplicable and possibly injurious to sanity; therefore I chose to enjoy a leisurely day among the booksellers (and restaurants, and sellers of fine viands and bottled items) to be found in the Barony of Cynnabar. That is to say, Ann Arbor, for those readers not familiar with the nomenclature of the Middle Kingdom.

Some time ago, I mentioned that I would have more to say about bookstores in Michigan. Two of the finest are to be found in downtown Ann Arbor, and I spent a leisurely hour in each. They don't exhaust the possibilities, by the way, but they are more reliable locations for medieval books than the others.

First, perhaps my favorite bookstore in Michigan is Motte and Bailey, at 212 N. 4th St., just south of the Kerrytown area. With a name like that, you might surmise that the proprietors have a good medieval section, and they do. Their prices are reasonable, I might add. Today I chose Those Who Fought; An Anthology of Medieval Sources, edited by Peter Speed. It was an inexpensive paperback; I resisted the many other temptations in the quiet, elegant store, having many other stops to make. (Besides, I'll be back soon enough. I had to make sure I didn't actually have a copy of another book, and I don't.) Checking out, the co-owner suggested a work describing the military campaigns of Louis the Fat. It's that kind of store. I've had similar conversations with both owners on previous occasions. Once had a long talk with this gentleman about Jonathan Sumption, and when we could expect the next installment of his magisterial history of the Hundred Years War.

A bit later, it was on to Dawn Treader, the venerable warren of stacks at 514 E. Liberty, quite near the big Borders and State St. I've been visiting Dawn Treader since the early 1980s, and have lost track of all the books I've bought there (sold quite a few books to them, too). Today I chose, with some difficulty, The Secular Spirit: Life and Art at the End of the Middle Ages, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is an exceptionally fine catalog from an exhibition in the mid 1970s; not the flashiest museum exhibition book I have, but probably the best I've seen, with many photos of late medieval objects arranged logically, with clear and knowledgeable commentary. Just at a glance in the store, it had photos of things I had heard vaguely described and found interesting, and it was inexpensive. Over the years, I've both found many wonderful things at Dawn Treader but often found their medieval selection a bit thin; picked over by Cynnabar folk, no doubt. The last couple of times I've visited, the selection was not thin; I had trouble deciding what to buy.

Ann Arbor has other used bookstores; I usually visit Westside Books, at 113 W. Liberty, but it happens that I rarely find what I'm looking for. Still fun to look, as I did today. Also, keep in mind the Ann Arbor Public Library Friends book shop, which is open in the basement of the library on Saturdays and Sundays during fall, winter and spring. Their selection changes massively from week to week, but I usually find it the best of the library book sales in Michigan. Today I found two books I've seen many times but never for a price I cared to pay, Grant Uden's handsome Dictionary of Chivalry and Flanders in the Fifteenth Century: Art and Civilization.

Sometime soon, bookstores in East Lansing.

Books of Hours Again

And other illuminated manuscripts, at the Leaves of Gold website.

Books of Hours

One of my loves about the Middle Ages is the study of Books of Hours, those personal prayer books from the 13th-16th centuries of which so many lovely examples survive. I've manfully restrained myself from greedily collecting all the handsome facsimile copies in print... except for a few, of course, plus many less extravagant books about them. I just got Painted Prayers by Roger S. Wieck, and was reminded that I haven't looked around the Internet lately to see what was currently out there. (Regrettably, Painted Prayers is out of print, and I had meant to get it but not gotten around to it until this week... I did not pay anything like the prices for used books shown here. Just in time, I guess.)

Here is a link to a Book of Hours owned by Oberlin College, the Artz Hours, all of the pages of which are shown on successive pages. Very interesting.

More Book News

One of the features of the Lapeer Days festival in nearby Lapeer, Michigan, is a library used book sale. The festival began today, and so did the book sale at the de Angeli Public Library. It's not the best local used book sale, but it's pretty good. My principal complaint, actually, is that the Friends of the Library arrange the tables in such a narrow fashion that it is fairly difficult to get around and see all the books. They also have a huge selection of children's books, dvds, cds, and etc. Lapeer Days lasts through the 16th.

New Acquisitions

Well, if I didn't get to go to Pennsic, I did some satisfying medieval shopping here at home.

The Flint area is not well supplied with used bookstores. There are two Jellybean stores; together with a third in Owosso, a locally-owned chain. The one to the south of town concentrates on mass media stuff; I can't recall ever finding anything on the Middle Ages other than things that get assigned in history classes. Not complaining, they are the place to go for used music, mystery and science fiction paperbacks, DVDs, that sort of thing. The one closer to the center of town is more interesting, although the management have a sometimes exalted notion of how to price some of their collectibles. They get people to pay it, I guess. They have easily the most extensive collection of used books of a more serious type than anywhere this side of one of the university towns in Michigan, but it is a curiously neglected side room; the main action with paperbacks, records and so forth is in the main room. I don't think there's ever been another customer in the side room on the rare occasions I go in - about once a year or less. Awkwardly, the clerk decides on a price at the counter for these books, after performing a brief check on the Internet. ABEbooks.com, I'm guessing? They don't say. I've actually gotten some good deals, once a spectacular deal, so they're not being unreasonable on price; I just wonder if they realize how discouraging a browsing experience this mysterious method induces. If they just marked the prices in the books, I'd go in more often.

At any rate, on a rare visit this week, I found two books on Western martial arts. Sydney Anglo's authoritative The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe. I've checked it out from academic libraries, and it seemed well worth having. Author John Clement claims it is the most important work on the subject in a century; while my interests tend more to the political and strategic levels, particularly about the Hundred Years War, I'm willing to agree with Clement, as far as I can tell. The second book was the Codex Wallerstein, a 15th century fighting manual with reproductions of the illustrations and translations of the text into several languages. Want to know how to rob a peasant by making him think you've slit his throat, but without actually doing so? No problem, the Codex Wallerstein explains the method. I'm hoping I don't have occasion to use that one, myself. But it's good to know these things, right?

Both volumes were in hardcover, in good shape with a little shelf wear, and I certainly wanted them both. The clerk wanted $40 for each, and I left them there. At the very least, I wanted to make sure I couldn't do better on the Internet. But $40 was about right, I found, and after giving it some thought, I realized I would just regret it if I didn't go back for them. Both books are out of print; I didn't go to Pennsic and spend lots of money there; I haven't been keeping up with the literature on my hobby for years now; so the next day I went back and bought both.

So that was fun, but I had already been thinking this week about a Saturday visit to John K. King Books in Detroit (check out the YouTube videos at the link). I tried to persuade Skalla-Geirmundr to go with me, but he was busy being responsible or something. John K. King is the biggest bookseller in Michigan, advertising 900,000 books. It is a spectacular experience, quite like visiting an academic library but being able to buy the books (well, an academic library with a somewhat haphazard collection, but still...). Five or six floors of an old factory building right downtown on W. Lafayette, just what you'd want a big city used bookstore to be. I knew from experience that they have excellent sections on history, cooking and art, just to note some of my interests. Strangely enough, I haven't been there in about ten years, although my infrequent visits always produced wonderful results back in the 90s. It's not really that much fun, getting to that spot in downtown Detroit all the way from Flint. No, it's not a safety issue, downtown Detroit is perfectly fine with me. It's the traffic, construction and accident backups. I've driven in a lot of big cities, but Detroit's the only one I really try to avoid - things are never going smoothly, the way they do on the average visit to Chicago. Half the place is always torn up for construction, because Michigan can't be bothered to build the roads to proper tolerances to begin with; we'd rather repair them every other other year. I mean, Washington DC is less annoying, even with very much heavier traffic and much more aggressive drivers.

Sure enough, I 75 was backed up, so I found myself on a tedious crawl on surface streets to M 10, the Lodge Freeway. That went quickly, thankfully.

I had originally meant to get there early and spend all day visiting each floor, but my local medievalist extravagance suggested a more disciplined approach. The cooking section for cocktail books and medieval cookery; the medieval and English and French history sections; the military section for medieval items were my targets. So I never made it above the 2nd floor, but I had one of the more productive bookstore visits I've ever had. I found (pertinent to the topic of this blog, anyway):

Food and Feast in Tudor England by Alison Sims.
Art, Culture and Cuisine; Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy by Phyllis Pray Bober.

I'd read both but didn't own them. Both are beautiful hardcovers with dustcovers, both were very attractively priced, much better than I could've done on eBay or Amazon.

The Medieval Soldier; 15th Century Campaign Life Recreated in Colour Photographs by Gerry Embleton and John Howe.
Crecy 1346; Anatomy of a Battle by Henri de Wailly.

The price for these two I can only describe as derisory. $18 for the pair. Both are immaculate; the Embleton and Howe book looks brand new and still bears a sticker for $65 on the back cover. I had never even seen the book outside of libraries, and had little hope of finding it for a reasonable price. I'm unfamiliar with the Crecy 1346 book, although I've read a good deal of more recent books on the topic, so I'm not sure about it, but it looks good. I don't know if it was written in English by the author, all of whose other books I can find are clearly French language texts, or if it is translated, but the translator is not named. We'll see. By the way, there are several books on the Battle of Crecy with almost identical titles; this one was published in 1987. I'm hoping for a strong French point of view, as most books on the topic are written from an English perspective.

On another occasion, comments on other good bookstores in Michigan.