"HAVE YOU READ WAR AND PEACE?"

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A GREAT FRIEND....THE INTERNATIONAL
COLLECTORS LIBRARY!
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This question, "Have you read War and Peace?"---oft
heard in the 50's when I was in college, and even later
on, is seldom heard anymore. Why I don't know. Maybe
twittering and tweeting and "reality" everything has taken
us over! Maybe reading War and Peace is not deemed of much
consequence these days. Have we entered some sort
of...new era?

That question was heard in those years, anywhere and
everywhere, sometimes as a kind of benevolent
joke---referring to the thickness and difficulty of that awesome,
daunting tome, War and Peace. Now and then you'd hear the question
even on a talk show.

Along about the same time during my junior year in college,
I ran across a brochure published by The International
Collectors Library, advertising their simulated leather-
bound, and stamped in gold covers.... classic books. Not
only that, the pages, top and front were gold leafed.

I ordered one just to check them out. (Somehow or other,
in spite of a great high school education, I had missed out
on the classics...and I felt my lack.) My book came...and you
guessed it: I had ordered "War and Peace!"

My reader, you are going to laugh at this---but it must be told
in my story! The ICL books were the best-smelling books of
any books I ever had. How great! For $3.65 plus freight, I
received a stamped leatherette book, like from an English
estate library---that had a wonderful "new, booky" smell that
in itself seemed to promise glorious hours of accumulating
knowledge---old archaic stories, ideas, customs, and times---
almost like eating delicious food. Watching me, you'd have
thought I was gaining learning by inhaling, rather than reading!

I soon had a number of these books in my meager college-boy
library and over time, about twenty-five or more. There were
books available from authors around the world: Russian novels
were bound in red; British in blue. American classics were bound
in brown; French in maroon...and so on.

My first four were all Russian: "War and Peace" and "Anna
Karenina by Tolstoy; "The Brothers Karamazov" and "Crime
and Punishment" by Dostoevsky. I read three of the four, but
not Karenina. It's okay, my Beloved Editor has read it enough
for both of us and we have seen every film version of it. There
is an "Anna Karenina" movie on order right now from Netflix.
(She swears she's read "War and Peace"... but I can't remember
it.)She claims she pulled an all-nighter at Wayland to finish the book
for a test.

Yes, I read "War and Peace" during the summer of 1954, my
last one at home. I was working to save money for my senior
year of college. There was no TV then and I tackled it every
night. It was touch and go for the first 80 or 90 pages because
of the difficulty of getting oriented with the Russian names;
also there are many "diminutive and endearing" variations,
particularly with girls' names---to deal with. As classics go, it
was okay. Maybe like getting done with a big dose of medicine.
Forevermore then, in society, if the BIG QUESTION ever came
up: "Have you read..."War and Peace," I could proudly say: "Yes."

Sadly, The International Collectors Library is no more. A great
idea and classics source faded away. First they dropped the gold
leaf pages and the edges were white. The stamped bindings lost
their leathery feel. (Not to blame ICL---books generally went from
$5.95 to $25.95 over those later 20th Century years.) We were
even shorted on the smell! Prices went up, and sometime or other
I dropped out.

There must have been several hundred classics on their list.
Here are some of mine, that I have read:

"WAR AND PEACE".....Tolstoy
"THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV"....Dostoevsky
"CRIME AND PUNISHMENT"...Dostoevsky
"JOHN BROWN'S BODY"....Benet
"MADAME BOVARY"....Flaubert
"LES MISERABLES"....Hugo
"A TALE OF TWO CITIES"....Dickens
"DAVID COPPERFIELD"....Dickens
"THE RAZOR'S EDGE".....Maugham
"THE SUMMING UP"....Maugham
"THE WAY OF ALL FLESH"....Butler
"JANE EYRE".....Jane Austen
"PRIDE AND PREJUDICE"....Jane Austen
"WUTHERING HEIGHTS".....Charlotte Bronte
"GONE WITH THE WIND"....Mitchell
"PUDD'N HEAD WILSON"....Twain
"PRINCE AND THE PAUPER"....Twain
"LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI"....Twain
"FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD"....Hardy
"THE THREE MUSKETEERS"....Dumas
"THE MOONSTONE"....Collins
"THE PICKWICK PAPERS"....Dickens
"POEMS OF HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW"
"GREAT EXPECTATIONS"....Dickens

Recently, in searching for the present status of ICL, I
learned they had discontinued their fine books...I think,
in the seventies. Then somehow I ran onto some very
interesting information. There are ICL classics available
on eBay (and likely any used book search service.) It is
worth your searching just to see and know about these
books, and read some of the many titles that are available.
You will note on close scrutiny, that in the eBay collections
available, some pages will be gold-edged and some white.
The gold ones actually denote an earlier, better quality book.

There are several "sets" of classics available for sale...books
that someone collected in earlier years. One set of 22 books
is about $109.00 shipped. Another set of 19 books is less than
$100.00. A better bargain you'll never find for these classics.
It would be a good gift for a reading-young-person (if there is
such an animal!) If I were younger or had a mountain cabin
in the Yukon, I'd grab them to expand my collection.They
warm-up a room, as classics always do! (Alas, so many books,
so little time!)

Check them out; you might want to just get a few and settle
down, "far from the madding crowd," and read a bit, in some
older "reality" from the past! And don't forget "War and Peace!"

Who knows, you might be lucky and get an ICL book from
eBay with a little "old bookish smell" remaining!
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(Epilogue: I didn't discontinue my classics-reading. In 1976,
a company came out with the ONE HUNDRED best books
of the two hundred years of United States nationhood. They
WERE bound in real leather with specially treated paper, to
last a few hundred years. These became mine at one- a-month
for eight and one third years. There is absolutely nothing quite
as grand as a leather-bound-book!)

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BY MIL
7/21/13

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