Bibliophemera

I came across this copy of William Goldman's Marathon Man (Delacorte Press, 1974) and found a card paper-clipped inside for one of the publisher's representatives, Theron Palmer. His card includes two publishers, the other being the Dial Press. A few clicks on the Internet introduced me to Mr. Palmer, courtesy of Chris Stephens and the riverrun bookshop blog , where some wonderful personal memories of the man are recounted and even a photo displayed. In the 1970s, writes Stephens, Palmer's territory was Oklahoma and Texas. That's a lot of ground to cover. You can drive all day and not get out of Texas. So learning of Theron Palmer's territory explains how this book wound up in Texas, where I found it. It was likely hand-delivered to a bookseller by Theron Palmer. Considering the vast territory Palmer had to cover, I wonder if he sometimes felt a bit like a "Marathon Man," driving the miles and miles of highway between bookstores. One thi...

As defined in Webster's Third New International Dictionary , the giant one that will give you a hernia trying to pick it up, a bookmobile is defined as an autotruck with shelves of books that serves as an itinerant library or bookstore . So when is a bookmobile not a bookmobile? How about when it's a trailer, which is not an autotruck. A trailer is not mobile unless being pulled by a car or truck. But that technicality didn't get in the way of proclaiming the trailers below (two postcards and a photo) to be bookmobiles by their respective libraries. First up is what looks like a recycled horse trailer, being used by the National Catholic Community Service (NCCS) for the USO during World War II.   This was the first library trailer image in my collection and the reason for acquiring the next two images. I found the concept of a trailer an interesting alternative to the traditional autotruck bookmobile, a throwback to the horse and wagon or Parnassus ...