tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2239062544101975016.post8107893937694275144..comments2024-03-28T14:05:25.134-07:00Comments on Sacnoth's Scriptorium: My Friend JimJohn D. Rateliffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12324926298336489295noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2239062544101975016.post-55075753925355399842021-05-13T15:05:13.826-07:002021-05-13T15:05:13.826-07:00Hello,
I hope this comment finds you well, John, ...Hello,<br /><br />I hope this comment finds you well, John, and isn't a source of some form of grief to bring this post back to mind, but I thought I might share what I believe to be the strange coincidence that led me here:<br /><br />I was recently purchasing original hardcovers of some books I read in my youth (a quartet by Laurence Yep—unwitting but at least semi-appropriate reads for this Asian American Heritage month) and noticed the rear of one of them had a few dates, partly hand-written, partly stamped. By chance, one happened to refer to my fourth birthday.<br /><br />I was reciting this fact in discussion over the phone with a friend, and picked up the sequel I thought had the date to reference it, only to discover it did not have the date of my birth, but a date six days later. Being handwritten, I concluded I'd imagined things, misreading a date into an eminently familiar one through the strange machinations of the subconscious and a kind of confirmation bias.<br /><br />I was finishing off the actual re-read of the first book (<i>Dragon of the Lost Sea</i>, should you be curious), and discovered I didn't imagine it: there it was, below a stamped date, my birthday (plus four years) handwritten in the back of this book I'd purchased used to have a nice, clean hardcover copy for the rest of my life.<br /><br />"What a strange coincidence," I thought: not only my birthday and a close-by companion date in another book from the series, but both previously owned by someone who wrote dates in it at all. A technologically-limited library checking things out to patrons, perhaps?<br /><br />Sated with the knowledge that I'd indeed found my birthday in a book, a perfectly enjoyable coincidence, I got to page 150 in the sequel (<i>Dragon Steel</i>), and noticed that there was a name stamped at the bottom left corner. A sort of confused haze dropped into my brain: Hadn't I <b>just</b> seen a name stamped in the corner just like that? <i>And wasn't it the exact same name?!</i><br /><br />So I drew the first book back down off the shelf, flipping rapidly through it, and finding that, yes, I had in fact seen it before: on page 150 of each book there was stamped: "JIM PIETRUSZ".<br /><br />A bookplate in the first book re-affirmed this, a gnome or dwarf drawn, woodcut-style, with a cane and carrying books, marked "EX LIBRIS JIM PIETRUSZ".<br /><br />Now utterly mystified, I checked back at where I'd purchased these books from via Abebooks: one came from a bookshop in Houston, TX (in another coincidence, my father's hometown—though with one that size, less surprising on the whole), and the other from a bookshop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.<br /><br />I took to the search engines, and I found my way here. While it's hardly a guarantee, there seems to be enough in common here that I suspect these may both have been from your friend Jim Pietrusz--fantasy books, one even drawn from a used home in Milwaukee, and showing the signs of a devoted collector (I've since decided these may perhaps be the handwritten dates of the times the books were read).<br /><br />While I'd hoped to find Jim himself, it seems that's unfortunately not the chance I have, but I thought perhaps it might be good to know that these two, at least, are in the hands of someone who loves the books he once had (now dustjacket-protected by my own hands, even) and set for a happy life of appreciation. I'm sorry for your loss, these many years on, but I hope this is a good, if small and perhaps somewhat distant, tribute to Jim and his love of books and collecting them—even if it's just yet another pile of coincidences and another Jim entirely, I hope such appreciation and treatment of beloved fantasy books might serve to honour him all the same.<br /><br />It's many years late, but thank you for sharing his story and your memories.Fangsyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04734437656316336822noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2239062544101975016.post-40529908556934290932014-04-10T18:39:35.822-07:002014-04-10T18:39:35.822-07:00John,
I'm so sorry to hear of Jim's passi...John,<br /><br />I'm so sorry to hear of Jim's passing. While I didn't know him nearly as well as you, I also have good memories of the few times I spent with him.<br /><br />May he rest in the embrace of the Divine.<br /><br />MattMatt Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11613295692997491442noreply@blogger.com