What books would Indy have on his shelves?

Lonsome_Drifter said:

I also bet Indy relaxes by the warm hearth sipping brandy and smoking a fine cigar while puzzling over finding Waldo.

Click to expand...

Between digging for artifacts and dangling from cliffs, Indiana Jones must have very little time to read, never mind to buy books. Luckily, he has a team of people to do it for him. Dr. Jones?as represented by the set decorators for the forthcoming film ?Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull??recently engaged the Strand Bookstore?s Books-by-the-Foot service, which provides ready-made libraries for private homes, stores, and movie sets.

Although prop books are meant to be seen and not read, they have to evoke a mise en scène, inside and out. For Indiana Jones, the filmmakers specified that the books cover such topics as paleontology, marine biology, and pre-Columbian society. They had to be in muted colors and predate 1957. ?People have gotten so character-specific nowadays,? Jenny McKibben, a manager at the store, said. ?It can?t just be color anymore. With high-def, they can just freeze the film and say, ?Oh, that?s so inappropriate.? ?

Since the program?s inception, in 1986, the Strand has built scores of imaginary reading rooms, from the prison library in ?Oz? to the Barnes & Noble clone in ?You?ve Got Mail.? Clients also include window dressers, commercial architects (the Strand furnished each floor in the Library Hotel with a different Dewey decimal category), and people with more shelf space than leisure time. Kelsey Grammer requested all hardback fiction in two of his homes, while Steven Spielberg, who, incidentally, is the director of the new Indiana Jones movie, allowed a wider range (cookbooks, children?s books, volumes on art and film) to penetrate his Hamptons estate. ?There have been a lot of biographies on him, so I put those in there, too,? Nancy Bass Wyden, a co-owner of the store, said.

Customers can choose from eighteen basic library styles, for purchase or rental. ?Bargain books,? a random selection of hardbacks, is the cheapest, at ten dollars per foot of shelf space. For thirty dollars, clients can customize the color. For seventy-five, they can get a ?leather-looking? library, which, as the Strand?s Web site puts it, ?is often mistaken for leather.?

Despite this emphasis on form over content, McKibben approaches her job more like a librarian than like a decorator. ?It?s really just knowing books and knowing what people read,? she said, as she sorted through stacks in her third-floor office. In front of her, a shelf held volumes reserved for a wedding centerpiece (Russell Banks?s ?The Darling,? A. N. Wilson?s ?The Victorians?).

To her left was a rolling cart on which she was building a personal library. ?The designers or the clients tell me a little about themselves,? McKibben said, dragging the cart toward her. ?This one is for a family.? She pointed out ?kid-friendly? books on the Beatles and Charlie Chaplin, and a Dave Eggers volume (?because there are teen-agers in the house?). McKibben spun the cart around to the father?s section. ?We?re kind of guessing the character,? she said. ?The husband is in finance. He likes the History Channel, the Biography Channel. It?s like my dad, and I know what?s in my dad?s library.? The selections included a biography of John Quincy Adams and a hulking gold volume called ?India After Gandhi.?

Downstairs on the shopping floor, Bibbi Taylor, a Strand manager, perused the Africa aisle for Indiana Jones material. Taylor has a discerning eye for historical-looking history books. She quickly eliminated a rust-colored Paul Theroux and a baby-blue Alexandra Fuller (both were too recent), and zeroed in on a beat-up orange hardback. ?This looks good,? she said, pulling out ?The White Nile,? Alan Moorehead?s classic history of Egyptian exploration. ?It has that older worn look, which makes sense, because Indy?s on the road all the time.? When Taylor saw the copyright date, 1960, she recanted. ?That?s pushing it,? she said.

Taylor weaved around some undergraduates and shifted two bookcases to the left. ?Indy?s a philosopher of sorts, so I?d want some ancient-Greek stuff,? she said. She leaned down to a lower shelf and pulled out a green book with a faded spine. ?Oh, yes! A ?39 ?Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture,? ? she said. ?This could be something that he?s read many times.?

?Paideia? in hand, Taylor recalled other recent projects. For a drug dealer in ?American Gangster,? she gathered leather-looking books. For the gym-trainer character that Frances McDormand plays in an upcoming Coen brothers film, she collected self-help titles and romance novels (?a lot of Fabio?). Indiana Jones, though, was clearly her favorite client. ?Dr. Jones, he?s my hero,? Taylor said. ?I get to get inside his mind, touch the books that Harrison Ford will touch.? ♦

The Pictures, ?Books in Bulk,? The New Yorker, October 1, 2007, p. 42.

Click to expand...

Lance Quazar said:

"Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret?"

Click to expand...

Stoo said:

Great article, Rocket and a nice insight into background detail! "The White Nile" sounds like a good read. Thanks for posting.

Click to expand...

Attila the Professor said:

Here's an article that bears on this a little, in fact.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/10/01/071001ta_talk_kelley

Click to expand...

Rocket Surgeon said:

Uh, sort of missed this post, o ):

Pays to read I guess...

Though after clicking so many dead links in other threads, it was worth posting the text. So there was something redeeming.

Click to expand...

Morning Bell said:

I'm reading "Exploration Fawcett", the journal of Colonel Percy Fawcett, and it definitely seems like the kind of book Indy would have picked up sometime in his life. It's an excellent read!

Click to expand...

Attila the Professor said:

Maybe he picked up it up from Fawcett's belongings himself...

Click to expand...

IndyBr said:

"What Happened in History", by V. Gordon Childe.
In KOTCS he mentioned this author to the student in the library.

Click to expand...

JRJENNINGS86 said:

since Indy was a friend of T.E. Lawrence, I would Imagine he would have the "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" and any other books Mr. Arabia wrote.

Click to expand...