cosmopolis

They still think like this

Jeremy Lewis, after being hired by a Scottish politician to "edit" a book:

"Although he was an experienced and combative journalist, Tam seemed to think -- like many others before and since -- that books and compost heaps have much in common, and that his random thoughts on House of Commons notepaper, together with the odd anti-devolutionary article wrenched from the Guardian or the New Statesman, would, if pressed together, somehow mulch down into a finished book by a mysterious process of fermentation; I found it hard to share his optimism, and as the disparate sheets of paper mounted up around me I began to feel symptoms of incipient hysteria."

For sale -- sold (6)

to Myopic:
Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain
James Farrell, Chicago Stories (Illinois paperback)
Thomas Beller, Seduction Theory (review)
Richard Critchfield, Trees, Why Do You Wait? America's Changing Rural Culture (review)
Charles Jones, The Gifting Birds (Dream Garden)
Silvana Paternostro, In the Land of God and Man: Confronting Our Sexual Culture (review)
Cocteau on the Film (Dover)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway's Party (Harvest)
Edith Wharton, Omnibus (Scribners)
Ihara Saikaku, The Life of an Amorous Woman (New Directions)
Claudio Magris, Danube (paper)
Alice's Adventures Under Ground (facsimile)
Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice (hardcover reprint)
Abroad in America: Visitors to the New Nation
Andrew Sinclair: Dylan Thomas, No Man More Magical

Result: Only the Boyle and the Amorous Woman failed to make te grade. Total take: $32.50.

Norman Lewis, our hero

from William Dalrymple in the Guardian:

One typical adventure of the nonagenarian Lewis took place on a trip to Kos. On reading a story in the local paper about a police investigation into rumours that "women on the small island of Anirini were disposing of unwanted husbands by throwing them down dry wells", he merrily set off on a boat with three sponge fishermen and a prostitute they had picked up on the Piraeus waterfront ("they spent the crossing sleeping, eating and making love - the last on a strict rota") in search of this barren island populated by homicidal widows. Before long Lewis, then aged 92, had hopped ashore, rented a room from one of the chief suspects, and was soon cheerfully peering down well-heads in search of rotting cadavers.

For sale -- sold (5)

to Myopic: Doris Lessing, Allfred and Emily (slightly defective) John A. Williams, Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light. Inscribed, but with a bookplate and a worn jacket Max Apple, Oranging of America (UK paperback) Brendan Behan, Confessions of an Irish Rebel (UK) Isabel Colegate, A Pelican in the Wilderness (review) Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel (I got another as a gift) Jay Winik, April 1865 The New Gilded Age (New Yorker Anthology) Patricia Hampl, Virgin Time (review) J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood (second printing) Ajana Appachana, Listening Now (Indian novel) Raymond Sokolov, Why We Eat What We Eat Literary Journalists (pb anthology, review copy) Cynthia Ozick, Dictation (second printing) Alexander Trocchi, Cain's Book (Grove, new edition) Insider's French (bet they reject this) rejected were not the Insider's French, but the Sokolov, Winik, Lessing (surprisingly), the Literary Journalists, Virgin Time, the Behan and Colegate. Net takings: $21.