Last issue’s column was about the first of three titles I was glad we didn’t sell at last month’s M.A.R.I.A.B. (Mass. and Rhode Island Antiquarian Booksellers Association) book fair at the Cyclorama in Boston. It was a drunken sailor memoir, Behold Me Once More, by James Garrison, ashamed older brother to the Boston area abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. At the time, only four copies of it showed up on www.addall.com., from $12-$15.50 Now eleven copies are out there, ranging $7-$25. Listings on the other two titles will also change between my writing and your reading, and all it takes to change them is one person listing a copy and another person making a decision and buying that or another copy. And think about it: eleven copies listed for sale in the entire country?

Number one of the other two is Philippe Halsman’s Jump Book, first published by Simon and Schuster in New York in 1959. Halsman (1906-1979) came to the U.S. in 1940 and became a pre-eminent portrait photographer, in particular doing more "Life" magazine covers than anyone else. "Born with an intense interest in jumping", he started in the early 50’s to ask his celebrity subjects if they would jump for him, and very few refused. Bertrand Russell was one, saying he did not want to reveal himself thus. Marilyn Monroe has a wonderful legs-behind-her-back jump recorded here, but became overcome by shyness and wouldn’t leap again after asking "you mean that my jump shows my character?"

The photographer explains "jumpology": " In a jump the subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcomes gravity. He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and his limb muscles. The mask falls. The real self becomes visible. One has only to snap it with the camera." And he has printed 178 snaps in this lovely book, arranged by "Captains of Industry", "Scientists and Theologians", "Actresses and Singers", "The Eloquence of Legs", "Seven Authors", "Great Athletes", "Veteran Comedians" and the like.

Richard Nixon jumps, as does Adlai Stevenson. Audrey Hepburn soars with delight, William Holden is an acrobat with a cane, and Peter Ustinov jumps down from a wall while reading a book and smoking. Tallulah Bankhead, also smoking, takes only one high heeled foot off the ground while lifting her dark dress. Judge Learned Hand, asked to jump at 87, answered "Don’t you think this might kill me?’ but continued "After all maybe, this is not a bad way to go...."

E.Phillips Oppenheim, Paul Tillich, Jackie Gleason, Brigitte Bardot, Phil Silvers, Benny Goodman, Jack Dempsey , Maria Tallchief, Aldous Huxley, Joanne Woodward, Mike Wallace, Mrs. Edsel Ford, John Steinbeck and the author are among the wonderful subjects. The Simon and Schuster trademark, the guy drawn on the title page planting a field, even leaps as he sows. Unfortunately, there’s no index or even a table of contents, at least in the 1959 first I’m looking at. One hopes Abrams added one or both in 1986, when they re-issued it in an oversize trade paperback.

There are several dozen listed on-line, mostly of the Abrams paperback . Prices right now start at $7.50 for that and $15 for a 1959 British edition of the hardcover without dust jacket. Most nice copies of the U.S. and British cloth editions start at $30., ranging up to $200 for a significant inscribed first printing. None of this is bad compared to new book prices.

The second title we didn’t (and won’t) sell unfortunately also lacks index and table of contents. This rambling mess is a really pretty hardback first of Best of ‘Hillbilly’ subtitled A prize collection of 100 proof writing from Jim Comstock’s West Virginia Hillbilly (a paper for people who can’t read edited by an editor who can’t edit), compiled by Otto Whittaker and published by Droke House Publishers of Anderson, South Carolina in 1968, distributed by Grosset and Dunlap.

Comstock started the weekly in 1956 in Richwood West Virginia, and for the back page wrote "The Comstock Load", his own thoughts and spewings, and by the mid 60’s developed a national following. He writes about birth, death and government butter. He describes hog killing, still maintenance, Presidential election visits and durable toothpicks from raccoon pizzle bones. He cares about language, kindness and sense.

My favorite piece describes the "cold day , week of Christmas" when a lady asked him to put some false upper teeth in his paper’s lost-and-found: its front window by the bus stop. She was waiting for the bus when "this awful man came staggering down the street and I know enough about drunks to know that any minute he was going to shoot his cookies." He did so, and staggered on, and the bus came. She "took a step to the side to keep out of the vomit. It was then I saw the man’s teeth grinning at me." They would have been crushed by the front wheel as the bus left, so " I yanked off my glove - I can wash my hand - and grabbed them. I didn’t do it for that awful man I want you to know, I did it for his poor family. People like that always have big families." And the bus waited while she quickly delivered the scummy bivalves. Two days later, Sunday morning, the owner called, still drunk but very hungry, and Comstock went down to the office to give him his teeth.

And only after the lady left the area did Comstock write "the story of a lady who, I have always felt should be... decorated for bravery."

He also did a column on a do-it-yourself appendectomy, with the incision delineated on a photo of the Venus de Milo by a dotted line, and, in one of several hitchhiker columns, describes a grizzled bad-teeth rider as "Uriah Heep with a shot of heroin."

Many dozen copies are on line, mostly a rack sized paperback starting at $2.50 and $3. Hardbacks start at $5 and $9 and go from there. The dust jacket is well designed, and available on many inexpensive copies. If you look on-line, use "best" and "hillbilly" as title words: the juxtaposition is such that nothing else shows up, and you’ll see that some dealers list Comstock as the author, others Whittaker, and of course the more careful use both. But the less careful are often cheaper: just judge where their cares and yours are likely to coincide, where they’ll collide.

As always, these are examples of things people can find by browsing in used bookstores. See what you can find that you didn’t know existed.

Feedback and questions are very welcome at mike@mcintyreandmoore.com.