Gary Lovisi ou le futur des collections

Nous avons évoqué ici à plusieurs reprises les publications de Gary Lovisi, collectionneur, éditeur et libraire, consacrées à la littérature populaire anglo-saxonne. La maison de Gary Lovisi a été frappée par l'ouragan Sandy et sa cave à trésors inondée, détruisant près de 50 000 ouvrages...
Voici le détail du désastre (cf. http://www.gryphonbooks.com/News/news.html):

Garry Lovisi a écrit:

Hurricane Sandy hit us on Monday, October 29th and everything changed…

Like many homes and businesses in our part of Brooklyn we were hit very hard. I have lived here for 20+ years and never had any water in the basement in all that time – except 2” last year from Hurricane Irene. As bad as that was, it would prove to be nothing compared to when Hurricane Sandy hit us. Our home was surrounded by 3-4 feet of water, the basement that I use as a stock room was flooded with over 6 feet of surging water, mud, sand, muck, that took us 10 days to clean up. The destruction was incredible, heavy shelves and book cases loaded with rare collectable books of all kinds were strewn about like they were nothing. It was a nightmare. We also lost both our cars from the water and had no electric for 16 days, and no heat for 19 days! It was rough going for a while but Lucille and I are recovering now and will continue to rebuild. I could never have come through this in one piece without her help and support.

Here is the result of Hurricane Sandy to our book business:

GRYPHON BOOKS PUBLISHING: Almost all Gryphon Books stocked in the basement were destroyed by the water. A publishing business I had built up over 30 long years is now all gone. All Gryphon crime novels are gone, the 60+ books in The Gryphon Science Fiction Rediscovery Series, (including all 31 Golden Amazon books by John Russell Fearn), were all destroyed. All issues of Hardboiled magazine, and almost all issues of Paperback Parade magazine were destroyed. All the various Sherlock Holmes books I have published over the years are also gone. It is a true disaster. I do not plan to reprint any of them. I can not afford to do so.

GRYPHON BOOKS RARE BOOK BUSINESS: Almost all of the 16,000 rare and collectable books I had for sale on Internet book sites ABE, Alibris and Biblio were also destroyed. These include hundreds of rare sexy digests and crime digests and digest magazines, Australian Phantom Books crime digests, rare British and Canadian books, 1960s sleaze, and a lot of crime and science fiction. Very few were salvaged. My Internet book selling business has been closed down for the last 2 months, all listings taken down, but I hope to reopen in a few weeks – with a much less amount of books to be sure – perhaps just a thousand. However each book that was saved, was a little miracle, and there were some few hundreds out of the 50,000 books in the basement that were untouched. They were in bags, of course, but bags did not always save the books. Rarely, in fact, because the violence of the water surge was so great. It blew out windows in cars across the street, even moved cars away from the curb. The force of the wind and water was incredible. We were lucky to escape this devastation with our lives – some people we know did not…

BOOKS BY GARY LOVISI: As an author, books which I have written over the years were stocked in my basement and they were also all destroyed. Books I had written and which I published under my Gryphon Books imprint are all gone now. Books by me which were published by other publishers were all destroyed as well, but some of them – those published by POD (print-on-demand) publishers have been reordered and have now been restocked. So my books published by Ramble House, Borgo Press / Wildside Press and Airship 27 are now in stock. I also have been able to buy a few copies of two of my three lovely Krause books on paperback cover art. One bright spot is my latest book, The Great Detective: His Further Adventures, a new anthology of Sherlock Holmes stories which I edited for Borgo Press / Wildside Press is out now. It did not come out until after the hurricane – so it is in stock now and it is the first of my new books. I am very proud of it and it looks terrific!

MY BOOK COLLECTION: I have been a book collector for 40 years and built up a nice collection of various rare and valuable items. Many of these I have written articles about over the years. Most of these books are not replaceable – or not replaceable at today’s prices! My book collection was in the front of the basement and it is almost all gone. All comic books, pulps and magazines, fanzines and hard covers are gone. My collection of Avon Books, Bantam Books, Ballantine, Pocket Books, Perma Books, Cardinals, Penguins, Pennants and many others is all gone. It is a devastating loss, personal and financial. The comic books, many of which I bought and read (carefully) when they first came out in the 1970s, the pulp mags and men’s sweat mags and my entire enormous science fiction paperback collection containing every paperback of EVERY sf author, were particularly sad to lose. But it could have been worse and I try to look on the bright side and look to the future.

THE FUTURE: So we are now busy rebuilding and recovering and I will be back in business soon – though on a much smaller scale. The new Sherlock Holmes anthology is out now and it is good to see a new book of mine published and out after the hurricane did it’s worse. I am now selling books on eBay, these were not in the basement and are undamaged. I hope you will continue to check my website, my eBay sales, and soon my books will be listed again on ABE, Alibris and Biblio once again. New issues of Paperback Parade and Hardboiled are planned and will also be coming out in the coming months, so Gryphon Books publishing has not ended, things are just delayed. However, there will be some changes as we go forward and I will let you know about them when I do, so keep your eyes on this site and the news when I post it.

Over the last two months I have received many kind words and prayers from so many people all across the country – and the world – that it is impossible to list them all but I want to thank every one of you whose contact and kindness, care and generosity meant so much to us in this time of need. Thank you all, and let’s make 2013 a great year for us all! Thank you.

aarrgghh! j'ai survolé le texte ( no parla engliche) mais y a de quoi faire une dépression ....j'esperes qu'il etait un peu assuré ? je suppose qu'il etait hautement improbable qu'il fut inondé un jour ? je suppose aussi que depuis qq années il sauvegardait systematiquement ses ouvrages persos sur disque dur ; pour le reste , ses pulps , avon and co , quel massacre !
resterai a scanner ce qu'on a de lui ( je dois avoir qq fanzines )