cosmopolis

For sale -- sold

Testing out the used books market, I hauled to Myopic Books today the following treasures:

--Best American Travel Writing 2002, review copy

--Katharine Briggs, The Vanishing People: Fairy Lore and Legends (a nick or two)

--Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years, edited by Pamela Sargent (trade paper)

--Robert Coover, The Public Burning (a nick or two)

--O: The Intimate History of the Female Orgasm (dull)

--Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect

--F. Sionil Jose, The Samsons (trade paper)

--Juan Ramon Jimenez, Platero and I (Texas)

--William F. Nolan, ed., The Pseudo-People: Androids in Science Fiction (beautiful, but worth zip)

--Evan Connell, The White Lantern (more nicks)

--Matthew Klein, Con Ed (thriller)

--Michael Martone, ed., A Place of Sense: Essays in the Search of the Midwest (review copy)

--David Leeming, The Oxford Companion to World Mythology (Folio premium)

--Richard Fortey, Life (oversize illustrated book published and given as a premium by the Folio Society)

Later the same day:

They rejected four books: the Connell, the Jose, Women of Wonder and, weirdly, Life. I was offered $32 in cash or $34 in credit. Naturally I took the credit.

Avram Davidson, in memoriam

In our senescence, we revisit our youth. Found in a box my never-published first literary piece, on my hero Avram Davidson, nonpariel short story writer, devout Jew, total fuck-up. It was 1986, and I was trying to launch my career with a Rediscovery for Book World. My chosen venue was "Crimes and Chaos," a volume of nonfiction by Davidson published as a paperback original in 1962 and promptly forgotten, which is not to say anyone noticed it, ever. But the pieces -- about the Triangle fire, the sinking of the General Slocum, the adventures of Jack the Ripper -- were as good as Liebling or Joseph Mitchell. I made my case in the first half, then wrote about how Davidson had destroyed his career, and was now dying in a veterans' home in Washington state. "Too downbeat," my friend and Book World editor Michael Dirda responded. I rewrote it, shortened it, to no avail. The acting editor of Book World, Alice Digilio, had no interest in such a piece, and truthfully, why should she? Weep not for writers. I also note that I said in one of the drafts that I had spent $50 for Crimes and Chaos, the equivalent of perhaps $250 now. There are at least a dozen copies for sale online, most cheaper than what I paid. Alice Digilio became a Metro reporter, left the paper, and disappeared.

Top this, Jim O'Brien.

And then I read ...

A Place of Sense: Essay in Search of the Midwest, edited by Michael Martone (Iowa, 1988).

There's a review slip inside, which must mean I got the book free when published. After a decade or so, I trucked it from Washington to San Francisco, then to another location in San Francisco, then to a third location in San Francisco, then to the East Bay, then to Chicago. The carbon footprint on this sucker is immense. 

Last night, rearranging things, it popped up in a box. Now I live in the Midwest. Was it time to read these essays by Louise Erdrich, Michael Rosen, Michael Martone and four others? The book met its moment. Thirty minutes later, I was done. The most notable essay was David Hamilton's on his unnamed Iowa hometown during his youth in the 1960s. It covers the expected territory, broken down by geography (the teenage club, the school, his family farm) and subject (traffic, Easter, integration). On death: "Wrecked cars were our memento mori." Sloppiness, stupidity, suicide wishes? Unfortunately, he doesn't speculate. 

Other than that, I saw nothing memorable. I think I can finally let this book go. Someone else can carry it around for the next couple of decades.