Even the most die-hard fans of Ernest Hemingway haven’t read his first novel. That’s because the manuscript disappeared when his wife’s suitcase was stolen from a train in Paris in 1922, and now is adrift in the underworld of lost history.
What if this mythical novel had not vanished, but was something you could grab at your local library? That’s the fascinating premise of an exhibit at the Book Club of California, which conjures real, three-dimensional books based on tomes that never saw the light of day. “Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books” presents an alternative library of 100-plus books from New England bibliophile Reid Byers’ collection – you can’t exactly read them, but they’re great fun to ponder.
Made by artists and bookbinders, these include William Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labours Won,” a sequel to “Love’s Labour’s Lost” of which no known copies exist, and Lord Byron’s juicy memoirs, burned by his publisher to protect the poet’s reputation. There are incomplete books like Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” – he wrote 54 lines before a visitor interrupted him, ruining his inspiration – and Raymond Chandler’s “Shakespeare in Baby Talk,” which translates the bard’s plays into googoo-gaga infant speech. And fans of science fiction should enjoy seeing “The Necronomicon,” made famous in the “Evil Dead” franchise, as well as – don’t panic! – “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
Details: On view 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday until July 21, 2025, at 47 Kearny St., Suite 400, San Francisco; free admission, call to confirm an appointment at 415-781-7532 (extension 3), bccbooks.org.
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