Rare Book Moment: What determines value?

No. 7: Michael Slicker discusses some of the factors that go into determining a book's value. Michael Slicker's Rare Book Moment is recorded at Lighthouse Books, ABAA in St. Petersburg, Florida. Music by Jack Payne: Back to Those Happy Days

Enjoy your Independence Day!

Have a great Fourth of July!

Franz Kafka wrote the surreal

Franz Kafka

It is the birthday of writer Franz Kafka (1883), who is considered by critics to be among the greatest writers of the 20th century. Most of his work was published after his death in 1924, by his friend and literary executor Max Brod.

He is most remembered for his books such as The Metamorphosis (1915), about a traveling salesman who wakes up to find himself transformed into a bug, and The Trial (1925), about a man arrested and prosecuted for a crime which is never revealed to him or to the reader. His bizarre plots gave rise to the term "Kafkaesque," suggesting a surreal situation and unidentified impending danger.

Kafka was born in Prague when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to a Jewish family. His father was the man in the community who ritually slaughtered animals according to Jewish dietary laws. Kafka had a lifelong fascination with the Jews of Eastern Europe but often seemed disconnected from Zionism. The Jewishness of his works remains the subject of debate among scholars.

He was educated in German and wrote most of his work in the language, though he also studied Czech and French literature. His writing was translated into English, and there are several English editions available.

Very little of his work was published during his lifetime. Kafka instructed that upon his death his unpublished work and his letters were to be burned but Brod ignored his instruction. Much of his work was published between 1925 and 1935, and translated into English later. A cache of letters he wrote to a lover was confiscated by the Gestapo during World War II. The location of the letters remains a fascinating project for literary sleuths.

Kafka's work is sufficiently ambiguous to allow broad interpretation. Writers see shades of anarchism, existentialism, Marxism, spiritualism, and Judaism in his writing.

Hesse wrote Steppenwolf, Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse

It is the birthday of German writer Hermann Hesse (1877), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946 for his work that highlighted an individual's search of enlightenment and self knowledge. He is best known for his novels Steppenwolf (1927) and Siddhartha (1922), which became must-read literature among counterculture enthusiasts in the 1960s through the writings of Timothy Leary and Colin Wilson.

Hesse grew up in a small town in the Black Forest area of Germany. He was a difficult child, resisted authority and became a loner. He knew he wanted to become a writer in his early teen years. By his late teens he was reading books on Greek mythology and such prominent German writers as Schiller, Lessing, Goethe, and Nietzsche.

His first successful novel was Peter Camenzind (1904), whose hero is a young man from a mountain town who struggles to become a poet.  The novel was popular throughout Germany and was praised by Sigmund Freud.

Steppenwolf (1927) concerns Harry Haller, who, much like Hesse, feels himself to be an outsider in society, and wrestles with his dual nature as both a spiritual man and a low, animalistic one. The book is named for the lone wolf of the steppes. The 1960s band Steppenwolf is named for Hesse's work. So is the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. In San Francisco, the Magic Theatre Company is named for a place included in the novel. The Simon and Garfunkel song The Sound of Silence draws upon imagery in the book.

Siddhartha (1922) tells the story of a young man's pursuit for enlightenment in India  during the lifetime of the Buddha. An English translation was first published in the United States in 1951, and it became wildly popular as the youth of the Sixties turned to it in their own pursuit of enlightenment. Several musicians, including Pete Townshend, referred to Siddhartha in their work.