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Chapter 20
- Louisiana State University Press
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194 20 The week after scattering my father’s ashes I visited the Chicago Rare Book Company in search of the lean, eager man with chain-slung bifocals. He was easy to find since he ran the shop by himself, and during the hour and a half I spent with him I was the only patron to walk in. He introduced himself as Hardy—I failed to ask if this was his first or last name—and indeed he could have passed for a minor character in a Thomas Hardy novel, a vicar perhaps: pale, angular, and fidgety. We sat by the picture window that looked out on the main drag of Old Town, and I asked him if he knew my father, Roland Clary. “I won’t soon forget him,” he said. “He came in out of the blue one day with some of the most valuable books I’ve seen. I bought as many as I could afford, and I put him in touch with a private collector in Highland Park for whom money is no object.” “How much are we talking about, if you don’t mind my asking?” “You should probably discuss that with Mr. Clary,” Hardy said. “I don’t generally share those details.” I told him about my father’s death. “I’m his executor,” I explained. “And I’m trying to settle accounts.” “I’m so sorry.” Hardy touched my hand, then quickly withdrew it. “I only saw him a couple of months ago.” “He had heart trouble.” “I know how that is. A heart attack got my father last year. This used to be his shop,” he said. “And I know about settling accounts, too. My dad kept no records. His ledgers were all up here.” Hardy pointed to his bald head. “The shop didn’t always look like this.” The books stood sentry on dusted shelves, and the place had that almond aroma of old paper and glue, along with the fresh scent of wood polish. “My father was not the most orderly person.” 195 “Sounds familiar,” I said, and passed along my sympathies. Hardy went into a back room and brought out an old laptop computer. He put on his glasses, clicked open some windows, and went over the transactions one by one: Death in the Woods by Sherwood Anderson. Hardcover, first edition. A few chips along the top edge of the dust jacket. Otherwise, good condition. $2,200. Dark Laughter by Sherwood Anderson. Hardcover, first edition. Excellent copy in a fine unclipped dust jacket. $3,500. “This was the book that Hemingway parodied in Torrents of Spring,” Hardy said. “So much for that friendship.” Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, rare first edition, signed by the author on the front free endpaper. Original dust jacket in fine shape. Tight binding. $8,500. “The amazing thing about this one is that your father came into the shop with three signed first editions of Winesburg. The other two were in even better shape. I appraised them at $9,750 and $11,000, but could only afford the one.” Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, first edition, first issue, slight age-toning to the white jacket and modest chipping at the crown. $3,200. Hardy peered over his bifocals and continued his running commentary: “Not only did Anderson borrow the structure of Spoon River—interrelated stories set in a small midwestern town—he also stole Masters’s girlfriend and married her.” The list went on, including first editions by John Dos Passos and several writers of the Chicago Renaissance, among them Dreiser and Sandburg. “All told, I paid over thirty-five thousand dollars.” Hardy closed his laptop. “Your father must have come in here four times over the course of a couple months, so I gave him four checks in varying amounts.” “Do you remember what other books he brought in?” “Do I remember?” Hardy said. “It about killed me that I couldn’t buy all of them. He had a first edition of Hemingway’s In Our Time, one of only 170 printed by Three Mountains Press in 1924. Very good condition. I’d put it at fifty thousand. And he had two rare books by Faulkner: Sartoris, a signed first edition worth fifteen thousand. And the crown jewel: a first edition of Soldier’s Pay that Faulkner inscribed to Sherwood Anderson himself. What’s even more remarkable about the Soldier’s Pay book is that Faulkner thanked Anderson for being...