Two Towers..and a partridge in a Pear Tree

Saw Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on Chrismas day, and since you will see it too there isn't much that needs to be said. Except what anyone familiar with the pseudo-medieval epic quest fantasy trilogy genre already knows: The middle volume of the trilogy is ALL middle. You may experience reversals and betrayals, signs and portents, oaths and battles, despair and renewed hope, but one thing you won't get is an ending. Closure. And since you already know the beginning, the nature of the quest having been revealed in part one, part two almost inevitably ends where it began. Every man, woman, and hobbit, if they have survived this far may be wearier and wiser, but they are still just on the way.

Of course since a quest is supposed to be about the journey, not the destination, maybe the middle is the true heart of the story and the need to wrap it up in part three anti-climactic. We'll see. Actually, I look forward to it.

Opening Day of the Season

With Friday my last day of work before Christmas I feel like now the season can really begin. The fact that I actually have all my shopping done makes it easier to get into the spirit, since I don't have to contend with the hordes of holiday shoppers.

This morning I had a simultaneous experiences that I hope will set the tone for the Holidays. I was sitting and watching what may be my favorite Chiristmas movie. No not It's a Wonderful Life. No not Jean Shepherd's A Christmas Story. I was watching (am watching actually since it is still on in the mext room) The Bishop's Wife with Cary Grant, David Niven and Loretta Young. Based on a book by an unfortunately forgotten, or at least neglected writer, Robert Nathan, who wrote a slew of these sort's of light fantasies back in the 30's, 40's and on up through the 70's. Probably his best known book is Portrait of Jennie (I own a very nice first edition in jacket), and also a wonderful movie, starring Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotton.

Anyway The Bishop's Wife (for those who don't know it check your local listing, since it should be in heavy rotation for the next week), of course features Cary Grant as an Angel sent to earth to assist a burned out Bishop (Niven), who is neglecting his beautiful wife (Young), and caught up in his administrative duties, particularly the fund raising for the building of a new Cathedral. I was watching the scene early in the film when the Bishop has promised to take his wife Christmas shopping, but a day of dreary meetings has caused him to cancel. Cary Grant by contrast arrives full of energy and enthusiasm not only for his duties as Bishop's assistant (the prospect of organizing the card file fills him with joy), but simply with joy in the people around him and the wonder being alive in the world.

It's a very infectious enthusiam, although the Bishop hasn't caught it yet, and sitting on the couch I look up to the window in the dining room where my black cat Jet is on her ledge looking out the window and it is snowing outside. Her tail is twitching with excitement (actually her tail is almost always twitching) and she is watching the snow with a coiled intensity. Her head whipping back and forth watching individual snowflakes as they streak past the window. I watch her for a long while as she sits and just watches it snow, soon I look past her and I am also just watching it snow. I let my mind empty and the try to become as catlike as I can (far from empty headed however) and my cat and I sit together and watch the miracle of snow as it happens for our own amusment.

This I think (losing my catlike state of mind) is the way I want to be this Christmas. Like a cat. Like an Angel just come to earth. Open and full of wonder. Looking at everything with fresh eyes as if I'm seing it for the first time. Not just the snow, but also the people, especially the ones I have seen many times before. Reaching out to them with an open mind and a heart full of wonder. It's worth a try.

Then I come over to the computer to type this, and while I am typing Jet jumps up on the diningroom table behind me and knocks down the big plastic tub of bunny pellets onto the floor where the rabbit is now feasting on her pellets, which I suppose I should go pick up before she eats herself sick.

Mencken Speaks

As a sort of follow up to yesterday's rant I wanted to mention a piece that I heard this morning on NPR about H. L. Mencken. I think Mencken's skepticism may just the antidote to the lack of critical thinking and inattention to languge thet seems rampant today.

Check out the story on Mencken in real audio . The NPR piece begins by saying "For people who are often convinced they are surrounded by idiots H.L. Mencken is just the ticket." And who isn't convinced of that. I think it gives you a quick overview of Mencken warts and all. I liked the excerpts from the only existing recording of Mencken and one of the things he said showed him at his most grumpy:

"The volume of mail that comes in to a mazgazine, newspaper or radio station is no index of anything except that you happen to attract a lot of idiots because most people who that write letters to the newspaper are fools."

That observation may help explain why so much talk radio is right wing. Nowadays who writes letters? Easier just to pick up the phone.

Mencken is grumpy, bitter, funny, frank, and inciteful and no idealogue so he should irritate and enlighten all points of view in equal measure.

What’s the Mood Like There On the Ground?

I don’t want to go political on you but there are some current trends that I find irritating if not out and out disturbing. I don’t know if the media is Liberal or Conservative (when I listen to Rush’s uninterrupted daily 3 hour rant though I tend to think it might lean a little to the right since I can’t think of a Liberal voice with a similar platform), but I know one thing that crosses party and ideological lines and bugs the hell out of me, and that is the lock step fashion in which the media adopt the buzz words and jargon of the organizations and agencies they cover.

Why the hell do all reporters, anchors, and talking head pundits feel it necessary to clarify that inspectors, or troops or law enforcement, or whoever the subject of a story in a particular location happen to be are there “on the ground”. Inspectors aren’t just “in Iraq” they are inevitably “on the ground in Iraq”. Why? Was it possible we thought they were “in the water,” or “underground,” or “hovering just above sea level” in Iraq? No, of course not. If they are “in Iraq” then they are de facto “on the ground in Iraq”. If they are “in the air” in a plane en route too Iraq then they aren’t in Iraq. They are “on the way” not “on the ground”. Until they are on the ground no normal person would say they had arrived in Iraq. So why the knee-jerk use of the phrase?

Remember last summer before the mass distraction of potential war had drawn our attention from corporate corruption, and the Bush Administration was making a few show arrests of corporate CEO’s and the key photo op was the “perp walk”, when the evil white male captain of commerce was led off in handcuffs so that the media could indulge in their accustomed frenzy. I must have heard that phrase “perp walk” several hundred times in the space of a few weeks. I remember one talking head cable news show where the various pundits were throwing the phrase “perp walk” around like a bunch of 4th grade boys who had just learned a new cuss word. Remember “hanging-chads”? How quickly jargon becomes overkill.

Or think about sportscasters. Every season (especially football) sports announcers seems to latch onto some new piece of coaching jargon and use it like they were collecting royalties on it. I remember a time when no one talking sports said, “hang time” or “fully-extended”, when we didn’t “take it to the next level”, when the “Jim Thomes and the Omar Vizquels” were singular not plural, and the “point of attack” was just the line of scrimmage.

So why does any of this matter? Because language matters. Language is thought and language controls thought. Think Benjamin Whorf. Think Orwell.

Now I realize that in the case of sports coverage it is probably a good thing that fans feel more immersed in the action when the announcers give them a little of the technicalities that coaches and players use to talk about the game. As long as it doesn’t become too off-putting to the casual fan or neophyte. And as long as sportscasters don’t start talking so much like the players that they sign off by saying “A lot of people didn’t think we could make this broadcast. We proved the naysayers wrong. I’d like to thank my Lord and savior Jesus Christ and give a shout out to my homeys. Hi Mom.”

But if crime reporters start to talk and think too much like cops, or if war correspondents are seduced by the Tom Clancyesque military-techno babble of the generals, then I think it becomes increasingly difficult for them to stay objective and (I hate to say it) to think outside the box.

And “on the ground” sounds to me like the sort of overly precise redundancy that you hear at military briefings. And so reporters like the sound of it. It sounds a little macho, a little sexy, a little bit “inside baseball”, and the next thing you know they’ll be talking about how many shoppers were “on the ground” at the Mall the day after Thanksgiving, and how the mood was “irrationally exuberant”.

But “Really,” I hear you say “so what. Isn’t this just a matter of style and not substance?” I’ll admit that it is the style that I mostly find irritating, but I’ll give you an example of where the terminology has driven the debate, or at least given a “course correction” in favor of the administration.

“Weapons of Mass Destruction” is the operative phrase, put into play by the administration to describe the potential threat from Saddam Hussein. He has them, or at least he can get them, and he has shown that he will use them. After all he gassed his own people (back when he was our pal with gas we helped provide, but that’s beside my point). Weapons of Mass Destruction is a phrase that has a focus group tested feel to it that seems calculated to strike fear and conjure up visions of the World Trade Center crumbling and smoldering. And Hussein has these weapons, and he has used them. But hold on there Mr. President. What is a “weapon of mass destruction.”? I think we can agree that “mass destruction” is buildings falling, fires raging, smoke rising, people dying. You know “The Big One!" Nuclear Weapons, or maybe box cutters. Is that what Hussein has? Is that what he has used in the past? Is that what Gas, or Chemical, or Biological weapons or Neutron Bombs for that matter do? No. They kill people, but they don’t destroy stuff. They are strictly speaking “weapons of mass death.”

Now, I’m not here to defend weapons of mass death. Let me go on record as saying death is bad destruction is bad and weapons are bad. But if we are having a debate about engaging in a war of mass death and destruction let’s try to keep it as rational and precise and truthful as possible and let’s choose our language carefully.

I, of course, believe the Bush Administration chose very carefully for maximum effect. Why do you think these wars all have names like cheesy action movie? Desert Storm. Infinite Justice. Enduring Freedom. Because as corny as it all sounds in our media savvy post-ironic culture it apparently works. Part of the effect of the repetition of the phrase "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in connection with Iraq is that by implication and connotation we tie Iraq to the "destruction" and conjure up visions of teh World Trade Center without actually stating it, and thus making the connection really hard to refute. We certainly haven't seen or heard any proof of a connection. It is tricky bringing these sorts of unstated assumptions and connotative language to the forefront. This isn't normally the stuff of political debate. It is the stuff of literary criticism and English class. I suppose it would be hard to engage in a decontruction of the imagery and diction of a poltitical speech on a Cable News show. But, hey, isn't language supposed to be the stock in trade of the talking head pundit and print media sweat shops?

So, what does the liberal media do with this loaded language? They pick it up and run with it. They swallow it hook, line, and sinker and regurgitate it with regularity. They beat it to death with a little stick. It sounds scary. It sells papers and keeps people glued to Cable TV News watching “Countdown to War” or “Showdown in Iraq” or whatever.

I’m no policy wonk. I don’t have the answers for World Peace or the Middle East Crisis or World Hunger. I can barely formulate the questions. I will admit that the distinction I make is subtle and hardly earth-shaking, but the language of “mass destruction” has gotten inside people’s heads, and I think it is stirring passions that would be better shaken not stirred. Shaken by the enormity of the possibility of war and not stirred by the inflammatory language used to incite it.

My example may betray my liberal bias (No, really, do you think so?), but my point is not to criticize the Bush Administration. They have their agenda, and I guess it is their responsibility to pursue it. After all we elected them (sort of...Oh!...It still Hurts). I'm sure the Limbaugh loving conservatives out there could point out numerous example of loaded lefty rhetoric. My point is that language is the tool of the news media, whether TV anchor or a print reporter. Shouldn't we expect a little more care in their choice of tools than we would from the average Joe. If a plumber comes to your house to fix your sink and instead of using his own specialized tools he took your sink apart with a butter knife you had lying on the kitchen counter you might start to worry. If I fix my exhaust system with a coke can, black electrical tape and a wire coat hangar that may get the job done temporarily, but I want Midas to use real pipes and hangers and weld the damn thing. So, should the chattering classes just pick up any old phrase that the newsmakers leave lying around for them, or should we expect more sophistication about their choice of language? Jargon might sound wonky, sexy, and cool, and using it might make you sound like a press secretary, or a tank commander, or whatever, but if you are a reporter maybe you shouldn't sound and speak just like the people you are reporting on.

Interlibrary Loan Rocks the House!

Rrecently I have been taking advantage of our ILL service at work to read some pretty obscure, expensive, hard-to-find items . Things that would have cost $100s and in some cases $1000s of dollars to buy on the antiquarian market are mine for the asking through interlibrary loan. The only difficulty is parting with the books when it is time to send them back from whence they came. So far I have had no luck corrupting our ILL librarian, but I think my latest request may have her seeing the light.

I wanted to read David Goodis's first novel from 1939 Retreat from Oblivion, but the approximately $2000 price tag for a Very Good copy has always seemed a bit more than I could justify (at least to my wife). And I couldn't afford it anyway. I did offer one Book dealer $100 if he would let me read his copy, but I think he thought I was kidding, or that I might spill coffee on it. So I thought what the heck I'll try and get the book through ILL. Well today we got back an acknowledgement from a large university library saying that they would send it out for a $15 fee. Well hell yeah! Send it on out. I wonder how much they would charge if I happened to "lose" it, or "drop it in the tub"? I told the ILL person what it would cost to buy a copy, and I think I finally saw a glint of larceny in her eyes. I couldn't get her to crack on the copy of E.H. Visiak's horror novel from 1929 Medusa, but that one was only worth about $300-400. I certainly couldn't get her to cave on the copy of One Man's Muddle by E. Baker Quinn a forgotten (unjustly in my opinion, now that I have read it and you haven't) British hard-boiled mystery from the late 30's. (By the way that E. stands for Eleanor. Add her to the list of great Lady Noir writers) That one is only about a $150 book, but both it and Medusa seem to come up for sale very infrequently. Ditto for a 1900 collection of spy stories set in French diplomatic circles called A Diplomatic Woman by Huan Mee. I have never found a copy for sale, so I actually have no idea how much it would sell for, but I read an ILL copy from a women's college library in Texas, and since that one is way in the public domain I felt no compunction xeroxing the whole book as well. If I can ever get my free scanner to work I'll put it into e-book format and pass it along to Project Gutenberg because that's the kind of guy I am. It's all about paying it forward, and since I don't really have any talent except for ferreting out oddball old books by any means necessary, it's the least I can do. No, really, it is the very least.

Of course I am ready to dash off a check for the loan of the David Goodis book which for all I know may be really bad, since most Goodis books came back into print starting in the 80's during the Noir fiction boomlet at Black Lizard/Creative Arts, but this, his first, remains unreprinted. I don't even know if it ever had a paperback edition. Most other Goodis books did at some point. In fact most David Goodis books were paperback originals, and never saw hardcover. So great books (or at least great titles) like The Moon in the Gutter, The Blond on the Street Corner, The Wounded and the Slain, and Fire in the Flesh languished in obscurity. I find it impossible to believe that there are not other equally great books, and authors languishing out in the flea markets, garage sales, paperback exchanges, and thrift stores awaiting rediscovery (or in most cases just plain old discovery, since they went undiscovered the first go-round and sank from site without a ripple). So, I am out there spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of pulp. Sometimes experiencing the thrill of discovery, and sometimes the agony of cheap reads. But always searching for the human drama of, well, human drama. You know. The good stuff.

A Day in the Life

What does a bibliomaniac do with his free saturday you might ask. Well here is a glimpse inside the dull and wretched life of the final stage bookoholic.

Woke up got out of bed. Dragged my sorry ass downstairs, and had a bowl of Honey Nut Shredded Wheat with chocolate soy milk. While my wife got ready to go to her Pilates class at 10AM, I prepared for a day of solo booking in the heartland. That preparation mostly consisted of gathering up some stuff that I thought I might be able to trade for credit and thus avoid spending any cash.

I headed to Alliance and E & C Books where I had a few items to swap for credit, and if I am lucky maybe a little cash deposited direct to my PayPal account where it is striclty off the books as far as any joint community property is concerned. Scott and Joe, the friendly proprietors, were both there when I arrived, and some lady who has an antique shop down the street was just bringing them some coffee of which there was an extra that they gave me. Antiquarian bookstores are like that. You don't go into Borders and have them hand you a big coffee because you just happened to show up.

Much of the bookbuying process involves bullshitting and swapping booking stories and E & C is no exception. The fact is that I have spent enough time browsing in there that I could probably draw you a diagram and fill in about 75% of the titles in stock. At least the ones I am interested in. So the first thing I usually ask is "any thing new or interesting? " Of course Scott and Joe know what I like and so will edit out the stuff that I wouldn't be interested in and give me a run down of their latest acquisitons both new and used. I then begin a mental calculation readjusting my mental want list of what I know they had from before and integrating the new stuff and coming up with a sort of preliminary list of the most urgently needed items all the while carrying on a breezy conversational tour of books, authors, publisher, bookselling and bookcollecting acquantainces, conventions, and maybe even a brief stop in "how's-your-wife-and-kids town". I found out that a Youngstown bookstore is soon closing. Twice-Loved Books has been around for about 20 years, but Scott tells me they are currently having a 40% off going-out-of-business sale. It was all I could do at that point to keep from dropping everything, beating feet out of the store and burning rubber all the way to Youngstown. I think I still have unused credit there. It's pretty sad really. A good store (two big houses side by side both full of books), and nice people.

Eventually I have circled the shop several times all the while talking and listening and building a little pile on the counter of the things that I would probably violate several Commandments to acquire, but will try and act casual about, so as not to drive the price up with my overeagerness. (actually E & C is very reputable and prices are reasonable and reasonably firm). Some bookdealers will have items unpriced on the shelves, and this is the bane of the book collectors exixtence (one of the banes anyway). A simple grasp of the laws of supply and demand tells you that if you ask about the price, then the fact that you are asking has just driven up the demand while of course the supply is usually just the 1 copy you are holding. Luckily if you put it back and come back another time you are likely to get a different price, and if the owner is not there and his mother or girlfriend is watching the store you may get a really good price. "This old paperback? Who is David Goodis? I never heard of him. Well, it looks like the price is twenty-five cents. How about half?" Of course you also run the risk of having him recall that someone asked about that same book before, but not remembering that it was you, and so concluding that it must be a really hot item thus driving the price up even higher.

I ended up leaving a box of stuff for Scott to research (including a pretty nice first in jacket of What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, so call him if you are interested), and he'll give me a combination trade credit/cash offer, but they know me well enough that I took a couple items with me and they will charge them against any credit I get. I had some credit from before and had asked them to hold a copy of a book for me that they had sold out and restocked: Ray Bradbury: An Illustrated Life. That wiped out my credit from previously and I picked-up 5 more things 4 new and 1 used.

Total E & C Haul

Ray Bradbury: An Illustrated Life by Tom Heist
The Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers by Lee Server
Vols. #4, #6, and #7 (I alredy have 1,2, 3,& 5) of Dark Horses reprint of the Japanese manga Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka
and Brass Knuckles by Frank Gruber a hardcover reprint from the 70's of the Oliver Quade Human Encyclopedia pulp mystery stories mainly from Black Mask Magazine of the 30's.

I had been circling the Gruber book for about a year, and had fallen behind on the Astro Boy, I had them holding the Bradbury for me, so the real find was the Pulp Writer reference book, just out from Facts on File, and that was so much up my alley that it was a complete no-brainer. They had me at "Hello" on that one. Lee Server has done several other books on pulp fiction that I refer to quite often.

This might seem like a modest haul for two hours plus browsing and bullshitting, but remember I have to get back in the house with this stuff and Christmas is coming so I can't treat myself too much.

Where to next?

The next stop was actually Rodman Public Library in Alliance because I had determined via their web-catalog that they owned a copy of the reference book 1001 Midnights by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller. My library doesn't own this and I would very much like to buy a copy, but even though the thing was published in 1985 for $39.95, it is out of print and copies start around $120 dollars. So until I can find it I apparently need to drive 45 minutes just to look at it, since Rodman's copy is reference only and does not circulate. But I found what I wanted in there and made some photocopies.

I was soon on my way to Ravenna with a quick stop at the Burger Hut in Alliance where I usually get lunch. The weird thing about the Burger Hut is that in addition to French Fries and Onion Rings as a side they also have Sauerkraut Balls, so I just get two orders of those and I'm on my way. I don't even know what's in them beside Sauerkraut, and something tells me I don't want to know, so don't e-mail me with the ingredients. (Perhaps they will be included in the book I am planning called The Oblivious Vegetarian that will give you all the things you can eat that don't seem like they would have meat in them, but really do, so that you can plead ingnorance to your aggressively vegan friends.)

Next stop The Book Corner in Ravenna Ohio. A paperback exchange, and a pretty good one because he is not overburdened with arcane rules and regulations and minimum prices for popular genres. If something has a $.40 cover price then you pay $.20. No hassle, no bullshit. Of couse a $15.00 trade PB costs $7.50, but them's the breaks. And of course your $.50 paperback would only get you $.12 1/2 trade-in credit, but who would be dumb enough to trade that in anyway. Well someone, I hope, because his older stuff is getting pretty well mined out. Once, about 12-15 years ago, I found a VG+ copy of Charles Willeford's original Belmont paperbackThe Machine in Ward Eleven in there, now a $40-50 book, but I'm afraid those days are over. So, I am forced to make up for the drop in quality by an increase in quantity. Well "forced" might not be quite the right word. "Driven"? "Compelled"? "Psychotically Obsessive-Compulsive"? I still can't seem to shake the feeling that there has got to be some gem buried in the crap.

Paperback Exchanges have been losing favor with me as hunting grounds for vintage paperback, and I am certainly not unique in this feeling. I would blame the internet for hipping everyone to the "collectible" paperback, if the trend hadn't been in full swing by the late 80's thanks to various Price Guides, most of them wildly optimistic toward the sellers point-of-view, and to the fact that most Used Paperback store owners have NO clue of the concept of later printings or grading condition. If the price guide says $125 for a mint copy of the first printing of The Brass Cupcake then good luck trying to explain to the romance reading Christian lady with the big hair and scary mole that the cat-piss stained copy with the $.60 cover price is not even worth $1.25.

But luckily the guy at the Book Corner is not one of the clueless inhabitants of romance-land. He has attended and organized SF Conventions and mostly sits hunkered over his computer while you shop, but he is a nice guy, and just takes the trade-ins that he can use and hands back the ones he can't instead of trying to devise and post a Talmudic Tablet of rules and regulations about what he will and won't take. Hey, it's his store he doesn't have to take anything he doesn't want, and I don't need a sign saying "No Garage Sale Books, No Ex-Library Books, No Harlequin Romaces under a $1.00, No Cat-Piss stains, etc. etc." One, now defunct, store in Warren had a list of 14 rules painted on a sign above the cash register, and a variety of corallaries and amendments tacked up around it. A simple "can't use it" would have been sufficient. At least for me. Maybe people thought the store was obligated to take any old crap they dragged in there. Now that I think of it that probably is why they had to post all that stuff. Working with the Public sucks!

So what was the best thing I found in Ravenna. Were my hour-plus efforts ferreting and rooting rewarded, or would I have been better off going back to the Easter Seals sale here in town this weekend to rummage through the 4/$1.00 paperbacks that I rummaged through yesterday? And which were mostly the ones I rummaged at the last sale in September?

Let's see here...No that's Junk...just crap...what was I thinking!!?..Oh, wait, here is something interesting: a Leisure Books "Mens' Adventure" series title from 1974 called Ryker #3: The Terrorists. It looks just like any of the other Executioner knock-offs that flooded the racks in the 60's & 70's, only this one was written by Nelson DeMille. Now a best-selling author he obviously needed to pay the rent back in the day by cranking out paperback original pulp fiction for the surrogate penis set. "The Terrorists splashed the streets with innocent blood. It was Ryker's job to seek and destroy them - one by one," says the front cover blurb and the back cover adds the surprising fact that "Ryker is not just an ordinary cop." Really? You mean he isn't one of those ordinary street-smart, rule-breaking, authority-flaunting, shoot-first-ask-later, Dirty Harry clones that populate titles like The Executioner, The Butcher, Death Merchant, & The Destroyer, (actually the Destroyer is a diamond in the rough of "Men's Action")? Well, then, maybe he is an out-of-the-ordinary, non-violent, civilly-disobedient, just-reason-with-the-perp-and-appeal-to-his-innate-humanity-and-wounded-inner-child sort of cop. Oh, wait, no, look here it says he will "use any means-leagal or illegal-to rid the streets of degenerate criminal scum". Well I'll check it out it anyway. Who knows maybe DeMille will use any means necessary to rid the racks of the usual degenerate hack-writing scum.

What else do I have here. Well I did find a couple of Gold Medals unfortunately they are the Sam Durrell Assignment series by Edward S. Aarons: the black jelly beans of the Gold Medal paperbacks. Always the last ones left after all the tasty ones are taken.
I I have four here. Assignment - Lowlands from 1961 is a first printing with the familiar yellow spine and the Gold Medal logo at the base. The others are all later printing from the mid 60's Assigment - Treason; Assignment - Sorrento Siren;, and Assignment - School for Spies.

Probably the most embarrassingly Freudian of all the "Men's" series is (or hopefully was), The Penetrator by Lionel Derrick. I wouldn't normally indulge such an obvious and politically incorrect vice but what the hey, I found #1 The Penetrator: The Target is H so how could I resist, especially with the big phallic gun thrusting from the front cover. The book introduces Mark Hardin (more easy pickings for the double entendre hunters among you) The Penetrator who is "at war against the L.A. Heroin trade" and who is surprisingly enough "bound by no rules but his own".

Leaving the realm of male power fantasy I did manage to pick up some not so guilty pleasures. Two Brit Noir titles Blood Rights by Mike Phillips and Rift by Liza Cody. Both in nice shape. Neither is a PB original, but both are by solid writers, and both titles are currently OOP. So I was glad to pick them up.

Anything else I'm not too embarassed to mention here? I did pick up trade PB editions of The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki and Advertisements for Myself by Mailer. Both tight and bright, the Mailer was only $1.95, and in surprisingly good shape. Both nice reading copies. Tanizaki satisfies my current yen for Japanese fiction (no pun intended, but I'll take it) and the Mailer contains some classic essays, including "The White Negro", an early look at the Beat sensibility.

Also picked up an ARC of Break and Enter by Colin Harrison. This is his debut novel, and he has since gone on to bestsellerdom with Manhattan Nocturne and Afterburn among others. Haven't researched it yet, but maybe I can trade it at E&C on my next booking excusion.

So I dragged home 23 paperbacks from Ravenna. I had some trade-in credit to defray the cost, so I got out for around $20.

And then home, where I found my wife snuggled in her chair, wrapped in her pink afghan, cat in her lap having just finished reading "Green Requiem" which I told her she would like, and she did. I had to wonder if I had really spent my day in a fashion to maximize my booking pleasure. Browsing time 3 hours+, driving time about 2 hours, reading time 0. Something seems wrong with this equation, but I can't see quite what it is.

I think I'm going to watch some TV and unwind.

Bloody Hell!

Despite my protestations to the contrary I apparently haven't posted anything for a month. I know I promised regularity, punctuality, and prolificity, but (as usual) I was full of crap.

So what have I been doing? Well I went to see me mum over Thanksgiving, she is very well thank you, and my youngest brother had a suprise 40th birthday party thrown by his wife. Don't you think there is something just a little bit cruel and sadistic and smaking of veiled agression about a surprise birthday party? Especially when the object is to lure the victim in, and then mercilessly roast them for being old and weird, while pointing out all their flaws and idiosyncracies. Well this was the spirit in which we celebrated my youngest brother's 40th, and count me among the cruelly sadistic aggressors because it was a hell of a good time. His wife made a sort of "This is Your Life" video, and also sang him a torch song she had written about his fishing obsession to the tune of "Bad to the Bone". My other brother gave him a variety of humiliating gag gifts like a years supply of condoms (3), and to skewer his reliance on some over the counter weight loss formula called Stacker 2 he relabelled a container of Whoppers chocolate malt balls "Slacker 2".

For my part I had not planned to do anything in advance, but when his wife asked me to say the grace and make a toast, I came up with something the jist of which was that since whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger we older brothers had done our best to make him as strong as possible, and should take the credit for any success he has had since for not killing him when he was an annoying pain in the ass as a little brother.

Hey, I said it had to be spur of the moment. Were you expecting Georgie Jessel?

I also mentioned his obsession with how our pillows smelled when we were teenagers. I'm not sure why he was trying to bug us by saying our pillow smelled, but It worked and we had to pound him quite often. Now of course he could easily kick my ass, but luckily has abandoned pillow sniffing.

I have been reading some and buying lots, but with no real pattern. I went on a mini kick with Japanese Science Fictio, of which there is surprisingly little in English. I interlibrary loaned three small books one by Shinichi Hoshi who had the first Japanese SF story translated into English and published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction back in like 1963. That story was titled "Bokko-Chan" and it was one of about 30 mostly short-shorts on the collection The Spiteful Planet and Other Stories . They were mostly shorts with twist endings in a Twilight Zone mode, and for the most part pretty clever and original. The other two books were both by Moroto Asai and were really novellas published by The Kodansha English Library in a smaller that standard paperback format intended for Japanese students studying English. "A Trip to the the Stars" was a fairly standard Ruritanian space adventure/mystery about a young girl who wants to leave Earth for adventures in space and does so disguised as her brother with his stolen passport. She immediately gets in the middle of some off-planet political intrigue and by pluck and grit saves the day. The other, much more interesting and ambitious story was called "Green Requiem", was a love story involving a Japanese grad student and an alien girl who is really more plant-like than human, but has been altered to blend into human society although at first she is unaware own history and the dangerous power she posesses. I found it very touching. But, of course, I am a sentimental softy.


One last thought about my brother's party. When your youngest brother turns 40 it can make you reflect on the fleeting years and your own encroaching age, decrepitude, and senescence. Well after a fleeting glimpse of my own impending ending, I realized I don't really feel it. I mean being there with my brothers and sisters, mother and cousins I felt much closer to the kid I was, and very far away from any grown-up old codger I am probably on the way to becoming. I don't mean that I am any kind of eternally youthful Dorian Gray, but only that I usually feel very close to my inner child. My selfish, impulsive, curious, distractable, cheeky, mischevious, annoying, sweet, innocent, inner child, who at any moment might throw himself on the floor and have one of those screaming, twisting, arched-back fits of temper that would get him dragged out of W.T Grants by the ear or who might spend a whole afternoon day-dreaming in his room with nothing but a book and the whole wide world and heaven and angels to contemplate. Anyway, chronology certainly doesn't equal anything when it comes to how old you are. I'll gladly give up the years gone by if I can keep the wonder and joy for the years to come.


Anyway, Happy Birthday Chris. You surprised the hell out of us and turned out to be a real man.