Second Chances

My friend the bon vivant bookseller Michael Seidenberg of Brazenhead Books, which he ran out of his apartment in New York City, died in 2019. I’d known him since 1978, when as a teenager I apprenticed myself to his first shop. Michael loved pressing “lost” books and authors on me, and on anyone. A visit to one of his shops often concluded with taking home a novel one had not only not been seeking, but of which one had never heard. He would typically reduce the price of such a purchase, as a softening of the risk entailed in taking his word.Michael was also an instinctive devil’s advocate. When I once spoke of my enthusiasm for trade paperback imprints dedicated specifically to reviving lost books, he surprised me. “Those are tombstones,” he told me (my quotation is a paraphrase from memory). “Being published by one of those presses that only publishes revivals, it’s the last heartbeat of a dying reputation. Presenting an author under the flag of rediscovery is the same thing as saying, ‘No one cared in the first place.’ After that, a book is officially dead forever.” He also pointed out how these imprints tended themselves to die out after just a handful of books.With hindsight we ...