A book whose allure is actually increased by its utter lack of practical utility for most earthlings.

Reminder to all staff: Do NOT shelve these next to Tom of Finland!

A Sherlock Holmes mystery grows even more mysterious when printed in shorthand.

"In this day the sign letterer who does not understand colors and color harmony, and who does not know how to get up signs in color, is greatly handicapped, and his usefulness as a sign letterer is seriously interfered with."

Have you heard of the new parlour game called "Monkey's Paw"? Friends compete to see who can invent the most sublimely banal book title.

What kind of magazine devotes ten full pages to a typeface composed of naked women photographed on the floor of a Dutch gymnasium?

n/a:
PATTERN BOOK 1935. ARMSTRONG'S LINOLEUM
Armstrong Cork Co., Lancaster, PA, 1934.

If you know of anything sexier than a 340-page full-colour catalogue of Depression-era linoleum patterns, please contact us immediately.

<-- pp. 138-139

Monahan, Barbara:
A DICTIONARY OF RUSSIAN GESTURE
Hermitage, Tenafly, NJ, 1983.

The Slavic soul expressing itself in non-verbal gestures: dissatisfaction, resignation, caution, approbation, sexual innuendo, satiety, disgust, etc. Illustrated with photos.

<-- front cover

Cravat, Harland R., and Raymond Glaser:
COLOR AERIAL STEREOGRAMS OF SELECTED COASTAL AREAS OF THE UNITED STATES
U.S. Department of Commerce, Rockville, MD, 1971.

Could be useful if you're planning an amphibious invasion. Includes folding stereo viewer in pocket at rear.

<-- front cover

Burns, Aaron:
TYPOGRAPHY
Reinhold Publishing Corp., [New York], 1961.

Here's a sure-fire bait for trapping graphic designers: take a large-format typography book from the high modernist era, and display it spread open to a dynamic Paul Rand design. Mortally effective!

<-- pp. 14-15

Logan, Herschel C.:
HAND CANNON TO AUTOMATIC: A PICTORIAL PARADE OF HAND ARMS
Standard Publications, Inc., Huntington, WV, 1944.

Lovingly rendered pen-and-ink illustrations of firearms both ancient and modern: basically it's pinup art for pistol fetishists.

<-- front cover

Groneman, Chris:
GENERAL BOOKBINDING
McKnight & Knight, Bloomington, IL, 1946.

Six decades ago, students at vocational high schools were actually taught bookbinding as part of their industrial arts education. Here's the proof.

<-- front cover

Lang, Robert (ed.):
LA COLLECTION DES "DOCUMENTS MÉDICAUX"
[16 issues bound in one volume]
Documents Médicaux, Paris, [ca. 1933].

In a perfectly aesthetic world, even a journal of gruesome medical photography would aspire to the highest standards of production and design… wouldn't it?

<-- "La Sympathologie"

[de Postels & Klinkel]:
TWINKLE TUNES PIANO BOOK
No publisher, no place; [ca. 1939].

The plinking of a 70-year-old toy piano makes a suitably eerie soundtrack, drifting from the back of a haunted bookshop.

<-- front cover, with toy piano keyboard

Haney, Robert, and David Ballantine; Jonathan Elliott (phot.):
WOODSTOCK HANDMADE HOUSES
Random House, New York, 1975.

The vernacular architecture of hippies in upstate New York: utopian dwellings for hermits and hobbits.

<-- front cover

[n/a]:
[BOUND ARTIFACT] (paper, leather, fur, plant material, etc.)
[no publisher, place, or date]

Bookseller's dilemma: in what section do you shelve a cryptic leatherbound book-object, apparently handmade as an art stunt by a mad occultist?

<-- (fur, vellum, Satan)

Schroeder, Francis de Neufville; Alvin Lustig (dustjacket):

ANATOMY FOR INTERIOR DESIGNERS; AND HOW TO TALK TO A CLIENT

Whitney Publications, New York, 1951.

What, bibliographically speaking, makes a book "sexy"? It's the combination of intriguing subject matter; smart design; and an ineffable, but bewitching, physical allure. Like this.

<-- front cover

Djebar, Assia; Magnum (phot.)

WOMEN OF ISLAM

Bruna Book/Andre Deutsch, London, 1961.

This daring photographic survey includes dozens of provocative full-face shots. 

<-- front cover

Sumner, Lloyd:

COMPUTER ART AND HUMAN RESPONSE

[Self-published], Charlottesville, VA, 1968.

Geek creativity of the early digital era: the true avant-garde.

<-- p. 71, "The Noble Alternative"

Schmidt-Brümmer, Horst:

VENICE, CALIFORNIA: AN URBAN FANTASY

Grossman Publishers, New York, 1973.

"Today I'm in the mood for a photo-based cultural commentary on California's seediest beach community, undertaken by a German academic in the early '70s. Any recommendations?"

<-- front cover

[Cadogan, Adelaide]:

LADY CADOGAN'S ILLUSTRATED GAMES OF SOLITAIRE OR PATIENCE

David McKay Company, Philadelphia, 1914. 

Looking forward to some long, cold, and very lonely winter nights.

<-- front cover

Bishop, George: 

THE WORLD OF CLOWNS

Brooke House Publishers, Los Angeles, 1976.

Get your Gacy on!

<-- front cover

Nichols, Herbert L.:

MOVING THE EARTH: THE WORKBOOK OF EXCAVATION

North Castle Books, Greenwich, CT, 1976.

Pencil-necked intellectuals will need a front end loader just to hoist this monster into reading position.

<-- whole book, looming

(At the Monkey's Paw, we love the twilight season. We love dead leaves, dead poets, dead books; we love women in masks, men in dresses, children in black cat costumes; we love neglected graveyards and cheap candy. Yes: we love Halloween!)

*** MICROCATALOGUE #16: HALLOWEEN 2011 ***

Laughlin, Clarence John:
GHOSTS ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI
Bonanza Books, New York, 1961 (Revised Edition). 

Decades before Louisiana produced superstar bloodsuckers like the Vampire Lestat or Bill Compton, its macabre reputation as the home of "plantation gothic" was firmly established by an eccentric photographer from New Orleans. In his visual study of the region's rotting and moss-draped antebellum mansions, Laughlin produced 100 images of grandeur and decay, and (subtlety be damned!) added splendid theatrical titles: "The Shadowed Pillars," "The Spectral Fans," "Enigmatic Urn," "Mementoes of Unreturning Time," etc. As an approach to architectural history, Laughlin's explicitly "poetic" style might be disdained by dry academics; but romantic souls attuned to the mildewed moods of the Deep South will find themselves transported. Happy Halloween, y'all!

Price, Vincent and Mary:
A TREASURY OF GREAT RECIPES
Ampersand Press, [n.p.], 1965.

So what if your séance fails to raise the spirit of Vincent Price? You can still dine on his version of "Cornish Hens with Sauce Diable." In this enormous vanity-published compendium, the horror actor and his second wife gathered hundreds of recipes from their favorite swanky restaurants around the world, and dressed them up with facsimile menus and a glib text by Vincent himself. The whole production reeks of jet-set exotica and Hollywood connoisseurship, particularly the autobiographical photos: breakfast in the dark-panelled library; high tea beside the swimming pool; curry served before a Mayan idol; wine on board a Clark Cortez mobile home; etc. The master lives!

Browne, Thomas; W.A. Greenhill (ed.):
SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S HYDRIOTAPHIA ["URN-BURIAL"] AND THE GARDEN OF CYRUS 
Macmillan & Co., London, 1896.

Seemingly obscure, and decidedly difficult, this strange essay is actually a stealthy classic, savored for centuries by literary melancholics from Poe to Borges. Originally published in 1658 after the discovery of a Roman grave in Norfolk, "Urn Burial" is more than just a survey of ancient burial customs. Browne's meditation veers into the deepest shadows: he obsesses on the relentlessness of time, the inevitability of death, and the pitiful transience of all human accomplishment. Whether you actually grapple with the text, or just feel comforted by its mortal weight in your hand, this little book will make an elegant accessory to that goth librarian costume you're putting together. [Bound with "The Garden of Cyrus," Browne's truly cryptic essay on the mystical geometry of the number five.]

Habenstein, Robert W., and William W. Lamers:
THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN FUNERAL DIRECTING
First Edition. National Funeral Directors Assoc., Milwaukee, 1955. 

True or false: In 1882, Albert Fearnaught of Indianapolis patented a "Grave-Signal" device to summon help in the event of accidental burial alive; at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, a manufacturer exhibited a purple hearse, but the style never caught on; Dr. Thomas Holmes, "the father of modern embalming," also developed a formula for tasty root beer; a proper Victorian lady in her first year of widowhood was expected to write on stationery with a 1/4" black border… (These and thousands more sepulchral facts can be found in this illuminating book, along with over 100 solemn illustrations.)

Sante, Luc:
EVIDENCE
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1992. 

It's standard practice at Halloween to treat the subject of death as spooky entertainment; but "Evidence" raises those stakes considerably. Here, the image of a blood-spattered corpse on the floor of a saloon qualifies as truly profound art. The 55 graphic crime-scene photos in the collection (murders, mostly) were shot by NYPD technicians in the nineteen-teens; Sante discovered the pictures in the archives, and recognized them as exquisite, if inadvertent, dramatic tableaux. The accompanying text -- Sante's search for answers both literal and aesthetic within the mute, dispassionate photos -- should be shown to every snide kid who thinks history is boring.

[** end Microcatalogue #16: Halloween 2011 **]

[Aikin, Lucy; adapted from original by Daniel Defoe]:
ROBINSON CRUSOE IN WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE
American News Company, New York, 1869.

An interesting technical achievement, and further evidence that monosyllabilism is a legitimate literary genre. But why didn't they call it "Rob Crue and His Man Fri"?

<-- front cover