McKay's ads transcribed from the Edsel B. Grimshaw review

THE OLDEST WRITERS' SERVICE

Literary Agent, established 35 years. Manuscripts criticized, revised, typed, marketed. Special attention to Book manuscripts. Poetry. Catalogue on request.

AGNES M. REEVE,

Dept. B. Franklin, O.

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LAURENCE ROBERTS, LITERARY AGENT

STORIES, NOVELS, ARTICLES, BOOKS MARKETED.

Highly recommended for publication of fiction and non-fiction. Editorially recognized advice, recommendations, editing, for revision, sales, publication. Un-established writers assisted. Write for information before sending manuscripts.

3 West 42^nd St., New York City

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LITERARY AGENTS 29 YEARS

We sell short stories, articles, books, radio scripts, plays. Verse also considered. Constructive criticism for new writers. Personal representation for established authors. Editing, revision. For information and references,

E. Madison Ave. at 4 St., New York, NY

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BOOKS LOCATED PROMPTLY

All subjects, out-of-print, rare, etc. Special items for collectors acquired. New books at publishers' prices postpaid.

19 Hopedale Street, ALLSTON 34(?), BOSTON, MASS.

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BOOKFINDERS

Unusual, hard-to-find, out-of-print books at reasonable prices. Send your wants. Institutional lists accepted. Fast thorough(?) service. No obligation.

Box 1884-H(?) LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

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ATHEIST BOOKS

22-page catalogue free. SEEKER CO.,

8 Park Row, New York, N. Y.

No. :--UNUSUAL LITERARY ITEMS

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WE PUBLISH

-print and distribute your manuscript in pamphlet or book form. Send for free folder.

PAMPHLET DISTRIBUTING CO., 11(?) W. 5 St., N.Y.

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Just the book for Lenten Reading

THE LIGHT

by

STEFAN TATE

At all bookstores......$3.95

Two Shoes Publishing

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OUT-OF-PRINT and HARD-TO-FIND

books supplied: also genealogies; Incomplete sets completed: magazine back numbers supplied, etc. All subjects, all languages. Send us your list of book-wants ---no obligation. We report quickly. Lowest prices.

LIBRARY SERVICE

17 WEST 48th(?) Street, Dept. H., New York, N.Y.

P.S. We also BUY old books and magazines.

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Daring, vivid, exciting!

MOONLIGHT

By JOSHUA LEE

Thrilling intrigue in the remaining “nights” of the war. Enemies change allegiances in the guise of darkness. A diabolical tale of about the worse in men before the dawn of a new world order.

“...a story about the war within a war.”

-MICHAEL GRUBE, Sentient.

“A must read in moonlight or daylight.”

-BENJAMIN JAMES, Examine.

At all bookstores MACMILLAN

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“WHO ARE THE MASTERS OF POWER?'

ANDREW SILVER authority on the changing social-political geography of our post-war world, identifies 15 persons who cradle the specter of power that will dictate unwritten rules and boundaries. He foresees an arms race between East and West. A cold war fought under the guise of regional, post-colonial conflicts. A chilling question arises. Will preventing the end of the world mean sacrificing the lives of thousands?

THE POWER 15

ROSE & BLATT

Publishing

at bookstores $3.50

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Mulligan Stew, or It's Burgoo to You, Part 1

The worm turns...

The Mckay's review of Ship of Theseus calls the book "a vulgar ouroboros of a novel."  Ourobos, the snake that eats its own tail. According to wikipedia,

The Ouroboros often symbolize self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things such as the phoenix which operate in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished. While first emerging in Ancient Egypt, the Ouroboros has been important in religious and mythological symbolism, but has also been frequently used in alchemical illustrations, where it symbolizes the circular nature of the alchemist's opus. It is also often associated with Gnosticism, and Hermeticism.

Based on what I have found, I suspect that almost everything in S. is a "ship of Theseus."  An unreliable narrator with subterfuge in mind and a reclusive author; both of whom seek to encrypt and misdirect.  The people, the dates, most footnotes appear to be composites of real and literary references and individuals with some intentional misdirection and fictions thrown in to obscure and muddy the waters.

Palimpsests, archaeological strata, literary references that don't quite make sense; pastiches, layers and composites join in to obscure.

The archaeological strata of literature...

That snake that eats its own tale can be a metaphor for literature that takes what came before.  Whether we like it or not, much of what is written, painted or discussed is based in part on something that came previously.  That's not to say the work can't be original and engaging, but it can't exist without history.  Works like Tristram Shandy, The King in Yellow, Finnegans Wake, Ready Player One, The Waste Land and now S. all owe a debt to history.

It's a literary genealogy that Tolkien referred to as the "cauldron of story." Sterne was inspired by Rabelais, Locke, Pope and Swift and their influence is well documented.  The King in Yellow owes a debt to Ambrose Bierce from whom Chambers appropriated Carcosa.  These works went on to inspire the likes of Lovecraft, Goethe, Marx and many, many others.  And it continues to this day, as Mystimus discovered with the Glass Bead Game.

Prehistoric pastiches...

Juan Blas Covarubbias, the Portuguese pirate is fictional. Yet the name Covarubbias is not, nor does it originate from Portugual, but Spain.   It comes from Burgos Province and some of the surrounding areas to describe the red caves found in that area; many of these same caves feature prehistoric art. Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, amateur archaeologist, discovered the Altamira cave on his property in nearby Cantabria (which used to be part of Burgos and was in 1590), but it was his young daughter who spotted the drawings on the ceiling.  Cueva de La Pasiega, also in Cantabria has sanctuaries or galleries of cave paintings from different ages not unlike the cave S and Corbeau escape through.  It was officially discovered when researchers were told by villagers in the area of its existence 1911.

The city Burgos of Spain, and located in the province of the same name, has two interesting looking museums, one for books and a museum on evolution (following the monkey, perhaps?).  Both opened in 2010, so it's possible that DD knew of their existence while he was writing S., or it could just be a happy accident.  

I also found in researching Burgos, that the word "karst" as in Karst & Sons, the now defunct publishing company (page v), is a part of a geological term called karst topography which is described as the erosion of a layer or layers of bedrock.

Mulligan Stew, or It's All Burgoo to You, Part 2

Monkey's Marginalia, No. 3

1.  I am going through the book again as some of the avenues I want to follow are on hold until the books come.  I did notice in the forward that Caldeira lists SOT as Straka's twentieth novel; but there are only 19 that we know of.   So there is a hidden Straka novel?   I apologize if this has been touched on somewhere else.
(7/31/14 edited to note, there is NO 20th Straka novel. I misread a passage in the Forward of SOT in January.) 

2.  I also found the place in one of the postcards included in S.; it's an old photograph of the Botanical Gardens in Rio de Janeiro. (image courtesy of the SFiles22)

3.  Here is the image taken from Google Maps street view for comparison.  

4.  As I posted on twitter a couple of days ago, I found another reference ad for the Grimshaw review posted on twitter by Doug Dorst.   This one also comes from The Saturday Review (October 15, 1949).  

5. And an unrelated bit of minutiae, I did find a Scottish author, Helen MacInnes who wrote spy novels.  

Lenten Reading, a Wagtail?

It's official. Doug Dorst may be having a bit of fun with us.  I was unable to find the original reference ad for The Light by Stefan Tate that was part of the review that Dorst tweeted on December 19, 2013.  (Note: In the fictional world of Straka, this review was probably published sometime before February 22, Ash Wednesday in 1950.)

All I did find was a current publisher, Two Shoes Publishing started by author Audrey Mckay to distribute her books which are contemporary Christian fiction. (Just a reminder, McKay's was the name of magazine in which the review appeared.)

Stefan Tate appears as characters in two books.  Embrace of the Sun: In Shadows, by Daimon Price is another work of Christian fiction, this time with vampires.

Schoolfrenz, by Ray Crowther also features a character by the name of Stefan Tate, but as far as I can tell, this is straight fiction without religious affiliation.

(7/31/14, edited for grammar and tags added)

Daring, Vivid, Exciting! and another T.S. Eliot reference

Edit: I have a cold today and it's muddled my head.  I listed the wrong magazine as the source of the original reference ad.  The magazine that should have been listed is The Saturday Review and has been corrected in the text below as well.

On December 19, 2013 Doug Dorst uploaded two pictures of the Ship of Theseus review by Edsel B. Grimshaw. Geekyzen and Mystimus both written excellent blog posts about the review. 

I was intrigued by the ad next to the review (2nd page) for the fictional book Moonlight.  @0bFuSc8 on twitter found links to additional ads and posted them on twitter and in the comments of the SFiles22 blog.

Here is the ad as it appears in the review: 

Asking the google, I was able to find the original ad that was adapted for use in the review.  It comes from the August 26, 1950 edition of The Saturday Review.

"German general kidnapped from Crete by Englishmen and partisan guerillas..."

It's interesting in that the ad gives another us another link to Greece (Santorini Man) and the author also wrote a book titled Bats with Baby Faces which is reference taken from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.  I was unable to find any additional information on the book other than it was published by Harlequin Books (1951) and appears to be pulp fiction.  I welcome any additional information that readers may have to offer. 

(Fair use under U.S. Copyright law allows for the use of copyrighted works for non-commercial educational purposes)

(7/31/14, tags added and edited for grammar)