Sometimes the prolific pulp writer E. Hoffmann Price would make a single notation in a book from his library, other times no marks at all. One time I visited him in his home in the hills above Redwood City just as he was finishing adding more ink into a very beaten-up copy of The Rubáiyát, which looked as if it had experienced waves of annotations for decades. His copy of Albert Richard Wetjen’s Shark Gotch of the Islands falls somewhere in between. Another Wetjen title formed the basis for a movie which attempted to revive John Gilbert’s stalled career, but today is of interest to many of us mostly because it features the tough guy boxer-writer Jim Tully in a major role. A whole chapter on Wetjen appears in Price’s posthumously published memoirs, The Book of the Dead from Arkham House. These never-before-seen notes from Price are copyright © 2011 by J. Dan Price:
