Worms' Turns

CARROUSEL FOR BIBLIOPHILES (400 pp.)--Edited by William Targ--Duschnes ($7.50).

This is a de luxe anthology written by bookworms for bookworms. The only wolf calls in its pages rise when a bug-eyed bibliomaniac spots an unescorted Gutenberg Bible or First Folio Shakespeare. With the knowingness of a convention of beekeepers discussing the nuptial flight of the queen, 40-odd bibliophiles talk about the designing, the collecting, the stealing and the forging of books. Some of the highlights:

Holbrook Jackson's essay about Books Bound in Human Skin, which tells of a Russian poet who had lost a leg in a hunting accident, and used the discarded skin to bind a collection of his own love lyrics. Hides from many an aristocrat are said to have been used by leaders of the French Revolution to bind the works of their Patron-Philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. Correctly tanned and dressed, human hide, says Author Jackson, is definitely comparable in texture and quality to good morocco or pig.

Lawrence S. Thompson's Notes on Bibliokleptomania, an informative "review of centuries of thievery" which shows that neither age nor instruction can reform the absent-minded book borrower or save the true bibliophile from the temptation to pick up and pocket volumes that catch his fancy. One of history's most eminent bibliokleptomaniacs seems to have been Cardinal Pamfili (who later became Pope Innocent X). Charged one day with book-lifting from a private library, the book-loving Cardinal denied the charge with such fury that--the stolen volume fell from beneath his robes with a resounding crash.

In a querulous essay, the late Robert Benchley asks Why Does Nobody Collect Me? "I have been told by hospital authorities," says Humorist Benchley coldly, "that more copies of my works are left behind by departing patients than those of any other author. It does seem as if people might at least take my books home with them." Benchley offers for sale the following rare editions: 1) Pluck and Luck (Holt, 1924), by Robert Benchley--"a very interesting find for collectors" since it is inscribed by Author Benchley to his friend, Donald Ogden Stewart, whose name is misspelled "Stuart"; 2) Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, 1st ed., inscribed ("in bull's blood") to "Garbage-Bird" Benchley, and with "each blank in the text where Scribner's had blushed and put a dash" filled in by Author Hemingway.

Vincent Starrett's The Fine Art of Forgery, an essay on human gullibility whose principal hero is French Forger Vrain-Denis Lucas. Spry M. Lucas sold to a contemporary collector (for 150,000 francs): 27 letters from Shakespeare to his friends, "communications from St. Luke and Julius Caesar, from Sappho, Virgil, Plato, Pliny, Alexander the Great, and Pompey. These . . . were somewhat eclipsed by such unusual items as a letter from Cleopatra to Caesar discussing their son Caesarion, a little note from Lazarus to St. Peter, and a chatty bit of gossip from Mary Magdalene to the King of the Burgundians. All were written in contemporary French . . . which . . . certainly . . . made it easier for [the purchaser] to read them. . . . Lucas was on the point of selling him the original manuscript--in French--of the Sermon on the Mount . . . when he was unmasked."

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