NYSL — "No!"

I.
Via MUG, a nice write-up of the New York Society Library, where I go every couple of weeks.

II.
The aforementioned stacks indulges the temptation to judge a book by its cover—or more commonly, by its title alone. Sometimes this practice pays off. The passage below comes from one of the current books on the proverbial nightstant—Walter Karig's Zotz! (1947):

I have, as I said, attempted to put this history in the form of a novel, So, except for Dr. Jones, the Rev. Dr. Alfred Claverhouse, Mrs. Angela Brant, Miss Virginia Finster and, of course, myself, all the characters in this book are fictitious, bearing synthetic names such as belong to no persons known to me. It it possible that out of affection, I have endorsed some of those characters with the amiable qualities of persons who have blessed me with their friendship. But if anyone should say: "I wonder if he meant that to be I" (for all my friends are grammatical even when excited) or "I wonder if he meant that to be Johnny Walker (or Charley Tompkins, Dick Williams, Boris Shishkin, the very Rev. Dean "Zab" Zabriskie, Admiral Frank Farley, USCG, Captain Atherton Macondray, USN, Colonel "Gally" Galliford, USMC, the Rev. Drs. Mollegan, Brown-Serman or Kein, or any of their womenfolk)," why, the answer is "No!" That is, I don't think so.