Books

Flying Off the Shelves by Paul Constant

There’s an underground economy of boosted books. These values are commonly understood and roundly agreed upon through word of mouth, and the values always seem to be true. Once, a scruffy, large man approached me, holding a folded-up piece of paper. “Do you have any Buck?” He paused and looked at the piece of paper. “Any books by Buckorsick?” I suspected that he meant Bukowski, but I played dumb, and asked to see the piece of paper he was holding. It was written in crisp handwriting that clearly didn’t belong to him, and it read:

1. Charles Bukowski

2. Jim Thompson

3. Philip K. Dick

4. William S. Burroughs

5. Any Graphic Novel

This is pretty much the authoritative top five, the New York Times best-seller list of stolen books. Its origins still mystify me..

I asked the man whether he preferred Bukowski’s Pulp to his Women, as I did, and whether his favorite Thompson book was The Getaway or The Killer Inside Me. First the book chatter made him nervous, but then it made him angry…

Continue reading Flying Off the Shelves by Paul Constant | via The Stranger

Any booksellers reading this?  I’m curious about the how the lists might compare from store to store, city to city… Not surprised Buk is at the top of this one, however.  But where is Hoffman?  Surprising omission.

Related posts:

1. So why not consider a revolutionary if not long-forgotten information concept: a book; a book whose pages have texture that can be felt; a book whose letters make a slight indentation in the paper yet jump off the page; a book with hand-stitched binding. "I'm trying to get people to see a book as an aesthetic artifact, not as a generic container," says Dave Wofford, who operates the one-man letterpress Horse and Buggy Press. "I like the concept of attention to detail, tactileness, intimacy. To me books can't be beat for those things. via The Durham News Horse and Buggy Press

2. He pioneered the cult of youth and turned himself into a brand. No wonder Oscar Wilde is still seen as ‘one of us’

   From The London Times

   by Gyles Brandreth Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death by Gyles Brandreth will be published by John Murray on May 1

   Last Sunday I made a pilgrimage to the Père Lachaise cemetery, in the northeast of Paris, to pay my respects to the shade of Oscar Wilde. I found I was not alone. The great man’s grave was surrounded by quite a crowd, including a party of Japanese students, a family of Germans (the father was wearing lederhosen) and an assortment of young people in their twenties: French, Italian, British and American.

   In his own time, he was an outsider and an exotic. Now he’s one of us. We understand his craving for celebrity. We share his obsession with youth. (“Youth is the one thing worth having,” he wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray.)

   As I arrived, one of the young women (an English student from St Andrews) was planting a kiss on the huge Jacob Epstein effigy that surmounts the poet’s grave. She was kissing the marble deliberately, to leave the lipstick impression of her mouth on the monument. “Why did you do that?” I asked. “Because I love him,” she replied. “We all do,” added another of the girls. “He’s one of us.” Wilde, it seems, is our contemporary. He died in Paris 108 years ago, a near-friendless exile, impoverished, shunned, disgraced. Today, he is world-famous and universally admired. There are 1,000 lipstick impressions on his tomb. He would not have quarrelled with the attention: he was a pioneer of celebrity culture. “If you wish for reputation and fame in the world,” he advised, “take every opportunity of advertising yourself. Remember the Latin saying, ‘Fame springs from one’s own house.’ ” At theatrical first nights, as a matter of policy, during the 10 minutes before the curtain was due to rise, he would make a series of brief appearances around the auditorium - in the dress circle, in the stalls, in the boxes on either side of the stage. He wore outlandish clothes; he said outrageous things. He set out to get himself noticed. He was. And he is. I am writing a series of Victorian murder mysteries, traditional who-dunnits featuring Wilde as my detective, and, as my publishers cart me about the world, I am discovering that my hero’s fan base extends way beyond Europe and North America. He has a substantial following in South America, the Middle East, India and - wait for it - Korea. Other Victorian writers may be more widely read (Dickens and Conan Doyle, for example), but I reckon that no other individual Victorian, however eminent (no, not Queen Victoria herself), lives on as a personality in quite the way that Wilde does. [Continue reading the Times article here]
3. In ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ by Lewis Carroll, Alice falls through a mirror and on the other side of the mirror, she becomes a piece in a game of chess. Inspired by this, the chess pieces have an opaque mirror finish, when they touch the surface of the board they magically turn transparent and reveal the identity of the piece contained inside them. When removed from the board they revert to being opaque, hiding the identity of the piece. This is a comment on how a chess piece has no value unless it is in play on the board. If removed from the board, a pawn and a queen are equal, in that neither have any value.

   A Chess Set inspired by the novel 'Alice through the Looking Glass' where the pieces magically turn transparent when they touch the board.

   The theme of 'Alice through the Looking Glass' is the difference between the real world and the world behind the mirror. In keeping with this theme there is a contrast between the unlit mirrored piece and the clear glass piece. Each unlit mirrored piece is a smooth and modern shape. Each lit piece is clear glass, with the negative shape of a traditional, delicate Staunton chess piece enclosed within it. In the book the White Knight talks about how he thinks better when he is upside down. In a reference, the White Knights in the set only work when they are placed upside down. This joke is hidden to all but those who know the background of the chess set The Chessboard is made out of LightPoints a material manufactured by Schott, which is glass that has LED's embedded in it; the pieces are coated with Mirona, a Material that turns transparent when light shines through it. When the piece is placed on the board it completes the circuit and lights up the LED under it turning it transparent, like magic. This product was designed by Yasmin Sethi in response to a brief set by Schott UK Ltd. for Final year students of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. via Yasmin Sethi Design
4. Not many books begin with a word of warning. Through the Clock's Workings does. This anthology of literature is not some textual tome, frozen in time and space. It is alive, evolving organically in a constant state of flux.  This is a world first: a remixed and remixable short fiction anthology. (remix my lit)

5. The Beat Generation t-shirt sale has ended. My apologies, but I promise it will come again.

   Thanks as always for shopping in the real, and for your continued support of Beat Poetics.

   The more exposure to the beats the better off we all will be…

   You can still order a custom Beat lit t-shirt (or other) on the Custom page, or pick one up at Book People at 6th and Lamar in Austin. They’re graciously featuring Beat Generation writers in the store this month to coincide with the On the Road with the Beats exhibit at the University of Texas at Austin / Harry Ransom Center.

   The exhibit explores the lives and works of the artists who made up the “Beat Generation.”

   Featuring more than 250 items drawn from across the Ransom Center’s collections, the exhibition will take visitors on a journey through the cities, landscapes and communities that fostered and shaped the most important works of the Beat Generation, from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s. The exhibition runs from Feb. 5 to Aug. 3 in the Ransom Center Galleries at The University of Texas at Austin.

   Jack Kerouac’s scroll manuscript of On the Road, on loan from the collection of Jim Irsay, will be on display from March 7 through June 1. The first 48 feet of this 120-foot “page” (aka “the roll”) will be visible in the gallery. This visually stunning first draft has no paragraph or chapter breaks, and the characters are referred to by their real names.

   

   

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

© 2008 Reckon .