Summary: Had a hard's day slog down in the basement archives last week, and it was a lot of fun. Worked with Mr. Stypeck, a man with a storied life, and found out that he was once on NPR. Plus, he gave me a neat book.
So, it turns out that the guy I helped down in the archives last week used to be on NPR...
BLOT: (03 Feb 2013 - 03:26:19 PM)
So, it turns out that the guy I helped down in the archives last week used to be on NPR...
Though I didn't talk too much about outside purposefully "wide-shot" tweets, I did indeed do the archive work I hinted about a week and a half ago and it was a blast. Ten hours of really continuous work with some stiff joints and sweat involved, yes, but generally it was a physical dimension of work that reference librarianism will never involve. Largely involving a room maybe 8 meters by 6, stacked high with boxes down four rows. And the rows had paintings and various bits down in the floor that had to be gotten up (my job was primarily to get these and sort them and record notes about them then take them into the hall, photograph them, and them put them into another room). Several hours of my day looked like this:1
The man I was assisting was the delightful Allan Stypeck, owner of Second Story Books up in Washington, D.C., who does this sort of hardcore and varied appraisal of archive/collections business on a regular basis. We had a lot of discussions about a number of topics ranging from horror movies to the space program to Operation Paperclip to spy novels to our personal experiences with sensory deprivation chambers to cryptography. He actually sent me a book about this lattermost topic, dealing with Leibniz's Crypto-machine, and I've been reading it throughout the day. Old timey crypto is best crypto, really. For fun reading, anyhow.
My favorite bit about him was that he was the one time cohost of The Book Guys on NPR, back in the late 90s up to early 00s. Apparently a somewhat irreverant take on the rare book world, to the ire of some and delight of others:
One day, a caller left a series of phone messages...outraged at what he considered to be a lighthearted approach to the scholarly subject of rare books and literature, [he] repeatedly ranted, "I've never heard such rancid pedantry!" Stypeck was so delighted that he now has a sign on his office door identifying him as Allan Stypeck, Rancid Pedant.
"Our biggest obligation is to the enjoyment of the show," Stypeck says. "Not to turn it into a Vaudeville routine, but to remember that you have to combine the information with the entertainment and never let either one take away from the other."
Don't misunderstand. Stypeck, who has been in the business of appraising rare books for more than 20 years, takes the subject very seriously and very passionately. But he also finds it tremendously fun and exhilarating, and that's what he wants to come across on the air.2
On the Second Story website, the end of the show is said to be due to its own success meeting the dual of beast of declining public radio funding and the move from local to nationalized content3. Which is a shame, because it would have been fun to hear it. I was a fairly active NPR listener all the way back into the mid 90s, but I don't think I ever caught it. Maybe it was never in any of the markets I was in. Ah, well. I'll dig around and see if any of the old shows exist.
Notes
1: Jesus, my poor phone's camera really has been scuffed and beaten to the point it can barely take a photo. I've joked that I have the "1994 home video filter" turned on, permanently, but it is more appropriate to say that I have the "Make everything look like video still prop from the background of a particularly scary
2: Holtzclaw. [As a note: The DP website sometimes lets you view the article, and sometimes wants you to pay to view the article. I assume this is a "if you find it, once, you are in, but if you come back to it, you are not" arrangement as per a NYTimes.com style thingie].
3: "Book Guys".
References
Holtzclaw, Mike."'Book Guys' In Town To Do Show: National Public Radio Program To Be Taped At Main Street Library".
"The Book Guys Radio Show".
OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: February 2013
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