What’s It REALLY Worth?

I was out on the road for a week and returned to find a very nice article in the Boston Globe about HUBERT’S FREAKS.

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/06/21/a_master
_of_oddball_characters/

The article was brought to my attention by a colleague, who also told me that a copy of Benjamin Franklin’s “Maritime Observations” was coming up for auction at Christies. This is an important item in the history of science and, because of its maritime component, he wanted to let me know about the sale. Essentially Franklin’s treatise documents his discovery, in 1785, of what we now know as the Gulf Stream. The pamphlet was estimated to sell at $15,000-25,000. I guessed it would sell at around $35,000. In fact, it went for $80,500 with the auctioneer’s 20% premium.

Tracking the blatant “rich getting richer” course of the Bush economy, the escalation of high-end material has taken over every area of the high art world, including rare books. The rarest of the rare sells for increasingly grand sums. Everything else founders or sinks. Perhaps the strongest example of this at the Christies sale was tragic genius Alan Turing’s 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers.” This early and important item had a well-established value of about $20,000. However, the copy at this Christies sale brought $182,500, including the premium.

This highlights another aspect of today’s weird market. More than ever before, the sales venue has a significant impact on the selling price of an item. Turing’s paper might sell for $20,000 at Bloomsbury or Swann, and $180,000 at Christies. So what is it really “worth?” Has value become a function of venue?

Inevitably all this takes me back to the cancelled Phillips sale last April 8th. It’s getting on three months and the mystery buyer announced by Phillips has yet to emerge. I can’t help but wonder if the people at Phillips misjudged the current market, only to realize their mistake at the last moment. Auction results over the past decade have demonstrated that, for all of Arbus’s work, it is only the icons that bring strong sales numbers. Results over the past few years make it clear that Christies and Sothebys are where the real money gets made. Did Phillips think they could buck this trend with Bob Langmuir’s collection of funky, fascinating, but off-brand Arbus material?

In HUBERT’S FREAKS Steve Turner counsels Bob Langmuir not to over-pitch his goods, to let the buyer “sell it to himself.” At this remove it looks more and more as if Steve Turner took his own advice when he was trying to find a taker for the Hubert’s archive. Charlie Scheips and Joseph Kraeutler, the photography experts at Phillips, sold it to themselves.

Alive and Well

Last night I did a gig at the Dire Literary Series, a long-running (they’ve had over 80 readings) forum for young writers organized by poet Timothy Gager. It was held at the Out of the Blue Gallery at 106 Prospect St., People’s Republic of Cambridge. The Gallery was an eye-popping mélange of far-out art, some of it horrible, quite a bit very loveable. They’d hung a children’s art show that night, and the walls crawled with dinosaurs and super-heroes.

My Big Box bookstore readings typically draw crowds of three or four people, two of whom are derelicts temporarily dwelling in the store’s spacious aisles. So I was surprised to see that there were a couple of dozen attendees at Out of the Blue, and even more surprised to learn that each of them had shelled out $4 for the privilege of hearing us read.

Emcee Gager warmed the crowd up by reading a few of his funny, gritty, slice-of-life poems, alternating with his own brand of good improv comedy, playing off the audience, getting them relaxed, making them feel involved. They were already getting their money’s worth.

He was followed by a poet named David Lawton, who did something that I found remarkable. Rather than read his poetry, he ranted it, rapped it, declaimed it, crooned it – all off the top of his head, without ever once sticking his nose in a manuscript. The poems were strong and smart, but what really impressed me was Lawton’s performance – in the old bardic tradition - bringing us news from faraway places sung by a minstrel in cargo pants.

Next I did my bit out of HUBERT’S FREAKS which, since I was probably twice the age of anyone else in the room, at least proved that people had been trying to write things since before they’d been born.

Last up was novelist Mike Heppner who read a bit from a work in progress about going to a reading with a girl who kind of annoyed him. The guy giving the reading in the piece was a burned-out case and Heppner got into a very funny riff imagining this guy's life, which started reminding me of my own, especially the part about his poor weary liver feeling like a pulled muscle.

The whole reading had a young, funky energy to it that put me in mind of Freebird Books in Brooklyn, where I’d read a couple of months before. Same age-group, same sense of humor, same confusions, same freshness. Then, with the synchronicity that sometimes accompanies such events, I got an email from Freebird this morning. They’d just discovered an artifact from the old Hubert’s Dime Museum, and Charles Hutchinson, one of the proprietors, had written an eloquent essay about Hubert’s, with a link to the YouTube video of our old pal Jack Dracula talking about Diane Arbus. (Check it out at http://www.freebirdbooks.com/ )

Everybody in my business talks about how the publishing industry is a sinking ship, how retail bookstores are a thing of the past, how books themselves will soon be replaced by Kindle and its spawn. But a couple of nights at places like Freebird and Out of the Blue are enough to give me hope.

This stuff won’t go away. It’s too much fun.

Google Me Gregory

Well, we finally got the website for HUBERT’S FREAKS finished. I took it for a test spin this morning and I liked it – a wonderfully, unhealthy, lurid look to it, and plenty of features, including photos not in the book, a video of the amazing Jack Dracula talking about his love life and his association with Diane Arbus, and three audio samples of Charlie Lucas’ grind tape, a recording he made in 1965, and piped out to 42nd St. in hopes of luring customers down to Hubert’s Dime Museum. It’s amazing to me - close to miraculous, really - how effectively internet technology can deliver the feel of another time and place. Check it out at http://hubertsfreaks.com/

All this computer aided time-travel put me in mind of things webbish, and of Google in particular. (It has long been a fantasy of mine to write a crime novel in which one tough-guy character asks, “Who the hell are you?” and the other replies, “Google me, asshole.”) Long ago, in accordance with advice I gleaned from some “How to Publicize Your Book on the Internet” book, I set up a daily Google search for “Hubert’s Freaks,” “Diane Arbus,” and “Gregory Gibson.” Now, whenever a new review or news item comes out on the internet, Google finds it and sends it to me. Thanks to blessings of Google, I feel right on top of things.

But blessings sometimes come with curses. In this case, it’s my alter-ego, Gregory Gibson. Seems the “other” Gregory is a truck driver in Virginia. Last summer he sped through a red light and hit another car, killing a teenaged girl. He was headed for prison but the girl’s family asked that he be shown mercy. The judge, impressed, sentenced him to home incarceration and community service. Gregory wept and begged forgiveness. The newspapers, impressed, picked the story up, and now Google delivers it to my electronic doorstep, in its every iteration.

It’s a moving drama of redemption and forgiveness. I certainly wish the best for the girl’s family and for the truck driver. But, dammit, I do NOT relish waking up every morning to news of my criminal trial, to recounting my act of heedlessness that resulted in the death of another, to the recitation of the pain I caused that family, or even their high-minded mercy. Not to mention my wretched attempts to let them know how sorry I am for what I’ve done.

In some mystical way that relentless, blind Google spider has “called my name” and every morning I am dragged by proxy into a bit of the hell that these people are trying to live through.

I intend to be more careful with miracles in the future.

Little Orphan Archive?

Well, it looks as if Bayo Ogunsanya’s suit against Bob Langmuir will have its day in court. That is, the presiding judge in Brooklyn has not thrown it out. But when the busy New York Eastern District Court actually gets around to hearing it is anyone’s guess.

Meanwhile, Phillips de Pury has purged all traces of the scuttled auction of Bob Langmuir’s Arbus/Hubert’s archive from its website. And the auction catalog, a lovely document, is no longer available for sale. Either canny speculators snapped up the remaining copies, or Phillips is holding onto them, knowing they have an instant collector’s item.

A journalist friend, researching a piece for the Village Voice, interviewed Jeff Rosenheim of the Metropolitan Museum, and spokespeople for the Arbus estate and the Fraenkel Gallery. When asked about their possible involvement in Phillips’ last minute cancellation of the April 8 auction, they all said NO WAY. Phillips, true to form, had no comment.

So maybe all my conspiracy theories about the Arbus archive are wrong. Maybe the Arbus estate and the Metropolitan Museum could care less about what happens to the photos that Diane Arbus took of performers at Hubert’s Dime Museum, or the dream journals of Charlie Lucas, the African American performer who managed that venerable Times Square institution.

Maybe Phillips de Pury is just waiting for everyone to forget about the whole strange affair. Maybe they’re banking on the fact that the Bayo lawsuit will exhaust Bob’s resources and that they’ll then be able to strike a more favorable deal with Bob than their original guarantee promised. (They estimated the Arbus/Hubert’s archive would sell for a minimum of $1.75 million. So far, they’re $1.75 million shy of that number.) And then, if they ever settle with Bob, who’s to say they won’t just put the archive away to ripen? Or, worse, disperse it quietly, in dribs and drabs.

This is precisely what Bayo would have done if left to his own devices. He’d have sold the photos and documents on eBay and at various paper shows, piece by piece, thereby destroying the integrity of this unique collection, and the scholarly uses that might have been made of it.

Bob rescued the archive, and made the public aware of its importance. Now he faces a court date, a nasty battle with a well-funded auction gallery, and the disturbing possibility that all his labors might have been in vain.

The Grind

The image is of a flat stone skipping across the water. Each skip gets a little shorter as the stone loses energy. Then a brief last slide, and the stone disappears.

Unless you’re Malcolm Gladwell or Stephen King, or the author of a top ten bestseller (the odds on this are about like a ghetto kid making it to the NBA), that’s the way it is when you publish a book. A couple of months of interviews, signings and reviews, and then the world moves on in its ceaseless quest for the New. Your beautiful book sinks like a stone. Or at least it feels that way – Goodbye book! Nobody loves you anymore! When my first book, GONE BOY, came out, I didn’t understand what was happening. At this point in the process for the second book, DEMON OF THE WATERS, I understood all to well, and became depressed. This time I’m philosophical.

HUBERT’S FREAKS hit bookstore shelves mid-March, and now I can feel the attention beginning to wane. But instead of considering suicide or drinking myself into months of oblivion, I’ve come to realize this is when the real work begins. My baby is out there on its own now, but there might be things I can do to help it.

So I’m writing a lot of emails. I’m trying to be helpful to movie people. I’m feeding journalists who are interested in following the story of the art world shenanigans that have fouled things up for the book’s protagonist, Bob Langmuir. I’m visiting bookstores and I’m reaching out to niche markets, just like it says to do in all the books that tell you how to publicize your own bestseller. I’m loading the website with HTML content and soon I’ll get it all tricksy with Java and Flash, so that when – IF – the paperback comes out interested browsers will have a sticky destination with click-throughs to Amazon, B&N, and me.

I’m starting to feel a bit like Charlie Lucas on the Grind Tape he made in 1965, trying to lure customers to the ticket booth at the back of Playland on 42^nd St.

“Come back here, in the rear, where the show is going on right now. Hurry along, hurry along, hurry along. Come on in. You are just in time. It is show time. It is show time in Hubert’s Museum. A real live show… There is no waiting. There is no delay. Oh yes. This is a continued show… This show is for ladies, gentlemen and children… We have six live acts. They are alive, living, breathing as you or I. Hurry along. This show is for ladies and gentlemen, children. Hurry along, come on in…”

Maybe nobody buys the pitch. Maybe tens of thousands of people walk past that fantastic doorway - where Joe Buck stood, trying to work his innocent hustle in “Midnight Cowboy” - oblivious of the wonders within. But it beats getting depressed. And it gives me something to do while I’m stewing over the proposal for the next book. You’d think I’d learn.

Hurry along, hurry along. This is a continued show...

FREAKS IN THE MUSEUM?

In my book HUBERT’S FREAKS Bob Langmuir has an important meeting with Jeff Rosenheim, curator of photography at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. Jeff clears up some preliminary misunderstandings on Bob’s part by telling him, “We’ve already done an Arbus show. I want to do a Hubert’s show.”

It’s a critical moment in the story, as Bob comes to understand another aspect of the archive he’s discovered. But it also speaks well for Rosenheim’s curatorial insight and intelligence. The strange subculture of freak shows and sideshows, and how Diane Arbus interacted with it, would indeed make for a fascinating exhibition.

Now, whether by means I’ve speculated about in earlier blog entries, or through some yet-to-be-discovered scenario, it seems at least possible that Bob Langmuir’s Arbus/Hubert’s archive might wind up with the rest of the Arbus Estate’s holdings – in the care of the Metropolitan Museum. Such an outcome would probably be satisfactory to the Estate, who would once again have control over the rogue archive thrown before the public by the intractable Langmuir. But it might also result in the Hubert’s exhibition Jeff Rosenheim has been longing to assemble at the Met, which would be a terrific thing.

Such were my thoughts as I finished a long phone conversation yesterday with a man named Preston Mardenborough. Preston had run away from home and, at the age of sixteen, wound up spending a lot of time at Hubert’s, eventually finding part-time employment there. He remembered Charlie Lucas, Woogie, Sealo the Seal Boy, Congo the Jungle Creep and Andy Potato Chips - all subjects of Arbus’s photographs - and he asked after them as eagerly as someone at a high school reunion might ask after absent friends.

Preston is just one of a number of surviving Hubert’s alums. Jack Dracula, Presto the Magician, Richard del Borgo, Ward Hall, and Bobby Reynolds are still with us, and who knows how many others might be out there somewhere – alive, kicking, and full of stories about Hubert’s and maybe even about Arbus?

I hope Jeff Rosenheim gets to do his Hubert’s show at the Met, and I hope all the old freaks go to see it. Wouldn’t that be a lovely scene – giants, midgets, tattooed men and bearded ladies trooping through those hallowed halls? Can senior citizens still eat fire? Swallow swords? What happens to tattoos after 50 years? Does anyone still remember how to train fleas?

It would make a great panel discussion on the night of the opening. Surely the Met would give it a dignified, academic-sounding title. And they’d have to get phone books for the midgets to sit on, low chairs for the giants, and translators for the wildmen and geeks, but it would be a splendid event, well worth the extra effort.

Give me a call anytime, Jeff. I've got their contact info.

WHITE KNIGHTS AND BLACK HOLES

49 Geary St. in San Francisco is a big chunk of a building refurbished into a warren of medium and high-end galleries. The exclusive Fraenkel Gallery has been a tenant there for twenty years. They are one of America’s foremost dealers in contemporary photography and, incidentally, among the select few dealers representing the Arbus estate.

Speculation at 49 Geary St. is that Fraenkel was in some way involved in the mysterious cancellation of the auction (at Phillips de Pury last April 8^th) of Times Square freak show photos by Diane Arbus. “Sounds far-fetched to me,” my informant reports, “but the whole thing is way out of my league…”

Far-fetched, all right. But go back to December 2007, and the stunning Christmas Day press release by the Metropolitan Museum:

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that it has acquired the complete archive of Diane Arbus ... The Estate of Diane Arbus has selected the Museum to be the permanent repository of the artist’s negatives, papers, correspondence, and library. The Museum will collaborate with the Estate to preserve Arbus’s legacy and to ensure that her work will continue to be seen in the context of responsible scholarship and in a manner that honors the subjects of the photographs and the intentions of the artist.”

(I take that last sentence to be code for “No outsiders. And no more hare-brained discoveries and books like those by Langmuir & Gibson.” Here’s what Joseph Kraeutler of Phillips de Pury said about HUBERT’S FREAKS – “I was disappointed to see that Arbus was treated more as a crazy person rather than the brilliant artist that she was and I found it tasteless the amount of detail which was included regarding Bob’s interactions with various institutions and my colleagues” – Sounds to me like he’d read another book than the one I had written, but the tenor of his statement certainly jibes with the Met’s promise to ensure “reasonable scholarship and a manner that honors… etc.”)

In its Christmas press release the Met also announced that it had simultaneously acquired 20 iconic vintage Arbus prints. Here’s the NY Times article on that acquisition:

“At the same time, the museum has bought 20 of Arbus’s most important photographs… from the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, which represents her estate. While the Met declined to say what it paid for the photographs, experts say they are worth at least $5 million.”

Flash forward to the critical week of April 6-12. Bob Langmuir, the discoverer of the Arbus trove, is being sued by Bayo Ogunsanyo, the dealer from whom he purchased the archive. But that’s not the worst of it from Phillips’ point of view. Everyone knows it’s the Arbus icons that bring the big dollars. Phillips de Pury is running a risky strategy trying to peddle off-brand Arbus material. Who knows what level of pre-sale interest they were able to generate?

Then, the night before their sale, an Arbus icon sells at Sotheby’s for a record breaking $553,000, sucking most of the oxygen out of the room for Phillips’ goods. The buyer? - Jeffrey Fraenkel! To make matters worse there’s a huge sale of Arbus icons coming up at Christies in a couple of days. Phillips cancels their auction the day of the sale, announcing they have a potential buyer for the entire archive. As of this writing they still have not revealed his identity.

But all the sudden, the 49 Geary St. rumor doesn’t sound that far-fetched at all. Once Langmuir gets the Bayo Ogunsanyo mess straightened out, maybe Phillips restructures their deal with him. (Don’t forget, by virtue of their contract with Bob, Phillips more or less “owns” the photos). Then they might get rid of the archive just as they’d said - by private treaty to a white knight buyer. And if Jeffrey Fraenkel is the white knight maybe the whole screwy Hubert’s/Arbus archive gets buried in the Metropolitan Museum with the rest of the Arbus material, where it will be studied only “in the context of reasonable scholarship.”

Next week - Who REALLY Killed the Kennedys.