The Private Library’s Interview interview
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A Harlem Poetry Lesson: Bruce Weber, featuring Jumel Terrace Books & The Private Library
Grand Guy Bruce Weber brought fash’ legend David Bailey about, the hottest day of the year 2013, to take pictures around the house with not-yet-on- the-market very yellow Nokia cell phone/cameras. They were shooting the commercial that ended up an homage to local hero, Gil Scott Heron. Bruce’s been supportive of our efforts for several […]
Papua New MauMau
Melanesia from a bespoke library by The Private Library. Music From The Sepik Province by unnamed Aborigines Of Papua New Guinea.
Onitsha Market Literature
From : Life Turns Man Up and Down: Highlife, Useful Advise and Mad English. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2001). Your private librarian’s book about books. A collection that evolved out of my much cherished 20 year long association with Bill French of University Place Books in a Greenwich Village long ago and far away. This […]
Intoxicology: On the Algebra of Need
From the collection of the private librarian at The Private Library.
Your Private Librarian on The Book Problem
The Book Problem Were the problem book people like us it would soon go away. It is not our weaknesses, or our sentimentality, or our nostalgia. It’s As If we’ve become obsolete and we haven’t. By ‘we,’ I mean We the People of the Book: Jews, Christians, Islamic people and a lot of people who […]
From the Library of Diana Vreeland
Let’s suppose you were a total stranger – and a very good friend. That’s a good combination. What would you want to know about me? And how would you go about finding it out? To me the books I’ve read are the gateway. My life has been more influenced by books than by any other […]
From the Library of Alan Pryce-Jones
From my diary June 25, 1991 Mr. Pryce-Jones’s houses, three mid-ninteenth century saltboxes, are on John Street in the heart of Old Newport. I hadn’t been prepared for a compound. His principle residence is at 46 where we found a note addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Thometz asking us to check in at #50. He […]
Fran Lebowitz On Reading
As told to Kurt Thometz. I’m not a collector. I don’t care about things like that. I not a collector because I’m not that organized. I’m not grown-up enough to collect things, but I have acquired a stellar collection of odd books, weirdo books, books that don’t fit easily into categories. I have a very […]
From the Library of John Waters
Reading as a Pleasant Deviation: A Guided Tour of John Waters Library. As told to Kurt Thometz. I was not a book fanatic until I was fifteen and discovered Genet and Burroughs and all these Grove Press books and thought, thank God, I’m not that abnormal. That opened up a whole new world to me. […]
