INTERVIEW WITH DAVID KLAPPHOLZ, BOOK COLLECTOR
David, when did you start being a book collector? Was it a particular
book or subject that got you started?
At some point in the late 1970's or early 1980's I decided that I wanted to
express my artistic side by learning and doing photography. As was my
habit, I learned by reading...lots and lots of how-to books on the technical
and artistic aspects of photography. My specialty, motivated by my then
hobby of growing flowering plants, especially lilies and day lilies, was
close-up (macro) photography of...flowers.
As has been the case with almost everything I've been interested in, I
eventually became more interested in the history of the subject than in the
doing...in this case, helped by the fact that I proved to have little or no
artistic talent. I started reading contemporary books on photographic
history, and eventually started haunting used bookstores to find older ones.
Aside: As a kid, starting at about age 10, I began taking the subway from
Brooklyn to Manhattan to visit museums and libraries. At the main branch
of the NYPL, I spent days reading issues of the NY Times from the period of
the Civil War, a special interest at that time. On a few occasions I
wandered past the used bookstores on Fourth Avenue, but didn't know what a
treasure I'd found, and didn't have the money to take serious advantage of it.
At about that time, I wandered into an antiques show at the armory just south
of Grand Central Station on Park Avenue. I was fascinated by the
stereoviews, especially those of nineteenth century NY, another interest.
I bought a few for what was very little money at the time, but wasn't able to
collect seriously as even the small amount I paid per slide was a real splurge
for a young kid. Much later, in the late 1960's, while I was in graduate
school in Philadelphia, I bought a Civil-War era cabinet stereo viewer for,
again, very little money to a true collector, but too much for a student.
(I still have all the stereo cards and the viewer...as well as two Edison
gramophones that I also bought -- in Lahaska, Pennsylvania, when it was still a
great antiques town -- during my grad school years.)
Back to the late 70's-early 80's. As time went on, I developed an
interest in the history of color photography, but found very little any older
than the 1920s or 1930s. As I became more interested in the history of
photography, I also noticed photography books, including at least one early
book on color photography advertised in Shutterbug, the tabloid weekly in which
photographic equipment is sold and traded. Shutterbug introduced me to
mail order (catalogue) booksellers. I sought them out, including ones in
England and France, and bought lots of good older books. I became
obsessed with hunting books, received catalogues almost every day, and visited
bookstores on trips to professional conferences. I began to become
familiar with the open shop booksellers of Chicago, Washington, and a few other
cities...like Traverse City Michigan, cherry capital of the U.S., where one
conference was held every August and where, I noticed a few months ago, this
year's cherry crop was a total failure.
As a result of my interest in early color photography, I became very interested
in our understanding of the physics of color and of color perception, and
started buying books on those subjects. Since Sir Isaac Newton was the
first to understand color the way it's now understood, I started buying every
book I found in stores and catalogues about Newton...at least those that I was
able to afford. I read all the Newton biographies and can still hold my
own with historians of science who don't specialize in that period.
On a visit, probably about 1982 or 1983, to the one used bookstore in
Westfield, NJ, near where I now live, I was searching for Newton material and
picked up a book by, not Sir Ike but, rather, A. Edward Newton. At that
time, when I got a new catalogue in the mail I quickly turned to the N's.
More than once I was excited by a "Newton" listing, only to be very
disappointed when I discovered that it was an "A. Edward" Newton book
rather than an "Isaac Newton" book. Who was this A. Edward
character who dared to compete with one of the founders of modern science?
This time, though, I picked up the A. Edward book, started reading it, and
didn't stop until I'd finished at about 4:00 AM. The book was
A Magnificent Farce
-- refers to Warren Hastings' trial for treason when he'd never committed
anything like treason. Newton was addicted to English literature, and was
able to afford it in first editions, often with strong association value.
He was interested in Hastings, not as a writer but rather as an eighteenth
century British Governor of India, because Hastings had named his estate
"Daylesford," and Newton lived, in Berwyn, PA, along the Main Line
just west of Philadelphia, across the street from a PRR station with the name
"Daylesford." One of the illustrations in the book was a
ticket, from Newton's collection, to Hastings' trial. Other chapters of
the book dealt with famous and not so famous English writers, Newton's
association copies of their books, their letters or their manuscripts, and with
Newton's hunt for literary rarities. I later found out that Christopher
Morley referred to Newton's essays as "printed personality."
The personality was appealing, and Morley was right. (By the way, I was
ripped off for that first Newton book. It didn't have a dust jacket,
wasn't a first issue, and was way overpriced at twenty 1982-83 dollars.)
How you go about searching for books on the internet? Do you still use
methods of searching other than the internet?
I loved Bibliocity and Bibliofind because they allowed a full-text search of a
book's description; a specialist needs that. I love ABE because it
allows the user to store wants and emails matches as new books are
uploaded. At the moment I use ABE, passively, by reading matches.
(I've perfected my many wants to the point where I rarely go to the ABE site to
look for books or to add or modify wants.) I regularly use the ABAA web
site because it allows full-text search...but doesn't allow the user to store
wants.
I rarely go to open shops any longer because there's so much good material on
the net. There are a few stores I do go to, mainly in L.A., currently the
best open shop city in the U.S., because they don't list all their stock in my
fields of interest, which now include the history of book collecting and
antiquarian bookselling in America and Britain.
If you are especially eager to obtain a copy of a particular book, do you buy
one in lesser condition if that is all that's available?
Yes, I recently realized that I'd never even seen a copy of the English edition
of Newton's
Dr. Johnson, a Play, and bought a fairly ratty copy with no dust jacket. Nothing better has
shown up on the internet, but I'll buy it when one does. I care about the
condition of books I buy "just" to read, but will buy a copy in bad
condition if that's the only copy available.
Do you upgrade to a better copy when one becomes available?
I'm always doing that with Newton books, but "better copy" can mean
"better condition" or "has a good association value and the
earlier copy had none." Having learned about association copies from
Newton, I buy any good association copy I can find of any Newton item -- except
in a few cases when the seller gets too greedy and sets a price two or three
times the going market price. I have as many as ten or twelve really good
association copies of some Newton books, and as many as 20-25 of a few of the
Xmas issues. My goal is to have at least one good association copy, in
dust jacket, of every issue of every Newton book printed during Newton's
lifetime. I'm not too far from that. I also own lots of letters and
galley/page proofs, and some of the little extant manuscript material.
Have the book-related lists proven to be a good resource for finding books
you're looking for, or alerting you to books you didn't know existed?
Unfortunately not. I've bought a very few really good items through the
lists, but very, very few and not for quite some time.
Do you use search engines like Google to find new venues either notifying you
of books you didn't know existed…
I never have. Various online library catalogues have alerted me to the
existence of previously unrecorded items, like a recent edition of
This Book Collecting Game
in Chinese. (My Chinese teaching assistant eventually got me a copy
through friends who were visiting the U.S.)
…or for looking up facts that lead to variations on a theme of your
interests?
I use Google for just about everything but finding books to buy...including
identifying inscribees whose names I don't recognize.
Are the descriptions by online booksellers usually adequate for your purposes
in deciding whether a book is one you want or in the condition you want?
I can usually tell if a seller is knowledgeable;if s/he isn't, I simply
ask questions.
Anything in particular that "turns you off" in sellers' listings?
"Very good for its age." I've handled a Gutenberg Bible and
have concluded that age and condition have little necessary relationship.
Do you only buy 1st printings of books in your interests?
As I've said, I buy every issue of every edition of anything Newton. When
it comes to books about collectors, libraries, booksellers, etc., I used to do
the same, but there's not enough space and not enough money to do everything
I'd like.
Are you interested in ephemera relating to your interests?
Finding ephemera is usually far more exciting than finding another issue of
another edition, or even another title translated into Braille -- have one --
or Chinese...because they're usually far scarcer...and many are not recorded in
any bibliography. I have an extensive collection of prospectuses of
Newton books and books to which he contributed an introduction or a chapter. I
also have lots of announcements of talks by Newton and lots of invitations to
get-togethers at his home, Oak Knoll; some of the most fun ones are invitations
to marionette parties that Mrs. Newton gave for kids and their
grandmothers. I also have lots of original Newton-related newspaper
clippings.
I also collect material about book collectors' organizations. I have lots of
Grolier Club, Book Club of California, Zamorano Club, and Roxburghe Club
ephemera; just had an auction lot of about two hundred pieces of
California ephemera arrive yesterday.
What is the particular thing about Newton that keeps you so interested?
Newton had so many interesting close friends that an interest in Newton leads
to all sorts of things, like most of the important collectors of his period,
the Golden Age of Book Collecting in America, to the formation of great library
collections, to the history of the teaching of English literature in American
universities and those who pioneered it, many of whom were Newton's friends, to
Dr. Johnson's literary circle, etc., etc. Even to the development of
Philadelphia's western suburbs, by railroad barons, in the late nineteenth
century.
Can you give us a list of what you do collect?
Everything mentioned above except the history of photography; am still
interested but don't have enough space or money.
Are you a reader, as well as a collector (of things other than what you
collect, that is)?
Yes.
If so, what types of kinds do you like to read on a more casual basis, just for
enjoyment?
Technical material in my field -- software engineering -- and, to a lesser
extent, the history of computers and computing. I enjoy my work, so
technical and historical reading is enjoyable. I'd love to have time to
read fiction, but am so busy that I don't.
What other hobbies, interests, or recreation or arts, etc., do you enjoy?
I wish that visiting museums was an aerobic activity; I might be in better
shape if it was. I'm interested in urban history -- especially NYC,
Chicago, and L.A., the three American cities which compete with London and
Paris on cultural grounds -- and in architectural history, mostly
American. (Yes, I said "L.A." Beyond the Hollywood glitz
it has more cultural activity than any American city other than NYC. I
love San Francisco; have lived in the Bay Area a few summers, but it
doesn't compare on density of cultural activity.) My wife and I both love
crawling around red rock in the southwest and visiting historical sites.
We've covered just about every square inch of CA, UT, and AZ, and quite a bit
of NM, WY, OR, CO, and WA. We plan to see the rest of all these states as
well as lots of western MT. We've also started spending time outside the
U.S. again after a long period of traveling solely in the U.S. (We travel
about six times a year, usually in connection with a professional meeting that
I have to go to. There are trips to Japan and Spain coming up in the next
few months.)
What would you like to tell us, business or personal, about yourself?
I've been a professor of computer science for about twenty-eight
years; used to do technology research and currently do process research
and pedagogy research. I love it and never want to retire. I have
one wife, three grown daughters and the two cutest, smartest granddaughters in
the world -- all more important than work or books, as much as I love work and
books.
