Paths of Glory

The last thing I would have ever expected is that I would be reading a book by Jeffrey Archer. However for some strange reason I just read (in one night) The Paths of Glory, the tale of George Mallory and the possible first ascent of Mt. Everest. The book was actually very good, and true to the heroic and tragic story. George loved his wife Ruth very deeply and their relationship was portrayed endearingly. His love for climbing was also related vividly and viscerally. Mallory was the man who supposedly, when asked "Why do you do it?", answered "Because it is there."

He died in 1924 on his third attempt to summit the tallest mountain in the world, also known as Qomolangma. His body was recovered in 1999 by Conrad Anker. Ruth had sewn a little bag for Mallory to keep in his pocket. There were small mementos in it. There was also a photograph of Ruth, his favorite picture of her. He had promised to place it on the summit when he reached the top. When he was found, just a couple of hundred feet from the top, the picture was missing.

There's a novel out now that's written in the form of an auction catalog. It's called Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry. I think it'd be interesting to look at, especially after going to an auction in Philadelphia to buy books for our bookshop, but I've heard that the book itself is a little too cute. It seems like lots of young people, or maybe just people, love collecting objects. For instance, I knew a group of people who bought the entire ball cage from a grocery store and put it in their living room. I also knew a guy who bought a collection of children's gas masks from eBay, put a different colored light in each one, and hung them on his wall. He also had a hair drying chair in his bedroom, and lots of taxidermy animals.

Mortal Coils

Mortal Coils by Aldous Huxley deals with a wealthy, bored and inconsiderate husband, "taking care" of his very sick, disfigured wife, with the help of a wrongly accused, pain in the ass, nurse. A story of unrequited love, turned poisonous, both literally and figuratively, the play deals with redemption, damnation and a methodology for converting one into the other. It also features an 18 year old nymphet, who, while ignorant and innocent, is angelic in this fable-like setting. A kindly old (58, one year older than me!) doctor is the catalyst that brings this story to its semi-pleasant conclusion. Moral: Don't mess around with Arsenic! Don't put in in your coffee and beware of older women (36!) who have orgasms when it rains.

Bill O'Reilly reads from his work

In honor of the day after St. Patrick's Day, the Village Voice "crap archivist" has some clips of clear blue-eyed Christmas lover Bill O'Reilly reading from his violent sex thriller novel. It's about a murderer a little like himself. Choice quotes: "Off with those pants," "I wish I were a lesbian," and others not fit to print.

Rudy Rucker

One of my very favorite writers. Check out Software, Wetware and Spactime Doughnuts as well as The Sex Sphere, The Secret of Life, White Light and The 57th Franz Kafka.

You won't be disappointed, unless you are a nitwit.

Literature Map

This is very cool. Just go back to start and type in any author's name:

Literature Map

You may disagree with the results, but the creators will let you help them edit their choices.

Some may start with Joyce.

Others, unfortunately will begin with Faulkner!

Basically the world is now controlled by Japanese schoolgirls. In the old days California set the pace for the latest in memes, mutations and trends. Now it is the ubiquitous presence of a cultural breeze from the East.

Good Morning

Cell phone novels are really popular in Japan. Cell phone novelists can upload what they write right onto websites where readers can then download their work. No editors, no filters! Mostly, they're by and about young women. And the phrases are short enough to fit on a cell phone screen: "Daddy/Mommy/Yudai/I love you all so much/... --clatter, clatter--/the sound of a door opening./At that moment.../--Thud--/A really dull blunt sound/The pain shoots through my head..." OH NO! keep reading!

Mutton

Anne Bronte, in Agnes Grey, lifted the following, unfortunately, from her own personal experiences:

There was a roast leg of mutton before him: he helped Mrs Bloomfield, the children, and me, desiring me to cut up the children's meat; then, after twisting about the mutton in various directions, and eyeing it from different viewpoints, he pronounced it not fit to be eaten, and called for the cold beef.

'What is the matter with the mutton, my dear?' asked his mate.

'It is quite overdone. Don't you taste Mrs Bloomfield, that all the goodness is roasted out of it? And can't you see that all that nice, red gravy is completely dried away?'

Well I think the beef will suit you.'

The beef was set before him, and he began to carve, but with the most rueful expressions of discontent.

'What is the matter with the beef, Mr Bloomfield? I'm sure I thought it was very nice.'

'And so it was, very nice. A nicer joint could not be; but it is quite spoiled,' he replied dolefully...

Notwithstanding the ruinous state of the beef, the gentleman managed to cut himself some delicate slices, part of which he ate in silence. When he next spoke, it was, in a less querulous tone, to ask what there was for dinner.

'Turkey and grouse,' was the concise reply.

'And what besides?'

'Fish.'

'What kind of fish?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know?' cried he, looking solemnly up from his plate, and suspending his knife and fork in astonishment.

'No. I told the cook to get some fish--I did not particularise what.'

'Well that beats everything! A lady professes to keep house, and doesn't even know what fish is for dinner! professes to order fish, and doesn't specify what!'

'Perhaps, Mr Bloomfield, you will order dinner yourself in future'

Fake advertisments in the Bronte's "Young Men's Magazine"

Branwell Bronte created the Young Man's Magazine when he was a kid and passed on "editorship" to Charlotte Bronte, then 13, when he got bored of it. She filled it with heroic poems, fairy stories, and fake ads. It also exhibited her and Branwell's temporary obsession with vivisection. Here are some of the ads:

To Be Sold a painting of a bull fight 3 feet long & 2 feet wide by Private he shall limn [describe]

TO BE SOLD 20 POUNDS of the essence of white FLOUR A NEWLY invented THING which is an infalliable remedy for ALL COMPLAINTS by SIR ALEXANDER hume BADEY--------

Orion & Arturus a POEM by LORD WELLESley Recomendation -- this is the most beautiful poem that ever flowed from the pen of man, the sentiments are wholly original nothing is borrowed. - Glass Town Review

ADVERTISMENTS SAles TO BE SOLD a rat-trap by MONSIEUR it can catch nothing FOR its BROKEN

THE ART OF BLOWing ones Nose is taught by Monsieur, Pretty-foot at his house, No 105. blue rose street Glass TOWN

Rebuttal

Prince

Books to Eat To

The New York Times has an article up in which they ask authors what books they like to read while they eat. Israeli writer Etgar Keret says he read Slaughterhouse-Five recently at a Chinese Restaurant in Tel Aviv: "I started laughing and crying, which goes with sweet and sour."

Sorry for the picture.

How to Read: Music

Some say that the French composer Erik Satie was the inventor of what's now known as "muzak." He wrote pieces that he called "furniture music" allegedly after hearing Henri Matisse "express a desire for some kind of art form without any nagging subject matter." "Forged Iron Tapestry" was to be played as guests arrived in the foyer; "Phonic Floor Tiles" was intended for lunchtime or marriage proposals. Satie's furniture music was created to fill up awkward silences in conversation, neutralize the sound of silverware and traffic, and generally create the sensation of an easy chair. Satie's pieces are composed of fragmented, repeated phrases, that imitate the pattern of wallpaper and that are not intended to attract attention in any way. At the debut of his concept, held at a music hall, Satie became infuriated when the audience refused to stop listening: he "leaped into the crowd and implored everyone to talk, make noise, or concentrate on the picture exhibition in the theater hall."

Satie's music, even his non-furniture music, is good to read to. His rebellion against Wagnerian "excess" led him to plainsong and chant, and his music shows a similar interest in abandoning "dramatic accents" in order to create music that "sounded remote enough to make people more cognizant... of their surroundings." A lot of Satie's music is always moving forwards-- like all music, except music played backward-- but it doesn't ever reach anything that startles us out of our reading.

"Furnishing music completes one's property." -Erik Satie

A great source: Elevator Music by Joseph Lanza (on Google Books!)

Thanks and a tip 'o the hat

To Emma for her charming initial post. For some reason it has prompted me to tell you to read Guided tours of Hell by Francine Prose. And of course, as noted, The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake (Plate 14).

Wait, let me close the door. My stomach has been listening to all of this. (2nd bookstore joke. Sorry. Geez).

The Pleasures of the Door by Francis Ponge

This is my first Wellington Square Bookshop blog post!
Here is a poem about the satisfaction we get from doors (our new shop will feature doors). Translated very quickly by my friend Mackensie from Le French.

The Pleasures of the Door

Kings do not touch doors.

They don't have this happiness: to push in front of the self softly or roughly one of these great, large familiar panels, turning it towards himself, to put it back in place,-- to take hold of a door in his arms.

...The happiness of grabbing one of these high obstacles to a room by the stomach on the knot of porcelain with one's fist; from a rapid body to a body in which the step is detained for an instant, the eye opens and the entire body accommodates itself to its new apartment.

With a friendly hand he still holds it, before decidedly pushing and closing it, -- this which the click of the powerful but well-oiled spring agreeably assures him.

Great News

Emma Alpern, Henry James scholar in residence at Bard, will soon be contributing to the WSB blog. We can't wait. She is witty, has a sardonic sense of humor and beautiful red hair. Keep watching, but beware!

My Detachmant

I read My Detatchment last night, by Tracy Kidder.  It was about his year in Viet Nam.  The most unusual aspect of this book was that he was honest enough to portray himself a dweeb and a coward during the war, when he was in the oxymoronic intelligence division of the U.S. Army.  He was a second, then first lieutenant, overseeing a motley crew of disrespectful and journeymen grunts who had neither respect nor military obedience toward him.  He, throughout the book, lies, grovels and rationalizes.  It was a courageous act to write this book, and he didn't have to now that he is 60 years old, and semi-famous!  I guess it is now 40 years later.  It wasn't exactly uplifting but it reminded me of the difficulties inherent in being a 23 year old nerd.   Being an officer in Viet Nam at that age is unimaginable to me.

Saturday by Ian McEwan (It wasn't all that)

Saturday is a novel set within a single day -- 15 February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children, who are young adults. What troubles him is the state of the world - the impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before. On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne makes his way to his usual squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousand of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug called Baxter. To Perowne's professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man. Baxter, in his turn, believes the surgeon has humiliated him, and visits the opulent Perowne home that evening, during a family reunion - with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep this doomed figure alive.Saturday is a novel set within a single day -- 15 February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children, who are young adults. What troubles him is the state of the world - the impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before. On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne makes his way to his usual squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousand of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug called Baxter. To Perowne's professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man. Baxter, in his turn, believes the surgeon has humiliated him, and visits the opulent Perowne home that evening, during a family reunion - with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep this doomed figure alive.

21 Delightful Ways to Commit Suicide

Great book for this Depression since it was written during the last.  I especially like #2 which is titled Suicide by Means of Prolonged Total Immersion.  This blog entry does not indicate in any way, shape or manner what your actions might be should your 401(k) drop by more than 80%.

Anathem

How can this guy write four 800 page books in five years while he is working all day long for Jeff Bezos on the X-Prize?

I haven't written 800 pages in my entire life, and most of what I have written is a list of what I had for lunch on specific days during this 56.8 year journey (if you want to call it that).  I call it a headlong fall down the staircase of the cosmos.

H.G. Wells

He is coming to our shop for a signing on Opening Night.  Don't forget to bring your copy of The Invisible Man.  Get it.  It's a joke.

Espresso

Free espresso for anyone under 12

David Foster Wallace

I just read this week's New Yorker article about David Foster Wallace.

I will always remember him, mostly because I was so completely annoyed by the footnotes in Infinite Jest that I couldn't go on.  It wasn't his fault, it was mine.  

After reading the article it's kind of easy to see what drove this genius into severe depression and his eventual suicide by hanging last year.  He had so much knowledge and such a capacity to explain to people what people were, that he felt terminally frustrated by the inability of his readers and reviewers to grasp what he was trying to do.  And so he just didn't know what more he could do.

As Jonathan Franzen said at Wallace's Memorial Service on Oct 23rd,  "And so now this handsome, brilliant, funny, kind Midwestern man with an amazing spouse and a great local support network and a great career and a great job at a great school with great students has taken his own life and the rest of us are left behind to ask (to quote Infinite Jest), 'So yo then, man, what's your story?'"

The Strand Book Store

I just returned from a visit to The Strand, and more specifically, a visit to the third floor rare book room.  There I found myself purchasing book after book, so quickly that I barely had time to read the titles or to recognize the covers.  After I found that I couldn't stop buying books, I asked the kind salesman to push me into the elevator and press one.  I still don't know what I bought, how much it cost, if it will be delivered to me, when and how much the shipping will be.  Remind me to stay away from there.  When the books come I will tell you what I bought.