by Rick Moody
All books fine in original dust jackets, unless otherwise noted.
1. (Anthology). Kiss My Ass, Motherfucker, Gonna Blow Up Your Damn House. Seattle: Squatters Collective, 1979. Essays on direct action, including one by Tony Puryear, later author of an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, Eraser, also including the first ever appearance of National Book Award Winner Eileen Brennan (Several Generations of Forlorn Women) under her pseudonym, Elsie Tree. We had the book in our co-op back in Ann Arbor back in the late seventies. At the time, my roommate, who eventually directed aspirin commercials, insisted that influenza was organized and disseminated by the Central Intelligence Agency in an effort to neutralize the American counterculture.
$ 15
2. (Anthology). Prose by Don. New York: Unfounded Allegations, 1978. Hardcover edition of this sampling of literature by authors named Don, including Don DeLillo, Donald Antrim, Donald Barthelme, Donald Westlake, Dawn Powell, Donny Osmond, Don Knotts, Donald Sutherland, Don Giovanni, Don Vito Corleone, and others, also including excerpts from the autobiography of a Nutley, New Jersey, electrician, Don Vyclitl, of Ukrainian origin. Slight foxing to jacket, otherwise fine. Later titles in the series included the two-in-one volume Works by Zephediah backed with A Couple of Unpublished Scraps by Hamilton.
$35
3.(Anthology). Words, Blossoms, Cars. Austin, TX: Cooked Books, 1968. All contributions are unsigned, although, according to scholars like Tommy McCandless at Western Kentucky Technical Institute, they include Frederick Barthelme, a seventeen-year-old Mary Robison, Rikki Ducornet, Ann Lauterbach, and others, as well as excerpts from manuals on how to disassemble and reassemble the first Ford Mustang, several arguments against popular modifications of the Monopoly board, and some poems in the style of Mallarmé. This copy signed by Barthelme with appended disclaimer, Idon’t know what the hell you’re talking about, I had nothing to do with this book, I like your suede shoes though. KB.
$45
4. Blake, Kenneth M. Elocution. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1986. First American edition of this novel concerning a group of Oxbridge scholars who cook and eat their landlady and who later assume command of British forces during the Falklands War. Not long after, the author himself was convicted of cooking and eating his landlady. This copy also signed, rare as such: Bon Apetit! K.M.B., 7.7.87.
$50
5. Carrington, Leonora. Chilblains. Paris: Editions Aveugle, 1921. Little known roman à clef by the great surrealist. A library copy, actually stolen from the Widener, at Harvard, by yours truly. The story goes thus. I was desperately in love with an art history student, Anna Feldman, she of the blond bob, she of the palindromic name, she of the ballerina’s frame, she of the turnout, of the veils and scarves, of the BMW 2002; having espied her at a fast food joint in town (I was working at a used bookstore), I had taken the opportunity to follow her on a couple of occasions, always at a discreet distance, never in a way that would have intruded. I’d been reading Carrington’s books in the confines of the Rare Book Room at the Widener: For as the reader willrecognize, my famishment is immense. I was fascinated with the way the heroine in Carrington’s novel could change herself at will into the South American mammal called the nutria. I’d felt that Anna Feldman would especially appreciate the image and the book. Getting it past the sequence of alarms in the Widener was a chore, I can tell you, even though security was comparatively lax in those years. When I finally attempted to present Carrington’s volume to Anna, after months of conspiring, the future art historian was aloof, refusing the token of my affections outright. This copy, therefore, though it is in the original edition, has some lonely, dispirited marginal commentary in my own hand, of a mildly misogynistic cast (from which illness I later recovered, I assure you). I offer it at bargain price.
$75
6.Dactyl, Veronica (Davis, Lydia). How to Compose a Detective Novel. Washington, DC: Sun and Moon, 1987. Pseudonymous how-to primer, by the fiction writer and translator widely considered one of the most elegant and arresting of twentieth-century American voices. Davis, as has often been noted, writes and produces slowly, and now it’s clear why. Acting on information provided me by a Katonah, NY, accountant, I have learned that the identity of this shadowy, elusive crime writer, Veronica Dactyl, is none other than the exquisitely luxe prose stylist herself. This primer reflects Dactyls fifteen years of writing mysteries mainly for the French market (L’Ami, L’Amour, Le Mort, for example, was a bestseller after the release of the Mickey Rourke vehicle) and as such was not a hit on this side of the pond. Now that the association is clear, Dactyl will no doubt have a higher profile among collectors. Price-clipped, with some writing on title page, though not in the author’s hand: Happy bday B., you should always have a career to fall back on, love, Mom.
$100
7. Firth, Desmond. The Benzene Ring. New York: Linden Press, 1986. Outrageously funny first novel about the publishing business. Released posthumously. Which reminds me. After my years at the bookstore in Cambridge, where I was getting minimum wage and amassing enormous credit card debt, I decided there was little choice but to retreat to the groves of academe, where, although I’d never had much success, Ihad learned to respect and admire books. My list of likely institutions included several top-flight northeastern universities, to which I intended to apply in both the English literature and philosophy departments. I was also interested in at least one art history program, so that I might be closer to a certain beloved expert in forgeries of pre-Columbian native American artifacts, namely, of course, Anna Feldman. Desmond Firth, friend of a friend, had gone to SUNY Binghamton before getting his job in New York in the computer books division of New American Library. Our mutual acquaintance, a ticket scalper, memorabilia collector, and paraplegic called Benny Fontaine, therefore suggested I call Firth to discuss the academic business with him. Since I’m a little disinclined to make or return any kind of phone call, it took longer than I anticipated to make contact with Firth, even if from reports Firth was eager to talk to me. However, by the time I dialed the unlisted number of his Jersey City apartment, he had already thrown himself in front of a Manhattan-bound PATH train. At rush hour. The Newport Mall station. For reasons unexplained. Persevering without Firth’s help I made application to some regional universities on my wish list, including UMass, only to be rejected from all these departments.
$ 15
8. Ford, David. Demanding That You Deny Me That Which I Offer You: Lacan as Advanced Capitalist in the Age of Post-Post-Structuralism. Santa Monica: Danger! Books, 1994. Including instruction inviaticals, topologies, rhizomes, and the petit objet a.
$25
A Fascinating Letter
9. Gelb, Mortimer. TLS from Gelb to Chip Man dible, dated 14 July 1973. Clearly typed on an early IBM electric without correcting key. The author was a minor playwright (Death on theBack Nine, e.g.), known mainly in the Providence area (including a disastrous tenure with the Trinity Repertory Company), but here he writes in his capacity as director of Woonsocket Camp for Boys (note letterhead), to the stepfather of a camper given to vexing kleptomaniacal tendencies. Gelb’s preoccupation, from a disciplinary standpoint, is with a vanishing collection of 1969 New York Mets baseball cards. The card featuring Nolan Ryan was later recovered. A fine example of how an early covetousness can pave the way for effective business tactics in later life.
$900
10.Holberg, Susan Emmerich. Blue and Gray Notebooks: A Novel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. New York Times notable book of 1985. Haven’t read it personally, and I don’t have to, but with a minuscule print run (1,500 copies), a meager advertising budget, negligible promotion, it has all the signs of an income-generating bonanza in my sector of the business. Especially now that the author, having appeared nude on the jacket, is a sensation! Dealers have been shadowing Holberg coast to coast on the promotional junket for her more recent White Male Oppressors. Listen, deplorable is the only appropriate term for the conduct of my professional brethren. If we can’t treat the au
thors of these works with dignity and kindness, our business is going to wither before our eyes. On the other hand, I personally brought a shopping cart full of seventy-three copies of this first novel to Holberg’s in-store appearance in Boston. I actually had to get a homeless fellow from the Common to help me carry the shipping containers. I guess, in a spirit of business conciliation, I should offer my strategy: I would carry five copies forward in the reception line, run back to the shopping cart —where my pal Spike would hand me five more —wait through the queue a second time. When, on each occasion, I reached the dais, where the author was rubbing her arthritic wrist, I would alter my expression slightly, from careworn sadness to earnest befuddlement, completely deceiving the poor, exhausted Holberg. When the rest of the crowd, with their dog-eared paperbacks that will never be worth a wooden nickel, were through extracting signatures from her (This is for my friend Kitty! She wants to be a writer too!), I asked Holberg if she wouldn’t mind signing just a couple more. There were in fact forty-nine additional copies left, and Spike gamely brought them forward. When I hinted that I might be associated with one of the larger chain merchandisers, Holberg obligingly complied. After twenty-five copies, however, she handed the Sharpie back to me. “Why don’t you sign them all yourself? Nobody’ll know the difference.”This copy near mint, rare as such, with an interesting inscription, The authors hand as complex promotional swindle, S.E.H. 6/16/85.
$ 150
An Unusual Association
11. Holberg, Susan Emmerich. White Male Oppressors. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. It wasn’t long after my initial conversation with Holberg, that, at a yard sale, I stumbled upon this copy of her second novel, inscribed to none other than Anna Feldman! The inscription reads in part, One broad to another, enduring fealty, don’t let the bastards grind you down. I was drinking an Irish coffee, about ten in the morning. This was in Glastonbury, Connecticut, I believe, and the people having the yard sale —their belongings flapping from hastily strung laundry lines —were the Weavers. When I cornered the woman of the house, a pudgy, outdated example of the nineteen-fifties bombshell wearing the obligatory pelican blue eye shadow, I demanded to know where she’d gotten this first edition of the Holberg. She remarked that there was no reason to use threatening language. I’d used no such thing. She’d gotten the volume at the library sale in town, simply because she liked the dust jacket, with its leering platoon of American militarists. Supposedly, Mrs. Weaver claimed, she didn’t know Holberg personally, had no idea of the value of the book (which in fact had one of the Weavers’ orange stickers on it: 500), and was in the process of declaring bankruptcy. I felt I needed to keep the Glastonbury residence of the Weavers under surveillance for a few days, from the far side of Oakdale Blvd., yet I noticed nothing out of the ordinary except for Mr. Weaver’s tendency to sob while cutting the lawn. Around the back of his ranch house he would go, on his riding mower, his face a mask of anguish.
$275
Very, Very Unstable In the First Place
12. (Institutionalized Writers) Klingman, Finley. Sun, Shine Down Upon Besieged Humors. Amenia, NY: M.A.O. Press, 1987. A rare peek at the drawings and poems of one of the foremost of American outsider artists, Klingman committed himself in the late seventies upon becoming convinced that computers were beginning to speak to one another, a perception that certainly wouldn’t seem unusual these days. I met him thereafter and found him passionate, articulate, resigned to his fate. He was also an outstanding Scrabble player, specializing in sequences of two- and three-letter words that all fell, mercilessly, on triple-word scores. These feats were accomplished while Finley delivered lengthy tirades about particle physics and Ger man phenomenological thinkers. This chapbook is number thirteen of a limited edition of twenty, signed by Klingman, and thus especially rare, as he believed that signing anything would alert authorities to his political resistance and thereby bring torture down upon his head.
$ 1,000
13. (Institutionalized Writers) Meyers, Mirabelle. County Dreambook. Amenia, NY: M.A.O. Press, 1987. Another in the M.A.O. series. With Meyers’s poetical attention to dismemberment, ecstatic sexual union, forced homosexuality, religious themes, she’d have been a natural for any controversy relating to government funding of the arts, but, astonishingly, her work never came to the attention of Helms, et al., even though she was being housed in a state facility and even though M.A.O. received grants from N.Y.S.C.A. in 1987 and 1988. Meyers’s free-verse poems are all the more astonishing (with their heavy plagiaristic reliance on conservative publications like the National Review, the New York Post, the Washington Times), when you consider that she was a college dropout and former domestic engineer from Corinth, NY, whose husband was the local grocer, and whose children were dyslexic. The author died while incarcerated, penniless and neglected, and this is therefore her only work, one of a numbered twelve copies. I am forced to price it at a threshold it deserves. You would be lucky to have known Mirabelle. Those who did miss her.
$2,500
14. (Institutionalized Writers) Poole, Samuel. In Support of a Reliance Upon Power Tools. Amenia, NY: M.A.O. Press, 1988. Yes, I knew him, too, during that dark interval of my own. I loved them all, my friends inside, they were good people, and it’s no reflection on their own dignity that they didn’t have the kind of insurance that would allow them to stay in private psychiatric hospitals, or that their illnesses were of such sturdy architecture that they could not lead productive lives, as I have been able to do, by finding a line of work that made harmony with who they were, with their gears and engines. One night, I saw Sam Poole, actually floating in the corridor of the hospital; I awoke, in the ward, tiptoed quietly out into the hall, knowing that there was no loneliness like the loneliness of the mentally ill, knowing that my solitude would never be corrected, no matter how many days I waited in front of the brownstone in Back Bay where Anna Feld-man settled with her husband, the tax lawyer. Every thread of my short life had come to a frayed end. Out into the hall I went, across the hall, to whisper at the mesh of the window, out at the county road, empty at that hour but for a tractor, laden with bales, that labored away from me with hazard lamps flashing. I was as astonished as you would be, to find then, Sam, in his dressing gown, unshaven, drifting, as if in a heated, kidney-shaped swimming pool, several feet above the cracked, heaving linoleum. In his sleep, but nonetheless chattering like a suburban housewife. The night orderly was slumped in a chair by the nurse’s station. And thus there was no observer but myself, none but myself to ask of Sam the questions that had afflicted me and others in that institution, but Sam would answer no questions. That was not the sort of oracle he was. Instead, amid his jeremiads were the words Son, you get on out of here now. This is no place for a kid like yourself Since Sam was asleep his remarks were somewhat disordered, but this is how I reconstructed this particular morsel of advice. I founded the M.A.O. Press to preserve Sam’s literary legacy, and, yes, it’s true, Sam Poole argued, while drifting lazily in the corridor of my psychiatric hospital, that no matter the darkness of any life, we should always be grateful for the band saw.
$2,500
A Run of Defaced Mailers
15. Mailer, Norman (Duffy, Tyrone). Advertisements for Myself New York: Random House, 1959. Tyrone Duffy, a graduate of Cooper Union in New York City, began mangling and defacing copies of Norman Mailer’s work in the early eighties, and displaying them in galleries mostly associated with the East Village scene. In interviews, Duffy has refused to acknowledge any particular feeling for Mailer (but how could you have a feeling for Mailer, beyond being appalled that the writer once stabbed his own wife). Duffy claims to have selected Mailer for his art —which incorporates doodles, notations for saxophone solos, grocery lists, bank statements, diary entries, and quarrels with the texts themselves —because the lesser Mailer titles are readily available at used book stores. This subsequent collection of Duffy’s work (as opposed to Mailer’s), amazingly owned by a product manager from the Glock Firearms C
orporation (Frank Gilman), is an example of the aleatory quality of all the best literature, how it conjoins reader and writer blessedly, how it is never complete until there is a reader who can make of the work what she or he wishes, using it to line their birdcage, using it for ecstasy or articulation of dreams, using it to imagine their own log cabin in the empty forested regions of Western Canada or Cincinnati skyscraper in the shape of a flamingo; all this collecting of the perfect copy of everyone’s book, you and I know that collection is merely autobiography. Mailer now becomes Tyrone Duffy, and while Mailer might still haunt the Promenade on Brooklyn Heights, walking a pug and smoking a cigar, Duffy’s Mailer crowds him out. Late at night the author senses it and trembles.
