A Book And Some History

     Paperback books really got their start after World War Two as the pulp magazines were fading away -- but Uncle Sam gave them one heck of a jumpstart.

     As anyone who've served in our armed forces can tell you, service life, even during a global war, consists of a great deal of "hurry up and wait."  Once the traditional idle vices of the soldier and sailor have been used up -- complaining; telling more or less true stories of misadventure, home life or even derring-do; smoking; and idle speculation about what the brass have in store next -- and the pastimes so often assigned by non-commissioned officers (polishing shoes, peeling vegetables, making beds, shining the shiny things and painting the painted things) have been wrung dry, what's left?

     Assuming fighting, drinking and/or sex are off the table (which they usually were), one of the more portable options was reading.  But supplies of Astounding, G-8's Battle Aces, Spicy Detective or even Ranch Romances were a bit scarce, especially close to the various fronts, and the magazines were too large for easy shipping -- or a uniform pocket.  Besides, the War Department wanted to have a little say about the content; some of those pulps, well, phew.  Hardback books were even more unwieldy than pulp magazines, and they couldn't hand out Reader's Digest to everyone in uniform -- there was a war on, and paper was strictly rationed!

     But that digest size just about fit military pockets-- In 1942, a bunch of publishers, booksellers, librarians and authors got together (only so very slightly encouraged by the Office of War Information) to create the Council on Books in Wartime, under the motto, "Books are weapons in the war of ideas," and they intended for America's warriors to have the best armament possible.  They dreamed up (among other things) Armed Services Editions, genuinely pocket-sized, lightweight paperback books to suit every reader (within reasonable limits).  ASE reprints were hammered out by the millions, everything from William Makepeace Thackeray to Edgar Rice Burroughs, from H. P. Lovecraft to Thurber, Tolstoy and Thoreau.  They were printed on digest-sized presses, two books at a time, and then cut in half, resulting in a book longer than it was tall, just a little smaller than postwar paperbacks.*

     They were widely popular, carried, read, shared, swapped, and passed from hand to hand until they fell apart.

     And then, not too long after V-J Day, the presses...stopped.  As life returned to normal, the paperback book started showing up, filling the spots pulps once occupied.

     Elsewhere and years later, the delightful lunatics at Field Notes, who gave us the motto, "I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it down to remember it now," were casting about for a new project.  Their line of notebooks includes constant variation, and they decided to do one rather wider than it was tall -- or vertically-hinged; it's got a cover on both ends for the two orientations, one short and wide, the other tall and skinny.  And someone in their office with an eye to history, or perhaps to recent books about history, saw it was just about the same size as an Armed Services Editions book.  They borrowed the bright primary color covers of the wartime books for theirs, and....

     Ordinary minds might have thought, "H'mm," and moved on.  For Field Notes, it was an opportunity.  ASE printed mystery novels, including a couple by Raymond Chandler, but Dashiell Hammett (a WW I veteran who had re-enlisted in 1942, despite being 48 years old and suffering from tuberculosis) was skipped.

     So they fixed it.  You can buy their brand-new, near-perfect match ASE edition of The Maltese Falcon right now.  It's a good story, well worth reading even if you have seen the film -- and the book and film are a remarkable example of how to go from the page to the screen.  Not everything makes the leap, but it's surprising how much does, and in which ways.  And you can hold in your hand the same kind of book that troops serving in WW II held, passing time in print while an entire world hung in the balance.

     I'm not getting paid to shill for Field Notes.  It's fine by me if you pick up a $1.50 used copy to read instead, or not at all; multiple versions have come out since the story was first serialized and with the film, it's practically an institution.  Copyright was renewed in the mid-1950s, so royalties from the Field Notes reprint will go to whoever presently holds the rights.

     It is indeed the stuff that dreams are made of -- but I'm not asking you the play the sap for me.
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* Alas, the paperback book is no more.  Paperbacks comprise something more than seventy-five percent of the Roberta X Library of Science Fiction, Fantasy and (separately shelved) Mystery, so this hits close to home for me.  Literally; bookshelves are what we have in the dining and living room instead of wallpaper.