B O O K L A D

Cattch 22 and the Classic American Novel

2011-07-22T20:54:00.000-07:00

"In Catch-22, Joseph Heller invented a motif for the modern world. The book shaped everything that came after it, establishing Heller's reputation as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century"

-back of paperback edition of Hellers short stories

"It became enormously poplular, particularly among younger readers during the Vietnam War era, and it's title became a catch phrase"

-Oxford Companion to Am Literature

Somewhere between these two quotes lies the real Joseph Heller and the real Catch-22. I've spent the better part of the last month reading this wonderful novel and pondering all of the puffery surrounding it (along with it's author), and I have some ideas and observations that I'd like to share.

I've been a focused and obsessed reader going on 40 years now. Ever since I walked into Humphrey's Family Paperbacks in Glendale, AZ., and picked out a book to read (Reality Forbidden by Philip E. High), I've been consumed with books and reading. Now, I read other books at school and enjoyed them, but this was the first book I chose myself because it interested me (rather, the cover interested me). This simple book started a life-style than has me surrounded by books for most of my day working at the Iliad Bookshop. Then I go home to read for several hours usually before I go to sleep.

Now, I'm not a finicky reader. My reading moto has been honed over the years to a sharp, clean edge: "I'll read any book on any subject as long as it's interesting". And that's true. I'll read the worst kind of sleaze novel from the 50's and turn right around and start on an aesthetic analysis of the Quay Bros. films.

I don't believe in the accepted notions of highbrow, middlebrow and low brow culture. That's all crap created by obsessive-compulsives and passed on by people who should know better. W.H. Auden taught me in his great book, The Dyer's Hand, that everything you read becomes part of your imagination, so take in all kinds of books (paraphrased a bit here). And he's right.

So, what the hell does all of this have to do with Heller's Catch-22? Well, I'll tell you: even though I read Catch-22 back in my first year of college, I never really READ it, you know what I mean? Being forced to read an "important" novel, a "significant" work of art" by "on of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century" just kills the book for me. I read it, sure, but only to cull information to write up a pretty much bullshit essay on... something. I think I probably got more out of the Cliff Notes to Catch-22 than I did anything from the book. Although, I did remember being impressed with the "Dante" sequence near the end of Catch-22 where Yossarian is walking through the sleazy streets of wartime Rome and it seems like hell.

After college, I never thought about Catch-22 again and certainly avoided the damn movie version of it (rather stick a rail road tie in my.. well, you get the idea). And, of course, there's the bookstore puffery that comes with the "classics". Listening to people tell me that Catch-22 is a great work of art or that Joseph Heller is under-appreciated..blah blah blah. Sure, I respected the book because of it's place in the literary canon, but to me it was just a book I was forced to read and got nothing out of.

Until this last month....

I think it was the cover that forced me to read Catch-22 as an adult (see above). Here I am, 56 years old and I'm still doing the same thing I did at 16: buying a book because of it's cover. Well, that's not entirely true as I have a lifetime of reading books and reading about books behind me now. But, I mean, who could resist this cover? Here's the full description of the cover:

"Cover: B-25 Mitchell All-Plastic Twin-Engine Bomber complete with Pilots and
Gunners, Landing Gear, Three-Bladed Props, 75mm Cannon, 14 Machine Guns, 6
Rockets. Easy to assemble. (private collection)"

Could find nothing on the designer or the person whose private collection these toys belonged to (if anyone knows please post), but, damn, it's such a beautiful, evocative image! Especially the one or two toy parts that are pulled off of the stems they are attached to. Later, I was to realize the significance of these subtle touches.

"Catch-22 is concerned with physical survival against exterior forces
or institutions that want to destroy life or moral self"

-Paris Review 60, Heller Interview

But now it's time to sit down and read this book. This time because I want to and because I'm interested in it. Thinking: "about time I got back to this book...is it really the classic everyone says it is?"

from "art of manliness" blog

Is Catch-22 a classic?

The term "classic" is a bogus word nowadays. The advertising industry stole it and packaged it up so that anyone could use it as a lazy superlative: "Ah, yes, an instant classic", or, "I'm sorry but we only read the classics in this book club", and further, "It's an underground, pulp classic, dude". What does any of this mean? Basically, nothing. "Classic" is a butter word now. One that you spread all over something to add flavor when there probably isn't any present in the first place.

Good old Oxford dictionary defines "classic" very succinctly: "judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind". That pretty much puts the lie to the 1001 uses of "classic" you read and hear every day. What we have instead is a definition that simply states a "classic" of anything has to be "of the highest quality", "over a period of time" and must be "outstanding of its kind". Some wiggle room there with the "judged" and "of its kind", but I think we can apply this definition to Catch-22 now.

To be considered a classic, Catch-22 has to be of the highest quality. Now, re-reading the book, I can safely say it IS of the highest quality. Well, 75% of it is because the book feels sloppy and over-written. I'm not going to go into plot summaries, look it up, but the whole middle section where each chapter is a different character: a colonel, a commanding officer, a major, a captain....much of this became a blur and felt like either too-personal a recollection (Heller served in WWII and wrote much of the novel based on his feelings and experiences during the war) or an author's indulgence. Even Milo Minderbinder's long section feels almost like another short novel buried inside of the much lager Catch-22 novel.

And Heller's prose, when he's not dead on, is loquacious and fat. Listen to this section from page 246 (the Vintage-Classics edition):

"Certainly he would be much better off under somebody suave like General Peckem than he was under somebody boorish and insensitive like General Dreedle, because General Peckhem had the discernment, the intelligence and the Ivy League background to appreciate and enjoy him at his full value, although General Peckhem had never given the slightest indication that he appreciated or enjoyed him at all. Colonel Cathcartfelt perceptive enough to realize that visible signals of recognition were never necessary between sophisticated, self-assured people like himself and General
Peckham who could warm to each other from......"

Contrast this with the "Eternal City" chapter late in the book:

"The night was filled with horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a yard full of nuts, like a victim through a prison full of thieves. What a welcome sight a leper must have been!"

ibiblio.org

But let me cut to the chase here; Catch-22 isn't of the highest quality consistently, but it's really the overall effect of the book and it's characters that make the difference. And what characters! I think the real achievement of Catch-22 lies in the characters Heller created. Yossarian, Milo, the Chaplin and Nately's whore make indelible impressions on readers and there's an entire opera's worth in the book. Of course, the use of time shifting in the book is masterful, too, although at first it seems sloppy. By shifting back and forth between the very significant event with Yossarian and his dying fellow soldier on the plane, Heller creates an effect that is very film-like and results in a brilliant climax to the story (no spoilers here, folks.

And although readers and critics were slow to pick up on what Heller was doing (writing an anti-war story that combined comedy and tragedy with black, black irony), eventually readers and legions of college teachers (like mine) read and re-read the novel and discovered how "outstanding of it's kind" Catch-22 really is.

"I really don't know what I'm doing until people read what I've
written and give me their reactions"

The final element of the "classic" is time: "judged over a period of time", the Oxford definition states. It's been 50 years now since Catch-22 was published and it's become part of the American canon of novels. Listed in top tens on every list you can think of. A definitive anti-war novel (it's more than that though) taught by countless teachers in college and high-school. That should make it a classic, right?

No.

In order for Catch-22 to become a true classic like Vanity Fair or Aristotle's Poetics, it need more than a generation to laugh at it's absurd comedy and cringe at it's dark irony. I have a feeling it will last because so much of the story is based on Heller's own experiences in WWII and because he is such a passionate, funny storyteller, but we don't know for sure if Catch-22 will last for 100 years or 1000 years. It was written at a time (early 60's) when this kind of story was welcomed, especially by younger readers. As the excellent introduction to the Vintage Classic's edition (written by Howard Jacobson) puts it:

"What I think most of us who love Catch-22 love most is precisely what, from the Flaubertian position, is wrong with it. Its loose- ness, its unruliness, its extravagance, its verbal excess, its
emotional waywardness, its impatience with the niceties, whether of expression or of feeling, its repetitiveness, its devil-may-care clumsiness, its hysteria, its tomfoolery, its brutality,
its sexual rough-and-tumble, its unembarrassed preachiness, its vacillations, its formlessness, or rather - because Heller knows full well what laws he's breaking - it's apparent formlessness.
If those are faults, we say, then hang the virtues"

-Catch-22, Introduction to Vintage Classics, 2004

I discovered Catch-22 late in life. I mean, I really read the book and understood it as an adult. As a young, college kid I had no idea what was going on, nor did I care. Now, from a distance, it's themes and characters make sense to me. I was moved by Catch-22, don't get me wrong, but the book needs time to affect another generation before it can truly be called a classic. And considering the enormous changes in human perspective (not to mention war) that are coming because of advanced technology, I'm not sure the book will survive as "a motif for the modern world".

But, we shall see....

Joseph Heller

Heller apparently never quite got to the level he achieved in Catch-22 with any of his later works. Or so we are told. He wrote slowly using index cards, daydreaming and conversations with friends. Seven novels, a couple plays and screenplays, two autobiographies and some short stories are the extent of his writings. He suffered a paralyzing illness at middle age from which he recovered to make a living primarily through teaching writing at the university level. He died in 1999 just after completing his last novel Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man.

Unique library book-retrieval system at University of Chicago: something lost with innovation?

2011-05-31T11:30:00.000-07:00

I've been a library hound for most of my life, but never more than I was as a graduate student at Yale University from 1979 to 1983. Yale has some of the most incredible libraries on the planet, especially the Beinecke rare book library. Graduate students are entitled to their own study carol at the main library, installed in an old Gothic style church on campus with ceilings so low that there were "sub-floors" (two floors instead of the traditional one floor) of books. Even when I wasn't doing research, I'd roam the floors just looking for interesting book designs or titles I've never heard of before. In fact, every year while I was attending the University, a student would discover a rare book that had been donated, but not cataloged yet.

Unfortunately all of that is going to change if the University of Chicago's new Mansueto Library becomes the model for future library architecture. The student/researcher's interaction with books will be narrowed and the serendipity of finding books by accident will be a thing of the past.

From a Chicago Tribune article on cityscapes by Blair Kamin, the University needed to solve the problem of keeping their entire book collection on-campus while at the same time providing an appealing and practical atmosphere for students to study and research. Architect Helmet Jahn's startling sci-fi design is based on the idea that book storage is separate from the student research area. As you can see in the picture above, the giant "bubble" is where the students study and the large blocky building to the right is where the books are stored and then delivered by a fully automated system to the waiting students next door.

Here is a description of how it works from the Tribune article:

"Patrons can request materials at a computer terminal in the library or via the Internet. It works like this: You request the book, then a high-speed robotic crane zooms down a tiny railroad track and stops at the right bin. It pulls out the bin, and delivers it upstairs to the circulation desk, where a real person picks out your book. The process, which has been used for industrial storage, Internet retailers, and smaller academic libraries, is supposed to take 5 minutes — as opposed to at least a day for getting materials from a remote storage facility."

The advantages are obvious: ideal conditions to store books (temperature, handling, power saving, space saving, protection) and a wonderful, open space with lots of natural light for students to work in. And although they've encountered minor problems (students climbing to the top of the big bubble for one), the response by students has been very positive. The bright, open space with pleasing Scandanavian-style furniture looks like a wonderful place to study and to think (the 360 degree view must be wonderful).

Still, I can't help but wonder if something has been lost by separating the books from the students. Oh, I don't mean that students don't have the actual books to handle and use, it's the serendipity I was talking about earlier: the ability to 'browse' the library is effectively gone with this design. Students order the exact book they want and it's retrieved by a robot: no accidents, no finding a book mis-filed and it turns out to be a great book you would have otherwise never seen.

I suppose the advantages outweigh the loss of "browsing", as the books are kept in great shape and will last a lot longer (I don't think that rare book libraries will be adopting this method though), but I hope this new design doesn't become the norm. I'd like to think there is still some student wandering the aisles looking for something interesting to read or finding a book they would never have found if robots were looking instead. It's such a remarkable feeling to be amidst thousands of books in the stacks; that feeling of history and the expectation of learning while looking down row upon row of books. That experience won't be a part of the new system and I think it's a loss.

Iliad Bookshop Owner Dan Weinstein Featured in Local TV News Story

2011-05-05T18:49:00.000-07:00

My boss, Dan Weinstein, is on a roll recently. He's appeared on an episode of Storage Wars as a book appraiser (if you follow the link we come in at about the 18:00 mark) and just yesterday NBC News local affiliate here in Los Angeles used him for a story on taxing internet purchases (esp. Amazon.com). If he gets any more popular he's going to start collecting residuals and have an IMDB listing. Way to go, Dan!

I've been working at the Iliad Bookshop for over 12 years now and Dan is the best boss I've ever had. He's smart, generous and has put together a superb used bookstore that people come from all over town to shop and hang out. I love coming to work everyday.

Here's the local NBC news sequence:

View more videos at: http://www.nbclosangeles.com.

Recent Vintage Paperback Covers

2011-04-18T22:36:00.000-07:00

I decided to remove the Paperback Covers page and instead simply post new covers here in the main blog. Here are a few recent additions to my growing vintage paperback collection. These came into the Iliad Bookshop today and caught my eye. (Note: you can click on the image for the original size which is quite large)

I've tried my best to determine cover artists for each cover, but often the artists aren't credited. The ones I do know, I've indicated in the caption at the bottom of the image.

I truly love the Time Rogue cover which I hope to reproduce inside of Blender at some point. The Ten From Infinity is pretty amazing, too. Perhaps I can reproduce that one in Muvizu?

Enjoy!

Lancer Books 74627-075 (1970)


Airmont (1964)

Pyramid Books R-1170 (1965)
Cover painting by Jack Gaughan

Lancer Books 75346-095 (1968)

Pyramid Books F-794 (1962)


Daw Books No. 206 (1976) Cover art by Deane Cate


Monarch Books 297 (1963) Cover by Ralph Brillhart

Zenith Books ZB-14 (1959)

First Paragraphs From Paperback Show Purchases

2011-04-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

Looking over my vintage paperback loot from the recent 32nd Annual Paperback Show, I found myself reading the first paragraphs of each book in succession just to get a taste of the writers style. They were surprisingly different. In fact, the one book that I bought on a whim (The Mark of Pak San Ri) with little expectation of the book being any good or not, actually turned out to have the best opening of all six books (see below)

I did cheat a bit with Nobody Dies in Paris as the picture makes more sense with the first two paragraphs (sue me). All of the books are interesting and I hope to read them in one big jag over some lazy weekend. McGivern is probably the most accomplished of the writers listed (justifiably so) with Odds Against Tomorrow being made into a fine movie with Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan. I'm also intrigued with the Jack Ehrlich title (Parole) as his name keeps popping up in lists by other writers and booksellers of paperback crime.

I was also attracted to the covers of the books. All of them are colorful and striking. I love the old graphic/painted design style of fifties and sixties cover design. Something I think publishers like Penguin are getting back to (thank God). Gunman's Harvest front cover is particularly interesting with a great dramatic pose and use of muted greens and golds. Even the back cover is nicely done. The front cover painting is by Mal Thompson.

From The Mark of Pak San Ri by William Stroup
Published in 1965 by Book Company of America, #10
No cover artist listed

"The taxi careened out of nowhere. The little man crossing the street with the bundle

under his arm never saw it. It caught him dead center and flung him a good twenty feet.

The bundle flew from the man's arms and broke open. then the hit and run taxi, a rattling monstrosity which looked like it had been built out of a hundred junkers, sped on,

screeched around a corner and was gone".

From Nobody Dies in Paris by Jerry Weil
Published by Signet, #1449. 1967
No cover artist listed

"The late afternoon June sunlight streamed in through the small, unwashed window of the hotel room. It found its way into the corners of the tiny room. It warmed the room.
There was a girl lying on the bed midst a pile of undone sheets and blankets. She was wearing green silk pajamas that were faded by too many washings. She was smoking a cigarette."

From Stop Time by Frank Conroy
Published by Dell, #8211, 1969
Cover art by James Bama

"When we were in England I worked well. Four or five hundred words every afternoon. We lived in a small house in the countryside about twenty miles south of London. It was quiet, and because we were strangers, there were no visitors. My wife had been in bed for five months with hepatitis but stayed remarkably cheerful and spent most of her time reading. Life was good, conditions were perfect for my work"

From Gunman's Harvest by James Keene
Published by Dell, #A205, 1960
Cover artist Mal Thompson

"As ranchers went in South Texas, Jim Asher's place was small, only four thousand acres, but he liked it because he was the kind of man who held dear the things he had to work hard for. Six of his thirty-two years had gone into the place, and four years of that at a loss or barely breaking even. These last two, there had been some profit, but the scent of trouble was on the wind, a whisper in the warning venters of his mind."

front cover

back cover

From By-Line for Murder by Andrew Garve
Published by Dell, #765, 1961
Cover artist Robert Stanley

"At the wetter end of Fleet Street, close by the Crown Inn and not far from the famous Cheshire Cheese, there is a five-story, red-brick building which houses the London Morning Call, a national newspaper with a certified daily net sale of nearly two million copies. Though the paper is popular, no one has ever been known to say a good word for the building in which it is produced - a late-Victorian monstrosity of classic ugliness which an incongruous flesh-pink filling where a hole blown in the structure by a delayed-action bomb in 1941 has been repaired."

From Odds Against Tomorrow by William P. McGivern
Published by Pocket Books, #C-316, 1959
Cover artist not listed

"For what seemed like a long time he couldn't make himself cross the street and enter the hotel. he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and frowned at the revolving doors and canopied entrance, indifferent to the nighttime crowd drifting past him, his tall body as immobile as a rock in a stream. People edged around him carefully, for there was a look of tension in the set of his shoulders, and in the appraising frown that shadowed his hard even features"

32nd Annual Paperback Collectors Show

2011-03-30T21:44:00.000-07:00

Although Lisa and I were still depressed over the lost of our much-loved store cat, Zola, we decided to stop by the 32nd Annual Paperback Collectors Show in Mission Hills on Sunday, March 27th. Run primarily by Tom Lesser, a great promoter and collector of paperbacks himself, along with Rose Idlet, owner of Black Ace Books in Los Angeles.

"The show began as part of my collecting hobby but gradually developed into
         a large show which is now held for collectors and members of the public who
         just want to come, walk around, maybe get some books signed and meet the
        authors"
                                                                                                                    -Tom Lesser

We've been going to the show for over a decade now and have always enjoyed meeting collectors and pouring over the tables and stacks of paperbacks. However, this year we just didn't feel the spirit of the show all that much and only came away with a handful of books. Nothing to do with the show (which was active and actually crowded a bit this year), it was more to do with our somber mood. Still, we got to see a lot of friends including author Christa Faust, who was excited about the show and seemed to be spending way too much money.

The Paperback Show takes up three rooms at the Mission Hills, CA., Valley Inn and Conference Center. The main room is where you enter and pay the 5 bucks to get in. Then there is a smaller room off to the side and another large room where most of the authors appear to promote and sign their books.

Most dealers display their books face up or spine up on long tables. Some dealers have additional boxes of books underneath the tables which makes for a lot of people on their knees browsing and going through endless stacks of paperbacks. The more organized sellers list books by publisher or have selections of authors works all together. And, of course, there are related paper ephemera like pulp magazines, posters and magazines.

I got a chance to see three or four of my favorite paperback people. James Madison who sells via Ebay and via mail/email, always has the best organized table with lots of good vintage paperback bargains. He's such a great guy and a top-notch paperback dealer, too.

Also got to see Lynn Munroe, who is a primarily a private dealer and historian. He has done so much for vintage paperback history and I've enjoyed every book he's ever recommended.

Ron Blum of Kayo Books always has some of the rarest and most interesting paperbacks. He had a sleaze paperback with the original painting used for the cover on display (see pix below). His San Fran store is a must see if you visit that town. The store website is pretty cool, too. Ron's wife, Maria, is always at their large dealer table while Ron's out looking for deals. It was pleasure to see her again and chat a bit. Their store is doing well, glad to say.

There is always a long list of authors signing at the Paperback Show every year. This year there was Ann Bannon, Bill Pronzini, Donald Glut, Bruce Kimmel and William F. Nolan just to name a few. I snapped a pix of Donald Glut, a very interesting author/screenwriter who in addition to his long and varied writing career is an expert on dinosaurs. I wish I had had the time to chat with him a bit.

I had a enjoyable chat with Gary Lovisi (stupid me for not taking a pix) who edits the Paperback Parade (a semi-annual mag that covers vint pap authors/history), runs Gryphon Books and is a noted hard-boiled author himself. He's done so much to bring forgotten authors to light. In the current issue of PP #77 he covers the jazz musician and paperback writer Charles Beckman, Jr.

I came away with only 6 books this year and Lisa picked up three nifty James M. Cain paperbacks. I just grabbed books that interested me. Picked up only one book by an author I've been looking for, Jack Ehrlich. Looks like a good book. I plan on posting the first paragraphs of each of the books just for fun and perhaps doing an reading of them as well for fun.

You can find out more information about the annual Paperback Show here. I took some video of the event and will edit it together in a week or so. Will post here and on Vimeo. Nothing special, just a short simple documentary of my time at the show. Here's a little snippet:

If you happen to be in Los Angeles in late March sometime, I highly recommend the annual Paperback show. Bring two 20 dollar bills with you and you'll walk out with a bag full of great vintage paperbacks, plus a lot of new friends.

Jim Tierney Cover Designs

2011-03-23T11:34:00.000-07:00

From Mark Frauenfelder at boingboing.net: a very cool post on designer Jim Tierney's designs for Jules Verne book covers. Here's the link (and pix below):

Jim Tierney Book Covers

I love the strong contrast in colors matched with the whimsical design. Perfect for Verne's books. Unfortunately, as the blog post states they are design projects and not commercially available. You can see more of his work at his main website here:

Jim Tierney Website

I also follow a wonderful book blog on cover design called:

The Caustic Cover Critic

From this blog comes an interesting Edwardian take on HP Lovecraft designed by Travis Louie.

Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari (tr. by Kengi Hamada)

2011-03-20T22:48:00.000-07:00

Ugetsu Monogatori 1953 (picnic scene)

I first came across Tales of Moonlight and Rain after viewing Mizoguchi's brilliant film Ugetsu Monogatori (1953) which adapts two stories ( Homecoming and Bewitched) from a collection of 16th century Japanese Gothic tales written by Ueda Akinari. Since I was deeply impressed with the Mizoguchi film, I wanted to read the two original stories from the collection. So when Criterion released their wonderful 2-disc set of Ugetsu (the name was shortened to one word for American audiences) they also included the two stories in a small booklet and I was finally able to read them. I was entranced and immediately wanted to find a good edition of the full collection. And thanks to working in a great bookstore, I found an excellent collection published by Columbia University Press in 1972. It reprints the University of Tokyo Press edition which came out the year before. I've scanned the front, rear and spine of the book for you and posted it below.

This hardback edition is beautifully designed featuring an inked version of an old woodblock print from, presumably an early edition of the book. Several other b&w versions of the original prints are included as accompanying illustrations for the 9 stories that comprise Tales of Moonlight and Rain. Click on the image above to see a larger version. It's from "Bewitched", one of the stories Mizoguchi adapted for his film.

And here's another woodblock illustration from "Bewitched". In this scene, you see the two vengeful spirits disappearing in the waves.

Ueda Akinari (1734-1809) is a highly regarded writer and scholar whose life ran the gamut of experience. He was born to an Osaka prostitute never knowing who his father was. Adopted by a wealthy merchant at a young age. His father cared for him and gave him a good education which set Ueda with an inquiring mind for the rest of his life. He survived a small-pox infection as a young man and felt that his parents prayers to the god of the Kashima Inari Shrine are what saved him. This, perhaps, is what fixed a live-long fascination with the supernatural and the occult.

Ueda Akinari

Tales of Moonlight and Rain (1776) was a departure for Ueda, who was primarily known for light comic sketches of contemporary life. His movement towards these supernatural stories reflected his increasing knowledge and love of Chinese literature which is rich in other-worldly tales. According to the translator, Kengi Hamada, who also wrote the fine "About the author" for this edition, Ueda the source material came from "ancient vintages". He states that Ueda "adapted, reshaped, and retold his stories in his own peculiar settings, representing interactions of history, mores, maxims, superstitious beliefs, and personality conflicts of an altogether different milieu".

The modern reader of Tales of Moonlight and Rain might miss some of the originality of this work since it's central to Japanese literature and has influenced world literature, but is not as well know in America. We so see some of the tropes re-produced in these stories in our own horror/gothic fiction of the present day. Somehow, the social conscience of the original tales is missed in our re-telling of the story-tropes. What struck me in reading Tales of Moonlight and Rain (aside from the wonderful poetry and characterizations) is how masterfully the tales are woven into a moral and social construct. It's as if Ueda is saying "people are always going to mis-understand the supernatural; always going to be a victim because of their lack of knowledge of history". I'd also add "because of their lack of humanity". In some of these stories, for the modern reader, the spirits of the dead are often more sympathetic than the victims.

The female ghost in Ugetsu (film)

Ueda is a powerful writer even in this slightly antiquarian translation. Of course, I very much enjoyed the stories adapted into the Mizoguchi film, but two other stories were equally as captivating: "Demon", the story of a priest who takes on the cannibalistic demon who is haunting a local temple, and "Reunion", which is the story of the power of friendship and commitment. I believe "Reunion" also contains a self-portrait of Ueda in the character of Hasebe Samon, the scholar who loves nothing more than to read and be with his books.

One of the stories ("Exiled") requires a knowledge of Japanese history to fully appreciate, but even here the writing is so striking and the situation so poetic/gothic that it hardly matters. All of the stories are sharply drawn with an eye towards a combination of the mundane and the macabre. I savored each story reading one a day at bedtime. I found that familiar shadows in my room started looking strange and disturbing after I finished a story and put the book on my bedside table.

Tales of Moonlight and Rain is a remarkable collection of stories written by an imaginative and intelligent man whose love and fear of the supernatural are caught in his words like fireflies in the darkness. This collection is highly recommended as is the film adaptation.

Note: Columbia University Press has a new version of Tales of Moonlight and Rain with a new translation and introduction. I haven't read this version, but will be doing so very soon. In the meantime, you can find out more about it here. There's also an attractive edition by Routledge that looks interesting. Well, there goes my paycheck again.

Editions of Akinari's other works are hard to find and expensive. Also, books about him are not easy to find in English. I hope that my favorite publisher Reaktion Books will consider doing a new book on Ueda Akinari in their "critical lives" series. It certainly would be welcome by this reader.

Cities of the Red Night by William Burroughs

2011-03-17T22:36:00.000-07:00

Cover by Thomi Wroblewski

   "The days seem to flash by like a speeded-up chase scene in a 1920s comedy.......
   patrols always behind them, bullets thudding into flesh, bombs in Middletown bars
   and theaters and restaurants. A wake of glass, blood and brains and the hot meaty
   smell of entrails remind Audrey of a rabbit he had once seen dissected in biology
   class. A girl had fainted. He could see her slump to the floor with a soft plop.
   Shatter Day always closer..."
   page 255

Before I jumped feet first into the kaleidescope of drugs, piracy, private eyes, homo-erotic sex, hangings and boys adventure pulp parodies that is Cities of the Red Night, I read a terrific short biography of Burroughs written by Phil Baker and published by a very cool British publisher Reaktion Press. Part of their "Critical Lives" series (I've read their books on Gertrude Stein and John Luis Borges...excellent books), William S. Burroughs packs as much biographical/critical information as you can in 192 pages. I like how Phil Baker writes and he, for the most part, is pretty even-handed and objective about wild boy Bill. Some parts struck me as new even though I read the huge (and probably definitive) bio of Burroughs by Ted Morgan years ago. Burroughs infatuation with Scientology, his continuous search for alternate reality/possession systems and theories (including attending a weekend seminar on "out of body" travel) and his discovery of the deep joy of living with cats late in life, all added dimensions to his personality that made reading Cities such an interesting, but frustrating experience.

Cities of the Red Night is the first book of a trilogy of novels Burroughs started writing in the early 80s (the other two books are The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands) while living in "The Bunker" in New York which, years before, had been the locker room of the YMCA building at 222 Bowery. Windowless and without any natural light, Burroughs liked the vast space and entertained a growing coterie of punk followers given celebrity status as a Beat icon. He also became addicted to heroin again, which he found preferable to the curse of alcohol.

One fellow who showed up at the Bunker was James Grauerholz, who after a short affair with Burroughs, became his amanuensis and eventual literary executor of the Burroughs estate. One of the dedications in Cities of the Red Night is "to James Graueholz, who edited this book into present time". How much James actually kept and/or cut from this novel is anyone's guess. It's an already fragmented novel, so you can't really tell. Certainly it's not easy to write when you are stoned, although Burroughs had learned to manage his habit over many, many years of his addiction. Still, it's important to remember he wrote it in the Bunker while living the life of a cult figure and coping with renewed heroin addiction. That sex, drugs, youth, addiction and disease figure prominently is no coincidence. Burroughs was writing his life out on the pages.

There's really no way to capture the "story" of Cities of the Red Night. Ostensibly it winds three strands of story which take place in different time periods: one is a boys-adventure pirate story taking place in the 18th century where the pirates are attempting to live their lives and seek freedom based on the "articles' written by a real-life Captain Mission whose community died out; another is a modern day (80's) story of a private eye (Clem Snide, Private Asshole....Burroughs has great wit with names) who's investigating the ritual sexual murder of several boys. There are also other plot strands including the CIA and Virus B-23 which sounds very much like an AIDS-like plague, although this book was written well before AIDS became widely known. Add to the mix, Burroughs speculation on the origins of various races (red, white, yellow) and his obsessions with hanging as an erotic act, plus the many and varied uses of male semen and you have a very funny, strange, fascinating, repulsive and occasionally boring novel that is beautifully written and, well, perhaps not that well edited.

Reading Cities of the Red Night is an on-again, off-again experience. I actually began another book while I was reading Cities. This was around the middle of the novel where the book is the weakest. It's also very strange that the book starts out somewhat traditionally (after an invocation to a God and the story of Captain James Mission; all unneeded in my view) and then proceeds to become more incoherent and scatological as it progresses. Eventually, you feel that Burroughs is just trying to insult you or shock you. Perhaps this worked in the 80s, but it is just boring for contemporary readers.

Then the novel starts catching fire again right around the time of the big battle between ancient cities starts (whose names were created by Brion Gysin, long time influence on Burroughs). Zipping back and forth between times and various story strands, Burroughs eventually winds everything up in a great ending that had me turning the pages as quickly as I could. Something I think Burroughs would have enjoyed hearing about.

The ending is a ironic and twisted and utterly perfect. I was left with an odd mix of feelings at the end of the novel, but mostly admiration for it's daring and a certain amount of sadness for several of the characters, most specifically Audrey.

I recommend this novel for anyone who has already read Burroughs and want another fix. New readers may struggle unless you have some reading stamina, an open mind and a good sense of humor. Burroughs likes to fuck with the reader and sometimes it's uncomfortable reading. But maybe that's just me.

On to The Place of Dead Roads

PS be sure to check out the Reaktion books site for the Burroughs bio and the rest of their excellent books. Also, the edition I read was published by Picador (UK publisher) in 1982 with a cover design by Thomi Wroblewski, who has designed other Burroughs covers in a fantastic style that perfectly matches Burroughs own. So if cover design means anything to you, get this edition. Shop at the abebooks.com site and put Picador in the publisher category for copies of the this edition you can purchase.

Short Spoken Word Selection from "The Orange Eats Creeps" by Grace Krilanovich

2011-03-10T23:03:00.000-08:00

I recorded a very short piece from Grace Krilanovich's wonderful novel The Orange Eats Creeps reviewed here at Bookland. Published last year by Two Dollar Radio, I urge you to buy this very unusual and imaginative novel.

I hope my reading will give you a taste of the novel's style. Definitely check out the novel's page at the publisher's site.

Short Reading of "The Orange Eats Creeps" by Grace Krilanovich by rickygrove

Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks

2011-03-06T21:34:00.000-08:00

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.

Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

.............................................................. from Iain-Banks.net

Iain Banks first novel Wasp Factory knocked me out when it first came out in 1984. Dark, poetic and sharp-edged prose made the book so powerful it lingered for years (literally). Read it and you'll see what I mean as it's one of my favorite first novels. Hell, it's one of my favorite novels.

What I can't explain is why I never read any more of his novels. Certainly, I had many of them in my library and even on my bedside table, but just never started them. Even when Mr. Banks began a series of SciFi novels that received thundering reviews, I still waited and waited. "What for", I ask myself. Just too many other books that demanded my attention.

Well, all of that's changed with Consider Phlebas, the first of Mr. Banks "Culture" novels. Determined to get back to reading Mr. Banks, I spent last week enthralled by his imagination and ideas. Described as "space opera" in the blurbs on the back of the book (it's not), this intelligent novel follow an unusual man, Horza, who comes from a race of "changers" and can adjust their bodies to look like other races. He is a perfect spy and the bulk of the novel follows his efforts to retrieve a "Mind" (sentient AI) who has isolated itself on a "Planet of the Dead" (world where all life has been destroyed due to war).

Horza is in competition with Balveda, an agent from the Culture, a race dominated by technology and artificial life. There is a strange respect and attraction between these two diametrically opposed characters. The story that Mr. Banks weaves with them is the real heart of the book. The climax of the story is the last line of the book (sans the brilliant Appendices).

The book is filled with striking visual imagery and fascinating (and at times horrifying) situations that keep you glued to page. It's one of those books where everything goes silent around you and your mind is filled with the world of the book. Mr. Banks take on traditional SciFi themes like war, race and nationalism is fresh and, at times, moving.

This is first of the Culture novels. I've got all of the others coming in the mail. I'll be writing more as I progress in the series.

Be sure to check out Iain-Banks.net for lots of interesting info. Here is the first part of a recent interview with Iain Banks (it's a radio interview)

The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich

2011-02-21T23:24:00.000-08:00

The title: working title was "Slutty Teenage Hobo Vampire Junkies", but as the author began to see the book was "transcending it's Roger Corman-esque origins" a song from a forgotten lo-fi band named Unicornface popped up called "Woof Eats Creeps" then a friend suggest "Sun Eats Creeps" which the author thought too obvious and riffed to "The Orange Eats Creeps".

"When a sleeping cats paws twitch it's dreaming of running away from you
You know, these are weird times, marked by a non-specific dread that rests

in nights of brown fog at the center of my bones. Everything in life is determined

a machine fueled by the tones emitted by digging a fresh grave. Horrific events

are set in motion in this occupied territory, activated by movement, but I can't

stop moving."

-page 105

The author: according to the wikipedia entry on Grace Krilanovich she "moved to the Los Angeles area from Santa Cruz, California in 2003. She attended San Francisco State University for her undergraduate studies, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies. She then went on to receive a Master of Fine Arts in Writing at the California Institute of the Arts, where she graduated in 2005. She currently works at The Los Angeles Times"

   "These were antique thoughts, marked by a non-specific dread...My first impulse
   is to go to sleep. My second impulse is to have sex with it and my third impulse
   is to eat it. That's how my mind works. But the three are not quite as fixed as
   you might think; they've been boiled down, chiseled out, and refined,
   painstakingly handcrafted over three centuries resting at the bottom

of my brain. The three are like the finest three-line poem chiseled in gold at the

foot of a roaring majestic waterfall and I'm sure as hell not giving them up, not

for the world. I need them."

-page 131

The publisher: Two Dollar Radio is an indie publishing house established in 2005 by Brian Obenauf, Eliza Jane Wood, Eric Obenauf and Emil Pullen to "publish books that if I stumbled upon as a reader I would push onto others, saying 'you've gotta read this.' Each and every book we publish we endorse without limitation. (No jokebooks or bathroom readers found 'round these parts.) Above all, we value ambition, and believe that none of our books crimp to convention when it comes to storytelling or voice. Ideally, that contributes to a liberating reading experience"

"Our kind doesn't die from anything, all we do is die all the time."

-page 8

The book: Grace started writing OEC as a Corman-esque horror story using the folklore and crime stories she grew up around in Santa Cruz, California. It quickly became something else entirely. Worlds like "story" and "plot" don't seem to apply to OEC as it's a wild, flowing mass of words loosely grouped around a young woman who might or might not be a vampire in and around the northwest of the US in some future time (perhaps). Her efforts to find her sister/friend Kim while searching and exploring urban and suburban scenes, attending lowend rock clubs, having sex and being raped, doing drugs, walking in the woods, hanging out with a gang, living on the road, et al. Living and dying day by day, moment by moment.

The book follows her journey from outside and inside as well. In fact, many times it's hard to tell where the young women's mind starts and the outside world begins. Waves of rhythmic poetic prose wash over the reader moving from macro to micro within the same sentence. Or a paragraph will start in a realistic setting and then morph out into the surreal and grotesque.

Grace worked on OEC (her first novel) for several years incorporating a wild variety of techniques for finding inspiration, direction and content for the book. Music was a major source of inspiration: "The writing of this book wouldn't have been possible without the antics, abandon and illegal proclivities of bands I hold near and dear spurring me along in my artistic endeavors, safe in the knowledge that somebody out there was pushing the limits, truly alive in their mind, even though they may have been out of step with the rest of world."

She also tried the Burroughs "cut-up" method and used her own set of "cards" which she threw to create unusual combinations of setting, character and afflictions. Here's a nifty vid of here discussing some of here writing methods in OEC:

Watch live video from Two Dollar Radio on Justin.tv

My thoughts: a quote from Mortimer Adler came back to me as I was reading deeply in this truly strange and wonderful novel; "In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you". How many readers will allow Orange Eats Creeps to get through to them? Most of us read every book the same way: for entertainment and escape. You can't read OEC this way as you'll end up like this Amazon reader: "What do I wish I had known before I purchased this? This novel is all junkie and no vampire (really I couldn't tell you exactly what the main character was because the entire story is incoherent)".

Serious readers will recognize that Grace is channeling a tradition of writing that goes all the way back to Baudelaire, Celine, Ginsburg and Burroughs. It's a literature whose goal is to "connect" (as Forester puts it). So what is Grace connecting with? It's the idea that language creates it's own reality and that words can be combined in ways that are unique and strange; that consciousness can be imitated with words and that we do this every day in our own lives.

In a sense, OEC approaches the quality of music, an art form which can be completely abstract and still move the listener with sound/tone combinations. Grace did what creative artists do; she combined everything she could remember, think and feel into a form and then shape the form to her conceits. In this case it's words combined in familiar/unfamiliar wasy to create a mind/world. It's also to kick the readers ass a bit like every good punk rock band does. You just have to let go to get it.

Perhaps this song "With Teeth" by the Melvins (part of her own "set list" for OEC) shows better than words what Grace Krilanovich is up to:

So let's cut to the chase: most people aren't going to get this book and that's fine because there are sevenbazzilion writers out there crankin out the copies of copies of popular sentimental melodrama that will keep their readers happy. And, hell, I read some of that shit, too. But Orange Eats Creeps is the real deal. It's unapologetic, uncommercial and like it's main character, it doesn't give a fuck about you except to suck your blood. Men don't come off well in this world because there are pretty much all bastards who think only with their cocks. A lot of women don't come off well in this book as the House Mom character is smothering and distant, Kim is lost and our young female hobo vampire carries the bones of some dead animal in her apron to jiggle for guidance. Ok, maybe the women at least have a shred of conscience. The whole world is filled with...well...creeps.

Perfect? No. The book bogs down in the middle and you have to tough it through a bit. Perhaps it could have been shorter, but who the hell knows. Borrows too much from Burrough? Probably not. Let me read it 5 more times after reading Naked Lunch and I'll tell you then. Posterity will love this book like a lost kissing cousin. I sure as hell loved it and will read it again and again.

You should too.

Notes: Two Dollar Radio has a great deal on buying their books. If you buy 5 of them (your choice) it will cost you $30 which is a big savings over the normal price of $12 a piece. And there's some great, great stuff in their catalog. Definitely head over to the site and have a look.

As you can imagine, OEC has created quite a stir and there are lots of reviews and discussions all over the net on the book. Most of them better than my poor efforts here. Here is a short list:

-excellent interview with Grace at the Twodollarradio blog
-Grace's music playlist
-best review is by Tobias Carroll at Vol 1 Brooklyn
-wonderful conversation between Richard Thomas and Blake Butler that covers just about every angle you can think of about the book/author.
-Orange Eats Creeps page at Two Dollar Radio where you can read some of the book.
-Steve Erickson's introduction is a bit over the top, but right on in several points. Give it a read here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More steve erickson

The Toy Collector by James Gunn

2011-02-13T19:25:00.000-08:00

"I believe all of THE TOY COLLECTOR is emotionally true, however only part of it is based on my real life or people I know. It is, in essence, a work of fiction"
-JamesGunn.com

The Toy Collector is the first novel by the well-known screenwriter and filmmaker James Gunn. Published in 2000 by Bloomsbury, US, it's become quite a cult novel and is currently available new trade paperback (with a crappy "oh, I'll get it done in an afternoon" cover/ see bottom image) and at good used bookstores in hard-back (with a much better cover above).

I've been flirting with this book for years. Initially drawn to the cover art, I had built up an idea of what the book was about long before I cracked the covers and dug in. Boy, was I way off. Thinking I was sitting down to the story of the toy-collecting racket in new your, what I got was much, much better. Didn't take more than the first 10 pages to kick my preconceptions out the window. Instead of a cute, funny little novel like I imagined, what I got was a blistering portrait of lost childhood, desperate addiction to toys/sex and masochism set alternatively in the 70's and in present day New York City.

The narrator (called "James" in the book) is selling pharma stolen from the hospital where he works as an orderly. His life is desperate, funny and violent. He is suffering from some sort of trauma and collecting toys (sp. 70's toys and toy in particular) is one way he has of covering over the pain. Remembering is another way of coping. Half of the novel is a portrait of the author as a young boy with his brother, Tar, his non-existent and hapless father/mother, and a close circle of misfit friends whom he comes to love. In fact, it's these friends that give him his only true sense of love and belonging. One friend in particular, Gary, is the focus of the small group because he just can't seem to fend for himself at school and is troubled with fears and phobias. It's Gary who the narrator truly loves and protects.

But a terrible tragedy occurs in the past. One that cripples the narrator and all of his friends. An event so violent and tragic that they are all scarred for life. This chapter in particular has some of the finest writing I've read in years. My hands were literally trembling as I read it. And I couldn't come back to the book for a day or two; it's that powerful.

The book is darkly comic. Jet black, in fact. The early scenes of the two brothers and their friends playing with their toys is told realistically, like the adventures are actually happening. The fate of their heroes is often sadistic and horrifying (as are their enemies). The "Bob and Oscar" section early in the book is laugh-aloud funny and sick at the same time. I found myself nodding in agreement with the playing, like I'd been there myself. Any boy who played with toys will pick up on the mix of humor and cruelty. It's perfect writing with a fucking amazing amount of heart.

Eventually, fate brings a woman to James in New York. Her name is Evelyn and they seem to have a relation ship that might just save James's ass. Nope. This is a novel with no mercy. James hates himself too deeply and although he loves this woman, he fucks her over good, too (in more ways than one). Some of the sex scenes in the book are so personal and intense that it's hard to read them through. It's no pornography because the descriptions are particularly arousing, but because the sex is obviously so desperate and needful. Sex breaks through James's barriers to his wounded soul which is why the scenes are so necessary (and so passionately remembered/written by the author).

In the present, James visits his folks for the first time and takes Evelyn with him (they have hot sex during the Christmas party in his old room) and everything falls apart again. Despite trying not to drink, James needs alcohol and meds too much. After getting the shit kicked out of him by his sober and successful brother, he leaves everything to go home and buy toys and sell drugs. Everyone around James, including his street friends and roommate Bill, all see what he's doing to himself and they care for him anyway (well, most of them). Only James can't put it together.

Finally, in a scene that plays like the opening of Apocalypse, Now and Little Miss Sunshine, James comes face to face with one specific toy in his past. But it doesn't work; the magic is gone. And James has his dark night of the soul, but at great cost to his body and mind. No happy ending, but a real ending. Enduring, like in Beckett. "I can't go on, I'll go on".

The writing is remarkable. The pain and passion put into this book is off the scale. This is a no-holds-barred novel that won't let go of you. Especially if you had similar friends or events in your childhood (as I did). I deeply admire this book and wish the author would write another novel soon (it's been 10 years).

I'll be posting a short reading from one of the chapters in the next day or so. Highly, highly recommended.

NOTE: For more info on James Gunn's film career check his IMDB entry and his own personal website.

Stanislaw Lem's Tales of Pirx the Pilot

2011-02-08T13:10:00.000-08:00

"Hold it. If I dream about someone, ask that person a question, I won't know what that person has said until he has said it. Yet that someone is a product of my brain, a brief and momentary extension of it. It happens almost every day, or rather every night - in dreams, when the self splits up, divides, and begets pseudopersonalities. These dream persononalities can be invented, or taken from real life. don't we sometimes dream of the dead? Carry on conversations with them?"
........from "Terminus" story

-cover of American edition of Pirx-

I've come late to Stanislaw Lem. Although I read Solaris in my youth the novel is overshadowed by the great Tarkovsky film adaptation. Now, after reading Tales of Pirx the Pilot and The Invincible I'm glad that I waited. Lem, a polish writer who lived a full and eventful life, writes the kind of science-fiction adults want to read. And although he draws a good deal from the hard-sci-fi tradition (one that emphasizes the science in science-fiction), he has such a talent for writing about important ideas without losing the fact that people, their desires, dreams, fears and mistakes, are at the center of science. Too often sci-fi writer forget this and end up writing page after page of their science essay on "hyper-realities" or "nano technology". The technology is interesting, yes, but it's questions about the motives behind creating the tech and how it affects people that are more important. And that's what Stanislaw Lem does so well: he wants to try to work out how people and technology affect each other, especially technology and/or beings that are alien.

Tales of Pirx the Pilot (check out the beautiful Turkish cover for the book above) was written in the middle of his career in 1973. Lem grew up in Poland and went through the Soviet takeover there. Much of his notion of government and bureaucracy comes from this experience. The character of Pirx, a loner with no family or sweetheart is a kind of everyman fool thrust into strange situations that are highly stressful. He has to use common sense to solve problems that others, because of their rigid scientific perspectives, fail at. Pirx is also a very funny character one that I think is probably autobiographical.

"With the exception of two or three short stories I am not too happy about this book. The first reason for its weakness is the similarity to a typical Bildungsroman. However a Bildungsroman has to be a novel with an "epic breath" and a broad social and historical background, while in the tales of the brave Pirx the Pilot the general perspective is rather narrow - the hero is isolated, has no friends or relatives. My initial intention was to write or two short stories only. Other stories appeared quite unexpectedly and there was no way to retroactively equip Pirx with a decent family. So the elements that are quite natural in a short story in series show some artificiality. But today I still like Ananke and Terminus."

-Stanislaw Lem, from the official website

Tales of Pirx the Pilot consists of 5 novelettes (slightly longer that a short stories) which start with Pirx in the Flight Academy and end with him taking over command of his own ship. All of the stories are interesting, but the final story is a real work of art. "Terminus" shows Pirx dealing with an obsolete ship which has a very ancient robot taking care of the atomic reactor. Lem's depictions of the ship and it's history (and Pirx's reaction to them) are masterful. But it's the robot (named Terminus) and how Pirx interacts with him that are remarkable. Here is a short reading of one of the Pirx/Terminus scenes from the book.

Audio Book selection "Terminus" by Stanislaw Lem by rickygrove

I thoroughly enjoyed Tales of Pirx the Pilot and have Lem's More Tales of Pirx the Pilot on order so I can read "Ananke". I also urge you to go to the Stanislaw Lem official website to learn more about this remarkable author.

Quick note on The Invincible: this novel was an exciting account of a rescue mission to another planet where the rescuers discover that their is an alien presence that exists as an extreme threat to them. Lem handles this fairly worn theme with panache. Again, his emphasis on character leads to some remarkably poetic moments. This is an engrossing novel, but not quite up to the depth of the Pirx stories. Still, highly recommended. Love the Czech cover for this enjoyable novel.

(covers and quote taken from Stanislaw Lem's official site: http://english.lem.pl

Reading Reading and more Reading

2011-02-04T22:48:00.000-08:00

I've embarked on a quest this year to read more and write as often as I can about what I read. With a homepage redesign, I feel invigorated and ready to go. But I've got too many books! How can I read all of the ones I want to?

Ah, well, not such a bad situation to be in. To be surrounded by books as I am when I read, is a wonderful feeling. I read mostly in-bed or on my couch. But I also have a nice reading chair that Lisa gave me several Xmas's a go which I especially enjoy using in the morning when the light shines in through our bedroom window. I've just re-arranged my books in this bookcase (we have about 8 large bookcases in our apartment) and have been reading non-stop since early January.

At present I'm finishing up my 2nd Stanislaw Lem book with dips into James Gunn's very intense The Toy Collector. I'll be reviewing all three books in the coming days.

In addition to offering reviews, essays and bookstore news, I plan on reading aloud from several books and posting short pieces here. So stay tuned!

H.P. Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu" as Graphic Novel

2010-06-17T13:27:00.000-07:00

I often like to browse at Dark Delicacies, a horror-themed bookstore in Burbank, to find interesting and unusual books that just don't show up at other stores. Sue and Del Howison just moved their store to a larger location and have done a wonderful job of displaying their collection of small press horror and related items.

A graphic novel adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's most famous story "Call of Cthulhu" caught my eye one Sunday. Actually, several books caught my eye but I could only afford one book and the artwork in this graphic novel looked intriguing.

After getting it home, I got settled in my reading spot and started in. And, man, am I glad I bought this book. Swiss artist Michael Zigerlig's artwork and layout is superb. Plus, he does an excellent job of trimming away at some of Lovecraft's over-written prose to lay out the bones of this weird tale.

I think one of the best aspects of Lovecraft's writing is his sense of mood. Weird and uncanny are accurate descriptions of the scenes in most of Lovecraft's works and none more so than in Call of Cthulhu. In Zigerlig's hallucinatory, spidery drawings (all in high-contrast black and white) the sense of dread and loss of reason so present in the story are beautifully captured. Scenes like the police discover of the Cthulhu cult in a swampy forest outside of New Orleans are truly weird in Zigerlig's drawings. And I particularly like the rhythm he establishes by using large and smaller boxes of drawings. Sometimes the box vanishes entirely and the entire page is used to great effect. This adds to the feeling that structure/reason is breaking down very much like it does in the story.

These illustrations are certainly the work of someone who knows Lovecraft and his works through and through. The attention to detail, especially in period clothing and furniture detail is marvelous. And, of course, his use of contrast and shadow is masterful. In Zigerlig's artwork the play of light and dark itself could tell the story.

I just loved this adaptation. It counts as one of my favorite versions of the story, right next to the excellent amateur film adaptation of "Call of Cthulhu" done in an Art Deco style and released on DVD a few years ago. Definitely pop it onto your Netflicks cue.

If had any criticisms of Zigerlig's "Call of Cthulhu" it would be that he uses dialog boxes perhaps too much. In an effort to retain some of Lovecraft's writing, he can crowd a scene with dialog or description that would work better if he completely relied on the visual. Still, it's a tough job working your way through Lovecraft's prose and Zigerlig has done a very good job overall.

I highly recommend this graphic novel. As it is we are in a renaissance of graphic novel art both by major and minor publishers. I commend Transfuzion Publishing and in particular, Gary Reed, for putting this book together so well and for selling it cheap ($9.99).

PS there's an intro by H.R. Giger, but it's middling and inconsequential. It will sell copies, but he probably spent 5 mintues writing it. Skip it and go right to the story.

P.J. Haarsma and "The Softwire"

2007-02-06T09:45:00.000-08:00

The Young Adult fiction market has exploded over the last several years. Locus magazine (May 2006) estimates that the amount of Young Adult genre books published in the U.S. has more than doubled in the last decade. Much of this growth is due to the astounding success of the Harry Potter series by author J.K. Rowling. As a result, publishers have begun to publish more Young Adult books and to re-package the genre to appeal to adults as well as young readers. The audience for Young Adult fiction is growing by leaps and bounds. Suddenly, the Young Adult novel has gained a respectability that, while long past due, is most welcome.

I've been a reader of Young Adult novels ever since I first grabbed "Sargasso of Space" by Andre Norton off the shelf of a local paperback shop and lost myself in a science fiction world that even a teenager like myself could understand. Not only did I read the novel with a great sense of wonder, I enjoyed the fact that many of the characters in the novel were just like me. And now, at 51, the simplicity and brevity of the Young Adult novel still appeal to me. It seems to me that many modern Science Fiction novels are just too long and overly technical to engage me. I often turn to a good Young Adult novel for clear, simple writing that treats me as a smart reader and allows me to enter into a fictional world with ease. Many Young Adult novels are often more creative and genre-bending than their mainstream counterparts. Garth Nix, Nancy Farmer, Meredith Ann Pierce and Michelle Paver have all written books that I found as entertaining and moving as most of the adult novels I read in 2006.

Which brings me to the recently published (August 2006) Young Adult Science Fiction novel, "The Softwire: Virus on Orbis 1" by PJ Haarsma. Original, intelligent and immersive, "The Softwire" is a perfect example of why the young adult novel is so good. I was very fortunate to have lunch with the author of this excellent novel on a sparklingly clear Los Angeles Sunday afternoon. We met at a Little Tokyo restaurant called East, and over a superb Japanese box lunch, my partner, Lisa Morton, and I talked with PJ Haarsma about "The Softwire".

PJ Haarsma is a handsome, stocky man in his thirties who speaks with passion about how "The Softwire" came to be written. PJ was at a cross-roads in his life. Twenty years of success in the world of advertising had left him feeling uncomfortable and unhappy. He told me that he wanted to "do something creative" with the second half of his life. He was tired of how advertising paid little attention to the products it was actually trying to sell, and since he didn't want to be a part of that world anymore, he quit his advertising job and decided to become a filmmaker initially. He wrote and produced the film "Devious Beings" in 2002, but once again, he found himself living in the same world as the one he just left. Hollywood was all about finding work and playing the game. This was a far cry from the creative, happy life he wanted to build for himself.

So, PJ quit Hollywood and decided to become a novelist. Although he never considered himself a writer ("English was my worst class in school", he says), he started "journaling" until one day Johnny T (the main character of "The Softwire) appeared on the page. PJ started asking himself "what if" questions about the character and about the world this character might inhabit. Eleven months later he had written what would become "The Softwire", a first person young adult novel centered around a young man born parent-less on a space ship during a voyage to the mysterious Rings of Orbis. The bulk of the novel is about Johhny T's struggle to understand who and what he is after he arrives on Orbis 1, for Johnny T is a "softwire": a person who can interface with computers using only their mind. This fact becomes a catalyst for the various alien races that want to use or obstruct Johnny's unique ability.

After friends helped him place the book with a New York agent, PJ decided to take the first good offer that came. So, not three months after finishing his first novel he was signing a 4 book contract for a Softwire series.

PJ's descriptions of working on the "The Softwire" indicated that the writing was a great joy for him. This pleasure in writing comes through very clearly in the novel. He likes his characters (even the villains) and there is such a sense of wonder in the writing that "The Softwire" story draws you in exceptionally well. You really care for Johnny T. and his friends. I think this is partly due to the fact that PJ is writing a kind of self-portrait in Johnny T, and after meeting him it becomes obvious. Both author and character are curious, sensitive and intelligent people with a special ability that makes them stand out from others. In Johnny's case it's his softwire ability; with PJ, it's his determination to free his creative self in order to become more alive.

While the novel loses a little momentum in the middle sections where the plot becomes more of a mystery than SciFi, the pace is generally quick and suspenseful. And it's clear to me that PJ is interested in the deeper questions of identity and friendship and otherness, as opposed to trying to create the strangest alien or self-conscious (and lengthy) descriptions of scientific phenomena that plague so many modern adult Science Fiction novels.

In discussing the writing of "The Softwire", PJ indicated that originally he had written the novel entirely in the third person point of view, but somehow it didn't quite feel right, so he re-wrote the opening chapter in the first person and asked his wife, Marisa, and selected friends to read both and tell him which version they liked best. The first person account was the favorite, so he re-wrote the entire book from the first person point of view. This was not an easy task since it meant a complicated re-working of the story from just Johnny T's perspective. Considering the fact that Johnny was raised in a starship with minimal exposure to the common metaphors and phrases that we would expect from a normal Earth boy, this wiped out whole sections of the book. But ultimately all of PJ's hard work paid off. Johnny is a completely sympathetic and compelling character and you follow his thoughts and fears each step of the way. PJ was telling me that he wants to use the game to tell other points of view as the series progresses. Perhaps even publishing a novel in two parts: one would be the story from Johnny's point of view; and another would be the same story, but told from his closest friend. I think this is a marvelous idea.

What I find most impressive about PJ Haarsma is the range and variety of his ideas. Interested in technology and the Internet, he decided to "extend the world of the Softwire novel" into an online flash-based game, and so he commissioned hand-picked artists and programmers to create the "Rings of Orbis". Interestingly, the game allows you to interact with the world in the same way as the young adult characters in the novel. This is a unique idea and one that will allow for a lot of imaginative growth as future novels of the series come out in August over the next three years. I spent several pleasant hours as the character "Etheleon" exploring and trading in beautifully designed 2d worlds. At present, PJ tells me, there are 2200 players who have signed up and are playing regularly in the game. It was a completely unique experience to read a novel and then find yourself as a player in a game that takes place in the same world. PJ is so excited about developing the "Rings of Orbis" site that he worries it will take over his writing. I don't think he has much to worry about really, since both the game world and the novel world will probably give him new ideas for many years to come.

PJ is a self-professed "bulldog" about promoting his book and companion on-line game. After heroic diligence, he even managed to get NASA to work with him on a grade-school level presentation that, as PJ tells it, "gets kids absolutely thrilled by the end". PJ told me that he managed to sell 1,000 of his books in Canada while touring schools there with his NASA program. He's excited about the prospect of doing the same thing in the Los Angeles area schools. With his winning personality and great ideas, I don't think he'll have much of a problem if he can just get a presentation to the right people.

As I was talking with PJ Haarsman, I had the growing feeling that his publisher, Candlewick Press, was missing a golden opportunity in using PJ's ability to promote "The Softwire". Any smart publisher would be overjoyed to have such a self-promoting author, but Candlewick seems to be stuck in an older, traditional model of how publishers interact with their authors. One where authors are supposed to just stick to the writing and let the publisher handle everything else. Unfortunately, you won't find a link or a mention of the "Rings of Orbis" game on the Candlewick site. Something that PJ found extremely frustrating. This is really too bad, since an author who sells 1,000 copies of their own books, has a free online game designed around his novel, and has children and adults enthused about "The Softwire" series, should be rewarded with co-operation and enthusiasm. I sure wish Candlewick would wake up.

"The Softwire" series books will come out in August over the next three years. I'll certainly be reading each one as it comes out. Thank God, PJ is resisting the urge to sell them to Hollywood. He mentioned that he wanted to first create the world himself so he can keep the details consistent. Nathan Fillion (of Serenity fame) has recorded the first three chapters of the book. They are available as a download at IGN.com. After listening to the recordings, I sure hope he finishes the whole novel.

Two hours of lively and engaging conversation with PJ Haarsma has left me with even more respect for "The Softwire" and it's author. It's not easy to leave a successful career for another in which you will have to start all over. I congratulate PJ Haarsma for re-building his life in a way that makes him creative and happy. It takes courage to step out and do something you've never done before.

PJ spoke to me of extending "The Softwire" into many more books than just four. He also has an idea for a horror series where he wants to "create a new horror hero, like Dracula or the Frankenstein monster". In conversation, his imagination and enthusiasm seemed boundless. And you know, while he was telling me about his ideas, he just kept smiling and smiling. I think he's found what he was looking for.

I'd like to thank PJ Haarsma for meeting with me and for being so forthright in conversation. And, of course, my partner, Lisa Morton , who paid for the lunch and proofed this review.

Notes:

The Softwire: Virus on Orbis 1 (Book one synopsis)

When the children on the seed ship, Renaissance, are orphaned in outer space, thirteen-year-old JT and his sister Ketheria are forced to work as knudniks on the Rings of Orbis. Instead of beginning the new and better life he had hoped for, JT and his sister spend their days sifting through trash for their new Guarantor.

But JT soon discovers that he is the first human Softwire - he has a special gift that allows him to enter any computer with his mind. And when the central computer on Orbis mysteriously malfunctions, the Citizens point their fingers at the newcomers, especially the Softwire.

Before long, JT is embroiled in a struggle between the Keepers who rule Orbis and the Trading Council, which wants him dead. As he learns to harness his newfound ability, JT uncovers a virus wreaking havoc inside the computer. Now he must convince the powers that be on Orbis that the virus is real before they make war on each other and destroy his new home - along with JT's dream of a better life.

-The short YouTube video was created from footage taken with a cool CVS disposable camcorder that I recently hacked. It's a really cool camera that's idiot proof.

Back to Booklad...

2007-01-28T15:14:00.000-08:00

Now that Blogger has updated their service, it's much easier to post here. I've decided to split my LiveJournal and my Booklad posts into two separate blogs. The Booklad blog will continue to comment and review books, while the LiveJournal blog will be about more general subjects like films, live experiences, trees, stars, cats, food, cartoons...well, you get the point.

I'm glad to be posting here again. I'm glad Blogger has improved on their service so that I can add images and media with ease to any post.

Next up:

Review of Young Adult SciFi novel "The Softwire" by P.J. Haarsma, along with short interview with him.

A enhanced review of new David Lynch's new book " Catching the Big Fish" which will include comments on his film "Inland Empire".

Group review of several hard-boiled novels and comments on the sub-genre. Charlie Houston, Ken Bruen, Nick Tosches, Michael Connelly and others will be considered.

Looks like it's going to be a good year for reading!

David Lynch - "Catching the Big Fish"

2007-01-07T21:41:00.000-08:00

Like all poets, David Lynch divides contemporary audiences with his insistence on creativity and his fearless use of abstraction in creating his films. His recent film, INLAND EMPIRE (the title was intended by Lynch to be capitalized), is a challenging, but ultimately rewarding work that requires the kind of free-form viewing that most American audiences refuse to do. Which is why you won't find INLAND EMPIRE on many of the year's best lists of films, although I consider it the best film of 2006. But our culture needs poetic filmmakers like Lynch. Cliche after cliche; sentiment after sentiment; stereotype after stereotype, film-goers are buried under a mount of banality that conditions us to reject the unusual and distrust the ambiguous. David Lynch asks us to "go for a little buggy ride with him" in his films. And he takes us to some pretty strange places because he uses his imagination freely without the constraints of genre or form. He collaborates with wonderful artists like Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nance. And they all say he is unique and "fun" to work with. This is because David Lynch wants to involve other people creatively with his work without "fear" (as he puts it in his book). And this combination of generosity with his collaborators and insistence on creativity make him highly influential to those (like me) who are inspired by his work and want to learn from him.

And so David Lynch has written a book, published in December, 2006 by Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin. His last book was "Images", published in 1994. This new book, "Catching the Big Fish", is a result of his continuing practice of transcendental meditation and his creation of a foundation to encourage young people to practice meditation in school to help them with the stress of growing up and give them a tool to cope with life. While David talks about TM in the book, he doesn't hit you over the head with it, or pitches any kind of sales talk. Smartly, he clearly states that TM is not a "religion", but a method to achieve personal freedom. He states he has used TM continuously since the 70's and it has aided and, at times, guided his creativity.
He feels much calmer and able to cope with the difficulties of life and of his job as a filmmaker.

"Catching the Big Fish" is the closest thing we have to an autobiography of David Lynch. The phrase refers to meditation (or daydreaming) as a way of "fishing" for ideas in the big stream of consciousness he believes exists in all of us. If you want to catch little ideas you fish in shallow waters, if you want big ideas you have to go deeper. While the analogy might seem simplistic, it is remarkably apt, especially when David begins to relate the many ways his "fishing" expeditions have helped him in creating his films or coping with depression or disaster (remember "Dune", anyone?).

Broken up into 82 short chapters, each with their own chapter title, "Catching the Big Fish" is very much in the style of the modern writers like Barthes or Wittgenstein who chose to write in short, epigramatic style. The chapter title announces the topic and then David riffs on the theme for a short while and then stops. The movement of the book is light and quick, which lends itself to re-reading (which I intend to do). David's writing style is almost exactly like he speaks. Short, compact sentences that illustrate his ideas perfectly. While reading the book you feel as if David Lynch is talking to you on the front porch is a large rocker with a robin singing in an oak tree nearby.

"I went to a psychiatrist once. I was doing something that had become a pattern in my life and I thought, 'Well, I should go talk to a psychiatrist'. When I got into the room, I asked him, 'Do you think that this process could, in any way, damage my creativity?'. And he said, 'Well, David, I have to be honest; it could'. And I shook his hand and left"

Some of the stories in the book are ones that David has told for the last decade (they are still interesting in spite of their familiarity), but most of the book is original and unique. He discusses the casting process, his working methods, the development of some of his most famous films. And he openly addresses issues like why he chooses not to record director's commentary for any of his films ("...we've got to protect the film... Director's commentaries just open the door to changing people's take on the number one thing - the film")

"Most of filmmaking is common sense. If you just stay on your toes and think about how to do a thing, it's right there"

There are no great personal revelations in "Catching the Big Fish". But through chapters titled "Light on Film", "Sleep", "Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit" and "Having a Set-up", you get the feeling David is trying to tell us some of what we want to know about him, but providing the answers couched in epigrams or short tales. In other words, this is a poets work of essay and autobiography and criticism and meditation; a unique creation unlike any other.

I highly recommend "Catching the Big Fish". It's a beautiful square-shaped Navy blue book with the photo of a splash of water across the page. Designed by Claire Vaccaro, it's as beautiful on the outside as it is on the inside. Fascinating if you don't know much about David Lynch; essential if you do. "Catching the Big Fish" is an inspiring, important book even for an aging cynic like me.

I can't wait to read it again.

PS There's an audio book version read by Lynch himself that sounds great. I'd like to download it to my new Creative Zen V Plus player. Just think I can have Lynch talking inside my head while I walk around looking for inspiration.

Moving to LiveJournal

2006-10-08T21:33:00.000-07:00

Hello, my friends. After struggling to format my long Spillane essay, I encountered all kinds of problems with Blogger. So, after losing hours of work, I've decided to move to another blog site: Live Journal.

My new post called "My Father, Mike Hammer and Me" is now located at this link:

Live Journal

I'm sorry to change horses in mid-stream, but a lot of my friends are also on Live Journal and this is much more convenient for me. Plus, it's a snap to format my entries there.

Please head over to Live Journal and check out my new post. I've gotten this damn Spillane thing out of my system and have several new posts lined up. Shouldn't be long before a new post is up.....

Book Covers

2006-09-06T18:39:00.000-07:00

This page is devoted to scans of book covers I've either reviewed or that I think are interesting and unusual. I don't collect books because of their covers (usually), but I do enjoy cover styles and book design as it relates to the content. click cover for larger view

-Various vintage paperback covers-

-70's Ace Paperback Gothic Romance Covers-

New Posts Coming Soon...

2006-08-20T22:22:00.000-07:00

I've always been annoyed at blogs where after a long time between posts, the blogger has to apologize and promise to post more in the future. Well, I guess it's time to take a big bite of humble pie, because that's exactly what I'm going to do here at the Booklad blog.

I do apologize for not posting recently. Writing has never been easy for me. I end up combing through each sentence and cutting/pasting/re-writing several times with an obsession for making my ideas clearer. I suppost that would work well if I were writing a novel or a play, but I'm blogging here for God's sake. I'm also afraid of that mis-spelled (did I spell that word correctly?)
word that I'll miss and which will make me look foolish. All of this is by way of saying that I take my time putting my posts together because I want to say something honest about books and reading.

I hope you will be patient with me as I try to get back on track. I'm eventually going to move over to my own personal website (rgrove.com) when I get it updated and re-designed. That will probably come somewhere around the end of the year. Right now, I've got a post on the recent death of Mickey Spillane and his (snort) legacy; there's a post I'm working on about ephemera I've collected over the years from inside of books; an post on "oddity" books that don't seem to fit in most book categories; and a post on young adult fiction, which I've been reading like crazy.

So stay tuned and I'll be posting something soon. And thanks for staying with me.

;-)

The True Lies of Book Statistics

2006-07-08T19:24:00.000-07:00

-Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.

-70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

-The time Americans spend reading books 1996: 123 hours 2001: 109 hours

-Used books were purchased by one out of ten book buyers in the previous nine months in 2002.

-Used books account for $533 million in annual sales; 13% of the units sold and 5% of the total revenue. The heaviest book buyers buy more than one-third of their books used.

-The largest-selling used books are: Mysteries, romance and science fiction. Used nonfiction sell best online.

-A successful fiction book sells 5,000 copies

-1.5+ million titles in print (currently available in the U.S.) Since 1776 22 million titles have been published.

The book industry statistics listed above are from a recent post at Dan Poynter's parapublishing.com. The original post has many more fascinating facts about the publishing industry, sales, the used book industry, reading, and much more. While I'm not fond of statistics, since they almost always seem counter to the actual reality I live and work every day, they do provide a certain interest and get the brain working.

Statistics are useful lies that get us to thinking about the truth.

For example, I'm not suprised that 70% of people have not been to a used bookstore in the last five years. Why? Because they spent the money they would have spent on books going to see Titanic, Lord of the Rings, Shrek and Spiderman. Plus, so many people think of reading books are something that is "hard" to do. You actually have to "read", whereas in the movie theatre or at home watching TV you just sit there and the movies do all the work. And it's so much easier to just look at big pictures rather than having to read words one after the other. I'm being cynical, of course. But I think you get my point.

What's cheering about some of these facts (and I can attest to in my daily work at the bookstore) is that more people are reading than ever before. I'd rather they were reading Tolstoy than Nora Roberts, but at least folks are reading. And while the statistics suggest that older people are more likely to frequent used bookstores, this is not the case in my experience. In my 30+ years of bookselling, I've always seen a large turn out of young people. Of course, they are sometimes there because they have to pick up books for summer reading, or are looking for a cheaper copy of a required book for class, but they are IN a bookstore which is a dangerous place to be. They might actually stumble across that copy of Thoreau's "Walden" or R.D. Laing's "Politics of Experience", which would corrupt them entirely with new ways of thinking.

People ask me all the time if books will ever become obsolete. I don't think so. There is something unique and personal about a book that it's digitization can never duplicate. Our culture still values whats original and unique. And books are some of the most unique creations of civilization. They are little mind bombs set to go off in your head when you least expect it. Even our free books set out in boxes in front of the store, regularly disappear. No, books are more popular than ever. And as long as we value the imagination, books will always be the best way we have to communicate and express our thoughts and creations.

Of course, there are those who think the exact opposite: books are an obsolete form of communication. One of the more interesting blog posts that counters my argument that books are here to stay is one by Jeff Jarvis. His "BuzzMachine" blog is highly intelligent and worth a read. Perhaps Jeff should write a book? Oh...I forgot, books are becoming obsolete. Ah, well....

For Love of Vintage Paperbacks

2006-06-26T21:31:00.000-07:00

I was cleaning out one of my storage drives on my computer the other day and discovered photos I had taken at the L.A. Vintage Paperback Show back at the end of March. I was going to do a booklad entry on the show, but it occured right in the middle of our big bookstore move and I forgot all about it. Well, better late than never I suppose.

I've always loved paperbacks. In fact, my first bookstore job was in Humphrey's Paperback Shop near my home. I spent so much time there pawing the Ace doubles and eye-balling the lurid Gold Medal covers that Hump finally said, "Hey, you kid. You want a job? You're here enough". And that was the beginning of second career as a bookseller. AND it began my great love of what we now call "vintage paperbacks". You know, those old paperbacks with the covers that scream out at you in used paperback shops? Something like this:

Hump didn't much care if I oogled at all, he just wanted me to watch the books and take care of the money while he was out enjoying his retirement. There was a lot more work than I had imagined. Moving boxes, cleaning shelves, alphabetizing, dodging the silverfish in the bags of old, smelly paperbacks that people wanted to trade, cleaning the bathroom, balancing the cash register. Aw, it wasn't that bad. I managed to find time to read such classics as "The Fast One" by Paul Cain, "Dr. Bloodmoney" by Philip K. Dick and "The Yellow Claw" by Sax Rohmer.

But it was the covers that led me to these wonderful words of sleaze, booze and the supernatural. They were like magic doors decorated with wonderous figures that writhed and beckoned. I'm still a sucker for a good cover. I still buy books soley on their covers. Of course, I know the cover often has nothing to do with the book itself. I'd be suprised if the cover artists for these marvelous paperbacks actually read the book they were doing the art for.

After serving my apprenticeship with the Hump, I began collecting paperbacks myself. Doc Savage, Raymond Chandler, Conan, Lin Carter, Andre Norton, and tons more began to pile up in my bedroom until I was often surrounded with these little gems with the screaming covers. I became so addicted to them that I almost always had one with me. This eventually became a kind of neurotic fixation so that I had to have a paperback book with me at all times, especially in public. It was a harmless security blanket for me, but eventually I broke myself of the habit (and thanks to my partner Lisa for her patience).

Before I became the paperback freak, I studied the history of paperbacks and learned the names of the major paperback artists. There wasn't the same interest then as there is now in vintage paperbacks. My love of comic books closely paralled the paperback fixation. Eventually, I was put in charge of the vintage paperbacks at a major mystery store here in Los Angeles. For two years I bought and sold paperbacks. I discovered that there was a large, underground community of people like myself who shared my passion for paperbacks. I attended famous three day paperback show in Portland called the "LanceCon" back in 1996. It was named after Lance Casebeer (yes, that is his real name) who was probably the most important person in vintage paperbacks at that time. In addition to running this great show each year for over a decade, he had the largest personal library of paperbacks in the world with well over 100,000 paperbacks. He often boasted of having every paperback published from the forties to the seventies. If you walked through his attic library where they were all stored, you'd believe it.

Sadly, Lance died a few years ago and LanceCon is no more. But my three days there were some of the most interesting of my life. Talking with other paperback lovers, sharing book titles and arcane info on writers and paperback artists. Buying, selling drinking,eating, laughing. It was all great fun. I ended up buying almost two thousand dollars worth of books and shipping them back to the store where I sold half of them in two weeks. It was a heady and exciting time.

But, let me get to the point of this blog: The Los Angeles Paperback show. This show has been going on for quite a long time and it is the "other" west coast paperback event that never quite lived up to the LanceCon reputation, but still proved to be an enjoyable gathering of paperback freaks and dealers. Put together by Tom Lessor in association with Black Ace books it takes place in late March every year out in Mission Hills. There Tom rents several banquet rooms and the dealers set up their tables to sell (and talke about) vintage paperback books. Here is a shot of the main dealer room:

I usually spend several hours at the show, but since we were moving the bookstore, I could only stay for just under an hour. I did find some neat books and managed to say hello to some old friends from Portland. This kind of show is a paperback lover's dream. If you are diligent, you can find all kinds of bargains. Especially towards the end of the day when dealers are willing to make deals so they don't have to take so many books home.

Now, paperback collecting and paperback cover art is a large market today. Much of this has to do with the internet, but also because the babyboomers like me wax nostalgic and want to own some of those great paperbacks they read when they were younger. The big trend now is in "sleaze" paperbacks, especially the gay and lesbian titles like:

The history of these underground sleaze paperbacks which were sold in adult bookstores and under the counter at magazine stands is only now starting to be written. Books like "Queer Pulp" by Susan Stryker and John Harrison's marvelous "Hip Pocket Sleaze" are wonderful and droll accounts of a time that seems to be strangely relevant today. And more good news; many of the classic titles are being re-issued and are pretty cheap (in more ways than one). Torreska Torres's "Women's Barracks' and Richard Amory's "Song of the Loon" are just two examples of great, classic gay and lesbian sleaze that you can buy at a hip indie bookstore or via the internet.

Still, many of the classic vintage paperback titles are still only available in expensive vintage editions that can comman prices as high as $500 and more. So you'll have to hold off on that copy of "Black Wings Has My Angel" for now (Update: just checked on abebooks.com and it looks like this rare mystery paperback original has been reprinted. Yeah!) But even with book scouts scouring the local thrift stores and mom n' pop paperback shops, you can still find good deals on some really cool books. Just check your yellow pages and look for places like "Paperback Shack", "The Paperback Trader". Maybe there's still a "Humphrey's Books" out there somewhere. Who knows?

There are many excellent on-line paperback dealers who also have open shops. Here is a short list:

Lynn Munroe Books. Lynn is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet about paperback books. He's done more than anyone to save this part of our cultural history. He's a gentleman as well.

Kayo Books, in San Francisco, is probably the pre-eminent store for Gay and Lesbian Sleaze.

Books are Everything is one of the largest and best stores in the country.

Black Ace Books here in Los Angeles is a wonderful, unique store that has a superb collection of vintage paperbacks for sale.

And lastly, if you'd like to read more about the history of paperbacks there is no better book to begin with than "The Great American Paperback" by Richard A. Lupoff. I'm also a big fan of Geoffrey O'brien's "Hardboiled America: Lurid Paperbacks and the Masters of Noir. You can't go wrong with either book.

I've created a Flickr.com photo collection of some of my favorite covers along with additional photos of the LA Paperback Show here:

Flickr Photo Set

Welcome to the world of vintage paperbacks! Stick one in your back pocket and head on down to the local cafe for a nice hot cup of coffee and some readin. Mmmnnn mnn.

W.H. Auden and "The Dyer's Hand"

2006-06-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

I came to this marvelous gay curmudgeon throught the fanstasy novels of Tolkien and through the mystery novels of Ross MacDonald (Kenneth Millar). I'm one of those people who upon finding an author I enjoy reading becomes obessessed with them. I read not only everything they have writen, but often every major book written about them. In the case of W.H. Auden, I had just finished the LOTR for the second time and began looking for commentary about Tolkien and his work. I discovered that Auden was instrumental in getting the word out about how great Tolkien's work was. He wrote major reviews for each volume of the trilogy for the New York Times. He felt it was a masterpiece and explained why. I ate everyword up as if it were manna because even though I did not have an Oxford education, I felt the same way. I loved Tolkiens work as a young boy; Auden loved it as an educated man. He put me on the path to both loving and understanding Tolkien's work that has existed to the present day. I read the LOTR ever year starting in October. And I also frequently re-read Auden's essays on Tolkien as well.

The Ross MacDonald connection is a little more direct; I discovered Auden after devouring all of Ross MacDonald's novels I could find and then finding Auden's essay on the mystery in an anthology. Intrigued, I followed the essay and discovered that Auden was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan where Kenneth Millar (R.M.'s real name) was a graduate student. They hit it off well and since Auden was a huge fan of mysteries, he got Kenneth interested in the form because Auden felt the mystery was worthy of serious artistic expression. Kenneth went on to publish mysteries that were so good they caused usually dismissive critics to take notice. His novel "The Underground Man" was the first mystery novel to be reviewed on the front page of the New York Times by Eudora Welty. It was a great review, but I've always wished it could have been Auden who reviewed it there.

W.H. Auden is an unusual passion of mine because he's never had that patina of "greatness" for me that other artists like Robert Lowell or Robert Graves have. I've always thought of him as my very, very smart "best friend" because, like Auden, I never really acknowledged a distinction between "high" and "low" art. Krazy Kat was as "artistic" to me as "Crime and Punishment"; I am equally fascinated with "Popeye" as I am with "Princess Mononoke". Auden was a great consumer of popular culture, much like that other wonderful queen, Walt Whitman.
In Auden's brilliant collection of essays, "The Dyer's Hand" (1962) he makes the point that:

"The critical judgment "This book is good or bad" implies good or bad at all times, but in relation to the readers future a book is good now if it's future effect is good, and, since the future is unknown, no judgment can be made. The safest guide therefore is the naive uncritical principle of personal liking. A person at least knows one thing about his future, that however different it may be from his present, it will be his. However he may have changed he will still be himself, not somebody else. What he likes now, therefore, whether an impersonal judgment approve or disapprove, has the best chance of becoming useful to him later"

That quote was from his essay (included in "Dyer's Hand") "Making, Doing and Knowing". You can imagine how impressive this was to a 17 year old student with a love of classic literature and a secret love of heroic fantasy. In school, these subjects were never allowed to meet. With Auden, they were encouraged to meet, go out to dinner and then have wonderful sex.
No wonder Auden has been a constant in my life for over three decades.

Auden wrote in just about every field. He is probably equally regarded for his fine poetry (I love his poems about complex machines and wild woodland hills) and his criticism. If you haven't read Musee des Beaux Arts, stop reading this and go out and buy any collection of Auden's with this poem included (try the "Collected Poems"). He also wrote avant-garde plays, translations of opera, documentary film scripts and never found a crossword puzzle he didn't like. The definitive biography (for me) is the one written by Humphrey Carpenter titled "W.H. Auden: A Biography. While not a writer with high critical marks, I have admired every biography he has written (including his Tolkien biography which I've read at least 10 times). Humphrey set's Auiden's work and life in perfect contrast/unison. His homosexuality was always a part of his work, but never defined him in the way that writers like John Rechy or Jean Genet. He was gay and to hell with you if you didn't like it, he was too busy reading, smoking cigarettes, doing crosswords, drinking cheap wine, daydreaming, finding the third volume in the Maigret detective series and staring at young men. Hmnn...he does sound like John Rechy there. Perhaps I'd better re-consider my idea.

Almost every year I come back to "The Dyer's Hand". And each time I find something new to admire and think about. Listen to this from his essay "Reading":

"Good Taste is much more a matter of discrimination than of exclusion, and when good taste feels compelled to exclude, it is with regret, not with pleasure"

and this, from "Writing":

"Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him with tiresome behavior; what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does this not explain a good deal of avant-garde art?"

Auden chooses, for the most part, to write in the epigrammatic style of short sentences or short paragraphs. This allows him free range to address a variety of topics within a single subject, unlike the traditional essay form with it's relentless forward motion. There are a few traditional essays in the book. "The Guilty Vicarage" is a wonderful explication and love poem for the mystery novel; "Genius & Apostle" introduced Ibsen to me as a vital and modern artist with much to say about life and happiness; "The I Without a Self" gave insight into the mind/world of Kafka that goes beyond simply reading Kafka. Listen to what he says about Kafka's readers:

"Kafka may be one of those writers who are doomed to be read by the wrong public. Those on whom their effect would be most beneficial are repelled and on those whom they most fascinate their effect may be dangerous, even harmful"

What's fascinating about this quote is that initially one is inclined to disagree, but upon reflection (especially after reading works like "Penal Colony") one see's the real truth in Auden's words.

There are other essays on the "Master-Servant" relationship in Literature (some consider this the showpiece of the book), Shakespeare, Byron's Don Juan, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost (a wonderful essay with a funny/serious ending), D.H. Lawrence. But what finally most interests me in the "Dyer's Hand" is Auden's fascination with religion and God. I am by no means a Christian, nor do I believe in God or some "supernatural" realm of existence beyond this one. But when I read Auden I become a believer for the time I am reading his essays on relegion. Somehow, the "best friend" relationship with him surfaces and I am caught up in his storytelling. I like this. It allows me to secretly "try out" spiritual thinking while I'm in his company, but then maintain my own beliefs when I'm myself again. I supose this is the storyteller's "spell" that the ancients say Homer had in spades. I guess this makes Auden my "Homer", something I have never considered until now. I like that thought.

On Critics:

"What is the function of the critic? So far as I am concerned, he can do me one or more of the following services:

1) Introduce me to authors or works of art of which I was hitherto unaware
2)Convince me that I have undervalued an author or a work because I had not read them carefully enough.
3)Show me relations between works of different ages and cultures which I could never have seen for myself because I do not know enough and never shall.
4)Give a "reading" of a work which increases my understanding of it.
5)Throw light upon the process of artistic "Making"
6) Throw light upon the relation of art to life, to science, economics, ethics, relegion, etc."

How to Buy Books on the Internet

2006-06-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

Some of the email and comments I've received about the "Five Things" post have given me the idea that a short commentary on book buying on the internet might be helpful. Since I am essentially buying and selling via the internet (and in our open shop) every day, I am aware of the advantages and pitfalls of internet book buying. This post will try to point out some of those issues and help you make better book buying choices.

1. The majority of internet booksellers are not open bookshops, but virtual booksellers.

An "open shop" is a traditional bookstore that has an established place of business and open shelves where customers can buy/sell new or used books. A "virtual" bookseller is someone who does not have an open bookstore, but rather a space where they store their books. Their bookstore is a web-page at places like Ebay or Amazon.com. While there are many good virtual booksellers (including some who, because of rising real estate prices, used to be open shops and have become virtual booksellers in order to save on overhead, there are many, many individuals who use unethical business practices to squeeze money out of the unwary book buyer. Such practices include copying other booksellers booklistings, offering the books at higher prices (their profit on the sale) and then when they have a sale, contacts the original bookstore to pay for the item (usually asking for a "discount" in the process) and having the book "drop-shipped" (shipped to their customer).

There are many good virtual booksellers, but I tend to buy more from established open bookshops. Why? Because service is usually better, you get a wider variety of books to choose from and because you are supporting a social institution that benefits the community as well as the individual who owns the bookstore. Plus, most open shops who sell online have added a percentage to their online price in order to cover the fees they are charged by the "broker" they are using to sell their books (Amazon.com, Abebooks.com, etc). If you ask, usually the bookseller will tell you that the in-store price is cheaper and they will offer the book to you at that lower prices. Our books at Iliad Bookshop are 20% more expensive on line than in our bookshop. We routinely inform customers who order direct from us about the difference and offer to sell at the lower price. Virtual bookstores, on the other hand, have no open shop and all the prices already include the mark-up for broker fees, so you generally don't get a price break shopping at a virtual store.

2 How do you tell if a bookstore is an "open shop" or virtual?

This depends upon the business that is "brokering" the deal between you and the bookseller. In the case of Amazon.com, you have a huge amount of virtual booksellers and finding out if the seller has an open shop is often difficult. By following amazon links for the seller (including the seller ratings page) you can usually come to a link for the sellers homepage which will reveal whether the seller has an open shop. On a site like abebooks.com, each seller has a homepage that will reveal an address and contact info. Usually if the seller has a P.O. box, it means they are a virtual bookseller. Other sites may have the information easy/harder to find, but if you just take the time, you should be able determine the kind of bookseller you want to buy from.

Also, keep in mind that on sites like amazon.com, the bookseller has a rating that you can examine. I've purchased low-priced books from virtual booksellers because their rating was very high and the feedback comments were positive. Never buy a book from a seller whose rating is below 95%. You'll be asking for trouble. In fact, I never buy a book from seller's whose rating is below 98%, but that's just my own personal preference.

3. Try to buy the book directly from the bookseller

If at all possible, contact the seller directly to buy the book. As I've already mentioned, open bookstores who do internet business are set up to sell over the phone or via the internet. Some virtual booksellers do not have accounts with Visa/MC/AMX and so they rely on the broker to handle the charges for them. By contacting the seller directly you can get a possible disount and get a reasonable quote on shipping. Established booksellers usually have an honest returns policy, so if you get the wrong book, they are less likely to give you a hassle about returning it. Or, if the book is lost in the mail, you can work out a reasonable compromise in dealing with the loss. Virtual booksellers are much less likely to process returns easily or, unfortunately, with honesty.

4. Figure out your shipping options carefully.

Shipping is the one area where the internet book broker is still failing it's customers. Because no real system has been developed to handle shipping betwen the broker, the buyer and the seller, honestly, there is all kinds of price gouging going on. For example, Amazon.com charges a flat rate regardless of the size of the book. Unless we choose the size of our books carefully, our bookstore usually loses money on shipping. So, many booksellers (both open and virtual) add
some money to the cost of the book to cover those times where they lose money on shipping. In other words, these booksellers are charging you for potential loss on shipping. Understandable, but not really fair, in my opinion.

There are two basic types of domestic shipping that I think are best for books, both involve the USPO and not UPS or FedExp (which, from my experience, I do not recommend). They are "media" mail and "priority" mail. Media mail is your best bet because it's very cheap and generally reliable. A package travelling across the country will take about 7-10 days to get to you. The package that amazon.com charges you $3.50 for actually costs around $1.97 to ship, if it's a standard, 2-pound package. Priority mail is even better for those packages you want quickly. There are "flat rate" priority packs that fit books perfectly and are free at local post offices. A bookseller would pay $4.05 for a priority pack that would take about 2-3 days to arrive cross country. Larger books can use flat rate boxes for $9.90. In both cases you can expect to pay several dollars more than the actual cost for priority shipping. Check the rates carefully to make sure you are not being over-charged. Amazon.com isn't too bad, but abebooks.com allows booksellers to set their own rates and many unscrupulous booksellers will rely on the fact that many book buyers don't take the time to check what they are being charged for shipping. They offer very cheap prices for the book, but scalp you on the shipping. Still, remember that if the book you are buying is large and heavy, you'll be paying extra for the shipping. As size and weight go up, so does the shipping. You can get a good idea of what the USPS charges for shipping by going to their "domestic shipping calculator" page here:

http://postcalc.usps.gov/

Choose "package" for the size of item shipped. Put in 2 lbs for the approximate weight of the average book and then check the level of shipping you want. This is a good way to understand the range of shipping options you have and their relative costs.

International shipping is even more problematic than domestic shipping. Since foreign shippers will be using their own postal system for shipping, there's no way to tell what a fair rate would be. You'll have to do some comparison shopping here to get an idea of what a reasonable shipping rate would be. The first thing to do is to contact the seller and request a shipping quote for both surface and air shipping. Any decent seller will offer this information. If they refuse, do not buy from them period.

Surface mail is the slowest and most unreliable method of international shipping. You package travels by boat and is usually stored in huge bunches on pallets in the ships hold. Needless to say, the handling is terrible and your package might get damaged. Airmail is the best method. Many countries have a flat rate airmail rate that can be a cost saver if the bookseller is honest. Ask about this when you inquire about shipping. Remember though, there is usually a weight threshold where the price starts to increase dramatically. In the U.S. that pound limit is 4 lbs. So, don't be suprised if your large book shipped via airmail from Germany is very expensive.

5. Don't be afraid to ask questions, but ask intelligent ones

Always ask about something you don't understand when you are purchasing a book. While some obvious questions are tedious to answer over and over, I really don't mind telling you that I will pack and ship your book carefully. In fact, I probably pack these shipments even better because I want to make sure they get their book in the best condition. While I generally pack books in jiffy bags, I'll box it if the customer makes the request. It's also important to ask about the bookseller's return policy if the book is damaged. Some will not return you book or refund you unless you have purchase insurance. The USPS has very good insurance rates and you should be able to get insurance for a regular sized, average books for only a few bucks. ALWAYS insure your expensive purchases. UPS and FedExp have a slight advantage here because insurance and tracking are automatic with these carriers. But I think the terrible customer service these huge corporate dumbells provide offsets their benefits in this area. That is why we choose not to use these companies for shipping.

Tracking your package is another big issue with books. Many customers assume that packages are trackable and routinely call us and ask for a tracking number. The USPS does not provide tracking unless you pay for it. We spend a little bit more on our shipping to get delivery confirmation so that when a dispute arrives we can verify if the package was delivered or not. Personally, I don't need tracking info on a package so I don't ask for it. Each internet book broker has different polices regarding tracking. You'll need to read up on them in order to know what you can or cannot do.

6. The lowest price is not always the best price for a book.

The internet is a book buyers market. While sellers make money, a book buyer has the advantage of being able to search hundreds of sites for the best price. Many sellers routinely underprice books in order to move them out of their store. I almost always research the books I catalogue for sale on the internet and underprice all of the other sellers on Abebooks.com because we bought the book cheaply and I want to sell it cheaply. This is another advantage in using an open shop bookstore to buy books from: you'll almost always get a book in the condition it is described in. I only buy books in good condition and when I describe the condition of the book on the internet, I over grade it. That is, if the book is Fine condition, I list it as "Very Good", etc.. This results in happy customers.

When you see a book online for forty cents and then another one for $4.50, you might think that the forty cent book is the one to buy. But this isn't always the case. On amazon.com check the sellers rating. Sure they sell cheaply, but they often ship very late and package poorly. Also, you might be getting a book in very poor condition, even though it's described as "in good shape". Underlining, highlighting, torn pages, are all underscribed in very cheap books. Since they are selling their books so cheaply, they want to spend the least amount of time in processing the book. This includes the book description. That $4.50 book might be the best one to buy because it's coming from a legitimate booksller with a high bookseller rating and because it will arrive in a timely manner in the same condition it was described.

I hope these comments have helped you understand better how to buy books on the internet. Please leave any questions you may have regarding this topic and I'll answer them as best I can.
And now here is a short list of internet sites and brokers you can use to look for that special book.

The best book search engine is:

Addall.com

this is a meta search engine that covers almost all of the major sites including abebooks.com, alibris.com, amazon.com, powellsbooks.com, etc. The advantage with this site is that you can comparison shop with different book brokers to get the best price.

The three best book brokers on the net:

Abebooks.com

Alibris.com

Amazon.com

Each of these book brokers have advantages and disadvantages that you'll have to weigh before you use them. On balance, abebooks.com is the best, in my opinion, because of direct access to the bookseller. But their shipping matrix is poor, whereas Alibris.com has an excellent shipping system. Amazon is an excellent site for more contemporary books. Pricing is all over the map on collectable books, so you'll have to do some searching using addall.com to find the best price.

Three outstand bookstore with major net presence:

Powell's Books

King's Books

Tattered Cover Books

Strand Bookshop

and, of course, The Iliad Bookshop

Powell's books, in particular, is an outstanding online bookstore. I highly recommend them, even though their huge size sometimes leaves for occasional inconsistent customer service, they have one of the best collections of used books in the world.

Five Things You Should Never Say To A Bookeller When You Are Selling Your Books

2006-05-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I've noticed that there are certain myths or misconceptions that people have when they are selling their books to a bookseller. After conferring with my partner, Lisa Morton, we've come up with five of the most common ones. In fact, just yesterday someone on the phone used one of them. In the interests of the mental health of booksellers, please read this list and the next time you are selling books ask yourself if your comment is on the list.

1. It's a really old book, so it must be worth a lot of money, right?

-We probably hear this one more than any other, which is why it is number one. It's not the age of a book that determines it's value, but it's rarity. A book can be published 100 years ago and not be as valuable as a book published a year ago. Why? Because one is more rare than the other. If you publish tens of thousands of copies of the 100 year old book and only 100 of the year old book, the former will be more rare. Old is usually defined as "antique" or around 100 years old. Rare means "scarce" or "few copies in existence". One of the rarist of books is the first printing of "The Good Earth" in paperback in the U.S. Out of a print run of about 100,000 there are only 5 known copies in existence with the original dust jacked (yes, some early paperbacks had dust jackets). So, just because the book is old doesn't mean it is valuable.

2. But, I'm positive this book is a first edition.

-this misunderstanding is more foregivable because sometimes the book will actually say it's a "first edition". Of course, the same book can also say "book club edition' as well. And when we point this out, the person will invariably say, "It's a first edition of the book club edition". Nope. Sorry. Book clubs are reprint edition. It says first edition because the book club publisher used the same plates to print the book. Determining whether a book is a first edition is not always easy. Especially for books printed before WWII. In the last several decades book publishers have started to use a relatively uniform system to identify the edition of a book they have published, however, before WWII each publisher determined their own method of identifying editions. Some stated first edition, some did not, but identified reprints. Some had no information at all. There is a large book devoted to all of these publishers criteria. It is called "First Editions, a Guide to Identification" by Edward Zempel and Linda Verkler. We use it frequently at the bookstore. But even then, some books are notorious for lack of information. I think there is a Faulkner first where you have to turn to a certain page and if a sentence has a word misspelled its a first.

3. Why can't you tell me what it's worth over the phone?

- this one is just stupid. How many times have I ventured a guess at a price over the phone only to find that when the customer brings the book in it's a) not a first edition and b) not the condition they described (see number 5 below). And when I tell them that the book is not worth anything, or only a fraction of the price I quoted, they say, "But you told me it was worth $. I've learned never to quote over the phone because people always tell you what they imagine the book is and not what it really is. Plus, it's just not good business.

4. I looked the book up on the internet and it's worth a lot of money

- the book you found on the internet is not the book you have in your hand. Or, if it is the condition is not the same. Your book is falling apart, missing a dust-jacket and is not a first edition. The book listed is in fine condition, has a dust jacket and is a first. Books are unique. You have to know something about them and how to identify them in order to be sure that the book being quoted at a book site on the net is the same as the one in your hand. Interestingly, you can learn most of this in about an hour of study at the library. Look for "Book Collecting: a Comprehensive Guide" by Allen Ahear (referred to as the "Ahearn" in the book business). Aside from being just a well-researched, well-written book, there is a complete introduction on how to identify firsts, grading condition of books and a general introduction to book buying. Plus, there is a list of famous books and their relative values. This book is updated every year, so be sure to look for the current version (2005). You can also go to our website for a basic intro. Knowing this kind of information will save you plenty of time when you try to sell your books at a used bookstore. Plus, it's just interesting stuff.

5. Oh, yes, the book is in perfect condition.

-the second most common phrase we hear. Of course, the book is not in that condition when they bring it in. It's covered with silverfish, cobwebs, the pages are loose, no dust jacket, the corners are bumped and the color plates are missing, but otherwise it's in pefect condition. There three grades of book condition. 1-Fine - the book is in perfect condition. no flaws. 2. Very Good - slight problems, minor scuffing, etc., 3- Good - major flaws, but still readable. 4-Fair - book is in very bad shape, but still readable. There are sites on the net where you can get good descriptions of each condition. heres one: Link

A general rule about selling books expect to get about a quarter to a half of what the bookseller is going to sell the book for, not what the price is on the dust jacket of the book. Some books are more valuable to differnet booksellers. If you have a valuable book, it pays to shop the book around (not by phone, see number 4 above). There are certain books that we put on our 2 dollar table even though they are more valuable at other stores. It all depends upon each stores buying practicies and store theme.

Lastly, books are unique, but some books are more unique than others. It's these books that demand a high price because you can't find them easily and because the information they have is unique and unusual. Common books (usually best sellers) are not worth much to re-sell because there are so many of them out there.

Selling your books to a used bookstore doesn't have to be a mystifying experience. Most problems are due to ignorance and high-expectations. If you do some homework on your books before you sell them, you will have a better idea of what they are worth. And you can always call the bookstore you are going to sell to and ask them what kind of books they are buying. Better yet, go there and take a look at the books on their shelves. Fifteen minutes of browsing will give you a good idea of what kind of books the store is going to buy.

Additional Links:

http://www.ioba.org/desc.html

Iliad Bookshop Book Grading

Guide to Identifying First Editions

Graphic Novels: "The Push Man" by Yoshihiro Tatsumi and "Cinema Panopticum" by Thomas Ott

2006-05-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

Comic books were an enormous influence on me as a young boy. I was a Marvel Comic's kid and right at the time I needed to understand how to deal with the world around me Peter Parker and Ben Grimm were dealing with the same issues. Since my narcissitic parents paid little attention to their responsibilites of raising a child, I was left to find my answers in the pages of Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange and Spider Man (to name a few). My feelings of guilt, anger and confusion were what Marvel comics characters were dealing with as well. They were my daily companions and advisors. Plus, they got to save the world, which was a wonderful fantasy for me. Even Stan Lee's "nuff said" gruff style became my personal tick that probably annoyed the hell out of my schoolmates. Comic characters were my friends in ways that real people couldn't be. The entrance of Galactus in the Fantastic Four made me worry for the safety of the Silver Surfer for days. It was like my own father intruding on the pages of my private world. This was my first inkling of something called the "Epic" style. And like the great poet and essayist, W.H. Auden, who had no distinction between "high" and "low" art, I am still influenced today by those brilliant images and stories. Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby are as much a part of my imagination as Dore and Edward Hopper.

All of this is by way of introducing what has taken the place of comics for me now that I am fifty: graphic novels. As I grew older, college and theater became my obsessions and I was content to pick up the occasional comic, but I just couldn't find them as interesting now that I was an adult. Chekov and Kafka had edged out Thor and the Dread Dormammu. All of that changed when I read an excerpt from "Maus" in Raw Magazine. I was so impresseed that I went right out and bought this new "graphic novel" and spent the rest of the day immersed in this strange and beautiful world. I didn't know it at the time, but "Maus" was the first masterpiece of a form I have come to love in the same way as I did comics: the graphic novel. And I have been reading them with hunger for the last 10 years. We are in a renaissance of sorts for the graphic novel. I'd like to review two recent examples of the form that I think are wonderful.

Yoshihiro Tatsumi is the grandfather of Japanese underground comics. He started writing and drawing more adult themed stores as far back as the 1950's when most of the manga art of the time was garish and overblown. According to the excellent introduction by Adrian Tomine (himself a great graphic novelist), Mr. Tatsumi is a prolific artist who currently runs a bookstore and continues to create short illustrated stories that reflect his ambivalence about people and modern life. Amazingly, "The Push Man and Other Stories" is the first official English language collection to appear in the States. The 16 stories that make up this brilliant collection were all composed around 1969, but you wouldn't know it from this simplicity of his writing. Instead of aliens and monsters fighting high school kids, we have everyday people trying to make sense of their dead-end jobs and their philandering lovers. The "Push Man" of the title story is a young man who "pushes" the crowd into a packed subway car. His sexual fantasies of "pushing" young women are realized by a woman who, after getting drunk and having sex with the young man, invites her girlfriends over to "push back". In the end the young man is pushed into his own subway car and can't get out. The slightly cartoonish characters set against a highly realistic background are mesmerizing. Each panel is a small work of art that pulls you in to a world of hope and despair; boredom and violence.

Reading "Projectionist" is stomach-turning, but not because of anything that is shown on the page, but for what the story suggests is being seen. The projectionist of the story charges high class businessmen and their call-girls for an evening of "special" pornography that both disgust and arouse the viewers, but leave the projectionist unmoved. His loneliness and despair are depicted in the brilliant panels of him walking through cities in the cold wind with his briefcase full of hellsex in hand. The careful detail in creating the man's facial expressions lend pathos to the suprise and ironic ending. In fact, in reading the stories I'm struck over and over again with the variety and beauty of Mr. Tatsumi's characters. They behave in suprising and shocking ways; sudden violence or cruelty coming from repressed rage and desire; quiet desperation and an endless desire for some sort of connection to another human being. Sex is a major element in all of his stories. But it doesn't seem to appease the deeper longing inside of his characters. These are urban horror stories are told with the simplicity of Raymond Carver, but with the twist of a writer like David Lynch or Jonathan Carroll. The art of the graphic novel has never been more obvious than with this collection of stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, a writer I hope you will read. Fortunately, Mr. Toumine is hoping to bring out a whole series of this writer's works beginning with he present volume. Drawn & Quarterly, a Canadian publisher distributed in the U.S. by Farrar, Strauss, is to be contragulated for publishing this wonderful book and for desiging and edition that the author would be proud of. Let's hope this book is successful enough to continue the series.

Thomas Ott is another amazing cartoonist that has caught my eye recently. "Cinema Panopticum" is a completely wordless collection of stories all organized around a young girl who visits the Carnival, but doesn't have enough money to enjoy the rides or any of the booths. She is very sad as she starts to leave the park, but tucked away in the corner is a small tent with the words "Panopticum" on a sign over the entrance. She enters and finds 5 old-fashioned movie viewers with titles like "The Experiment" and "The Hotel" written above them. To her delight, she finds that she has just enough money to use all of the "panopticum viewers". Each movie she views is told as a seperate story in Ott's book. The little girls view becomes ours.

While Thomas Ott is not as subtle an artist as Tatsumi, his visual style and attention to detail is superb. Using a high contrast Black & White palette, carefully scratches each sliver of his characters so exactly that it is a marvel to behold. And this almost overly detailed style matches pefectly with the strange, supernatural themes of his stories. The detail makes the gruesome morbidness of his world seem real and believable. His characters are unusual and, at times, grotesque. Much like the garish world of the Carnival itself. In one panopticum story, "The Champion", a mexican wrestler has to wrestle with death himself when there is a prophecy of death in his family. Of course, there is a twist ending which the young girl in the Panopticum tent finds astonishing (and so do we). Antother story features a homeless man who discovers that the "end is near" and attempts to tell everyone. But no one listens and the world is destroyed. My favorite story is the last one called "The Little Girl". You can imagine how our young girl responds to it. The last panel of this wonderful graphic novel is of the young girls leg disappearing as she runs in terror fromt he tent.

There is certainly a good deal of horror fiction in Thomas Ott's writing, along with Twilight Zone and Stephen King, but Ott's style is so uniquely his own that he gives new life to old themes. Mr. Ott is Swiss and is the lead singer in the band called "The Playboys". Fantagraphics is publishing his work in America in beautiful hardcover editions with illustrated boards. This publisher seems to be at the fore-front of the graphic novel movement. A quick look at their website and you'll see many outstanding artists represented. I've begun to collect Thomas Ott. He's a remarkable artist who, in addition to his graphic novels and stories, also does political cartoons and cartoons for several newspapers.

If you have never read a graphic novel, now is the time to go out and buy one. We are in a highly creative era of this art form. Along with the two artists I have reviewed here, let me suggest a few others for you to consider.

The Black Hole by Charles Burns (The single best graphic novel I have ever read!)
The Watchmen by Alan Miller
Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by Daniel Clowes
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Berlin: City of Stones by Jason Lutes
Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District by Ben Katchor (and you thought "Death of a Salesman" was a good story? This graphic novel kicks it's ass)

Z o l a : Our New Bookstore Cat!

2006-05-14T22:17:00.000-07:00

Say hello to our new store cat: Zola! Since our previous store cats find it hard to travel from their home to our new bookstore location, we have been on the look-out for a live-in kitty to guard our store every night and to keep an eye out for book mice. Our friend, Christa Faust, works with animal rescue here in the Valley and she told us about a one-eyed cat she rescued from an abusive situation. We very much wanted to meet this cat and one day Christa brought her to the store (her vet is in the neighborhood) and everyone instantly fell in love with "Zola" (including all of the customers in the store at that time). It tooks some time to convince Dan, the owner of our store, that we needed a new store cat, but Lisa and I worked our special juju and just last week Christa brought Zola to stay for good.

In the picture you can see her licking her chops from all of the special food we are giving her to fatten this little kitty up! She's about 2 years old and still has a tremor in her leg from the mistreatment she received, but she loves to play and is very affectionate to everyone who comes into the store. She's been at the Iliad for about a week now and has her own bed and play toys. She runs and runs down the long open stretch that goes down the middle of the store. Then in the afternoon she sleeps it off.

We are so happy to have Zola with us. In spite of the abuse she has received, she's not shy at all. She's so curious and full of fun. I just love her. I call her "Zo".

Isn't she wonderful!

Animating Book Covers with Machinima

2006-05-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

So sorry for the lack of posts here recently, I've been up to my ears reviewing a new 3d animation software called IClone. You see, I've been involved in something called "machinima" (machine + cinema) for the last few years. Machinima is a kind-of poor man's Pixar animation. We can't afford the cost of creating top of the line 3d animation like "Shrek" and so we use PC Games as our tools and shoot our movies inside of the games. It's got an underground following that's slowly breaking out into the mainstream with shows like the History channel using the PC game "Rome" to illustrate a documentary on famous battles. MTV has been using machinima to do all kinds of spots. The game companies are starting to get behind this form of filmmaking by providing all kinds of free tools to create films inside of their games. And one game in particular (The Movies) has as part of playing the game, the ability to create your own films.

Anyway, I've been doing mostly sound and acting for several films over the last year. When the opportunity to review this new software came up, I jumped on it. I've spent the better part of the last month learning the software and creating three short films as part of the learning process. I think that you can best understand how a creative tool works by actually creating something with it. That way when you are in the middle of production you can easily see what works and what doesn't with the program. IClone is basically a beginner's program for 3d animation and modelling. And it's pretty good, too.

So what does this have to do with books? Well, I decided to try the sister program to IClone which is called "Crazy Talk". This program let's you animate in 3d any digital image. So, when I was looking around for something to animate, I happen to look at a recent vintage paperback I'd picked up called "Hell Cat". There was a juicy picture of a femme-fatale on the cover. It suddenly occured to me that I could animate the face of the woman and have speak a sentence or two of dialogue. After a week or so of experimenting, I actually created a short film showing this animated cover. I also found several B&W pictures of mobsters in a Mafia history book that was in the free box at the Iliad Bookshop and animated one of them as well.

What's so interesting about both of these programs is that they stimulate my imagination and give me ideas about how to use book covers and book illustrations as sources for characters and backgrounds in machinima filmmaking. Imagine taking a Durer drawing and using it as the basis for a short film; or a Schiele painting; or an old Children's illustrated tale. Stitching the illustrations together and adding dialogue or sound effects would be a fascinating experiment. All of this is possible for a beginner like me using these two programs.

Here are the two short films I created to accompany my IClone review:

Hell Cat

The Mobster

and the final short film I created with IClone is here:

The Skip Heller Show

If you are interested in learning more about machinima head over to this site:

Machinima Premiere

Some recent IClone films can be seen here:
You Tube Iclone

Grove Press to Publish Beckett Centenary Edition

2006-04-12T11:40:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of day where I appreciate the Calendar section of the LA Times. Instead of the usual speculation as to why the movie box office is slumping, there was a well-written article on Grove Press's new 5-volume Centenary Editon of Samuel Beckett's works. Tim Rutten, a times staff writer I'd like to read more of, wrote a perceptive and helpful article on the edition that actually includes comments on the design of the books; something usually left out of many book reviews. He points out that the edition is not the complete works, but it contains everything that is essential in Beckett's works. With the possible exception of his novel "Watt", I think he's right.

The overall series editor is Paul Auster, but each volume has it's own seperate editor. The first two volumes cover the novels and are edited by Coim Toibin and Salman Rushdie. The Grove/Atlantic website doesn't list the contents, but I sure hope it includes Beckett's first novel, Murphy, which is an absolute knee-slapper he wrote while starving in London. To stay warm, he'd hang out in the movie theatres and was especially enamoured of Buster Keaton. You could probably say that Murphy was an extended fantasy of Beckett's where he imagines himself as a kind of Keaton character pulled off of the screen and given Beckett's troubles. I recommend this novel all the time to people at the bookstore and they come back raving about how good it is. In many ways (and as Tim Rutten points out), Beckett was a master of the novel as well as of the stage. I'd go further and say that he was a better novelist. The novel allows Beckett to speak directly to the reader, whereas his plays have to be understood through the medium of the actors, directors and designers who produce it. The novels (with the exception of Watt) are so well-written and bittersweet that I found myself enjoying them more than the various performances of the plays I'd seen. Beckett always wrote for himself. Watching his plays in the theatre (especially a good production) I've grown frustrated with the audiences who inevitably end up laughing and tittering because they can't quite figure out what's going on when it's perfectly obvious. Reading the novels you have the luxury of losing a dull audience and listening to Beckett directly. I'm a snob, but it's the truth.

The other three volumes are; Vol. 3, Dramatic works (Edited by Edward Albee); Vol. 4, Poems, Short Fiction and Criticism (Edited by J. M. Coetze); Vol 5, "Waiting for Godot" (bilingual edition, but no editor listed). Albee is not my first choice for editing the dramatic works. Pinter would have been better since he had an ongoing relationship with Beckett and used to submit the manuscript for all of his plays to Beckett who would make comments in a red pencil. I wonder if Pinter was asked to do the editing, but because of ill health, declined. Coetze is a wonderful choice for the short fiction, poetry and essays. I've long admired his work and look forward to reading his introductory essay.

Norman Dubie, the great unknown American Poet, once taught a class at Arizona State and I took it. He was a nut, but a brilliant nut. During an office visit, I asked him about Samuel Beckett and he told me that Beckett scared him. When I asked him why he said, "death, death, death...I won't be able to understand him until I'm an old man". Well, that's probably true for Mr. Dubie, but I started reading Beckett in my teens. I'm reasonably sure I understand him (although the novel Watt is still a puzzler), but perhaps a deeper understanding will come when I'm in my sixties.

On second thought, no, I don't think so. I'm going to buy this new set and read him all over again. Beckett is the most important writer of the 20the century. This set is a perfect way to discover him, or, re-discover as the case may be.

PS I went into the camp of the enemy and snuck a peek at the new editions (which are all on the shelves) and the design is, well...good. No dust-jacket, but with an embossed image on dark blue covers. It looks rather like a school book. Beckett would have liked that, I think. The font and layout are very nice. These books will be easy to read. What I don't get is why the colors are so muted. This seems to be the cliche notion of Beckett as somber and grim. Where the truth is: he is somber and grim, but he's also damn funny, strange and marvelous. There is no sense of fun in this design, whereas there is an enormous sense of fun in Beckett's works.

Quick note on the novel "Watt": Beckett wrote this novel during the occupation (as I recall from Deidre Bair's bio of Beckett - still the best, in my opinion and to hell with amazon.com reviewers) to try to keep himself sane in an insane time. The books style and content reflect this preoccupation with detail. It's an amazing, unreadable book that reads like the journal of a mental patient trying to describe his/her daily life. At one point in the book the narrator comes into the master's bedroom and for almost four pages he describes the various ways the furniture could be re-arranged; all in puns. For example, the headboard could be placed on it's back while the sideboard could be placed on it's head....(get the idea?). I suppose it should be included in his selected works, but be warned reader; you venture onto thorny ground. Even the title is a joke: What? Watt?

Stolen Hemingway Update! We Got it Back!!

2006-04-09T00:49:00.000-07:00

Amazingly, we have gotten the stolen "Men Without Women" first edition back, slightly damaged, but with a $100 tucked in the book to pay for the damage. I'm still reeling from the chain of events of the last two days.

Here is what happened;

Friday, Gloria and Lisa both had the idea that we should look on Ebay to see if anyone might be trying to sell the stolen first edition of "Men Withought Women" by Ernest Hemingway that I mention was stolen on Iliad Bookshop's opening day. Sure enough, there was a copy up at a starting bid of $1,499 with a description that almost matched our ABE (advanced book exchange) description where we had the book for sale. Only a few small words were changed. When we looked closely at the picture that accompanied the auction, we realized it was the same picture we used at ABE only cropped and brightened up, probably in Photoshop. After checking the seller (who was located in Texas), I remembered that one of the men who spent time in the rare book section where the Hemingway was located, mentioned he was from out of town and would be leaving in a day or two.

We decided to file a police report and then contact Ebay. We should have already filed a report, but that's another story. Dan was all for contacting the person on Ebay directly with a basic statement that we know the book was stolen from our store, we have a witness (which wasn't really true) and that if he didn't return the book, we'd contact the FBI. Dan also worded it so that if the book was returned there'd be no questions asked.

Both Lisa and I thought this was tipping our hand too soon, but Dan had had experiences with the police before and was not confident that they'd do anything. Lisa sent the carefully worded statement to the person on Ebay and I wrote out a statement for Dan to take to the police tomorrow.

At around 9pm this evening Dan called us at home to tell us that he had the Hemingway back in his possession. He told us that someone had called the bookstore and told him to go out to the postal box on the side of our building and look inside. The person apparently hung up before Dan could say anything else. Dan went outside and, incredibly, the "Men Without Women" copy was inside, along with a $100 bill and a short note indicating the money was to cover the cost of the damage to the dust jacket (there was a small tear on the rear cover that wasn't there before).

When Dan called us, we immediately checked the Ebay auction and it was still up for sale. However, I've just paused in writing..(there it was)...and the auction has been removed. Isn't this the strangest turn of events? Apparently, there must have been two people; one was the person with the book here in Los Angeles, and another with the Ebay auction in Texas. The Los Angeles person must have had a change of heart when he was contacted by the Texas person and decided to return the book. Ebay may have contacted him at the same time our email arrived. Dan was right: the best approach was a direct one.

I had suspected that the theft was one of opportunity. The "my God, no one is looking, I could steel this book" kind of thing that could tempt just about anyone. This person just succumbed to the temptation. They must have been carrying a load of guilt to return the book so soon after our contacting him. It's also possible that the threat implied in Dan's email may have simply scared him. I'm voting for the first explanation, since the person left a $100 bill in the book as well as returning it. All I can say is, "Thank you for returning the book. You did the right thing!"

So, now our store opening was a complete success and, incredible as it seems, we had a $4,000 book returned by the person who stole it.

Yay! Oh, Frabjus Day!

How I Survived the Great Iliad Bookshop Migration... (with a little help from my friends and some Motrin)

2006-04-06T19:57:00.000-07:00

A little over two weeks ago, the Iliad Bookshop (where I work) began moving its 100,000+ stock of books to a new location about a mile away. I worked for 131 hours alongside volunteers and co-workers to get the new store opened by April 1st. Today, I am writing to you having survived the Great Iliad Bookshop Migration. We managed to get all of the books, the store fixtures, the bookshelves, supplies, statues, plants, files, computers, lumber, couches, coffee tables, rugs, posters, signs and front counters to the new store and arrange them so we could open this last Saturday, April 1st. Of course, we were all exhausted and bruised, but we opened the new doors to a rush of people and did booming business all day Saturday. I've finally managed to get enough sleep to sit down and write about it. I've also created a Flickr.com account that has about 3 dozen photographs arranged chronologically, so you can get a visual idea of what it was like. This event was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done physically. I was worried about my back most of all, but despite a day that was touch and go, I came through it weakened, but proud of what we had accomplished. What follows is a short description of how we went about moving an entire bookstore.

But first a little background: The Iliad Bookshop had been at the same location for over 18 years. The reason we decided to move was because our landlord (Lord Voldemort) decided to take advantage of the crazy real estate market in California and at the end of our recent five year lease decided to raise our rent over 70%. This was the final straw for our owner, Dan, who has had to deal with the impecunities of Lord Voldemort for years and years. Dan went out and found a building that was the right size and a good location (and with room to grow) and be bought it. The financing took a long time to get put into place, so we were delayed in moving and ended up having only two weeks to move the entire store.

After talking over the logistics a bit, we bought 1,200 book boxes from a local box store. Dan went to the new store location and began to break down walls and get the space ready for the parquet floor he was going to put in. The new location is 8,000 square feet, but the space we were moving into is only 3,000 sqft. There are two other businesses who occupy the additional 5,000 sqft. When their leases expire in the next couple years, we will take over the space and expand our new store to triple its size. This was one of the things that made the building so attractive. But for the present, we had to break down what was an old television studio, put up a new wall and get the floors ready to be covered. Dan took about a month to get the job done, a frustrating job since we discovered all kinds of problems with the electrical, plumbing and support beams in the building that had to be fixed before we could move in. Dan was working 12 to 16 hour days long before we even began to move the store. I don't know how he did it.

Back at the old store, we had spent several months weeding out books we didn't want to move by putting them in the various free boxes out in front of the store and by culling the stock for our sale tables. This involved going through every section in the store and pulling books that had been there for years and re-pricing them to the sale tables. After storing the huge pallets of flat, empty boxes in our back rooms, I began to label every shelf in the store with a number system that would enable us to re-shelve the books in the new store in alphabetical order. In some of the pictures you'll see yellow post-it notes with numbers on them. These were the numbers that were copied to the boxes when they were packed so we could know what books were inside each box. In general, this system worked well and we were able to re-shelve efficiently. However, a problem we did not foresee was that some sections did not go into the same bookcases, since Dan had to mix and match at the new store to fit the space. Of course, the Art section was one of these and I spent most of a very tiring day with volunteer Dave sorting through every single book (Dave ended up doing most of the section and told me he never wanted to handle a book by Picasso every again).

We began packing on March 16th. Fortunately, we had almost 10 volunteers (to whom we gave bookstore credit for hours worked) who dove right in and got us off to a fine start. We moved all of the paperbacks first and managed to get everything packed in one day, along with most of the shelving (we moved the empty bookcases whole). I think we packed and moved something like 30,000 paperbacks in one day. Bob, the king of paperbacks, and Dan went to work at the new store and got the first rows of shelving up and we began to re-shelve the next day.

Click here to see the complete photo set

Slowly, very slowly, we began to work through each section in the store. We reserved the paperback room, which was cleared now, as the storage room for the new boxes as they were packed. Stupidly, I didn't pay attention and group all of the boxes by sections in the first few days, so many subject sections got mixed up (something that made for a lot of extra work sorting them out at the new store). Once I realized my mistake, we got the sections together and it was much easier to reshelve at the new store. The pattern became: packing books at the old store, loading up the big rented truck with about 100 boxes stacked three high (they fit perfectly on to a hand truck this way), move them to the new store and dump them in a clear area. We did this pretty much strait through the first week until we had about half of the books out of the old store.

Then we ran into a snag; Dan wasn't able to get new shelves up fast enough for us to put books on them. So, we all had to go to the new store and shelve like crazy while Dan worked on getting the shelved together. At first I didn't realize why Dan was slow, but then I remembered he had to cut off the top shelf of every bookcase because the ceiling at the new store was 2 feet lower than the one at the old store. That and the fact that many of the shelves had to be re-backed and braced together, slowed our boxing and moving for several days.

Lisa drove the 16 foot, 6-wheeler truck with a liftgate every day and she did a great job. We kept joking about her being the "Large Marge" character from the Pee Wee film. You can see her in the photo-set looking tough behind the wheel. Backing into the backdoor's of each store was a real bear and there were some nail-biting moments, but Lisa got the hang of it and eventually it became a piece of cake, except for the

"DAY FROM HELL".

.....The Day From Hell.....

Let me tell you about the "DAY FROM HELL". Dan managed to catch up with us and we were able to go back to the bookstore to pack the the last sections. We were making good progress when it started to rain. The volunteers had thinned out and we only had two left (thank you, JB and Dave!) and we had to get about 500 boxes of books to the new store in the rain. We managed to park the truck close to the back door and rig a kind of tent to keep most of the rain off of the books, but as the day progressed all of the floors got wet and there was water everywhere (I was soaked all day). On top of that we were moving the heaviest boxes, the Art books, some of which weighed up to 60lbs each. I had a terrible scare when the end of my shoe got caught between the liftgate of the truck and the edge of the truck bed. The liftgate operator wasn't paying attention and I stared in horror as the end of my shoe got crushed. Thank God, I wore shoes that I had bought from the Thrift store and that were slightly too large for me, because there was lots of space at the end of the shoe and the liftgate just missed my toe. I had dodged a bullet that time. I continued on as if nothing had happened. It was only later, in bed, that I realized how close I had come to disaster. Another awful moment in the "DAY FROM HELL".

By this time we had made three trips and came back for a fourth when some guy came into the store and claimed that our truck had hit his car. After looking at his car (which looked like it had been hit by someone), listening to his contradictory story, and looking at our truck (which had no marks on it whatsoever), we told him we didn't think we hit him. He started arguing with us and blah blah blah. Well, this went round and round for an hour while most of us kept on loading up boxes. Eventually, Dan came over and we exchanged driver information and decided to leave it to the insurance company to sort out. Lisa was upset and didn't want to drive the truck for the rest of the day. We managed to get one last load during very heavy rain, over to the new store where we were all so tired we were just going to leave the books in the truck and unload them the next day. But Dan was worried the truck might leak, so (all of us groaning simultaneously) we unloaded the heavy, heavy, wet boxes. I think we went home at around 8pm after a 10-hour day lifting boxes. Thankfully, that was the ..

.....end of the "DAY FROM HELL".....

The next day was much better (apparently, Librus, the Greek god of books, decided to spare us this day) and we managed to speed up our loading and get some more volunteer help. Moving the large fixtures (the front counter and the sale tables) turned out to be much easier than we thought it was going to be and we got them all loaded and moved in one day. By the 10th, however, my back started to give me trouble and I had to stop frequently to rest. I think all of us paced ourselves very well for this huge job. Every night I'd have a hot bath to sooth my muscles and I'd take a Motrin twice a day for pain. Our volunteer, JB, was a demon with work though. Man, this guy would stay for another three hours after Lisa and I would leave! I asked him where he got the energy and he just smiled at me mumbling something about energy drinks. Lisa tells me that he told her he drank a concoction of orange juice, mountain dew and coke every morning. He called it his "jet fuel".

Despite the wear on our bodies of moving almost 4,000 boxes of books, we got everything out of the old store. The weather cleared and we spent most of the last few days shelving and cleaning the new store for last Saturday's opening. Dan found that he had run out of shelving and so we weren't able to get Science, Nature, Erotica, Counter Culture, Cookbooks and a few other sections up onto shelves. But we got about 90% and when the doors opened people were very pleased. Of course, one of the first customers asked for the Cookbook section and I had to give her the sad news that all of the books were still in boxes (she didn't like that sound of that from the sour look she gave me). Dan plans to get the new shelves up within a week or two. He makes them from scratch; stains and waxes them so they look very nice.

We were not without some problems, however; several sections had very curious alphabetization and some books were in completely the wrong sections. We also lost our two large couches (no room) which was disappointing to some customers. We plan on adding chairs to make up for some of the loss of comfort. We also had big problems with SBC over our DSL line. Eventually, we just fired them after one bureaucratic foul-up after another. Our Credit Card terminal had to be upgraded which took many calls on the phone late into the night. But the opening went very well. The store, while not complete, looks beautiful. The parquet floors are simply wonderful. Gloria is almost through with her magic bathroom. My friend Skip, the jazz guitar genius, remarked that he had played on stages that were smaller than our bathroom. I love it. If you make it to 5400 Cahuenga in North Hollywood, you must use our new bathroom and tre cool toilet. Our plumber, Jason, told us, "I love this toilet". Oh, and the great books.

The only real downer for the whole experience was the theft of a very expensive Hemingway first edition from our rare bookshelves on opening day. We separated all of the rare books, but weren't able to get everything behind glass and locked. Someone took advantage of this and slipped away with a $4,000 book. We were all depressed about it for a day or two; and we're taking extra precautions now, so it won't happen again.

So, that's the story of the Great Iliad Bookshop Migration. We are slowly getting back into shape. The store looks wonderful. We are buying books again and the rhythms of our store are starting to become familiar again. I'm heaving a big sigh.....Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh.......

Thanks to Janet, Dave, JB, and all of the others for your help. We could not have gotten our store moved without your help. And thank you, Dan and Gloria, for having the courage to take such a huge risk and for all of your hours of hard work. I'm proud to work for you. And thanks to Loki, for making it fun to work (stop biting my shoes...down, Loki, down!)

If you happen to be in Los Angeles, come on by our new bookstore in North Hollywood. Loki would like to see your shoes and I'd like to show you around our new store.

Iliad Bookshop
5400 Cahuenga
North Hollywood, CA. 91601

http://www.iliadbooks.com

818-509-2665

Mon-Sat, 10am to 10pm; Sun, 12pm to 6pm

Review: "The Zapruder Film" by David R. Wrone

2006-03-19T20:31:00.000-08:00

"The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination"
by David R. Wrone
Published by the University Press of Kentucky, 2003.
368 pages with notes, select bibliography and index. ISBN: 0-7006-1291-2

I was watching "And Now Miguel" (the B&W 1953 version) in the grade school auditorium with my elementary school Unit 1 classmates and my much beloved teacher, Mrs. Nyman (my first teacher crush). This was about the third time we had seen this film, but I liked it anyway. Somehow just being in the dark in a quiet room and looking a big images on a screen was relaxing to me. Around the time where Miguel was writing poetry for school and sneaking it behind his fathers back (a part which always thrilled me), I noticed a disturbance in the auditorium; some sort of murmur was in crowd, primarily amongst the teachers. A few minutes later I noticed Mrs. Nyman was crying which completely ripped me out of the film dream and scared the hell out of me. I mean, she never cried. I was terrified. The film continued until its end (I think) and we were all taken back to our rooms where I was told that someone was killed; someone important. I didn't care about that, I was more interested in Mrs. Nyman. We were sent home early and I walked home from school very nervous and worried. Later that evening I was glued to the TV set because it told me about life and helped me figure out what was going on (my mother and father certainly were little help) and Walter Cronkite explained it all to me. He said that the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, had been shot and killed that day in Dallas, Texas. Then I remember a real nice picture of the president flashed on the screen. I must have thought that John F. Kennedy was Mrs. Nyman's husband or something because I couldn't quite figure out why she was so upset. I promised myself I'd find out what happened and tell Mrs. Nyman about it.

This review is for you, Mrs. Nyman, wherever you are.

While I'm not JFK assassination buff, or whatever you call them, from that first night after his death, I've been following the whirling theories surrounding his murder. I don't read every book that comes out, but I try to stay up to date and usually pick one or two a year to read. This year I picked David R. Wrone's book on the Zapruder film because I wanted to know more about that famous film and the man who shot it, Abraham Zapruder. Mr. Wrone is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point and has taught courses on the assassination for many years there. I'd never heard of him before this book, but the world of JFK assassination experts is very large and varied (to say the least) so it's not suprising.

The Zapruder film is really two books. One of the books I enjoyed a great deal, it followed Abraham Zapruder from when he arrives at his office near Dealy Plaza (he'd forgotten his famous camera and upon the urging of his secretary went back home to pick it up) to when the U.S Goverment decides to purchase the film from Zapruder's heirs (but not the copyright). The story Mr. Wrone tells is fascinating and full of suprises, even to someone who knows a great deal about events surrounding the assassination. However, the second book that Mr. Wrone manages to slip into his Zapruder film history is much less interesting. It is a book about the JFK assassination and who got it right and who got it wrong amongst the theorists and historians. In other words, it's axe grinding and nit picking. To his credit, the author makes case after case against the official Warren Commission report and this is interesting to some degree, but when he shifts into the, "and when Anthony Summers concludes that the coffins were switched on the plane, he erroneously...blah blah blah, Mr. Wrone". I'm sorry, but my eyes glaze over and my mind tries to stay focused on endless balls of detail that are impossible to keep juggling. He should have written his explication of the JFK assassination as a seperate book, which would have cut the Zapruder film book in half and made it much more manageable and easy to follow.

Now, make no mistake, Mr. Wrone is a very good writer. He does not have any of the stiffness and obtuseness that kill so many books written by academics. Even his complex sections are written as well as you can write this kind of "historiography". But the Zapruder book-within-a-book is the best part and Mr. Wrone makes some telling points about the film as it relates to the assassination and about it's mis-handling.

Not many people remember that the film was sold to Time-Life within days of the assassination for $50,000 dollars. Time-Life came back to Zapruder a few days later and paid him another $100,000 for the print rights to the film (the second fee was for film rights). One fact I was amazed to discover was that out of fear for an anti-semitic backlash (Zapruder was Jewish), he donated the first payment of $25,000 to the widow of officer Tippet (the Dallas cop Oswald was supposed to have slain). After the assinatation and during the huge confusion that followed, Zapruder was smart enought to keep the film from being taken by thuggish cops who showed up at his business soon after the murder of Kennedy; document the entire process of having the film developed and copied, and make three copies of the film for the authorities (two copies went to Washington). The original film was given to Time-Life and sent to their plant in Illinois where they stopped the presses in order to get the pictures into their next issue. Here is where the history of the film goes kablooey. Apparently, the original film was given to an inexperienced film clerk who broke the film while processing it for duplication. He made a rough splice right at the point where Kennedy goes behind the sign. For years this was part of the "proof" given for the film being tampered with and the whole authenticity of the Zapruder film being called into question. Mr. Wrone puts all of this nonsense to rest with carefully documented evidence that proves the clerk simply made a mistake.

The author follows the film through it's copies, it's eventual sale back to the Zapruder family for $1 (what a bargain), the huge copyright issues involved, the massive duplication of the film and it's sale on the black market, the first public showing on some sort of Geraldo Rivera show (I had forgotten that bit. Do a google search and you'll come up with this show), the Warren Commission's mis-use of the film to establish when how many shots where fired and when, the digitizing of the film and finally the US Government's purchase of the film for the Kennedy Assassination Archives. The main point Mr. Wrone emphases over and over is that the film is evidence in what was probably the most important murder case of the 20th Century and should not have been allowed to be owned or controlled by a large corporation. He maintains that the U.S. Government should have confiscated the film early in the investigation of Kennedy's murder and have safegarded it for the future. As it was the Warren Commission never got to see the original film, only copies and blow ups. I agree with him, despite the private ownership issues, because this situation is a special case. But because the Warren Commission was really only interested in proving there was only one assassin (they wanted to prevent a possible war with the Soviet Union if it was determined that there was a conspiracy) they "whitewashed" the investigation and didn't consider confiscating the Zapruder film.

I could go on, but it would spoil this interesting book for you. Suffice to say, this book is not for beginners. There are other, better books for that (try Anthony Summer's book "Conspiracy" (although Mr. Wrone would roll his eyes at this suggestion) and definitely watch two excellent documentary films on the subject:

Image of an Assassination: A New Look at the Zapruder Film" which features the complete process of digitizing the film and of the subsequent versions created with reduced shake and including the image captured betweent he sprockets (don't ask me to explain this). Also, "JFK Assassination Films: The Case for Conspiracty" by Robert J. Groden is a fascinating, if slightly biased, version of not only the Zapruder film but of the many, many other photos and films taken that day. Mr. Wrone's extensive notes and essay-type bibliography are a very well done and, if you are interested, prove to be rewarding if you want to journey around in world of the JFK Assassination History. He lists web pages, videos and many interesting books (some are hard to find and expensive, though). If you buy this book, definitely spend time in back of the book where you can gather the fruits of Mr. Wrone's excellent research.

In the end, all you can really do is cry like Mrs. Nyman did on that terrible day. We can never really know for sure what happend. But, like David R. Wrone, I believe that the Zapruder film is the best evidence we have for concluding that the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy. Mr. Wrone lays it all out for you in this flawed, but provocative work of history.

The Hidden Beauty of Fore-Edge Paintings

2006-03-14T20:37:00.000-08:00

I had never heard of "fore-edge paintings" until one night at the bookstore where I work, Dan, the owner, showed me an antique book he had just purchased, and by sliding the page ends on an angle there was a seemingly hidden painting actually painted on the page ends. He said he collected books with fore-edge paintings, but that they were hard to come by. Ever since then I've been interested in the topic and have recently come across some good sites with all kinds of interesting images of fore-edge paintings and their history.

Apparently, fore-edge painting is as old as the 10th century and usually come in two types. One type is painted right on the page ends and can be seen when the book is in its normal state. The other (the one Dan showed me) is a hidden painting that can only be revealed when the pages are slightly fanned out. Also, you can have a double fore-edged painting that is revealed when you fan the pages one way and then another. And finally there is a triple fore-edge painting that comes when the page ends arent gilded or marbled. Here is an example of a simple fore-edge painting on an antiquarian book:

Initially, these paintings were simple floral patterns or manor seals. Somewhere in the 18th century the paintings became landscapes; a tradition which continues to the present day. Several museums have had shows which featured fore-edge paintings. I'd love to go to one. I think it would be fascinating to see several examples from different centuries all gathered in one place.

Wouldn't it be great if we could do this with regular trade editions? Why doesn't Steve Erickson or James Carrol work out something with their publisher to do a hidden fore-edge painting on one of their new books? Something that is a clue in the plot, or a symbol for the theme of the novel? Too bad that this wonderful technique is confined to mostly antiquarian books and collectors. I truly believe that if I hadn't become an actor, I would be creating fore-edge paintings and fancy bindings for books. I think they are wonderful, beautiful works of art.

I Want to Stay Overnight at the Riordan Library

2006-02-27T11:41:00.000-08:00

I don't go to the library enough. Strange to hear that coming from me, a booklover, but it's true.

This last sunday, I went with my partner, Lisa Morton, to the downtown central branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. I was enthralled. Of course, I have been to this branch many times since it re-opened in 2001 (and re-named after then L.A. mayor Richard Riordan), but this visit was different. I felt like I was seeing this great library for the first time.

Originally constructed in 1926, the Riordan library is the third largest library in the U.S. It was designed in a mock Egyptian style by architect Bertram Goodhue and then re-designed in a Mission Style after a terrible arson fire in 1986 (the largest library fire in U.S. history). The expanded and re-designed Central library opened in 1991 with 71 Branch Libraries throughout Los Angeles County. I was fortunate enough to visit the library during a six-month stay in Los Angeles back in 1983. I used to have breakfast at The Pantry (one of L.A's oldest deli style restaurants) and then walk to the library where I would spend most of the day wandering among the stacks and reading. I remember the old library fondly: wonderful light and space; comfortable chairs; quiet. You could feel the history of downtown Los Angeles in the building.

But the new library is much better. The design is modern and up to date, while still keeping that sense of openness, quiet and light. This new version simply invites you to sit down and read. Everywhere you look there is a comfortable reading nook. The chairs are wonderful green leather and shaped perfectly for reading. Study carols, tables with soft light, nooks and crannies fill the structure.

Lisa and I spent most of our time on the bottom floor in the History sections where she researched background information for her first novel "Netherworld". The staff were uniformly helpful. There were tours of the library going on at the time, some in Spanish. There were many people using the computer terminals and searching through the stacks. I found myself looking for interesting book titles and came across two books on the famous Zapruder film of the Kennedy Assassination that I took home. I was tempted to ask to look at some of the antique maps housed in large cases near us, but it was Sunday and I didn't want the staff to have to go to all that trouble. When it came time to leave, I was disappointed. It's too bad they don't have cots for people like me who want to stay at the library overnight.

While searching in the open stacks, Lisa found an amazing old book, "Treaty Ports of China and Japan" by Wm Fred. Mayers, N.B.Dennys and Chas. King., London, Trubner and Co. 1867. She has her lead heroine visiting Shanghai around this time and wanted to gather details that her heroine might notice. This book had been rebound in a library binding, but was in excellent shape. There were several color maps of China and various cities, plus one large map that was damaged. She took notes and decided to check the internet for a copy she could buy for herself. Much to our surprise, this book is exceedingly rare and the sole copy we found online was going for over $2,000. I think we'll print out our info and head back to the library soon to let them know they've got to pull this book from the general stacks and put it in their rare book room.

I love the new Riordan library and with the subway an easy walk away, I can go down there just about any Sunday. I think I'll get back into the habit of breakfast and the library. This time I'll be going with my gal, Lisa. I can't wait to go back.

Wanderings in Bookland

2006-02-20T16:53:00.000-08:00

I'm in the middle of writing a longish post on "Novels into Film" (The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George Higgins) and I thought I'd share some random book notes that came into my head the last few days. If I don't catch them now, they'll be gone like birds in a cornfield.

Why I don't attend Antiquarion Book Fairs:

The LA Times Calendar/Weekend edition of last week had an article on the upcoming California Antiquarian Book Fair. The author made a strained attempt to convince the reader that the new collectors of antiquarion books were young people. Amazing! One of the convincing arguments was from a Netherlands-based bookseller who was selling a copy of lyrics and notes by rapper Tupac Shakur for $47,500. His excited proof was this; "Tupac is the Shakespeare of our time". If I was selling an item for almost 50 K, I'd say they were Shakespeare and Elvis combined. Another bright comment was "...they (antiquarian book collectors) collect our of passion, enjoyment and admiration of the book and its place in history. They relish the hunt. They value the book as a text, an art object or a symbol, and oftentimes they don't even read it". Woah! Back up there, "oftentimes they don't even read it". Kind defeats the whole purpose of the book in the firstplace, doesn't it? And what happened to the "they value the book as a text?" part. No, my experience of book fairs has been one of greed and survival of the fittest. Most of the best books are traded and sold between dealers the night before the show. And I buy books because I'm going to read them, not collect them. Although there are books I read that I collect as well. I suppose I'm being grumpy here, but those kinds of statements are so silly, you know?

How do you move 100,000 books in two weeks?

Iliad Bookshop (the used bookstore where I work) is going to move sometime in March. We will move the entire stock of 100,000+ books in two weeks. Whew! I'm tired just writing those words. Our rent was raised astronomically and we were forced to find another building. Fortunately, our owner, Dan Weinstein, bought a building only a mile away from our present location. So, we'll be lugging thousands of boxes of books over to the new store next month. I like the idea of moving though. We can improve the bookstore by getting rid of old, dead sections and adding new ones. We'll have parking and a lot more space. We will eventually bethe largest used bookstore in Los Angeles. Once all the hard work is done, we should have one helluva bookstore.

Old stores fade; new ones rise.

The last year has seen the loss of several independent bookstores in Los Angeles. We lost Dutton's (North Hollywood), Green Ginger, Old Town Books, Bestseller Books, and Book City in Hollywood. Most of the losses are coming from astronomical rent increases, but a few are the result of illness and a move to the internet in order to reduce overhead. Fortunately, there is one store that just opened. My friend Jerry Chadburn, who was a printer by trade, just recently opened his "Always First" bookstore in North Hollywood. It's a smallish store, but it's packed with great books in excellent condition. Jerry has always been a stickler for condition. He's got mostly vintage paperbacks for sale, but there are sections of mystery, science fiction and cinema books in hardback. He doesn't have a website yet, but you can reach him at:

Jerrry Chadburn

Always First Books

12041 Magnolia Blvd.

North Hollywood, CA 91607

818-761-3878

Warning: if you get Jerry started on some of his favorite topics, expect to stay at the store a couple of hours. He's hard to stop once he gets rolling!

Kate's Book Blog: It's what a blog should be!

My favorite book blog on the net (yes, and that includes BookSlut) is hands-down, Kate's Book Blog. Lately, she's been on a roll. Last week she had a great post on creativity/books/writing and music, that had me mulling over her ideas for days. I'd completely forgotten that when I was younger I would frequently buy a new music CD at the same time I bought a new book; and then would proceed to listen to that CD over and over while I was reading the book. The music and the story got fused in my mind so that, to this day, certain books are connected to certain albums. Phillip K. Dick's "Ubik" is forever welded to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here". She's got some wonderful observations on the topic with great links. You could stay busy for hours just following up. She's got an equally wonderful post on "Notebooks and Journals". It's ironic that I recently came across my old journals from 20 years ago and read many passages while cringing and laughing till I cried. Kate mulls over her use of notebooks and discusses several authors as well. I have fond memories of Camus's notebooks, the Notebooks of Athol Fugard, Robert Lowell's Notebooks and the recent Notebooks of Kurt Cobain
.

When is a bookstore like a library?

I've worked as a bookstore clerk for over 30 years. In that time, you meet a lot of people and you see them change. In the last few years I've noticed that young, high-school aged people are seem to have no idea how a used bookstore operates. At least a dozen times I've been asked by the confused young, "Is this a library? Can I check these books out?". I have to explain to them that even though we both have books, libraries and bookstores are very different. We buy and sell books here; at the library you can check books out and return them. They almost always gape at me curiously after I give them the spiel. It makes me wonder two things; are schools simply not teaching people how to use the library?; or, are used bookstores in decline so much that young people don't even know that they exist? Would the same young people ask if they could check out the books at a Borders Bookstore? or, a Barnes & Noble. I don't think they would. Hmnnn, the conclusions are discouraging. I'll just have to keep doing my part to educate younger folks about how cool a used bookstore can be. I hope you, the reader, will do the same.

Review: Rosario Tijeras by Jorge Franco

2006-02-17T12:47:00.000-08:00

"Since Rosario had been shot at point-blank range while she was being killed, she confused the pain of death with that of love. But she realized what had happened when she moved her lips away and saw the gun"

Out of the gate, "Rosario Tijeras", is in your face and demanding to be taken seriously. The paragraph above could have come from any number of American hard-boiled novels from the fifties. But this one is taken from a novel published in 1999 by Columbian author, Jorge Franco. Written originally in Spanish (the translation by Gregory Rabassa is wonderful) and published in english by the excellent Seven Stories Press, "Rosario Tijeras" is a tale of L'Amour Fou told against the backdrop of the drug cartel wars in Medellin, Columbia. The "Rosario" of the title is immediately situated in the "femme fatale" tradition with the opening sentence and it's promise of death and sex. She will be both lover and destroyer to the men in her life. While this concept is pretty stupid when you consider the real women you encounter in life, I can attest to the power of a "mad love" in my own life. Reason, logic, common sense; all of them go out the window when you become obsessed with someone who is on the path to hell, so to speak.

Our narrator, poor Antonio, tells his sad, sordid tale in the waiting room of the hospital where Rosario has been taken to die. In a series of beautifully constructed flashbacks, we learn that she got her last name by castrating the man who raped her as a young girl (Tijeras in Spanish means "scissors"), we discover that Rosario is a kept woman by high level members of the Medellin drug cartel and that she is simoultaneously having affairs with Emilio and Ferney, both local "hit men" for the cartel. Antonio is the young, reticent man who becomes her confidant and friend. After one night of sex, Antonio is besotted with her and spends a good deal of the novel trying to understand why. The ending of the novel (nope, I won't give it away here) is poignant and absolutely perfect. I could hear the Warner Bros. score well up as the camer pulls out the door and into a wide shot of the night lit city.

This novel won the Premio de Novela Dashiell Hammett prize in 2000 (for best literary excellence in crime fiction) and has been made into a film. All of this praise is well-deserved since the novel is well-written and intriguing. What is troubling is that most reviewers fail to point out that the mix of love/melodrama and drug violence is not always a good one. The author strains credibility at times when he has Rosario embark on senseless killing only to have our young narrator explain it all away in a gush of self-deception. In fact, that's the basic problem with this novel: it simply isn't deep enough. In his effort to create the instantly interesting femme fatale, Rosario, he doesn't spend enough time with Antonio and he becomes a much less interesting character than her. His story structure is in keeping with the noir tradition, but it's clear he wants to step beyond those tropes and comment on the social issues of Medellin and the people in the drug trade. The novel suffers from the authors balancing act between noir and the social realism. It just never quite comes together in an original form. When the novel is tough, it's very tough and is completely convincing. But the softer, more ruminative passages are not as convincing and slow the novel down. And I wish the author would have abandoned the flashback structure and simply told the story as it happened to Antonio. We could have developed more sympathy and understand of this character and it would have added more weight to the story.

Still, this novel is very good. It packs a punch believe you me. I was cringing in a scene where Rosaria shoots to death a motorist she has crashed into because of her own reckless driving. There is wonderful detail through out the novel that puts you right into the shoes of the characters and their various obsessions. And, as I've mentioned, the translation by Rabassa is brilliant. You don't have to know hard-boiled mysteries to enjoy this novel.

Last note: the cover of this edition is a still from the film. While this Rosaria is beautiful, she's nothing like the character in the book. I like the Spanish cover much better. Here it is:

Out of Print, Out of Mind?

2006-02-13T22:58:00.000-08:00

Teresa Nielsen is a science-fiction editor at Tor Books and her blog "Making Light" is an expression of her interest in publishing, books and writing in general. It is a very popular blog:her January 27th post, "The Life Expectancy of Books", has almost 300 responses (the post is about half-way down the page). I read about her comments in my favorite daily news site - boingboing.net, and headed over to read her looooong post.

Essentially, Teresa is writing to authors and telling them it's time to face the fact that your book is going to go out of print. Hence, her catchy phrase, "falling out of print is a books natural fate". The second part of her post (and the most effective) is a solid evaluation of how the copyright laws have become "useful tools for the control of intellectual property" by Hollywood and Corporate America. The real push behind the last round of copyright extensions came from the big entertainment combines. They're bitterly opposed to the idea that cash-cow properties like Winnie the Pooh might ever go out of copyright.

The "last round of copyright extensions" she's referring to in her blog is the infamous Sony Bono Term Extension Act of 1998 (also known as the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act"), which added 20 years to existing copyright terms. It also added 20 years to all works created before Jan 1, 1978. Her comments, while familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to this issue, aregood arguments that the new copyright laws actually produce results that are the exact opposite of what copyright laws were created for originally. I was amazed to read that certain authors whose works had gone out of copyright had actually come back in to copyright because of the 1998 law. She continues with a good discussion of electronic texts and their effect on copyright.

Where I part company with Teresa is her implication that when a book goes out of print, it goes out of mind. Having worked in bookstores since I was 15 (I'm now 50), I've got a front line perspective on out of print books. I think that many authors whose books go out of print actually find their readers at this point. Melville is a classic example. I believe all of his books were out of print at the end of his life. It's taken a generation or two to discover the relevance and beauty of his works. Contrary to Teresa's suggestion that none of us have heard of list of bestsellers from 1920 (and so, the books are no longer worth reading), I think that when a book goes out of print it actually becomes part of a wider culture of readers. She rattles off a list of authors in her blog (like Frank Yerby, Mary Roberts Rinehart, etc.) and states that it's "natural" for these books to no longer be printed. The implication is that they should be forgotten as well. There's a little snobbery here that is probably what I'm reacting to. In the bookstore where I work, these authors have not been forgotten. In fact, we sell copies of their works every week. Remember Lloyd Douglas' "The Robe"? Remember Mary Roberts Rinehart's "The Circular Staircase"? These books are part of the everyday book language at our store and at hundreds of stores across the country.

With the advent of the internet and out of print book brokers like Alibris, ABEbooks and Choosebooks, you can find an out of print book almost as easy as you can find a new book.The internet book trade has leveled the playing field between the in-print book and the out-of-print book. Amazon, which sells millions of books, has used and oop copies of a book listed for sale right next to the new book listing. I suppose what I'm proposing here is that while Teresa's comments are accurate, I don't like the idea of author's books having less regard because they are out of print and no longer in the publishers and advertiser's minds. It's understandable that she would think this way since her livelihood is in publishing, but I don't agree with that perspective. Part of my motivation for starting this Booklad book blog is to bring people's attention to works that are unusual and neglected. I don't think I'm alone in this effort either. Ecco Press did a great series called "Neglected Masterpieces of 20th Century Fiction" some time ago and I've read several of the books on their list ("Mooncalf" by Floyd Dell, being my favorite). Certainly the major publishers (like the one Teresa works for) wouldn't be interested in such a series, but smaller publishers and university presses would be. Why? Because these books are truly great and deserve a new audience; not because they would only make a very small profit, if any. It seems as if out culture is more interested in making money than in valuing our great artists and writers. Sigh....oh, well, back to reading forgotten authors!

Review: "The Good Soldier" by Ford Madox Ford

2006-02-09T16:27:00.000-08:00

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion by Ford Madox Ford.1914. The Broadview Press, Edited by Kenneth Womack and William Baker. 2002

"Ford's The Good Soldier is one of the fifteen or twenty greatest novels produced in English in our century" -back cover of 1951 Random House paperback edition

I suppose there's something contrary in my personality that, when I read such puffery on the back of a book, I immediately assume the contrary: that the book is probably one of the fifteen of twenty most boring novels produced in our century. However, the list of authors who agree with the statement is impressive; William Carlos Williams, Louse Bogan, Allen Tate, Jean Stafford and Graham Greene. Their recommendation made me re-consider my instinctive reaction and coupled with finding a new, interesting edition of The Gold Soldier, I began reading this novel about a week ago.

They were right. The Good Soldier is a masterful work of art. I don't think I've felt so deeply about a group of characters since reading Chekov for the first time. Written in 1914, on the eve of the Great War, Ford felt that it was his best book. After a period of time working as Joseph Conrad's assistant, he poured all that he had learned from that great author into a novel based partially on his own personal life. Initially greeted with little enthusiasm, it has come to be an important early work of modernism coming some 18 years before Joyce's Ulysses. I mention Joyce because Ford Maddox Ford has that same preoccupation with the contrast between appearances and reality; between convention and passion. This theme is at the heart of his novel.

“The Good Soldier” (not Ford's choice for a title, he wanted “The Saddest Story”) tells the tale of two couples who, on the surface, seem to be "good people" who live lives of wealth and culture. Underneath, however, they are seething with lust, jealousy and guilt. In the hands of a less imaginative author, the story might have descended into melodrama. Ford wrote the novel in a style he calls "Impressionism", which is essentially a story composed of impressions and images of events rather than a literal description of events.

In “The Good Soldier” the author's point of view is that of the main character, John Dowell, who is also the impotent husband in the ménage. What is impressive is the authors’ complete command of form and content; how each detail adds to the whole and how carefully he presents his characters as both caring and hateful people at the same time. This is the kind of novel that chapter by chapter becomes irresistible. By the end of the book, the story of these sad people is made even sadder since the author has so carefully crafted empathy for each character. You know why they act the way they do at the same time you wish they wouldn’t act that way. The tension between these two perceptions in the reader is delicious and deeply involving.

If there are flaws in this masterpiece it would be that the author seems to share the masculine point of view. But then again the novel is like a hall of mirrors and the male narrator's own point of view is called into question throughout the novel. So, even the male narrator is flawed and unreliable. Another reason to think of this as a modernist novel – the flawed narrator is a major trope in modernist fiction.

I urge you to read this brilliant novel. It’s not without it’s difficulties though and you’ll need a good edition with plenty of footnotes. I’ve chosen the edition produced by Canadian publisher, Broadview Press. Similar to the Norton Critical Editions, it includes a good introduction, chronologies (of the author and the events in the book), footnotes, essays and writings by Ford Madox Ford that help to shed light on the complexities of this subtle and beautiful book. Every item included in this edition is helpful and informative. However, I was disappointed not to see my favorite essay by Mark Schorer in the book. Titled “An Interpretation” it is the single most helpful essay I’ve read on the novel. Fortunately, it’s included as the introduction to the Random House/Vintage edition of “The Good Soldier” which is still currently in print.

The design of the Broadview edition is very well done. I love the cover photo of “Miss Anderson” by turn-of-the-century photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn. Reminds me very much of the Lenora character in the novel. Her steely gaze from the cover photo stayed with me as an image for her. Perhaps that’s why I chose this particular edition.

I’ve decided to create an audio book of “The Good Soldier”. I’ve begun reading the novel aloud for the Librivox.com site. I hope to make it available here at this site as well when it is completed in a month or so.

Clivejames.com - A Feast for the Mind

2006-02-05T10:30:00.000-08:00

Over the years, I've had a love/hate relationship with the writings of Clive James, the brilliant critic from Australia. I remember watching his BBC documentary series, "Fame in the 20th Century" back in the early nineties and feeling like I was having an arugument with my television. There aren't too many people who can be alternately bitchy and brilliant in the same scene. You can get a sense of what I'm referring to in his famous quip on the subject of television: "Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world".

Mr. James was a television critic for the British paper, The Observer, from 1972 to 1982. He then jumped into television production himself with his successful ITV show "Clive James on Television". He has continued to use television as a medium for his witty commentary on art, literature and contemporary life.

I tell you all of this by way of introducing Clive James's official website - Clivejames.com. And what a wonderful website it is. Mr. James has filled the site with a healthy collection of his articles, a very nice collection of video programs, and, my favorite, a series of recordings from his conversations with his learned friend, Peter Porter, called "On Not Having a Classical Education" and "The Literature of the 20th Century". Their conversations are a headlong rush of brilliance and wit that must be heard to be believed.

Mr. James has called his website a "cross between a space station, college campus and online pyramid". He hopes to preserve most of his prose, poetry and conversations on his site. Eventually, he wants to add his television programs as well. A truly multi-media website, the video section has around 18 interviews which he calls "Talking in the Library". You'll be able to watch his conversations with people like Terry Gilliam, P.J. O'Rourke, Martin Amis, Cate Blanchett, Sir Jeremy Isaacs, Jung Chung, Jonathan Miller and others. Brendan Bernhard, of the NY Sun, has written a good profile of the website along with with excerpts from a telephone conversation with Mr. James that is amusing.

At this point the site is free, but the cost of streaming all of the material on his site is expensive and Mr. James has indicated in other interviews that he may start charging a small fee for the use of his site. So, get over to clivejames.com and learn something while it's free. Clive James is a very funny, infuriating, and articulate guide through books, literature and contemporary culture.

Make Your Own Public Domain Audiobook

2006-02-02T10:17:00.000-08:00

Xeni Jardin, over at NPR (National Public Radio), has an interesting post about a website devoted to public doman audiobooks. Apparently, at LibriVox.com you can volunteer to record yourself reading aloud public domain books, short stories or poems, send it to their site and they will make it available free to the general public. The site is well-organized, the forums are active, and the list of books is very interesting. While I'm not a huge fan of audio books (they tend to substitute for reading), I do like to listen to them from time to time. If you've got that favorite public domain classic novel or short story, why not head over to their site and see how to get started. Be sure to read their informative FAQ. I'm thinking of doing Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward" or William Godwin's "Caleb Williams". Any other suggestions? Remember, it the book has to be in the public domain.

Guest Review: Scott Ingalls on "Underground London: Travels Beneath the City Streets "

2006-01-30T23:13:00.000-08:00

This is the first of what I hope will be many "guest reviews" here at Booklad. Scott Ingalls is the director of a recent short film called "he Wright Bros. Episode 4". You can see the film and the previous episodes at channel101.com. I worked as an actor on this episode. So, when we shot the first scene a few weeks ago, I found myself at Scott's supercool "faux Elizabethan" apartment in West Hollywood. It used to part of Charlie Chaplin's Studio, as his guest cottages, and is a wonderful place to shoot a scene set in the late 1800's. Of course, actors always have to wait and I made a bee-line to Scott's bookshelves. They were very impressive with sections on design, film, modern fiction, graphics and travel. I could see Scott had broad interests and was a good reader. So I asked him what he was reading and he said "Underground London: Travels Beneath the City Streets" by Stephen Smith. He showed me the book and it looked so interesting I knew I wanted Scott to do a guest review. Well, here it is. PS. They took a neat picture of Scott with the book, but he didn't send it along with the review! I think I can forgive him (this time...)

UNDERGROUND LONDON TRAVELS BENEATH THE CITY STREETS by Stephen Smith, Little,Brown, 2004,
ISBN 0316 861340

Stephen Smith has a distinct, personal voice, and he takes what could be a dry history, or stoic travel guide, and really creates his own story out of his discoveries, and so it is not only the arcane and forgotten passages, and practices, that lie beneath London, but also his journey through them, that the reader is allowed to glimpse in UNDERGROUND LONDON.

Interspersed among the conversationally written pages are rare gems of exciting antiquity, that inspire the reader to delve deeper into the topics that are so colorfully introduced in the book. For the avid Anglophile, the text may be too remedial to be truly enjoyed; to the initiate, maybe a basic historical text should be read first, in order to fully enjoy the author’s many witty references, but for those with a foundation of English history, and a basic taste of modern British culture, the book can be a easily dipped into and enjoyed to readers taste, making it a very good bed-time read.

I bought this book, second hand, in a charming used bookstore near Queensgate, on my last visit to London. It was almost midnight, and the store was open. In the shop window the owner had arranged only books with a red (or predominantly red) book jacket. Frankly, the shop had me at “open”, but the display was too good to resist. The shopkeeper was friendly and exceptionally helpful. We had the place virtually to ourselves, and soon had assembled a tower of books at the register. I can easily say that I enjoyed buying the book much more than the text itself. I am planning to relocate to London this year, and I am currently doing research for another show based, not surprisingly, on some of the more mysterious parts of London.

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Loompanics - Free Speech, or Manuals for Crime?

2006-01-25T11:11:00.000-08:00

Since 1975, Mike Hoy and his publishing company, Loompanics, have published over 300 books with titles such as, "The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving", "Secrets of Metamphetamine Manufacture" and "Understanding U.S. Identity Documents". Now, it looks like Loompanics is going out of business. Via boingboing.net, I read that Mike is closing up shop after 30 years of business. He says that he is going out of business because of the poor economic climate and not from polictical pressure.

Some Loompanics titles have long been a problem for me. When they were publishing books about how to eat cheaply, how to drop out of society and political tracts on corporate fascism, I found them interesting. But when they published books that seem to be nothing more than how-to manuals for criminal activity ("Making Crime Pay" and "Techniques of Safe-Cracking", et.al.), I was very uneasy. I mean, Jesus, I don't want to sell these kind of books.

Until the Iliad Bookshop, I had never worked in a bookstore that carried a lot of Loompanics titles. We keep them in the "oddities" section, and for good reason. These books deal with controversial topics that stretch our constitutional right to free speech almost to the breaking point. Does a book on how to set up a metamphetamine lab really serve a purpose other than to help crooks make money hooking people into a lifetime of drug addiction? Does free speech cover this kind of expression? My good friend Skye and her husband, Skip, had us over for Hoppin John and biscuits on New Year's day, and Loompanics came up during our hours-long conversation. Skye and I both felt that while some Loompanics titles were questionable, the books were still covered by free speech. Lisa and Skip, on the other hand, were adamant that these books did not benefit our community in any way and that local law enforcement should be allowed to have a record of those who sold and purchased books like the metamphetamine one.
.
They made compelling arguments, but I still think that you sacrifice too much when you start policing certain books. It's the principle of free speech which is being tested in the case of the Loompanics catalogue. And sometimes you have to allow speech that is questionable in order to stay true to the broader freedom. If we start forcing certain types of speech/books to be curtailed, where does it stop? And I don't trust government to make free speech decisions for us either. Politics and money would rear it's ugly head and principles would go out the window. I wouldn't sell them in my own bookstore, but I don't think others should be prevented from selling them, or have other resptrictions placed on access to these books.

I think Lisa and Skip are probably pleased that Loompanics is packing it in. I'm not so sanguine. At least Mike Hoy's departure from the anarchists book scene is not due to the Patriot act, but the fact that people just aren't buying his books like they used to.

Wikipedia has a good backgrounder on Loompanics, if you are interested in learning more.

LA Times Book Review - a New Passion!

2006-01-23T11:18:00.000-08:00

Increasingly, the Sunday LA Times Book Review has become my favorite section of the paper. David L. Ulin was named the new editor of the review back in August and, boy howdy, is he doing a good job with the book review. Yesterday's review section was their best yet. From the opening review (by Chris Abani) of Jorge Franco's novel "Paradise Travel" to the superb, full page review (by William Deverell) of "Frank Norris: a Life" by Joseph R. McElrath Jr. and Jesse S. Crisler, there isn't a boring or marginal book in the whole section. The review is twelve pages in length, with very few ads to break the flow of reading, and the range of subjects and quality of writing is outstanding. My favorite review in this issue is the delicious vivisection of Bernard-Henry Levy's pompous "American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville" by Marianne Wiggins. One sentence in particular had me slapping my leg in delight;

Whereas peppering a magazine article with famous names makes for a quick and jazzy read, "American Vertigo" begins to sound less like "Democracy in America" or "On the Road" and more like "Celebrity in America" or "On the Make"

At a time when many major newspapers are eliminating or drastically reducing their book review sections, the LA Times seems to be bucking the trend. I remember being passionately attached to the NY Times book review back in the 80's; maybe I've finally found a new review to get excited about. Bravo, Mr. Ulin!

PS, Because of the Norris bio we've had a run on his book "McTeague" and are now out of stock. Fortunately, it's still in print.

The Mysterious Visitor at Poe's Grave

2006-01-20T09:17:00.000-08:00

I Missed noting the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe yesterday (January 19th, 1809). I'm always late for birthdays....

Mr. Poe is one of my favorite authors. I regularly re-read his stories (Hop-Frog being one of my favorites, along with William Wilson). I also love to read about his life and times. The Kenneth Silverman biography, "Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance" is about as good as it gets in literary biography. Very well written and yet highly detailed biography that covers the era he lived in as well as Poe's life. A superb portrait of a sad, but brilliant writer.

Interesting story of a mysterious figure (apparently called the "Poe Toaster") who appears at Poe's grave every Jan 19th to leave flowers and cognac. CNN has a good account. Apparently, this person has been leaving flowers since 1949! Amazing.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Poe..

Cuban Noir

2006-01-19T22:17:00.000-08:00

From Sarah Weinman's excellent Crime Fiction blog "Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind" comes a link to the Miami Herald's quick overview article on crime fiction being written in contemporary Cuba. I read the excellent "Outcast: A Novel" by Jose Latour last year (it's mentioned in the article) and loved it. The article, written by Enrique Fernandez, quotes from what seems to be a very interesting book-length study of Cuban and Mexican Crime fiction titled "Crimes Against the State, Crimes Against Persons" by Persephone Braham. Both authors point up the strong differences that exist between the Spanish "policiaco" and the American/British "police procedurals". There's another interesting overview of Cuban crime fiction at G.J. Demko's "Landscape of Crime". Both articles makes me hungry for the Leonardo Padura novels and more from Jose Latour.

PS, the Sarah Weinman blog is very, very good. It's the kind of book-related site that should be an example for everyone. She writes clearly and with passion. There is a large amount of interesting information posted and it's frequently updated. I came to her blog while researching my upcoming "novels into films" essay on George Higgins's "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" book and film. There is a fascinating post in Sept of '04 about her not liking Elmore Leonard (who modeled his early books on Higgins) and wondering if there are gender differences among crime fiction readers. Many excellent responses to her rather provocative post (and I'm envious). Here's a direct link to save you all the digging:

Link to Gender post at Sarah Windman's blog

On 341, Emily Dickinson

2006-01-17T21:33:00.000-08:00

341

After great pain, a formal feeling comes -
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round -
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought -
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone -

This is the Hour of Lead -
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow-
First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -

Emily Dickinson, 1862

Fei Chai Mao, Victor (1998 - 2006)

2006-01-16T19:48:00.000-08:00

Today, I had the sad task of euthanizing my cat, Victor. He suffered from a congenital defect that caused him to form large crystals in his bladder. He had several major operations during his 8 years of life and suffered a great deal from infections and urinary tract blockages. For the last few weeks he had developed a severe infection and had stopped eating. Our excellent doctor, Dr. Liz Koskenmaki at the Aloro Pet Clinic, concurred with us in deciding to end his life. Lisa, my partner and friend, went with me to have the doctor perform the procedure. Victor was in sad shape and could barely move when we put him in the carrier. We spent a good deal of time with him, reflecting on good memories we had; petting him and talking to him.

Eventually, we went into the examination room where Dr. Liz explained that she would be injecting him with an overdose of barbituates. We talked some about the history of his illnesses and speculated that his condition was probably congenital; brought about by in breeding at the pet store where we bought him. She took Vic away to insert an IV into his right front paw. She came back and set him on the counter where we touched him and petted him. I put my forehead to his forehead and held it there for a minute. Dr. Liz injected him first with a "flush" fluid (probably water) to make sure the passage was clear; she then injected him with the barbituates which was a strange pink color in the syringe. I asked her about it and she said it was to "make sure no one got the drug mixed up". I saw Vic try to pull his paw back a bit as the fluid rushed into his veins. He shuddered a bit (I could feel him through my hands) and then after a second or two, collapsed completely with his tongue sticking out of his mouth. The doctor put her hand over his side and said "he's gone". She told us that he might have some involuntary reactions after death, but that this was normal and did not indicate that he was aware or alive. She said we could stay with him as long as we would like and they would take care of his body (we had made arrangements for cremation).

We stayed with Victor's body for a few minutes; just saying goodbye and touching him. Twice he seemed to gasp for breath, but these were the involuntary reactions Dr. Liz had mentioned to us. Still, it was startling and both Lisa and I were overcome.. We gathered his carrier and while Lisa paid the bill, I went outside in cold, looked at the slowly darkening sky and held Vic's empty carrier in my arms. I felt very, very sad. We drove home in silence; holding hands and trying not to sob aloud. When we got home we went into the bedroom and started playing with our three other cats, Roxie, Sylvia and Buster. They were starting the process of accepting Vic's death and living with it.

Victor was a good friend. He liked to lie on his back in the middle of the floor and fall asleep. Everyone had to go around him because he was so big (18 lbs). He would follow me around the house and brush up against me with his big 'ole head so hard it would hurt sometimes. When I was at the computer too long, he would let me know by plonking down in front of the monitor. He loved to come in and lie next to me while I was reading in bed. I think those times were my favorites. Victor loved to eat. We called him "Fei Chai Mao", which is "Fat Cat" in Cantonese. All you had to do was crack the lid on the can of cat food and before the sound had stopped echoing, Victor would be at your feet meeowing for his dinner. He also had the delightful habit of throwing all of his weight on to your foot so you could scratch him with your toes. Lisa has put together a page of photos we've taken over the years. One photo in particular has to be the craziest photo of a cat I've ever seen. You'll know it when you see it. He was really something.

Goodbye, Fei Chai, I will miss you terribly.

Strange Calls to the Bookstore #1

2006-01-14T22:16:00.000-08:00

(Answering phone at the bookshop)

Iliad Bookshop!

(long pause) Is this the Iliad Bookshop?

Yes, this is the Iliad Bookshop.

Do you have rare books there?

Yes, we have rare books. What are you looking for?

What?

What book are you looking for? Do you know the title and author?

It's "Trader Vic's Bartending Guide"

(Looks in the Bartending section. Comes back to phone)

We don't have a copy of that book right now. I've seen it here before , but it's a hard one to find.

What?

It's a hard book to find.

But I thought you said you had rare books!

We do. But we don't have that one. Do you have access to the internet? You could try abebooks.com they...

Aw, I don't like that stuff.

Well, you'll just have to call around to different bookstores. You could call...

That's what I've been doing!

I don't know what to tell you. You'll just have to call some other stores to see if they have a copy. I can give you...

Naw, never mind. (Hangs up)

You're welcome.

Katharine Thalberg (1935-2006) A Passion for Books

2006-01-11T10:52:00.000-08:00

Katharine Thalberg died on Jan. 6 at the Aspen Valley Hospital from cancer. I worked for Katharine at Explore Booksellers in Aspen, CO. from 1988 to 1990. She had moved to Aspen in 1973 where she opened the bookstore in 1975. Katharine was an extremely intelligent and well-read person who kept her bookstore open despite financial difficulties. She had enough energy and passion for two people. It's hard to believe that she is dead.

I've been sitting here after reading the Los Angeles Times obituary of Katharine, remembering her and her bookstore. Explore was a new bookstore, but had a great stock of books. Much better than most independent bookstores. She had a great passion for literature and would always order any book you felt should be in the store. Even when the book might come from a small press or university publisher and the discount might only give her a very small (5%) profit. She still wanted the book in the store. She was a demanding person and could be difficult to work with at times. I think this was because she was so out-spoken with her opinions and such a perfectionist. She was possessed of superior intelligence (degrees from Vassar, Stanford and USC) and had a boundless enthusiasm for literature and social justice. She did not suffer fools gladly.

I worked for her during a difficult transition period when the bookstore (a beautiful, large Victioran House on Main St. in Aspen) was being re-modelled to add an upstairs Bistro. The construction was a difficult process (in part because she kept changing her design ideas) and during one long day after the store had closed, this tough lady broke down and embraced me because she was so distressed. I was touched that she would ask for my support. Of course, I helped her as much as I could. Now the Bookstore is thriving and the upstairs Bistro is, I believe, the only vegetarian restaurant in town (in addition to having a great selection of books). If you follow the link and read the Aspen Times obituary, you'll find more comments by her friends and people who worked for her.

My time at Explore was very unique. I remember a Christmas rush where I picked out all of John Denver's books for Christmas. I had a wonderful conversation with the author Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels) right after I had read her book (recommended by Katharine, by the way). I also remember a wild signing for Donald Trump when his best-selling book "The Art of the Deal" was hot. With bodies pressing against us on all sides, I got him to admit he had never read Plato's Republic and that he'd better get to reading it soon if he wanted to write about business and society. When I told Katharine about it she thought it was hilarious.

I only knew Katharine for a few years, but I respected and admired her. Coming from the family she did (yes, she is a child of THAT Thalberg), it is remarkable what she made of herself. I've often wondered why she never wrote an autobiography. Considering how articulate she was, it certainly would have been a fascinating book. She rarely spoke of her childhood, but I remember her speaking fondly of Chaplin and others. She was passionate about literature and very proud of her bookstore. I don't think I ever saw her without a book in her purse or under her arm. She will leave her community, family and many close friends grieving for their loss. Explore Booksellers will continue under the leadership of her husband, Bill Stirling. I can't think of a better monument to her life. Goodbye, Katharine...

Books Bound in Human Flesh

2006-01-09T15:33:00.000-08:00

The Associated Press (via Boston.com - sorry for the registration requirement) is reporting that several major libraries across the country have books bound in human flesh as part of their special collections. Most of the books are medical texts and are many hundreds of years old. One particualar mention caught my eye:

The Boston Athenaeum, a private library, has an 1837 copy of George Walton's memoirs bound in his own skin. Walton was a highwayman -- a robber who specialized in ambushing travelers -- and he left the volume to one of his victims, John Fenno. Fenno's daughter gave it to the library.

You can see a copy of this volume by going to Boston Anthenaeum website here. In addition to a long, in-depth article on the book and it's history, they provide the complete text of the book itself. I didn't realize so many libraries had books of this type. Apparently, they are accepted into the library collection if they are books that further legitimate scholarly research. It gives me the creeps, but I think it would be a fascinating experience to see the Walton book in person. Here's another interesting article via the Harvard Law School on these creepy "anthropedermic" bindings. Including a speculative history of the practice of using human skin to bind books. Apparently, it gained popular credence during the French Revolution where copies of "The Rights of Man" where bound in flesh. Probably one of history's more ironic moments. The article also covers the "lampshade myth" from the Jewish Holocaust of the Second World War. There is a short, but interesting bibliography at the end of the article.

2.13.61, or, Henry Rollins is a Stand-up Guy

2006-01-08T22:35:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I was researching book reviews and came across an interview with Henry Rollins at the excellent websiteThe Modern Word. In the interview he called Jack Kerouac "a pussy" and thought that "On the Road" wasn't the great classic that it was made out to be..."because it was so nothing like what I was enduring on the road". Well, I thought he was full of shit and was all set to let him have it here at booklad. Ah, but reality likes to reach out and smack you sometimes. Who shows up at the bookstore where I work the very next day? That's right, Henry Rollins. Before I could jump on him for the Kerouac crack, he's going "Wow! What a great bookstore!" Drove by here last night and saw the lights on in the store. We went around the block twice. What a great place!" and proceeded to charm and entertain the hell out of me for the next hour. All thoughts of Kerouac's pussyness went out the window. I'm here to say that Mr. Rollins is now one of my favorite people. He loves books. He had a copy of Fitzgerald's journals in his hand and was incredibly enthusiastic. But here, let me quote a bit from the interview at Modern Word...

How long have you been reading and writing?

Well I was raised primarily by my mom, and my mom’s place was always shelves, many shelves, groaning under the weight of many many books. And so she taught me to read before I was in school. And we would read aloud to one another. And that’s how she helped me with reading and as a kid I would read a lot from Dickens’ Great Expectations. In school I really didn’t dig math or science but I liked literature. I was one of those introspective skinny boys who read because I would get my ass kicked on any level playing field with athletics, so I read my mom’s Dylan Thomas and E.E. Cummings and I really enjoyed John Steinbeck – I read Grapes of Wrath when I was in 6th grade and completely dug it. So as a kid, I read voraciously as kids do. You know, you just tear through stuff. And I was very fond of Truman Capote, who I still really like. American literature, I read a lot of it, like Hemingway, so I’ve been a fan of books since I was a little kid."

Now, that's my kind of guy! He takes the money he makes and puts it into a publishing company, hence the 2.13.61 (the date of his birth) In addition to publishing his own excellent work, he's got Nick Cave, Tricia Warden , Joe Cole and others. I can't wait to listen to him reading from his classic "Get in the Van" which is his account of touring with the punk group Black Flag. I picked it up in the spoken word section of Amoeba Records over the holidays.

Henry walked out with a couple Fitzgerlad books and some Theodore Dreiser. We were all so happy to meet him. His enthusiasm and love of life is infectious.. I admire his frank, no-nonsense style. Thanks, Henry! I'll remember not to judge people so quickly next time (However, I still think you are full of shit about Kerouac ....)

Booklad is a work-in-process

2006-01-04T23:29:00.000-08:00

Booklad will be updated and revised over the coming weeks. I hope to add more pictures and selected links to sites and blogs of interest. I'm researching right now and finding a lot of interesting sites (Kate's Book Blog, BibliOdyssey, etc). I'll be adding more photos and possibly changing the format of the site as well.

I'm trying to see what kind of blog I can create that will provide unique and unusual book related news and commentary. One thing I don't see a lot of is commentary on what it's like in a large used bookstore (at least at this point in my research). Having worked in bookstores for decades, perhaps in addition to reviews and essays on books of interest, I'll cover some of the daily issues and ideas that come up in my days work.

Stay tuned.....

Ali Smith's "The Accidental" Wins Whitbread Award

2006-01-04T12:08:00.000-08:00

Scottish novelist Ali Smith has won the 2005 Whitbread Novel Award with her novel "The Accidental", it was announced yesterday. The Whitbread is a world-class literary award that goes to the best first novel, novel, poetry, biography and children's book from an author living in the UK or Ireland. The Whitbread has always been a great source for interesting and consistently good books (unlike many of the American award-winners). Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime by Mark Haddon won the Novel award in 2003 and was one of my favorite books of the last few years. Vernon God Little by D.B.C. Pierre ( a controversial winner) was another outstanding read. While Ali Smith's book will leap to the top of my "to read" list, I haven't read any of her books yet. Ms. Smith will be taking home a check for Fifty Thousand pounds sterling.

Ironically, the Whitbread prize will be looking for a new sponsor because the giant brewer Whitbread has stopped funding the award last year. I'd like to suggest that the prize committe consider other great brew makers of the world as sponsors. How about the "Dos Equis Award"? Or the "Blatz Prize"? My favorite would be the "Old Peculiar Award"

The other winners include:

First Novel: "The Harmony Silk Factory" by Tash Aw
Biography: "Matisse the Master" by Hilary Spurling
Children's: "The New Policeman" by Kate Thompson
Poetry: "Cold Calls" by Christopher Logue

NEA announces "The Big Read" Program

2006-01-03T23:10:00.000-08:00

Over at the National Endowment for the Arts, they are working overtime to squeeze out the 200k they need to organize giant reading groups around the country to read one of four American novels: "Their Eyes Were Watching God", "The Great Gatsby", "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Fahrenheit 451". I say "squeeze" sarcastically because it seems like a pittance compared to what they should be putting out for this project. I applaud the NEA for doing something to get people interested in books and reading, but they should have come up with three times that amount. Still, considering the political climate towards anything cultural in these United States, we should be grateful that there is any money at all.

The program looks to be the result of a study the NEA did last year called "Reading at Risk" in which, based on questions from the 2000 Census, they apparently found a steep decline in reading across a wide range of Americans. I've downloaded the free pdf file and am reading it now. Pick up one for yourself here.

Er...I have to admit I haven't read "Their Eyes Were Watching God" yet, but I hope to remedy that situation this year. Personally, I like the list of books the NEA are using. I would have thrown in a Mark Twain or a J.D. Salinger, but I suppose they don't want any controversy. Too bad, controversy gets the blood pumping and the brain thinking.

"When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest"
-William Hazlitt (1778-1830)

PS. At Grand Text Auto there's a lively critique of the NEA report. Check it out here.

Origins of Booklad

2006-01-01T14:23:00.000-08:00

Booklad began as a drawing that Nancy Holder gave to us at a book signing at one of my favorite bookstore, Dark Delicacies. It was a drawing that her daughter, Belle, made. My partner (Lisa Morton) and I both loved the drawing and put it on our kitchen bulletin-board where we would see it every day. You can see the drawing just to the left of this text. I've added a little to make the name clearer, but it's pretty close to the original. Although the image is fun, it's the word "booklad" that has stuck with me these last several months. When I was mulling over new projects for the coming year, booklad was there whispering in my ear to start a blog about books. After all, I am a booklad. Books are my life. Every day I talk about books, sell books, alphabetize books, order books, read books, discover new books and look for new books to read. Then when I get off of work, where do you think I go? To the bookstore, of course! A booklad's work is never done.

With this "Booklad" blog, I hope to bring you news from the front lines at the bookstore where I work (Iliad Bookshop), stories of books and book hunting, reviews of interesting books from my own personal library, essays on book aesthetics and book history, and comments on new and unusual books that come my way. I will also have profiles and interviews with writer friends and an ongoing picture essay on "What are you reading?" where I will snap pictures of people I find reading and ask them about themselves and their book. Finally, I hope to learn more about books through this blog. I've always been interested in the history of bookstores, printing and publishing, but I've never studied it carefully. I hope to read extensively in these areas and to bring you my discoveries and commentary. It should be an interesting journey!

And thanks for the great drawing, Belle!