Gilbar, Steven 1941-

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GILBAR, Steven 1941-

PERSONAL: Born August 7, 1941, in Detroit, MI; son of A. Marvin (an optometrist) and Sylvia (Broudy) Gilbar; married Deborah Weiner (a social worker), August 26, 1974; children: Sky Marin. Education: University of Michigan, B.A., 1963; Wayne State University, J.D., 1966.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Maria Carvainis Agency, 235 West End Ave., New York, NY 10023; fax: 805-892-2721.

CAREER: Practicing attorney, 1967-72; Matthew Mender & Co., San Francisco, CA, senior managing editor, 1973-77. Founder and second vice president of Speaking of Stories (professional theater company), 1995.

MEMBER: California Bar Association.

WRITINGS:

The Book Book: A Compendium of Lists, Quizzes, and Trivia about Books, (nonfiction), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1981.

Good Books: A Book Lover's Companion, Ticknor & Fields (New Haven, CT), 1982.

(Selector) The Open Door: When Writers First Learned to Read, David R. Godine (Boston, MA), 1989.

(Editor) The Reader's Quotation Book: A Literary Companion, introduction by Doris Grumbach, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1991.

(Selector, with Dean Stewart) Tales of Santa Barbara: From Native Storytellers to Sue Grafton, John Daniel & Company (Santa Barbara, CA), 1994.

(Editor and selector) Reading in Bed: Personal Essays on the Glories of Reading, David R. Godine (Boston, MA), 1995.

(Selector) Red Tiles, Blue Skies: More Tales of Santa Barbara from Adobe Days to Present Days, John Daniel & Company (Santa Barbara, CA), 1996.

(With Dean Stewart) Literary Santa Barbara: Between Great Mountains and a Great Sea, McNally & Loftin Publishers (Santa Barbara, CA), 1997.

(Editor and selector) Natural State: A Literary Anthology of California Nature Writing, foreword by David Brower, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1998.

(Editor) Santa Barbara Stories, John Daniel & Company (Santa Barbara, CA), 1998.

(Editor) California Shorts (short stories), Heyday Books (Berkeley, CA), 1999.

(Editor) L.A. Shorts (short stories), Heyday Books (Berkeley, CA), 2000.

(Editor and selector, with Dean Stewart) Published & Perished: Memoria, Eulogies, & Remembrances of American Writers, David R. Godine (Boston, MA), 2002.

(Selector) Americans in Paris: Great Short Stories of the City of Light, foreword by Diane Johnson, Capra Press (Santa Barbara, CA), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Writer and attorney Steven Gilbar, a self-confessed bibliophile, luxuriates in the pleasures of reading, writing, and books. Gilbar's own works praise the sheer magic and delight of the written word, finding great joy in the sublime pleasures of simply relaxing and reading. Reading in Bed: Personal Essays on the Glories of Reading, edited by Gilbar, collects twenty-two essays on the merits of reading, in bed or elsewhere—only two of the twenty-two essays actually address reading in bed, though all achieve the intent of the subtitle, Personal Essays on the Glories of Reading, noted Jocelyn McClurg in the Hartford Courant. Gilbar arranges the essays chronologically, and includes material from a distinguished roster of inveterate readers and writers. The book includes material by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Robert Louis Stevenson, Marcel Prost, Hermann Hesse, Henry Miller, Clifton Fadiman, Vladimir Nabokov, and other luminaries.

"It's interesting to listen to writers reflect, in a personal way, on the pleasures and importance of reading," McClurg observed. Emerson, for example, "comes off as a taskmaster, urging the reader to strive for high intellectual ground when he reads." Montaigne ultimately concluded that he preferred the company of books to that of other people, because books "always receive me with the same kindness," McClurg related. McClurg called the book a "thoughtful, enjoyable collection," and noted that "The essays in Reading in Bed remind us why we do and should read books."

The Open Door: When Writers First Learned to Read, also edited by Gilbar, collects impressions and remembrances from twenty-nine notable authors in essays describing the profound realizations that accompanied learning how to read. "'Magic' is a word that people often use to describe their introduction to reading," wrote Nancy Pate in the Orlando Sentinel. "Often, it's not just the realization that certain symbols mean certain words, but the recognition that reading is the key that unlocks a whole world." John Steinbeck, who had early difficulties with learning to read, forced the "magic" to happen for him, with the help of an aunt who "fatuously ignored my resentment" of reading. Rudyard Kipling achieved an early epiphany when he realized that reading was "a means to everything that would make me happy." Frederick Douglass, the renowned former slave and abolitionist, recognized that reading and literacy formed "the direct pathway from slavery to freedom." Other notable writers represented in the book include Stephen King, Benjamin Franklin, Will Durant, Upton Sinclair, H. G. Wells, and Paule Marshall. Pate called The Open Door a "charming little volume." Janice Harayda, writing in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, described the book as "a lovely anthology . . . that describes some of the many levels on which people respond to the texture of a book."

In the current era of widespread and widely available electronic communications, first with television and more recently with the Internet and online worlds, the death knell for books has been prematurely sounded more than once. "But nothing can replace books," Harayda commented, "because nothing so ably leads us into the deepest reaches of another human heart or so acutely reflects the essential solitude of the human condition." Television, movies, the Internet, and other media require collaboration with a "shared vision" but "reading books, or at least bound books, is an inherently solitary pursuit," Harayda observed. "That is partly what makes the act so thrilling."

Gilbar's literary interests extend not only to a writer's living output, but also to words offered on an author's behalf by enemies and allies after a writer's death. Published & Perished: Memoria, Eulogies, & Remembrances of American Writers is "a remarkable volume produced lovingly by Steven Gilbar and Dean Stewart, stewards of a rare art form, the literary portrait of a literary artist sketched, in turn, by a literary artist," wrote David M. Shribman in the Wall Street Journal. The book contains remembrances written by notable authors in honor of other dying or deceased authors. The remembrances include F. Scott Fitzgerald on Ring Lardner, Oliver Wendell Holmes on Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willa Cather on Stephen Crane, Saul Bellow on John Cheever, and more. "In their brevity, and depth, they are powerful statements about the most powerful architects of the American imagination," Shribman remarked. Keir Graff, writing in Booklist, noted that the short remembrances in the book "reveal some new, small view of the subject's life or work." And a Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that "the majority of these writings movingly affirm the eternal spirit of these authors, their works, and the readers who live on from generation to generation."

Gilbar has also edited collections of short stories. Kristine Huntley, in a Booklist review of L.A. Shorts, a fiction anthology edited by Gilbar, noted, "All in all, Gilbar has compiled an impressive anthology of stories, each showing a different side of the city of [Los Angeles]." Similarly, Booklist reviewer Alice Joyce called Gilbar's edited collection California Shorts "a series of crisp snapshots" and a "satisfying collection of stories."

Gilbar once told CA: "I have constructively combined what were formerly aberrations—bibliophilia and list-making—into a career as an antiquarian and popular bibliographer. I desire to save books that have been unjustly ignored or forgotten and bring them to the attention of a new generation of readers. I see myself as a 'recycler' of literature who believes too many of the niagara of books published each year are superfluous when there are already so many fine books begging for readers."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

AB Bookman's Weekly, November 25, 1996, review of Reading in Bed: Personal Essays on the Glories of Reading, p. 1826.

American Literature, December, 1998, review of Natural State: A Literary Anthology of California Nature Writing, p. 933.

Antioch Review, spring, 1983, review of Good Books: A Book Lover's Companion, p. 252.

Atlantic Monthly, November, 2002, Benjamin Schwarz, review of Published & Perished: Memoria, Eulogies, & Remembrances of American Writers, p. 108.

Bloomsbury Review, March, 1990, review of The Open Door: When Writers First Learned to Read, p. 7; May, 1996, review of Reading in Bed, p. 21.

Booklist, September 1, 1982, review of The Book Book: A Compendium of Lists, Quizzes, and Trivia about Books, p. 63; February 1, 1990, review of The Open Door, p. 1053; December 1, 1990, review of The Reader's Quotation Book: A Literary Companion, p. 712; October 15, 1994, Denise Perry Donavin, review of Tales of Santa Barbara: From Native Storytellers to Sue Grafton, p. 394; October 1, 1998, Mary Carroll, review of Santa Barbara Stories, p. 308; June 1, 1999, Alice Joyce, review of California Shorts, p. 1789; June 1, 2000, Kristine Huntley, review of L.A. Shorts, p. 1858; November 15, 2002, Keir Graff, review of Published & Perished, p. 563.

Bookwatch, October, 1998, review of Santa Barbara Stories, p. 9.

Christian Science Monitor, April 6, 1983, review of Good Books, p. 11; December 18, 1989, Heather Vogel Frederick, review of The Open Door, p. 13.

Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 16, 1994, Janice Harayda, "Book Is Too Good a Friend to Bury; Art Form Threatened in Age of Electronics," p. K1.

CoEvolution Quarterly, winter, 1982, review of Good Books, p. 82.

Hartford Courant, January 7, 1996, Jocelyn McClurg, "Pleasures of Reading Related (Where Else?) in Fine Book of Essays," p. G3.

Hungry Mind Review, spring, 1996, review of Reading in Bed, p. 7.

Journal of Rural Studies, January, 2000, Peter Coates, review of Natural State, pp. 133-134.

Library Journal, June 15, 1981, Chester S. Bunnell, review of The Book Book, p. 1296; April 1, 1983, Chester S. Bunnell, review of Good Books, p. 731; April 15, 1998, Tim J. Markus, review of Natural State, p. 110.

Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2000, Liesl Schillinger, "Crossing ZIP Code Lines in the City of Sun and Self-reinvention," p. E3.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 17, 1998, review of Natural State, p. 9.

New York Times Book Review, December 5, 1982, review of Good Books, p. 71; January 2, 1983, review of Good Books, p. 5.

Orlando Sentinel, January 14, 1990, Nancy Pate,

"Writers Remember that 'Magic' Day," p. F8; January 21, 1996, Jocelyn McClurg, "Essays Illuminate Glories of Reading," p. F8.

Publishers Weekly, September 21, 1998, review of Santa Barbara Stories, p. 76; June 28, 1999, review of California Shorts, p. 56; November 11, 2002, review of Published & Perished, p. 53.

Reference & Research Book News, April, 1990, review of The Open Door, p. 39.

Virginia Quarterly Review, review of The Book Book, p. 61.

Voice of Youth Advocates, June, 1983, review of Good Books, p. 110.

Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2003, David M. Shribman, "Words in Honor of the Words They Wrote," p. D8.

Washington Post Book World, September 27, 1981.