"SUNNY INTERVALS." A BOOKMAN'S MISCELLANEA: LONDON/SAN FRANCISCO/HANOVER.

By HerbertFaulkner West '22. (Professor of ComparativeLiterature, Emeritus) Hanover: WestholmePublications, 1972. Limited Edition. Privatelyprinted. 400 copies signed by the author. 83 pp.$12.50.

After 40 years, London holds "more charm" for Mr. West than any other city. There, his real life as a collector began. At the American Club, 95 Piccadilly, he gives lavish semi-annual lunches for prominent dealers and even more prominent bibliophiles and writers. On one London day, courted by affluent friends he rode in two Rolls Royces, but he "didn't swoon." Fond of camaraderie, he lunches and dines in the better pubs and restaurants, Siegi's Club, for example, "which has the best food in London," or at the Bailiwick, Spanish where he chooses Dover sole, or at the "excellent" Snooty Fox.

Mr. West avoids Foyle's with its "million volumes" and concentrates on firms with the steepest prices and most exalted reputations, like Maggs Brothers, Berkeley Square; Bernard Quaritch, Ltd., New Bond Street; and Heywood Hill, Curzon Street. With a surprising memory for fluctuating prices, Mr. West has even more surprising and fluctuating attitudes towards business. In one place he remarks that he would rather own books than bank profits, but in another, "Obviously rare books constitute a fine investment." He spends "thousands every year" on rare books and first editions, but he never looks for bargains, only for "good" books in mint condition. Sooner or later, incidentally, they may command top prices, but he is no speculator, mad for a killing. In non-sunny intervals he himself reads them with sensuous delight, and he almost dreads a sunny interval.

Price fluctuations and flash-in-the-pan reputations should be enough to freeze the check book of a neophyte. Samples: Out of fashion, Tomlinson prices fetch only a fraction of those in the twenties and thirties. Nowadays Galsworthy is "treated with condescension." So wrote Mr. West in 1966 before Masterpiece Theatre, Susan Hampshire, and Forsyte adulation, (Unrevised, the 19 West essays from 1964 to .1972 sometimes need updating in book prices and reputations. T. E. Lawrence has risen to astronomical heights, and D. H. Lawrence is still popular with firstedition specialists. Robert Lowell is "extremely desirable to collect." So are the Dartmouth poets Richard Eberhart '26 and Philip Booth '47, along with Roethke, Auden, Spender, Cecil Day Lewis, MacNeice, and James Dickey. "The prices for Robert Frost have reached a peak and may soon sag." James Branch Cabell and Joseph Hergesheimer are "not completely forgotten." Prices for undervalued Edna St. Vincent Millay may eventually mount. Robert Graves' "books are going up. Sinclair Lewis is cold, but Joyce is 'hot'."

In 1971 Mr. West bought Eliot, Pound, Dylan Thomas, MacDiarmid, Yeats, and many Irish writers but not in Dublin, poor in books and rich in prices though an "absolutely charming town." His favorite American city is San Francisco with "good" books, some less expensive than in London.

As a member of the Dartmouth faculty from 1922 to 1964, Mr. West herded droves of students into the College Library for books, and for his own reading he relied heavily on his own well stocked shelves. And as a rare-books specialist, he deals with a sophisticated clientele to whom the printed word is of supreme importance. On the title page of "Sunny Intervals" under Mr. West's name is printed, in large letters for emphasis, a new England proverb: "READING ROTS THE BRAINS."