Sun 11 Dec 2011
ADVENTURES IN COLLECTING: Is Completism Fatal?, by Walker Martin.
Posted by Steve under Collecting , Columns , Magazines , Pulp Fiction[21] Comments
Is Completism Fatal?
by Walker Martin
Dear Walker:
My own collection is all but complete — meaning that I’ve almost acquired all of the items on my want list. Of course I’ll always be out there keeping my eye open for serendipitous books and magazines, but I only have a very few more such items that I’m actually looking for. Once I find those I’m essentially done. Then I’ll just give them all away to the Salvation Army thrift store and start over… Your advice, please!
Dear C.P.
You have touched on a dangerous subject that all serious collectors must beware. I’ve seen many collectors fall into the dreaded trap of completing their collection. Usually once the collection is completed then many collectors lose interest and start thinking what next?
This results in the selling off of many collections because the enthusiasm of the chase and the drive to collect is now finished. Collectors that limit themselves to a favorite author or magazine are prone to losing interest once their goal of completion has been achieved.
Since collecting can be so much fun, how do we avoid falling into the abyss and losing interest in our collections after completion? The answer I have found is very simple, you do not allow yourself to complete your collection. You have to keep expanding your interests.
For instance, in your case, if you are close to completing your SF wants, then you have to develop an interest in another genre, another subject, other magazines. Maybe detective fiction or adventure pulps or original art to go along with your SF collection. Something else!
For instance in my own case, I started off in 1956, at the age of 13 collecting SF. This continued for around 10 years until I discovered detective pulps thanks to Ron Goulart’s Hardboiled Dicks anthology. This led me to collecting all sorts of mystery fiction like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald. It led me to completing sets of such great magazines like Black Mask and Dime Detective.
But then around 1980, I was faced again with the horrifying realization that I was nearing completion of the detective and mystery wants. I quickly expanded to adventure and western fiction and started to work on extensive sets of Western Story, West, Short Stories, Adventure, All Story, Argosy, Blue Book, Popular, Sea Stories and many others.
As I started to complete these magazines and run out of reading matter, I decided my job was taking up too much of my time and interfering with my reading and collecting activities. So in 2000 I retired to concentrate on building up what may be the world’s largest collection of literary magazines.
I’ve yet to meet another collector that is interested in these artifacts, but I love them, and I can fall into a trance looking and smelling the scent of rows and rows of literary quarterlies like the Hudson Review, The Criterion, Scrutiny, The London Magazine, Kenyon Review, Paris Review, and The Virginia Quarterly. I could go on and on forever but I’m sure you are all disgusted and fatigued reading about someone else’s collecting addictions. Hell, I actually read these things.
But the end may be near, even for me. I’ve mentioned before about almost being crushed by the collapsing of one of my basement bookcases due to overloading. Then a year or so later several bookcases fell on top of me and my son. Then last month a bookcase of literary magazines showered me with more than a hundred issues of the Sewanee Review.
It was heavenly. I just stood there as the magazines rained down on me and I felt at peace. Then I had to go to work picking them up off the floor and stacking them before my wife came to investigate the noise. She’s heard the sound of collapsing shelves and stacks falling, so she never asked me until a couple days later about the crashing noise that she chose to ignore.
Probably, she was hoping that I had tempted fate once too often and had been pounded flat as a pancake by the old magazines that she now hates with a passion. But no, I survived once again, just like some pulp super hero!
So I say to you, C.P., don’t stop collecting. There are unknown fields still to conquer. Don’t spend all your salary on your bills, your family, college fees for your children. You work hard for your money; spend some of it on collecting!
Now I have to go back to a discussion I’ve been having with myself for 50 years. What is the greatest fiction magazine ever? Is it Adventure in the 1920’s, All Story in the teens, Black Mask and Weird Tales in the 1930’s, Astounding and Unknown in the 1940’s, Galaxy in the 1950’s and 1960’s?
How about The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which has to fit somewhere. How about the SF fiction in Playboy and Omni, or the mystery fiction in Manhunt or EQMM?
Maybe I better fix up these bookcases so they don’t collapse; I need answers to the above questions!
Previously in this series: Collecting Manhunt.
December 12th, 2011 at 1:17 am
While your local library may no longer have the room for magazines, state universities and the Library of Congress may need what you collectors have.
Never assume others have what you do. Yesterday, two lost episodes of DOCTOR WHO were discovered. A collector had bought them decades ago in a school benefit auction. He thought the BBC had them. Nope, they were part of over one hundred missing episodes of the show the BBC tossed out long ago.
Walker, maybe a local university will take some of your collection and you can visit them and not worry about your bookshelves or wife attacking you anymore.
December 12th, 2011 at 6:14 am
That’s my plan, Michael. Since my only child has absolutely no interest in these old magazines, I plan to get them into the library of a university, set up, perhaps, as a special collection. But that’s after I’m gone… for now I couldn’t imagine living without easy access to my collection.
December 12th, 2011 at 7:34 am
I don’t know if Michael is kidding me or has perhaps missed my point. People that have talked with me at home or at conventions know the one thing I do not want to do is donate my collection to a university.
If fact, many of the bound copies of my literary magazine collection actually came from university shelves. In recent years colleges and institution have dumped most of their hard copy magazines in favor of microfilm or some type of digital record. Some just threw the stuff in the dumpsters.
This actually happened years ago when my wife worked in the Periodical Dept of Trenton State College. She came home one night upset and told me they were throwing away tons of magazines. The next day I went over and sure enough the dumpster outside the department was full of bound and loose copies of SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE. Some were in nice condition and contained first appearances of major literary figures, like Ernest Hemingway. They let me fill my car up and I still have many, others I sold to a dealer.
I have a relative who graduated with a degree to become a Librarian. She took a masters in it also. From what she told me the emphasis is now on electronic information systems, not books or magazines. There are a few places like Bowling Green University that collect pulps but most libraries would probably dump the donated collection in a storage area somewhere where it would eventually rot away.
As a lifelong collector and reader, I’m a firm believer in keeping my collection in my house for ready access. I even moved into a bigger house 20 years ago to accomodate my expanding book and magazine files. I’m even against storage areas because once a collector puts books in storage it’s almost like they do not exist anymore.
I recently counted the bookcases in my house. I’m at the 200 mark now and I would expand into a bigger house except the housing market is terrible plus to tell you the truth I don’t think I have the energy to move again!
December 12th, 2011 at 9:27 am
As a quick comment, Steve in Comment #2 is not me, Steve Lewis, the guy who runs this blog. I don’t know if either my son or daughter would be interested in my collection, but I suspect not. Collections are too personal for anyone else to be interested in everything, perhaps only bits and pieces — and that’s being optimistic! My daughter has her own problems with running out of shelving space, only her passion is historical fiction.
What Walker says about storage areas is 100% correct. Once your stuff is there, it’s as if it’s gone. You have it, but you really don’t. I always have the feeling when I take a car load of boxes over to one of mine, I’ll never see them again.
December 12th, 2011 at 11:49 am
Steve in Comment #4 brings up a couple points that I find of interest. My children have absolutely no interest in my collection and though my daughter reads mainstream fiction, she now has a 6 month old baby and her full time job. Which means she doesn’t read much at all now. My son has no interest in reading fiction.
Concerning storage, a friend of mine who lives nearby has limited room in his apartment but an enormous collection, almost all of which he has in storage. He no longer remembers where anything is and until he buys a large house, which I doubt he will ever do, the books remain buried in piles of boxes. I think many collectors start off thinking of storage as a temporary solution and it becomes a permanent solution.
December 12th, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Walker, I was not kidding you. I know local libraries toss out paper. Back in the seventies when I was collecting newspaper comic strips the local libraries would give me their old newspapers. I would handle those papers until the ink made the skin on my hands dry, crack open and bleed. But, as with first editions, there are libraries, usually private or University, seeking to save the original magazines and books.
It sounds like what you have right now makes you happy. And as for C.P., I agree with your advice to expand his collection. I’d add if he had all the SF he wanted to look for favorite SF authors works in other genres.
The storage area brings up a sad point. I have lived in a small apartment most of my adult life. The storage area was the only choice I thought I had for my few thousand books. Then it struck me what a waste it was. All those books sitting gathering dust while so many people could enjoy reading them. I wondered did I own my collection or did own me?
Walker, this does not apply to you, but C.P. thought of giving them to the Salvation Army struck a cord in me. I wanted to say, if you don’t expect to read them again, give them away, but not to be recycled for paper. Find someplace where they can continue to be enjoyed. Find someone who will enjoy them. Heck, C.P., give ’em to Walker he’d find them a good home!
Walker, you are very lucky to find something that give you such joy and something you can afford to maintain. There is not a collector in this Universe that does not envy you.
December 12th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Thanks for your comments, Michael. When I took early retirement in 2000 I was so burnt out that I just wanted to sit down and read all day. I’ve been at it now for 12 years and each day I read, sort through my collection and watch at least one or two crime or film noir movies. I even fit in a walk each morning. So this is my idea having fun talking about collecting books and magazines.
For those of you thinking about retirement, I recommend it highly, especially if you like to read!
December 12th, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Finding a university that will take book donations for special collections is no easy matter. When I terminated my career as a mystery fiction bibliographer, ending the updates with the year 2000, I offered my substantial collection of reference books to my university library. The first 40 or so boxes were readily accepted and picked up, but it was at least a decade before the remaining boxes were collected. Libraries have the same space problems, on an enormously larger scale, that collectors do. I would like to think that my collection has been catalogued as a permanent part of the library’s Special Collections, but I’m not counting on it.
A friend of mind with an important Edgar Rice Burroughs collection that he had donated to a library discovered, to his horror, that much of his collection was not in secured areas in the library, and items were missing. He managed to find another university that would take the collection and guarantee its security, but items missing from the first donation were never recovered.
December 12th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
The BBC is, or at least WAS, famous for tossing out really good stuff. Especially popular things, that they deemed not politically correct.
To hang, draw and quarter those responsible would be far too soft.
The Doc
December 12th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
By sheer coincidence, there is a story first appearing online today about a couple of missing DR. WHO episodes that have recently been found:
http://thecelebritycafe.com/feature/lost-doctor-who-episodes-have-been-found-and-restored-12-12-2011
Although sometimes it works out well, I’ve heard too many stories about collectors leaving their accumulations to libraries only to have been disappointed.
If I went that route, I’d like to make sure that the public had access to my collection, that it wouldn’t be neglected or even dumped after I’m no longer around to watch over it.
As Michael suggested a couple of comments earlier, books are meant to be read and enjoyed, and if I can’t, then I’d be happy to know that someone else was.
If it’s relevant, I don’t have many books or magazines that are ultra-valuable; I just have a lot of them!
December 13th, 2011 at 9:30 am
Hey, Walker…though I’m not a completist (and therefore might be disqualified), you can be said to be at least virtually acquainted with someone whose lust for fiction magazines is as catholic as your own…buried in SEWANEEs does indeed sound like one of the less unpleasant ways to go through blunt force trauma (as long as, as with the Thugees, no blood is spilled on the precious, gravitationally lethal issues…).
Special collections at universities…Usually…are not treated so cavalierly. See George Kelley’s example, among others’.
December 13th, 2011 at 9:40 am
Indeed! What George has been able to with his collection is quite remarkable:
http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/kelley/
December 13th, 2011 at 9:40 am
I stand corrected; Todd Mason, like me, does have a lust for fiction magazines of all types. That’s why I follow his blog SWEET FREEDOM
December 13th, 2011 at 9:42 am
We have wandered somewhat from C.P.’s original question, although not badly.
The question still remains, what does the dog do when he’s caught the car he’s chasing?
One answer is, of course, is to learn how to drive. I am not speaking of C.P. when I say this, but too many collectors do nothing but collect. The goal is completeness for its own sake, to enclose their possessions in plastic, stick them in a box, and put the box into a closet, never to be seen again. (Ouch. This is starting to hit too close to home.)
Be that as it may, however, and speaking for myself, the end is nowhere in sight. I am nowhere near completeness, and I never will be. I collect only what I intend to read someday, and I expect to live long enough to do so!
December 13th, 2011 at 10:44 am
Steve in Comment #14 asks the question, “…what does the dog do when he’s caught the car he’s chasing?”
He will stop collecting unless he expands his interests. Many collectors once they stop, eventually then take the next step, which is the disposal of the collection.
How do I know this? Because during my attendance at almost every Pulpcon since 1972, I talked and became friends with many collectors and many of them are no longer with us. Not because they died, but because they reached their goal of a complete or almost complete collection. Then they stopped going to the convention and disappear from view or I would hear about their collection being up for sale. Sometimes, since Pulpcon was mainly a collector’s convention, I would see their collections up for auction or on a dealer’s table.
I’ll give an example which can stand as a representative case. In the 1970’s I knew a man in his 30’s who was crazy about the pulp, OPERATOR 5. For three years he haunted the dealer’s room looking for fine condition copies of the magazine. All he would talk about was Operator 5. I remember once as I drove up the ramp into the hotel’s parking garage, there he was, stopping each car and asking in a breathless and excited voice, “Do you have any OPERATOR 5 pulps?” Even I thought he was mentally unbalanced to only concentrate on one magazine title. Ok, so he liked Operator 5 but there were other hero pulps that he also should have been collecting.
I was at the convention when he made the big announcement that he had completed his collection. He went around shaking the hands of everyone that had helped him track down issues during the three years. He then disappeared to never be seen or heard from again.
I’ve seen the above happen not just once but many times when collectors limit themselves to one or two authors, one or two magazines. And some of these guys are so intense about the one author they collect, that they become bores because that’s all they want to talk about.
I know one collector I’ve known since 1975 who only wants to talk about THE SHADOW. I practically break a leg to get away from him when I see him because I know what he will be talking about. Another collector has a great collection of Robert Howard material but drives me crazy because that’s all he wants to talk about. I’ve tried to redirect the converstation to other members of the WEIRD TALES school but he refuses to take the bait. I now call him THE HOWARD GUY and keep a wary eye out for him.
My advice to book and magazine collectors, is to keep your mind open for new authors and magazines to collect. There is alot of good reading out there!
December 13th, 2011 at 11:14 am
Is there a link to Todd Mason’s blog SWEET FREEDOM, or is it by invitation only? Thanks.
December 13th, 2011 at 11:30 am
Rick
Here ’tis:
http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com
Every Tuesday is a highlight of my week. Todd publishes a compilation list of “Overlooked” Films and/or Other A/V, as submitted by other bloggers, including myself.
This week’s goodies, all with links:
Bill Crider: A Rage in Harlem
Brian Arnold: “Christmas in July” (Punky Brewster animated)
Chuck Esola: Stop Me Before I Kill!
Eric Peterson: Off Beat (1986)
Evan Lewis: The Sign of Four (1932)
Iba Dawson: Away We Go (2009)
Jack Seabrook: Robert Bloch on TV: “The Changing Heart” (Alfred Hitchcock Presents:)
James Reasoner: Time Again
Jerry House: Tuba Christmas
John Charles: Terror Circus (aka Barn of the Naked Dead; aka Nightmare Circus)
Juri Nummelin: Dracula vs. Frankenstein
Kate Laity: The Long Kiss Goodnight
Mike Toomey: “Back for Christmas” (Alfred Hitchcock Presents:)
Patti Abbott: The Knack…and how to get it
Philip Schweier: I Wake Up Screaming; I Walk Alone
Randy Johnson: Two Flags West
Ron Scheer: High Plains Drifter
Scott Cupp: Supergirl
Sergio Angelini: Maniac (1963; aka The Maniac)
Stacia Jones: Nana (1926)
Steve Lewis: Black Moon (1934); Illegal Entry; Offbeat (1963)
Todd Mason: Why Do You Write Horror Fiction? Gahan Wilson, Joseph Payne Brennan, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long and Manly Wade Wellman at the First World Fantasy Convention, 1975
Walter Albert: Nightmare (1956)
Related Matters:
Dan Stumpf: Jackie Chan: 5 Films
Frederik Pohl: Harlan Ellison (and Long John Nebel)
George Kelley: Jackie Chan: 4 Films; John Le Carre narrates his Absolute Friends
Paula Guran (courtesy Ed Gorman): Behind the Bates Motel: Robert Bloch
Prashant Trikannad: World War II movies
December 13th, 2011 at 12:23 pm
In Comment #14 Steve brings up the subject of collectors who only collect. They don’t read the material and they often are very fussy about condition. They keep the books and magazines in plastic, in a box, often out of sight. These collectors I do not understand because like Steve, I only collect what I can read. How can you not read books?
I guess this comes from the comic book mentality where the emphasis is on condition, condition, condition. Many high grade comics are now locked up in cases which are sealed. The process is called “slabbing” or “to slab a comic”. This protects the conditon but makes it impossible to read.
So far I have not seen a slabbed pulp or book. I’m very worried about the violent reaction that will take place when I do see the first one!
December 13th, 2011 at 6:34 pm
As a former comic book collector (I sold mine off in the 80s to finance my move to Hollywood), the mint collectors were for a time the life blood of the comic book industry. Collectors would buy two of every issue, one to read and another for their retirement fund. The publishers started releasing books with multiple covers so collectors were buying four plus copies of the same comic.
With the resulting surplus of comics and all the fans saving their copies the market collapsed.
I learned two important rules when collecting. One, if it is new and says it is a collectible on the cover or package, it isn’t and never will be. And the most valuable collectible of tomorrow will be something kids play with today and throw away.
March 9th, 2012 at 3:26 am
Thanks, Walker, for a truly perceptive piece about collecting. I completely agree about expanding your horizons when you’ve finished one aspect of your collection.
I’ve been a book and magazine collector (comics, pulps and more) for 56 years — since I was 8 years old and first entered a magnificent second-hand book store. To me, the whiff of paper (not mildew, though!) is absolutely intoxicating.
I have about 34,000 items, ranging from comic book runs, girls’ mysteries, pulp magazines, serials and films, and so much more, the majority from 1930-1960 or relating to that period, such as reference books and reprints. Yet my want lists show I would like to acquire about 6,000 more items in various categories, not even counting impulse buys. I can’t imagine ever running out of things to collect. Of course, perhaps I would have if I had been wealthy. As a writer with more than 10,000 published articles over a 46-year period, I’ve never been wealthy, though I once made a pretty good living in Pre-Reagan era economics.
Many of the items I’m seeking are fairly hard to find, though none are outrageously expensive. I’ve been very determined as a book scout and have found many sweet, valuable items for a song. Just today I found a 1969 Joe Archibald baseball novel at a library sale for 50 cents — in jacket! It’s the only copy I’ve ever seen of this story by an extremely prolific pulp author. He turned to writing lively novels when the pulp market went sour.
I have attended well over 500 book shows, pulp shows, comic shows, library sales and so on — easily more than a dozen a year since the late 1960s — and I still always feel a thrill entering the door, wondering if something special awaits me.
Even on the last days of shows, I somehow find great items. On the final day of PulpFest in 2011, for example, for $10 I found a pretty copy of the rare 1960 one-shot pulp Wagon Train based on the TV show. I had never seen this pulp.
A couple of years ago, literally walking out of the Chicago comic con, I found the last World War II Blondie Feature Book I needed to complete the set off 17, just sitting on top of a dealer’s box. I had looked for that issue for years, and here I spotted it just before I left the show!
Collecting is endlessly fascinating. I can’t ever remember attending a show or sale without finding something interesting, even if it’s just an impulse item. Even if I find only one item, a show is well worth while for me. The thrill of the hunt is one of the greatest feelings you can have.
March 9th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Michelle, I call collecting books and old magazines The Grandest Game in the World. It’s been the driving force behind my actions ever since I was 9 or 10 and started to read the Tarzan and Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I’m overjoyed to see the favorable publicity surrounding the 100th anniversary of the serial, UNDER THE MOONS OF MARS. Now I hope the movie is not a disappointment!