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Peter Whitney, Bookseller Extraordinaire, is an accomplished collage artist and sculptor, as well as an avid collector of toads--alive and dead.

Pete lives in New Jersey, "land of the ten cent book". There, in sublime Newark, he maintains his artist's lair, which also doubles as the nerve center for his bookselling operation.

Witness his stockpile of used and out-of-print books! (enough copies of Sexus to make your eyes water). Check out his collection of erotic squash sculptures, various toad and snail inspired collages, and snake filled terrariums! Behold Ft. Whitney, his five foot high booktable, a veritable book-scraper to maximize his table!

Back home, Pete has a special toad he keeps in a jar...an interesting specimen with a macabre but fascinating story behind it (you'll have to see BookWars for the skinny on this).

Like most of the booksellers out on the strip, Pete shuns stolen books, preferring the thrill of the hunt as he scours garage sales and estate sales in New Jersey and New York. There he acquires the literature, pomes, novels and memoirs that grace his sidewalk bookstand out on the streets of Gotham.

His stock is varied, depending on what he acquires on any particular hunt. He'll sell anything from Jonathan Livington Seagull to Mein Kampf His philosophy is simple:

"If people want to buy it...if it's good for them...they have the right to read it."

What more can be said about free speech and the right to pursue liberty and happiness?

At the bookstand, Pete can often be found tearing pages out of old National Geographics and volumes of American Heritage, which will ultimately end up as material for another one of his unique collages. Indeed , it is through these collages and his various sculptures that we gain the most definitve insight into the zeitgeist of this particular bookseller.

During a pause in shooting, Pete and I were drinking Heinekens and discussing the many tricks of the street bookseller's trade. One such trick is the practice of faking "original" prices in some of the books, in order to suggest to the customer that a particular book was worth a lot more than it really was.

I played devil's advocate and asked Pete if this weren't "immoral". He responded, paraphrasing the Marquis de Sade:

"Morals? Morals are absurdities, created by religion...if we quote the divine Marquis, he says what actually is religion but a means whereby the mighty enslave the weak? How does the latter believe their manacles are of divine origin? And what does worship consist of but grotesque ceremonies? And who could be more barbaric than this originator of Christianity..."

Just a glimpse of Pete.