Book shelves series #49, forty-ninth Sunday of 2012
Unless I’ve somehow miscalculated, this is the last book shelf in my house. It’s difficult to describe the room it’s in—sort of like a storage corridor that serves as an attic (my attic is tiny) with an ersatz workshop. Kids paints and art supplies dominate the top shelf; photo albums and year books the bottom. The middle holds all sorts of books that I can’t bear to get rid of, including a coffee-table history of MAD Magazine which is one of the first books I can remember begging my parents to get me.
There are also many, many back issues of MAD:
Also, lots of old books with out of date info, like a book about Jacques Cousteau, a book of Indian recipes which is more of a cultural guide, and this book of my home state:
Several old music zines (I should probably donate them to a zine library).
I have several dozens of these history packets called Discovery that I loved as a kid—they’d come with a booklet that illustrated the historical event in context, including opposing viewpoints, and they also had cool activities and games. I think they really helped me to learn as a child, and I can’t bear to get rid of them. Apparently Dennis Miller sat for the portrait of Guy Fawkes in the second issue.
The Science in Science Fiction probably deserves its own post it’s so wonderfully weird and silly.
Although this is the last shelf in my house, I said I’d do these posts each Sunday of 2012—and there are four more. I’ll visit the bookshelves in my office, the books in my car, take another look at the books on my nightstand (where I started) and then do a review post. Then I will never, ever do anything like this again.
From “A Conversation with Gordon Lish,” an outstanding interview between the writer/editor and Rob Trucks. The interview is really amazing—Lish talks at length about his writing process, his sense of competition, his friendships with Don DeLillo and Cynthia Ozick, his interest in Julia Kristeva, his feelings for Harold Brodkey and Barry Hannah—and Blood Meridian. Lots and lots of Blood Meridian.
I chose this little nugget because I think it reads almost like a perfect little Lish story—or at least, it seems to perfectly express Lish’s voice, which if you haven’t heard it, my god, get thee to his own reading of his Collected Fictions. Again, the whole interview is well worth your time if you have any interest in Lish. It includes this insight into the man’s fiction:
Biblioklept 