Normally I avoid the books the missus is working on at her desk, not because I'm not interested but because I don't speak Yiddish or Hebrew so I've no idea what they're about. But in the middle of a daring pencil stealing raid on her stuff this morning I noticed a book she was reading called From Krakow to Krypton by Arie Kaplan which is "a history of Jews and comic books." It had lots of pictures and illustrations and was written in a breezy style. This is about my level, I thought, opening up a packet of Hob Nobs and subsequently wasting my entire "writing day" reading it from cover to cover. The book starts well with a forward by the great Harvey Pekar and it continues well, explaining not just the well known Jewish origins of Superman and Batman but also looking at the original funnies, The Spirit, The Shadow, Mad Magazine and of course Marvel Comics' resident creative genius Stan Lee who gave us Spiderman, The Hulk, Silver Surfer, X Men et. al. The book also examines more serious comics, looking at the work of - the bard of Cleveland - Harvey Pekar himself, as well Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman and bringing us all the way up to Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon. This could be the perfect Bar Mitzvah gift for a 13 year old geek or a 40 year old shut in like myself. On his website Arie Kaplan tells us that he works for Mad Magazine (lucky bastard) and he gives us his home phone number, cell phone number and email address, so if you want to talk to someone who has talked to Stan Lee, this is your chance (but at least read the guy's book first).
Friday, November 28, 2008
From Krakow to Krypton
Normally I avoid the books the missus is working on at her desk, not because I'm not interested but because I don't speak Yiddish or Hebrew so I've no idea what they're about. But in the middle of a daring pencil stealing raid on her stuff this morning I noticed a book she was reading called From Krakow to Krypton by Arie Kaplan which is "a history of Jews and comic books." It had lots of pictures and illustrations and was written in a breezy style. This is about my level, I thought, opening up a packet of Hob Nobs and subsequently wasting my entire "writing day" reading it from cover to cover. The book starts well with a forward by the great Harvey Pekar and it continues well, explaining not just the well known Jewish origins of Superman and Batman but also looking at the original funnies, The Spirit, The Shadow, Mad Magazine and of course Marvel Comics' resident creative genius Stan Lee who gave us Spiderman, The Hulk, Silver Surfer, X Men et. al. The book also examines more serious comics, looking at the work of - the bard of Cleveland - Harvey Pekar himself, as well Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman and bringing us all the way up to Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon. This could be the perfect Bar Mitzvah gift for a 13 year old geek or a 40 year old shut in like myself. On his website Arie Kaplan tells us that he works for Mad Magazine (lucky bastard) and he gives us his home phone number, cell phone number and email address, so if you want to talk to someone who has talked to Stan Lee, this is your chance (but at least read the guy's book first).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
71 comments:
Detective Comics #27 is a cooler illustration.
Of course, first appearance of The Bat Man!
You know what they're up to now BTW?
This month they published Detective Comics #850!
Dang, I've been an American Splendor fan for years. No small-world surprises, though. Even though Harvey speaks a line or two of Yiddish in his books, he never studied with anyone whose mother ever played canasta with my grandma or anything. At least as far as I know.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Yeah I love Harvey. He's the Philip Larkin of American comic books.
Dont you think Letterman went on the decline as soon as he got too big to put Harvey on?
Ricky Gervais plugging his latest banal offerings or Harvey's misanthropic genius? No contest.
I like Pekar's take on Letterman: "I've rapped with dozens of faster guys in delicatessens."
I'm not sure the astonishing wealth and popularity of a guy like Letterman is evidence of decline in our culture, but it is an interesting pathology.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
About the only place on TV I've seen Harvey get the respect he deserves was on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations.
I have a dream that in 100 years from now people will watch this clip and ask "who is that asshole talking to Harvey Pekar?"
I'm a confirmed non-TV watcher, but I have enjoyed Anthony Bourdain's show a time or two. A cool guy -- he takes a serious interest in his subject, and I think he has no respect for jerks.
As it happens, his name came up in a chat with some colleagues this week, and I said good things about him. That he respects Harvey Pekar is even better.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
No Yiddish, No Hebrew, no superheroes (though that doesn't excuse you, Adrian, from learning the language your wife and daughters will undoubtedly be using to plot their Tasmanian dairy farm escape)but I did love American Splendor. Two things endear me forever: the absolute surrender he'd made to his collection--a model of my own housekeeping mode--and the fact that he is renowned in the graphic novel world without drawing a line.
Hey, where can I sign on for that career path?
The use of different artists from story to story lent extra visual interest to Harvey Pekar's story. I began to recognize a distinct personality or feeling to each: "Spain" Rodriguez was edgy and nervous, for instance, and one artist who illustrated a story in which Harvey is called for jury duty had an elegant style that would be at home in science fiction.
Pekar may not be an artist, but he does make interesting comparisons between his role and that of a stage director, telling the artist how to place figures and physical features, for example.
I don't know that Allan Moore has ever illustrated his own comics either.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I just noticed that we're carrying a graphic novel by Spain Rodriguez called "Che", though that's probably more appropriate to the last post here. I will check that out more fully tomorrow. This is perhaps the sim lord's way of pointing out that the clues have been available all along and not that subtly either.
I don't mean any criticism of Pekar--it just had never occured to me that you could be a kind of director in the graphics arts world. Of course it makes sense. He's simply telling the story of his own life. There could theoretically be an infinite number of illustrators.
Seanag
Yeah he cant draw but his little cartoon directions show a great visual sense if you know what I mean.
That Che book sounds interesting. I think the film sounds interesting too.
Peter
Yeah I agree. The changes in artist really suit Pekar's story.
Funnily enough I remember that jury duty one too. The story and the artist burned a memory link.
Damn--I forgot to look at the Spain Rodriguez book at work today. I suppose that can be attributed to the busy holiday weekend atmosphere. You may notice that I wasn't trampled to death in the mad rush to enter our store on Black Friday, which will be viewed as good news in some quarters, but taken as a grim sign that business wasn't as robust as it might have been in others. Whatever. In the unlikely event that books, holiday cards and calendars do create the sort of stampede more commonly associated with electronic goods, jewelry and clothing and it results in my death, know this now--I am taking at least a couple of shoppers down with me.
On a serious note, I think that graphic novels, and comic books too, do have this singular capacity to burn themselves into our brains. With all deference to straight text, there is just that small possibility that this is a superior art form. I don't know. I am not someone who gravitated easily toward the form, and still haven't read tons of it, but I think it was because a lot of the subject matter didn't interest me that much. Not just the superhero stuff (sorry), but the stuff that in the know graphic novels readers were into, like Love and Rockets. But once I broke through some sort of veil about it, I really like it as a medium. Adrian Tomine, Marjane Satrapi, and others I've encountered since have absolutely convinced me of the worth of the form. But all of them are more writer/illustrators, which maybe explains my naivete about the writers who visualize their story in scenes, but get someone else to illustrate it. Even though I did know that comic books are broken down into all sorts separate artisan jobs. Just hadn't quite put it together yet.
I do have to say that the great transitional figure for me is Walt Kelly and his Pogo series. Read them as a child, and looked at them again when I was getting interested in this stuff again, and was surprised to discover how vivid so much of it still was. Didn't hurt that he was a great political commentator as well.
v word=ablog. No, I'm not kidding. Duh, WV. Just because it's a holiday weekend doesn't mean you can get away with this kind of mediocrity.
I would love to dive deeper into graphic novels. I finished "Transmetropolitan" a little while ago, which was excellent on the account of the humor was right up my alley and I seen so much of myself in Spider Jerusalem. I started to read "Sin City", which I thought sucked major balls. Read the first issue of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", excellent stuff. Now I'm reading "V for Vendetta" and will go on to "Watchmen" after that. I'd love to check out Arie's book.
Interesting you should refer to "graphic novels, and comic books too." Comics is an interesting example of a word that first referred to content coming to refer to form. I'm guessing comics were first called comics because they were comical. Now the word has stuck even for graphic work that is not primarily comic, such as Harvey Pekar's and Allan Moore's.
The French call comics bandes desinees, or "drawn strips." I wonder if this reflects a difference in the way the art form evolved in France. Maybe French comics were not called comics because they weren't all comical.
I wonder if today's readership of graphic novels is skewed toward males, if only because I always got the impression when I was a kid that superhero comics were for boys. If girls read them, no one told me.
I tried Love and Rockets a few years back, and it never did much for me. And the idea of separate writers and artists for comics surprised me when I first ran into it, probably with Harvey Pekar's comics.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
By the way, assuming that Spain Rodriguez is the same one who illustrated some of Harvey Pekar's stories, he would be the third artist I know of who drew for Pekar and also wrote stories of his or her own.
TCS
I bet you could get a signed copy pretty easily seeing as you're only a subway stop or two away.
BTW I think thats an excellent order: League, Vendetta and Watchmen. Stay clear of Lost Girls for a while.
Peter
Did you ever read Persepolis? I havent, nor have I seen the film, but both look like my cup of tea.
Robert Crumb was Pekar's first illustrator, right?
Seanag
I'm surprised that you were expecting a frenzied rush in Santa Cruz, unless things have changed greatly since I was there, it always seemed a kind of laid back, slightly bossy, farmers market, Volvo kind of a place. Bit like Boulder.
I tried to write a comic book or graphic novel if you prefer back in college. I think the concept wasnt bad (not going to reveal it in case I ever need it someday) but the execution was very poor.
Funnily enough as I write this, the rattle of aerosols tells me that Melbourne's graffiti artists are touching up their work on the other side of our garage door. These gentlemen and ladies are not sympatico.
Who would expect frenzy in a city whose university's athletic teams are called the Banana Slugs?
I have not read or seen Persepolis, and I know Crumb illustrated some of Harvey Pekar's early work. Whether he was his first illustrator, I don't know.
One thing I don't think I've ever known is why Pekar worked with multiple illustrators. Did he choose them for what he thought they could bring to a given story? Did he hire whomever he could get?
V-word: sychies, which sounds better than it looks.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
In response to Peter's comment: When I was a kid they were called the 'funny pages'. But even then, a substantial portion of them were not funny but were as the French, so much more precise than we Americans can ever hope to be, call them, 'drawn strips'. Mary Worth and Prince Valiant and Dick Tracy. True, I came in on the end of their sagas, but it's not like writers and illustrators didn't early on grasp some of the potentialities of the form. If anything, there has been a bit of a decline, at least in terms of syndication.
As for the gender issue, well, don't get me started. Marjane Satrapi's works are a kind of everyperson's work, because they are all about what it feels like to grow up in an educated reasonable family that is at the same time trying to live under the morays of a harsh regime. It's not all about 'relationships' though those do of course do figure in, usually to her detriment.
It is so useless to decry anyone's lack of interest in anything, because, well, they don't care. We have the current 'Twilight' phenomenon. My supervisor's daughter is fully into them, and she's a super bright girl. He told me that she and her friends are trying to get their boy friends/peers to read them. You would think that the boys would get a clue and give this a try just to score a few points. But no. And my nephew, her peer, gave them a pounding when I saw him this Thanksgiving. The lines drawn between the sexes would seem to remain drawn as firmly as ever. I don't quite understand why women tend to be able to cross the line and identify with male characters and it doesn't work at all in reverse. I'm not starting a diatribe here, I just wonder.
I think it may well have been Carolyn Heilbrun, whom we've been talking about over at Peter's blog, who said that it's daughters who have the capacity to change men's consciousness about women, not wives. I find that profoundly discouraging and yet hopeful, all at the same time.
Adrian, I predict that because of your family make up, you will continue to evolve. At least, I'm hopeful.
Also, since you've commented since I started this, you have some of the demographics right, but the Volvo part is not exactly the mentality here, or not for the people I associate with, who are lucky to have a car, any car, that starts in the morning. I'm strongly considering a Norton...
No, I wasn't expecting a frenzied rush, especially since our own sale was a nonstarter. I wrote that only out of solidarity with other retail workers who were actually injured or killed in the Black Friday sales frenzy. I'll repeat my warning: Shoppers, I will take you down if you don't know how to wait your damn turn.
Oh, in all my retail solidarity, I forgot about those Melbourne graffiti artists. My intuition is that they are much more sympatico than you can yet understand. Can you go out and give them a shot of wahtever they're drinking or smoking or snorting or whatever they're into and ask what their going rate is to illustrate a comic book? ( Don't invite them into the house, though. At least not until they've learned the difference between public property and private.)
And if you think we are not going to get the details of that comic book out of you in all due course, you are very sadly mistaken.
Seanag
And to be honest I'm less than impressed with Melbourne Graffiti Artists' ideas, craftsmanship and skill. It just seems to be artless tagging. There was one guy who did a huge Barack Obama after the election on a brick wall but when I came to photograph it the next day it had been tagged over - I'm sure he or she just thought 'what's the point of trying to do something different.'
Boulder is Volvo country. Volvo SUV country.
Peter
Re you v world. There's many a job I couldnt have got through if it wasnt for the scyhies or sickies if you will.
When I was a kid they were called the 'funny pages'.
My parents' generation called them the funnies; I called them the conics. No difference there, really. But I must have been a pretty shallow kid, because I didn't like the serious, soap-opera strips. If it wasn't funny, I wasn't interested.
True, I came in on the end of their sagas, but it's not like writers and illustrators didn't early on grasp some of the potentialities of the form. If anything, there has been a bit of a decline, at least in terms of syndication.
There has been a preciptious decline in the quality of daily, syndicated strips. And some of the early strips made wonderful use of the form. I remember Bringing Up Father as a sitcom strip. Years later, I bought a collection of the early Bringing Up Fathers, which made the accurate point that the strip was a faithful, funny and moving portrait of Irish immigrants' experience in America. And some of the artwork was stunning.
My cheap-noodle v-word: ramen
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I'm posting this comment only because of the excellent v-word that came up on my screen after I posted my last one: dubsub
I've visited Boulder only once as an adult, though we actually lived in Denver when I was a kid for awhile. I would say it has a much more conservative and wealthier vibe than Santa Cruz. I guess I should also say that SC isn't really the sleepy little burg it once was. As it's become increasingly a bedroom community for San Jose, and with a steadily rising student population, it's actually pretty lively. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes not. So, frenzy would be overstating the case, but a busy holiday weekend is usually pretty hopping.
I should also say that I think girls did/do follow superhero stuff, and in fact one of my earliest TV memories was of watching reruns of the old Steve Reeves series over at the babysitter's house. But I do think the emphasis and identification is quite different. And I can't say I knew any girls who collected the comic books. But this is an extremely small sample.
Peter, your Bringing Up Father mention made me suddenly remember that I used to look through an old scrapbook that my mother had made of a comic called The Life of Riley (I think) that she had read when she was a child. It was all about an Airdale terrier, and on that basis her family had an Airdale terrier named Riley too. Not stunningly original, I know. I wonder if there was an Airdale fad?
There was one guy who did a huge Barack Obama after the election on a brick wall but when I came to photograph it the next day it had been tagged over - I'm sure he or she just thought 'what's the point of trying to do something different.
Exactly. This is the illustrator you're looking for. You will be giving his or her life an entirely new sense of purpose and meaning.
Seanag
There's a lot of money in Boulder. The average house price is about 100K above Denver. Unfortunately there is no longer a mystery book store. High Crimes on Pearl Street has been driven under.
That's sad to hear, but not surprising. Independent bookstores just are having a really hard time making it anymore. I don't know if there is any hope of a solution or not, but we've certainly lost some major bookstores in Northern California over the last couple of years alone. And the current economic climate is not going to help either.
v word=ableg. Which is either a very disaffected blog or one with a headcold.
An independent bookstore in Philadelphia, one that supplied the books for my most recent Noir at the Bar crime-fiction reading, announced this week that it was closing. Oh, well. We can rely on the knowledge and love of books that chains can provide.
Actually, I once had a deliciously subversive conversation with a Barnes and Noble employee who felt the same way as I do about the disadvantages of chains.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I don't think the fault or flaw of the chains really lies with the floor staff--I worked in one myself for a brief time, and worked with the same kinds of interesting people I do now. It's really the mentality that comes down from above that is the problem. Unfortunately, in order to compete with these entities, the independents have grown slowly to look an awful lot more like them. You start hearing the same kind of corporate cant and marketing gobbledy gook. It creeps in. If I hear the word branding one more time...but I probably shouldn't finish that sentence, because I definitely will.
Seanag, Peter,
I worked at B&N on 82 and Broadway for two years. I was on the team that opened the store and at first the hiring policies were for "experts" in their field but after Shakespeare and Company went bankrupt this was less of a necessity. Still you'd be surprised at the depth of knowledge of some of the employees in the NYC B&N's and they dont snoot all over you like the people in the Strand or Saint Mark's Comics.
Still you'd be surprised at the depth of knowledge of some of the employees in the NYC B&N's.
No, I don't think I would actually, especially as it was NYC. Even in the little suburban mall Waldens I served time in, we had a Jesuit seminary dropout who liked to read Anne Rice, a Chilean whose family was in exile from after the coup that took out Allende, and a guy who was moonlighting there while teaching alternative high school.
The problem for the book business is that it tends to employ smart people in transition to somewhere else. I won't say 'better', but definitely more lucrative. Only people who have absolutely no sense of self-preservation whatsoever stay on and on and on...
"I don't think the fault or flaw of the chains really lies with the floor staff"
It's a given that the problem is management's fault. But one of the problems -- to be fair, more a problem locally at Borders than at Barnes and Noble -- is hiring staff who don't know about books and don't have to because they can look up the information on a computer as long as you spell the author's name correctly for them.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Even in the little suburban mall Waldens I served time in, we had a Jesuit seminary dropout who liked to read Anne Rice, a Chilean whose family was in exile from after the coup that took out Allende, and a guy who was moonlighting there while teaching alternative high school.
And I made friends at a local B&N with a woman completing her Ph.D. in archeology at the University of Pennsylvania.
I won't say 'better', but definitely more lucrative. Only people who have absolutely no sense of self-preservation whatsoever stay on and on and on...
Same with newspapers, only almost anything would be better -- and I will say better -- than the rotting paper that pays my salary.
Any editing jobs open in Santa Cruz or Melbourne?
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
staff who don't know about books and don't have to because they can look up the information on a computer as long as you spell the author's name correctly for them.
But isn't this the trend of memory in general? That it's becoming unnecessary and only likely to become more so? Personally, I don't tend to think much about the downside of the 'I'll google it' mentality, though I'm sure I should. But the fact is that as a bookseller, you always have your areas of familiarity and your areas of relative ignorance. So it's nice to be able to put together the clues of what a customer is able to bring you and see if you can track it down. And it's often not a matter of spelling correctly, because customers will bring only their vague, often wrong idea of the title and author. Half the time, they only have some sense of the subject and a vague idea of when they heard about it on the radio. But now, you can sometimes figure it out for them anyway.
Our local paper is foundering too. In fact, they've moved out of town! But if I do hear about any editing jobs out here, Peter, I will certainly let you know.
Peter, Seanag
I remember reading about memory in The World Lit Only Be Fire, how medieval bards could remember thousands of lines of poetry, now all that is gone and its never going to come back unless we end up like A Canticle for Liebowitz or something.
"staff who don't know about books and don't have to because they can look up the information on a computer as long as you spell the author's name correctly for them."
"But isn't this the trend of memory in general?"
Sure, but the incident that sparked my feelings on the subject goes beyond that. I wish I remembered the name of the author in question who, when I asked a clerk to check stock for his or her books, asked, "How do you spell that?" That was simple lack of knowledge, not a shifting of collective memory from a human brain to a hard drive. The customer who says: "I want that book, like the one by what's her name, only with the green cover" is a proverbial figure of fun, but that was not me in this case. The clerk should have known the author's name but did not.
And don't forget the visual element. My local Borders outfitted its staff with headphones, presumably so they could be summoned without the need for blaring public-address announcements. But, aside from putting customers off because one never knows if one has the clerk's attention, the headphones create a disconcerting resemblance to McDonald's staff. That's no knock against staff either at McDonalds or at Borders, but it does say something about how Borders corporate office treats its product.
I'm afraid my current job search will have to aim 180 degrees away from newspaper. My paper's managerial incompetence only hastens an inevitable death. The rest of the industry is following. My future, and no one's future, is in newspapers. I am an American steelworker.
Nah, those bards had BlackBerrys™ up their sleeves.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Oz's economy is doing ok I think. Theres always teaching.
In the days of Finn and Fianna, to get into the elite warrior cast you had to recite the ancient poems without missing a word while defending yourself from NINE guys with spears who were all trying to kill you.
Those were the days my friend...
And I imagine that old poetry was harder to remember than "There once was man from Nantucket."
The law speakers in Iceland's Althing were so called, I think, because they used to have to recite the laws, presumably without notes.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Nine Guys With Spears would be a great name for a band or a club or a restaurant or Something.
Peter, I know that it would seem like booksellers should have some at least rudimentary mental inventory of books, but I guess the whole point is that we are getting away from the realm of expertise these days, as we can farm it out to electronic brains with far more storage capacity than we have. I'm not endorsing it, I just think it's the case.
And no, great feats of memory are not coming back, unless, as Adrian said, they become necessary again. That's the whole point. I think that for better or worse, human beings discard what's no longer strictly necessary. It may be that our memory gradually becomes something completely external to us--because it can. It sounds terrible, but it might just be the next stage of things to come. I saw a newsclip about a smart house that tracks the movements of its inhabitant and thus can be used to keep an Alzheimer victim in his or her home for far longer safely. The house remembers for them, and that seems to me to be compassionate, not sinister.
If people are nothing more than a set of fine motor skills sufficient to operate a keyboard, I don't need them. I can order books online just as easily.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Actually, more easily in all likelihood, which is sort of at the crux of the problem. The question is, what does a bookstore offer that online shopping does not, and I think that's one of the issues that's being hammered out in our era. I think part of what they offer is a space for public life--a place where people can meet on a theoretically somewhat higher level than the neighborhood bar scene.
As far as the employees go, well, the thing I wonder is why anyone who didn't have any interest in books would even work at a bookstore. The pay is lousy, there are no tips, you are at risk of all kinds of work related injuries and people are asking you questions that you have to figure out the answers to, rather than say, reading it off the menu. Waiting tables is a much more lucrative proposition all together. But you have to be able to balance things on a tray, which lets me out.
I've had it in for the modern-era chain bookstore almost literally from the beginning. Philadelphia's first Borders opened soon after I arrived, and the idea of a bookstore as so much more than a place to merely buy books was such a novelty that my newspaper's whacky, zany features writer wrote a story about it: it was an experience, it was a place to meet, blah, blah, blah.
Now, I had just moved from Boston, where I used to hang out in Harvard Square all the time. I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. I did not spend all my time reading dusty volumes by Henry James. But I was used to consumer bookstores that were about books, and where said books were sold at 10-25% off list price. In Borders, I got a goddamn lifestyle experience and a stock of books sold almost exclusively at list price, plus a whole lot of goddamned cute book-related accessories. But then, the higher price was for the experience, I suppose. Suffice it to say that Borders probably received no more scathing comment in its grand-opening guestbook than it did from me.
I hope that bookstores in the old-fashioned sense make a comeback, though I'm certainly not averse to an in-store cafe, preferably not run by Starbucks.
V-word: dullesse
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Peter
I worked for both McDonalds and Barnes and Noble and the latter was infinitely preferable. At least at B&N there was no smell. Also for a young man working the poetry section at 82 and Broadway Friday night meant girls, girls, girls!
"Let me show this early collection by WB Yeats," was one of my favourite lines.
You know, you could have offered to show Susan Sarandon one of Richard Stark's Grofield novels. I'm thinking maybe Lemons Never Lie.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Peter
Now that I think about it there was also a travel book I read called something like Driving Over Lemons. It was about Spain is all I remember.
Seanag
I had a band once called The Ayatollahs of Funk which I thought was a kick ass name but no one else did.
had just moved from Boston, where I used to hang out in Harvard Square all the time. I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. I did not spend all my time reading dusty volumes by Henry James.
Maybe not, Peter, but you could have done a lot worse.
I'll have to think about your wrath against the 'lifestyle' mentality. Not that I disagree with you, or at least I'm not sure I do. It's funny, because part of the history of my store, and a part I actually lived through, is that when I started, it was in an old brick building, very dark and snug, I'd say. But then it fell down, or partly fell down in the 1989 earthquake. I was actually in it at the time, but that's another story. The whole downtown was literally locked behind a chainlink fence for a couple of years, we did business out of giant tent for much of that, and when the store did reopen, it was in a new large light building that didn't look all that different from some of the nicer chains.
I bring this up because to this day there are still people who remember the old bookstore and lament its passing--probably in the same way they miss the old downtown, which was also completely transformed in the reconstruction. But there are also tons of people who love the store that exists now, and maybe it has something to do with the very 'lifestyle' packaging that you detest. I don't really know how I feel about any of it. I am sometimes surprised by my lack of attachment in this regard, nostalgic or otherwise. In some ways, 'loving' the store is itself a foreign concept to me. But perhaps I just know too much about its inner workings.
"Let me show this early collection by WB Yeats," was one of my favourite lines.
Heaven preserve us. I expect that NYC has never done so brisk a trade in Yeats before or since. In fact sociologists may still be trying to account for the brief spike of interest in the poet in that unlikely place and time.
I like your band name too but strongly suspect you were not aligned with the tenor of the times. And now would probably not be a good time to revive it either.
I dunno, I think Yeats had slipped into popular culture even before Adrian decided to experiment with his aphrodisiac properties. "The Second Coming" is probably one of the twentieth century's more quoted poems: Joan Didion, Peter de Vries. Even Lou Reed tried to quote a line from it on a live album but was too drunk or stoned to get the line right.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
"I'll have to think about your wrath against the 'lifestyle' mentality."
Ye gods, wrath is a scary state of mind, probably best reserved for worthier targets than bookstores that serve something called a doppio macchiato without necessarily knowing how to pronounce the words correctly. I am fully prepared to consider the proposition that I am a crotchety old fart and, above all, impractical.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Peter,
You know what's a fun game? Trying to find a line from Sailing to Byzantium or The Second Coming that hasnt been turned into a book title. But impressionable young ladies prefer the early lyric poetry in my experience.
I try to buy in independent bookshops whenever possible.
The problem is with foreign books-I should really cave in and buy them through online retailers.
The Dead Yard is still lost in the woods-at this point,if the sequence 1-3-2 was good for Gerard Brennan it will be good for me also.
Though my English Bookshop in Florence has a wonderful offer of second-hand books -last time I went I bought the Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies for a grand total of 0.75 €,as well as various other books in the 0-25-1.50 € range (many of them I wouldn't have tried at normal price).
Two U.S. GN recently translated and very positively received here are Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Charles Burns's Black Hole.
Peter, you're right, wrath was probably a bit overstated. I was projecting my own scorch and burn policy over things that aggravate me on to you.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure people had heard of Yeats before Adrian's arrival on these fair shores. All the same, if there was an unaccountable spike in MFA candidates at say, Columbia, who decided to do their dissertation on WBY within a few short years after Mr. McKinty's arrival, I don't think we have to look far for the answer.
Marco, good score on the Deptford Trilogy. Robertson Davies is one of my faves, or at least used to be--it's been a long time since I've read him.
Seanag, we are siblings from a different mother. I seethe with anger over:
-- Lifestyle
-- Bar musicians who say: "How you all doing?"
-- Artists who insist on setting their "thoughts" in paper to accompany exhibits of their work,
-- People who say "like."
-- People who talk loudly on their cell phones in public places.
-- People who talk on their cell phones in public places.
--Sidewalk cafes on my sidewalks.
More to come. You have a scorch and burn policy toward annoying jerks? I used to fantasize about carrying an invisible gun that would kill only tourists when I lived in Philadelphia's Old City.
V-word is a new terms for the philosophy practiced by the fourth generation of feminists: womism
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Oh, and I agree about the Deptford trilogy. Robertson Davies was always getting menioned for the Nobel Prize, but then he died. I shudder when I think how close the committee might have come to honoring an author who was not just readable, but fun.
Oops, make that bar musicians who yell: "Is everybody having a good time?" to the apathetic punters.
Gobshites,
Peter
Can I just dissent about Robertson Davies for a sec? While I liked the Deptford Trilogy and loved the trilogy that came after (whose name escapes me - the one about the gypsy girl, you know the one I'm talking about, oh wait I just remembered - The Cornish trilogy) and I liked his criticism from the 50's, I always thought it was very dodgy that in 1940 here's a young man living in London and like fucking WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood he goes the wrong way across the Atlantic. While thousands of men were rushing to the most important conflict of the last 1000 years Robertson Davies buggers off to provincial Canada to run a theatre. I mean really. A man of his learning could have been great in SOE. Even that fat right wing nut Evelyn Waugh did the decent thing.
I think you could add people who use cell phones in public restrooms, but maybe that's a girl thing. Actually, I find that one hilarious. Inappropriate, but hilarious. People really have no sense of boundaries whatsoever.
My v word is 'triast'. I have no clue what it means, except that Sophie is probably really on to something with the three thing. Or, more probably, 'fing', as I begin the laborious process of mastering Norn Irn... Oh, forget about this charade. I'm not mastering Norn Irn.
Adrian,
Well, I think you have a right to dissent about Robertson Davies, and I can't disagree because I don't know that much about his personal life. Although I've just had a very odd flash. The last Iris Murdoch novel I read, whose title I can't remember but will figure out if anyone cares, featured a big English hot springs type spa, but, more importantly, a returning mentor/ Mephistopheles figure who was coming from Canada, I think, after years away. Brilliant but not too likeable. I had sort of wondered in the back of my mind who or what he reminded me of, but it's only right now that I realized it was a kind of Robertson Davies figure. I can't quite work out their age differences, but suddenly wondered if it was R.D. who was the model for her portrait.
Well, I'm sorry to say this but writers do tend to let you down one way or another--whether it's their politics or their ethics or their drinking problems or whatever. I'm not sure, though, that it makes a huge difference to the worth of their writing. Emphasis on the 'not sure' part.
I liked the Cornish trilogy better than the Deptford trilogy myself. But I would have pretty much read anything of his at the height of my interest.
Criminy, and I've just been reading some Auden, too. I shall have to look for correlation between his politics as expressed in his poetry, and whay he was dong at the time.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Men use cell phones in restrooms, too, much to my annoyance and astonishment and even when they should be devoting full attention to the matter at hand. It is my dream to sneak up behing one of these jerks and yell,"Boo!" just to see if things go spraying off in unintended directions.
Another thing dapper gents do at urinals is flip their ties back over one shoulder. I always wanted to creep up from behind and flip the ties back to their original positions.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Seanag
From what I know of Murdoch it was more likely Elias Canetti she was thinking about.
Peter
They all certainly had a good, safe war.
Peter,you seem,like,a very dangerous person,like.
By the way,have you suscribed to Gobshite Quarterly yet?
I did read the first in the Cornish Trilogy,The Rebel Angels.
Overall enjoyed it,but some points annoyed me.
The Australian Nobel Prize for Literature,Patrick White, did participate in the War.
If I remember correctly,he enrolled in London-he could have easily escaped draft,as an Australian living in England,and had asthma and respiratory problems which meant the doctors at the medical visit were inclined to dismiss him.
Of course during the war he met his lover of fifty years,Manoly Lascaris,with whom he went to live in a small farm in Tas...near Sidney.
In the many years before White could earn a living through his books they managed selling vegetables and dairy products from their farm.
White was leftwing, green, anti-nuclearist,peace and disarmament activist, pro-immigrant rights,... I suppose I may have a positive bias in his favor specular to the negative Adrian has against Davies.
Patrick White did the right thing. Most people did the right thing. I mentioned Waugh because if you recall he was pro Franco and Mussolini - the foolish, foolish man.
PG Wodehouse is an interesting case though. No he didnt bugger off to Canada when the shit was hitting the fan, he actually made propaganda broadcasts (of a sort) for the Nazis.
I'd heard about the Fascist collaboration of Wodehouse if that was exactly what it was before. It puzzles me, because of his extreme ridicule of his most openly Black Shirt character, whose name escapes me just now. I've only read a book or two but have watched all the Hugh Laurie/Stephen Fry dramatizations, and must assume they are faithful to old P.G., at least on that point. So where and how did he go astray. I don't think a great humorist, which he definitely was, is really capable of buying fully into any System, since the instinct would be to subvert it. So it's all quite puzzling.
Thanks for the Canetti info, Peter. I realized that it probably couldn't be Davies Murdoch was referring to, so it's nice to have that nailed down. I haven't read Canetti but have been pointed in that direction by various authors I admire, so it's a bit disconcerting to hear that he found his way out of that war too.
And in reading Sylvia Townshend Warner's intro to The Book of Merlyn, I am finding T.H. White a bit dithering on that front too. He was hanging out in Ireland for at least a good portion of the time leading up to the war, still trying to believe in a Pacifist solution, despite the fact that the locals didn't seem to want him there, and the fact that he didn't seem to have much good to say about the Celts.
However. It's easy to judge from this perspective. I have no idea what sort of person I would have been back then--I mean whether I would have been seeking a way out or a way into that conflict. Whatever people might have imagined about concentration camps, the mind would still have boggled at the truth. We have the uncomfortable hindsight of knowing the worst.
Seanag
I think the consensus about the Wodehouse thing is that he didnt really know what he was doing. And there was no question of prosecuting him after the war, though he did, if I recall, rarely venture back to England.
Even such a true-blue leftist as Alexander Cockburn defended Wodehouse's action during the war. His theory is that Wodehouse made an easy target, a way to deflect blame from real collaborators and money-makers.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Well, it's reassuring to know that Mr. Wodehouse wasn't really meaning to be treasonous, though without more info, it's a bit hard to understand how he could be in the dark about it. It all seems a bit sad, in any case. A blot on other writers' reputations is not really so hard to bear, but there is something incongruous about the Nazis having had anything to do with someone whose wit is so effervescent.
Post a Comment