I Had Forgotten About Phillumeny

 
MATCHBOOKS
  If you are a phillumenist, you are a collector of matchbooks. My sister was and her collection was discussed under "Match Making" to attract readers. More was written about matchbooks in "Matchbook Memorabilia" in "Olde Post Addenda (2). 
  The subject is being raised again because matchbooks are both colourful and informative and I have found a huge collection at Pepperdine University. The collection also contains postcards and other things and it has been digitized. The 1,322  items can also be searched. This will give you something to do while I think about something about which to write.
   The collection is called the, Eric Wienberg Collection of Malibu Matchbooks, Postcards, and Ephemera, 1900-2013. Here is a description:

Summary:The collection consists of matchbooks, postcards, photographs and collectibles dating from the early 1900s up until 2013. It is arranged alphabetically by series and the files are sorted by subject and geography and put in alphabetical order. Items are related to the history of business establishments and sites in Malibu and surrounding areas in Southern California; the one exception is the Cliff House Restaurant Postcards file, which contains postcards from San Francisco, California.
Abstract: The Eric Wienberg Collection of Malibu Matchbooks, Postcards, and Ephemera chronicles the history of business establishments and sites in Malibu and the surrounding area. The collection covers a period between the late 19th century and the 1980s, and features matchbook covers, postcards, publications, and ephemera from restaurants, cafes, bars, hotels, motels, stores, and other businesses from Malibu, Topanga, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Culver City, Venice Beach and Catalina Island. The collection also includes publicity photographs, photojournalistic images, and candid snapshots from life in Malibu and Southern California.

 The Collection is made available via JSTOR and you will be able to access and search it. For another good description see, "Malibu in Matchbooks: Clues to a Lost Coast," by Alex Houston, JSTOR Daily, April 8, 2026.
Save this for a rainy day. 

Mark Twain's Books

 Alan Gribben (R.I.P. 1941-2026)
  In "Mark Twain and Libraries" I wrote about Twain's collections of books. In it, I also  wrote about Dr. Gribben and his quest to locate all of the books that Twain possessed. His was not an easy task and the result was a 2000 page dissertation based on his findings.
  Dr. Gribben passed away and this obituary is found in the New York Times:
  "Alan Gribben, Twain Scholar Who Excised Slur From ‘Huck Finn,’ Dies at 84," Michael S. Rosewald, June 10, 2026. Here is a portion related to Twain's books and Gribben's mission to document them:

  "For his doctorate studies, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley, home to the Mark Twain Papers and Project. The project’s editor hired him as a graduate assistant and tasked him with preparing explanatory notes for Mr. Twain’s handwritten notebooks...."

   He was fascinated by Mr. Twain, especially the mystery surrounding the author’s literary influences. Before Mr. Twain died in 1910, he gave away most of his books, scattering evidence that would have undoubtedly upended his carefully cultivated image as an uneducated “littery man,” as he once joked.

 

For his dissertation, Mr. Gribben set off on what would become a lifelong quest to find and document every book that Mr. Twain had owned. Driving cross-country in his blue Volkswagen Beetle, he visited libraries, rare book collectors and Mr. Twain’s distant relatives....

 

   
The culmination of Professor Gribben’s lifelong project — “Mark Twain’s Literary Resources” — was published in two volumes, in 2019 and 2022, totaling 1,379 pages. In them, he documented nearly 6,000 books, magazines and other materials that Mr. Twain had read. The subjects included sea voyages, French history, hymns, botany, slavery, detective fiction, insects, India, astronomy, birds, bees and the afterlife."

The End

Mendel's Many Books

    Readers of MM will know that I have often posted about libraries created by individuals. Here is a recent description of a book collection that was not appreciated by those who managed the building in which it was held.

   Mendel Uminer moved into a small studio apartment in Manhattan just over a year ago. He is a young Jewish scholar, so he brought with him around 10,000 books which came to occupy much of the 600 square feet. This description of his abode and lifestyle will appeal to any bibliophile:

  "Towering stacks of Judaica lined the walls, heaps of film criticism and opera history filled the prewar bathroom, piles of plays and poems blocked a window, and Uminer slept on a floor mattress engulfed in dog-eared novels. Waking up around noon, he spent his afternoons on his sunlit chaise, devouring the works of Yiddish writers like Chaim Grade and critics like Edmund Wilson, nourishing his mind while the city churned outside."

   Of course, such an existence could not last. He was evicted, not because of his Jewishness, but his bookishness. The notice reads, " “You are violating a substantial obligation of your tenancy,” it began. “You are maintaining the Premises in a severely overcluttered condition; permitting the over-accumulation of books in the Premises; creating a fire hazard by over-accumulating combustible books in the Premises.”
  His bookseller friend argued, “Of all the vices, I find books to be the least dangerous,” Mizrahi said. “I think it’s possible his landlord might have their priorities misplaced, or might not understand him. If you’re not steeped in his culture, maybe his library does look chaotic. But I’d argue it only looks like a mess. I’ll bet he can tell you where every single book is in his apartment.”
  The landlord was not moved by such an argument and Mendel recently moved out on a rainy day. One observer noted, “I heard he’s found a bigger apartment, so that means, more books."

Source: "Too Many Books?: Mendel Uminer Faced a Crisis When His Landlord Objected to the 10,000 Volumes in His New York Studio Apartment," Alex Vadukul, New York Times, July 9, 2026.

Marilyn Monroe

 HAD A LIBRARY
   Most will have seen the photo of Monroe standing over a subway grate, but it is likely that few will have pictured her sitting, reading a book. She had a core collection of 400 that moved with her and had collected many more.

    Monroe, who died 64 years ago, would have turned 100 this year. She is the subject of a new book which is about her books rather than her body. Information about, Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe, by Gail Crowther, is easily found on Amazon and the London Public Library has ordered an audio and a print copy. To help you determine if you should buy or borrow this book, here are some reviews.

1. “Books Are a Star’s Best Friend: The Little-known Reading Habits of a Hollywood Icon,” Noah Isenberg, The American Scholar, May 28, 2026.
   "Her sex appeal proved inescapable, but Monroe was far more than just a pin-up; she was fiercely intelligent, ambitious, and savvy in her professional life. Author Gail Crowther, whose previous subjects include Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton, shifts the focus to this formerly neglected terrain in her highly illuminating, jauntily-paced Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe....
   "On set, Monroe was known to carry her prized possessions with her—when making All About Eve (1950), she brought with her to the set a copy of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. She was especially fond of verse and owned numerous volumes by various poets from Shakespeare, Milton, and García Lorca to Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marjorie Tilden, and Heinrich Heine. “I read poetry to save time,” she once remarked with the kind of playful, witty nonchalance she often exhibited on screen...."
  "Crowther makes abundantly clear that Monroe was far more than the “dumb blonde” or Hollywood sexpot she was all too often made out to be. Marilyn and Her Books offers a more nuanced, complex narrative and is a powerful corrective to received wisdom—arguing convincingly, on the eve of Monroe’s centennial, that she must be “recast and reimagined: not the late, not the ditzy, not the bombshell, not the difficult, but the intelligent Marilyn Monroe.”

2. "Some Like It Literary: How Marilyn Monroe Gave a Smart Gloss to Her Image," Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times, May 24, 2026.
 "In MARILYN AND HER BOOKS: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe (Gallery, 290 pp., $30), Gail Crowther attempts to debunk Monroe’s dumb-blonde reputation through the Murphy door of her private library...."
  "It is refreshing to contemplate Monroe as reader, for as muse she has been stretched thinner than the diaphanous scarves in a Bert Stern photo. Someone so holographic is far more humanized by what was on her shelves than by some rotten rouge or the moth-eaten, Kardashian-appropriated frocks from her closet....
  "She dined on oysters and champagne with Carson McCullers and Isak Dinesen, who likened her to a lion cub; and summited with Edith Sitwell, who remarked that “in repose her face was at moments strangely, prophetically tragic, like the face of a beautiful ghost. A little spring-ghost, an innocent fertility daemon, the vegetation spirit that was Ophelia...." 
“She showed an interest in intellectual subjects which was, to say the least, disconcerting,” remarked the acidulous George Sanders, who appeared with her in “All About Eve.” “She was somebody in a play not yet written.”

3. "Marilyn Monroe Read books. A Lot of Them," Mark Judge, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, April 30, 2026.
   "That’s the revelation of Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe, a fascinating new volume by Gail Crowther. It isn’t a grasping-at-straws attempt to make Monroe a literary figure based on her love of a few good novels. Crowther has done her research, itemizing the books Monroe owned when she died, finding receipts for books she bought at the Ivy Bookstore in Los Angeles, and going through old letters in which Monroe discussed her favorite books. Monroe was a reader, which may explain why she was drawn to one of her husbands, the playwright Arthur Miller—a man who made his living with words...."
 "Most of Monroe’s books went to private collectors. One anonymous woman from Boston purchased five of her books and then donated them to the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The books were each written by an American woman: My Ántonia and Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather; The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker; The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers; and The Little Disturbances of Man, a collection of short stories by Grace Paley. In January 2000, the library put the books on public display, and the then-acting director, Jane Knowles, said, “We are thrilled to receive these books from the library of Marilyn Monroe. This just goes to prove that there was more to Marilyn Monroe than the movie star and popular icon. She was also a reader. We are delighted to add her books to those of other illustrious women at the Schlesinger Library.” 
  Many of Monroe's items, including some books, can be seen on Julien's Auctions. Toynbee's, A Study of History, sold for almost $4000.
  
  For a related post about women book collectors see, "Women and Books". 

London's Bicentennial (Snippet 2)

For International Women's Day

Early Feminism in London, Ontario - 1890
    An example is found in The Woman's Tribune, which is suitably situated in Beatrice, Nebraska. See the issue for Nov.8,1890. Under the heading "New Women's Papers", it notes "that new periodicals of, for and by women are springing up on every hand." 

   Ms. Wetherald is accomplished enough to have her own Wikipedia entry, from which the photograph was taken. A cursory search quickly found this: "Wives and Daughters," Isabel Campbell, The Mirror, Vol.1, No.1. 
   "Wives and Daughters" was published in London, Ontario as a monthly supplement to the London Advertiser between 1890 and 1892. Subscribers were expected to pay twenty-five cents per annum to receive it in the first year and fifty cents annually afterwards. Why and exactly when the publication folded is not known. The last known issue is Volume III, No. 1 in October of 1892 and there is no mention of the publication’s demise in it or in the London Advertiser at this time."
  The complete article is available online or in the Special Collections in the D.B. Weldon Library. It is published by the History Department at Western. 

The Journal of Schenkerian Studies

 Little Journal ----Large Issues

   I have devoted several posts to the subject of journals which are basically about one person. That person is usually an author, but in this case the periodical is about the Austrian music theorist Heinrich Schenker who was also an author. The number of subscribers to it is much smaller than the number of words in this post which I hope to keep very short.
   I should, because I know even less about classical music than I do about a very large number of other subjects about which I know little. Plus, I can't read music or German and the title of this journal scares me as much as the word "calculus." I understand enough, however, to know that even a little magazine can get into big trouble, if it is located on a campus and the subject of race arises.
   The Journal of Schenkerian Studies is published at the Center for Schenkerian Studies at the University of North Texas. The Center is headed by Professor Timothy Jackson, a tenured professor of music theory. 
    Across the country at Hunter College there is a Professor Ewell, also a music professor, but a Black one, a colour that should be mentioned in this case. In 2019, he travelled to Columbus and addressed the Society for Music Theory. The title of the talk was "Music Theory's White Racial Frame" and apparently one doesn't have to know much about music theory to understand the major points made, that Schenker was a racist, a fact ignored by the Schenkerians, and that, to put it bluntly, classical music was too white.  Apparently he received a standing ovation, which is a rather rare thing at an academic conference. 
   This news reached Texas and it is fair to say Professor Jackson did not agree. He then did what should be done when such academic arguments develop -- issue a call for papers to debate the issue. Articles discussing the Ewell arguments were returned and published in The Journal of Schenkerian Studies. Some agreed with Professor Ewell and some did not. Professor Jackson did not. Apart from the Black/white arguments, there were some into which anti-semitism was injected to further complicate the attempt at discourse.(Schenker, who was Jewish, died in 1935 and his wife died ten years later in Theresienstadt.)
   The news generated about this polemical essay in a very small academic periodical, was considerable. It came to the attention of the graduate students in Texas as did the word "race" and, probably without reading the papers, many decided that even a tenured professor should be fired it he was a racist. Others piled on and there was a demand that he be terminated.
   Naturally the news was a nuisance for those in the administrative  wing at North Texas and, not surprisingly, Professor Jackson was removed as editor and generally ostracized from departmental matters. 
   Once again, Professor Jackson did not agree, feeling perhaps that he had been treated shoddily, and sued the UNT regents and others who had defamed him and violated his right to speak freely. The regents appealed, but a Texas Court of Appeals ruled in favour of Professor Jackson and the litigation continues. 
   To keep this short, this episode can be characterized simply as another cannon shot at another canon that is a construct of a different group of DWEMS - DWEMusicians. It illustrates that even a little academic single author journal with limited circulation can have a big impact. 

Sources: 
   For most, all of the information you will want can be found freely in the Wikipedia entries for Heinrich Schenker or the one for The Journal of Schenkerian Studies. To visit the scene of the crime, go to the UNT School of Music and the Division of Music History, Theory and Ethnomusicology where the Journal of Schenkerian Studies still exists, apparently in a suspended state.
   If you are willing to pay, start here: "Obscure Musicology Journal Sparks Battles Over Race and Free Speech: A scholar’s address about racism and music theory was met with a vituperative, personal response by a small journal. It faced calls to cease publishing," Michael Powell, NYT, Feb. 14, 2021. 
"A periodical devoted to the study of a long-dead European music theorist is an unlikely suspect to spark an explosive battle over race and free speech."

The Bonus: 
Professor Ewell's views are expressed in his recently published book which is available up at Western in the Music Library. Here is a description:
On Music Theory: And Making Music More Welcoming For Everyone.
"Since its inception in the mid-twentieth century, American music theory has been framed and taught almost exclusively by white men. As a result, whiteness and maleness are woven into the fabric of the field, and BIPOC music theorists face enormous hurdles due to their racial identities. In On Music Theory, Philip Ewell brings together autobiography, music theory and history, and theory and history of race in the United States to offer a black perspective on the state of music theory and to confront the field's white supremacist roots. Over the course of the book, Ewell undertakes a textbook analysis to unpack the mythologies of whiteness and western-ness with respect to music theory, and gives, for the first time, his perspective on the controversy surrounding the publication of volume 12 of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies. He speaks directly about the antiblackness of music theory and the antisemitism of classical music writ large and concludes by offering suggestions about how we move forward. Taking an explicitly antiracist approach to music theory, with this book Ewell begins to create a space in which those who have been marginalized in music theory can thrive." -- Back cover.

Factlet (17)

 

Toronto Public Library
  Factlet (16) let you know that the Canadian dollar was worth about 61 cents in 2002, so it still has a ways to fall. This one provides some astonishing numbers about the TPL, which I assume are true. Those who never visit a library will likely be surprised by the numbers who do, either physically or virtually. 

About TPL

"Toronto Public Library is the biggest and busiest public library system in North America, with more than 46 million annual visits to our branches and online. We empower Torontonians to thrive in the digital age and knowledge economy through easy access to technology, lifelong learning, and diverse cultural and leisure experiences, where, when and how our customers need us.

Key Facts and Statistics

TPL has 100 branches and two bookmobiles that serve neighbourhoods across the city; we also provide 24/7 access to collections and services through tpl.ca. Our collections include 10.5 million items, such as books, CDs, DVDs and eBooks, with 40 languages represented.

According to a public survey conducted in 2019, 68% of Torontonians use their library, and in 2023:

There were more than 46 million visits to TPL – 12.5 million visits to our branches and 33.5 million visits to TPL online platforms.

There were more than six million wireless sessions in library branches and almost 1.9 million public computer workstation sessions.

Nearly 700,000 participants attended over 33,000 in-person library programs, and we offered over 1,000 online programs with total views and attendance of more than 45,000.

Library materials were borrowed 25 million times.

252,000 people registered for a library card."

Source: 
Toronto Public Library
The Bonus:

  If you wonder what people are reading see: "Toronto Public Library Reveals the Most Read Books of 2024."

  For Ottawa see: "Ottawa Public Library Reveals Its Most Popular Books in 2024."

  For Vancouver, a different list: "Britney Spears and 'romantasy': The Vancouver Public Library's most-borrowed books of 2024: Self-help essays and a book on Indigenous botany topped the adult category; fantasy dominated the teen section," CBC News, Dec. 24, 2024.

   The picture above relates to the Carnegie Libraries. The Carnegie Corporation continues to contribute to the library cause: "Carnegie Returns to Its Roots With Millions in Grants to Public Libraries," Alex Daniels, Carnegie Org News, Sept. 20, 2024.
"Carnegie Corporation of New York will devote $4 million to three of the city’s [New York] public libraries in a set of grants that mark the philanthropy’s return to its roots."