Interlibrary Loan Rocks the House!

Rrecently I have been taking advantage of our ILL service at work to read some pretty obscure, expensive, hard-to-find items . Things that would have cost $100s and in some cases $1000s of dollars to buy on the antiquarian market are mine for the asking through interlibrary loan. The only difficulty is parting with the books when it is time to send them back from whence they came. So far I have had no luck corrupting our ILL librarian, but I think my latest request may have her seeing the light.

I wanted to read David Goodis's first novel from 1939 Retreat from Oblivion, but the approximately $2000 price tag for a Very Good copy has always seemed a bit more than I could justify (at least to my wife). And I couldn't afford it anyway. I did offer one Book dealer $100 if he would let me read his copy, but I think he thought I was kidding, or that I might spill coffee on it. So I thought what the heck I'll try and get the book through ILL. Well today we got back an acknowledgement from a large university library saying that they would send it out for a $15 fee. Well hell yeah! Send it on out. I wonder how much they would charge if I happened to "lose" it, or "drop it in the tub"? I told the ILL person what it would cost to buy a copy, and I think I finally saw a glint of larceny in her eyes. I couldn't get her to crack on the copy of E.H. Visiak's horror novel from 1929 Medusa, but that one was only worth about $300-400. I certainly couldn't get her to cave on the copy of One Man's Muddle by E. Baker Quinn a forgotten (unjustly in my opinion, now that I have read it and you haven't) British hard-boiled mystery from the late 30's. (By the way that E. stands for Eleanor. Add her to the list of great Lady Noir writers) That one is only about a $150 book, but both it and Medusa seem to come up for sale very infrequently. Ditto for a 1900 collection of spy stories set in French diplomatic circles called A Diplomatic Woman by Huan Mee. I have never found a copy for sale, so I actually have no idea how much it would sell for, but I read an ILL copy from a women's college library in Texas, and since that one is way in the public domain I felt no compunction xeroxing the whole book as well. If I can ever get my free scanner to work I'll put it into e-book format and pass it along to Project Gutenberg because that's the kind of guy I am. It's all about paying it forward, and since I don't really have any talent except for ferreting out oddball old books by any means necessary, it's the least I can do. No, really, it is the very least.

Of course I am ready to dash off a check for the loan of the David Goodis book which for all I know may be really bad, since most Goodis books came back into print starting in the 80's during the Noir fiction boomlet at Black Lizard/Creative Arts, but this, his first, remains unreprinted. I don't even know if it ever had a paperback edition. Most other Goodis books did at some point. In fact most David Goodis books were paperback originals, and never saw hardcover. So great books (or at least great titles) like The Moon in the Gutter, The Blond on the Street Corner, The Wounded and the Slain, and Fire in the Flesh languished in obscurity. I find it impossible to believe that there are not other equally great books, and authors languishing out in the flea markets, garage sales, paperback exchanges, and thrift stores awaiting rediscovery (or in most cases just plain old discovery, since they went undiscovered the first go-round and sank from site without a ripple). So, I am out there spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of pulp. Sometimes experiencing the thrill of discovery, and sometimes the agony of cheap reads. But always searching for the human drama of, well, human drama. You know. The good stuff.