The Genghis Khan Book Society
HOUSTON, MICHAEL
The Genghis Khan Book Society By Michael Houston I have, over the past several years, been maintaining a dialogue with four of the most distinguished literary figures of our time. In...
...We refer specifically to the incident of last Friday, wherein a person or persons unknown pitched the May Triple Selection, still in its cardboard box, through the front window of the Society's offices on 14th Street, narrowly missing Miss Nimitz as she sat at her desk typing out invoices...
...In raising the question, at this time, of our Bonus Certificate Plan," it began, "we do not mean to imply that we have been influenced, let alone intimidated, by the number of Members who have telephoned the Society's offices and spoken in a threatening manner to Miss Nimitz...
...The following month—it was July —the postman brought a volume of Great Kurdish Short Novels together with a running mate, Cooking With Kurds: the Pleasures of Kurdish Cooking, and, presumably a Bonus Selection, a stereo recording of Great Plane Crashes...
...The Challenge of Communism, by Edward Carl James, $8.50 (September...
...The chapter on "Rain in the Seventeenth Century" was very interesting —it appears that the Mermaid Tavern, where Shakespeare and all that crowd hung out, was located in quite a rainy section of London, which probably accounts for The Tempest...
...The answer, Mr...
...still available...
...William Tybolt Harrison, quondam consultant on the colon to the American Collegiate Dictionary...
...not a Society selection...
...If you don't think we know what is best for you, why do you belong to us...
...I said yes...
...That dark and tormented figure who, although deeply involved in the unfortunately unsuccessful attempt on the life of Mad King Ludwig, nevertheless found time to commit to paper some of the most remarkable epistolary prose in the history of Bavarian letters (his correspondence with his son Haldor, confined since birth in the Royal Aquarium at Munich, is particularly fine), had his nativity in the blessed year 1862...
...The editorial tone this month was distinctly defensive: "Several rather unpleasant incidents have occurred lately, troubling the smooth surface of the entente the Genghis Khan Book Society has always maintained with its Membership...
...November selection...
...At this, I folded my copy of The Mongol and slipped it quietly into a handy copy of Days With Gilbert Gill, by Edwina Roberts Gill (Narcissus Press...
...Why, he writes, a threevolume variorum edition of The Letters of Oscar Hoergkeit (Member's Price, $17.95 per volume...
...James' irritating habit of pinching Miss Nimitz at every opportunity, a matter that we need not go into here...
...18.95...
...The Challenge of ?on-Alignment, by William Tybolt Harrison, $10.00 (October...
...GUI, whose devotion to literature is, as we all know, so fierce as to almost incapacitate him for the business of making a living...
...It was unsigned...
...The first of a series of disquieting notices appeared in The Mongol for June, 1962...
...This, quite frankly, gave me pause (and a bill for $13.70...
...Their refusal, en bloc, to allow us further use of that famous photograph of themselves which enticed so many of you into the Society, has caused us no little anguish...
...Bonus Selections included The Basic Writings of William Tybolt Harrison, The Collected Poems of Gilbert Gill, and a bushel of Royal Riviera pears...
...Then, the next month, A Treasury of Bats arrived...
...Welcher, we can't help you...
...The Challenge of Democracy, by Gilbert Gill, $7.95 (August...
...There has been, we feel, a communications breakdown...
...Welcher has apparently read, in Publisher's Weekly, about what he terms 'a shady bulk purchase deal between the Society, the Hoergkeit heirs and the proprietors of Narcissus Press,' only confirms our feeling that he is not the sort of person we want in the Society anyway...
...But this, of course, is nonsense...
...I had never had one, except for the odd Scoutmaster or two...
...It seems that our Bonus Certificate Plan has not been thoroughly understood...
...I began to pay closer attention to The Mongol, the GKBS'S chatty, informative monthly bulletin...
...I only hoped, I added in a postscript to my letter, that the dialogue would not embrace the work of any of the new French novelists, who tend to give me the itch...
...Finally, there was Mr...
...The book was very handsome, of course, with large colorplates in a uniform (but enormously subtle) shade of gray...
...When I received my first Genghis Khan Book Society selection, The Picture History of Rain, edited by Procne Goodbow (at the special Member's Price of only $15.40), I was a trifle disappointed...
...It is true that Mr...
...When the following month's mail brought me a copy of The Age of Idiocy by William Tybolt Harrison (special Member's Price, $9.50), I became a little angry...
...If you don't recognize a centennial when you see one, Mr...
...Harrison was perhaps over-given to the use of the word 'seminal.' (In an amusing note, Mr...
...To deal with the matter simply, let us answer a note from Mr...
...Gill made it his practice, invariably, to 'knock' the selections of the other judges without advancing any himself— the way of distinguished literary figures everywhere, perhaps...
...The dialogue was over...
...Are all your confounded books seminal?') And Miss Goodbow's strong predilection for books with the word 'challenge' in the title did create certain problems internally here at the Society, some of which are treated of glancingly in her new book of essays (Challenges, by Procne Goodbow, Narcissus Press, $12.50...
...Edward Carl James, latterly Chief, Loudspeaker and Leaflet Division, United States Information Agency...
...The wise and witty essays of our judges, which have adorned these pages for a number of years, will be sorely missed...
...In recent months the dialogue has been pretty one-sided and unsatisfactory, but that is probably my fault...
...I had always wanted a mentor...
...My coffee table sparkled with important-looking titles bearing the imprint of Narcissus Press...
...I began to wonder what kind of a dialogue I had gotten myself into...
...My dialogue with the Genghis Khan Book Society now became quite challenging...
...How could I resist...
...After putting the latter on my livingroom rig, thereby causing my neighbors to scurry for their basement shelters, I sat down to pursue my dialogue with The Mongol...
...Thus, we propose to devote the next few pages of The Mongol to a scrutiny of the slight coolness which seems to have arisen between the Society and the Membership...
...Welcher, is 1862...
...Then there was Mr...
...The next few months sped by...
...The debacle was announced in a poignant little note in The Mongol for January, 1963...
...Then, suddenly, my dialogue with four of the most distinguished literary figures of our time came to an end, and with it my relationship with the GKBS...
...And there they were, right there in the advertisement: Gilbert Gill, formerly Poetry Editor, Narcissus Press, and author of Mycology and Other Poems...
...Procne Goodbow, author of A nimals Without Backbones and sometime Dean of Women, Fistula University...
...It began: "The defection, in December, of our formerly distinguished panel of judges, is a blow from which the Society has not yet fully recovered...
...Whether, as our formerly distinguished judges claimed, they could no longer stomach the Society's rather modest demands on their time, or, as we here in the office suspect, they had gotten a better offer from another Society, is a moot point...
...Without going into the Quarterly Dividend Double Selections, the Simple Interest Selection for Anticipated Prompt Payment, and the Annual Christmas Treat, let us leave off by simply assuring you that you are getting a whale of a good deal...
...Michael Houston, a new contributor, is a young freelance writer currently living in New York City...
...M. A. Tydings of Elko, Nevada, writes...
...The photograph we are presently using, that of the new judges, my wife and I, is not, I don't mind telling you, pulling nearly so well...
...The Bonus Certificate Plan, then, is simply a mechanism which enables us to send you, and enables you to pay for, extra books at prices substantially higher than those obtaining at most good discount houses...
...Welcher does not seem to have quite grasped the point of the May Triple Selection either...
...They looked sere, mellow, distinguished and argumentative—splendid talkers all, as I could instantly tell...
...The fact that Mr...
...There arrived at my home, in the following order...
...But, somehow, the book did not quite live up to the advance billing...
...Nothing, however, could have been more exciting—or more flattering—than the original invitation to participate: "The Genghis Khan Book Society Invites You to Join in a Dialogue Covering the Whole Range of Human Thought and Feeling with Four of the Most Distinguished Literary Figures of Our Time as Your Guides and Mentors...
...It is true that we send you a little card to fill out which spuriously suggests that you may select the books you yourself want...
...As you know, the aim of the Genghis Khan Book Society is to maintain a dialogue between our distinguished judges and the busy reader by seeking out those seminal works of lasting value which the busy reader might not otherwise read, and to see that the busy reader reads them whether he wants to or not...
...James A. Welcher, 3232 Bedford Drive, Rye...
Vol. 46 • July 1963 • No. 15
