On The Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac

First Edition
Book: Fine, DJ: Fine
Viking, 2007
408 Pages

In Howard Cunnell's essay, which starts this publication of Kerouac's On the Road, there's a letter from Kerouac that says that he wrote "the whole thing on a strip of paper 120 feet long . . . just rolled it through the typewriter and in fact no paragraphs . . . rolled it out on the floor and it looked like a road." That's the way it was originally: no breaks, minimal punctuation. Makes Cormac McCarthy look like Henry James. OK, that's really going too far.
Point is, the effect of the original scroll is mind blowing. It's hard to put the book down at night because your reading the accounts of a young man's life without breaks, without pauses, and without anything artificial holding you from the subject. Even the names are the same; Allen Ginsberg is Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassidy is Neal Cassidy. The relationship between them is unedited by Viking, Scribner, or any other publishing house that's had its hand on the novel.
I'll bet their are traces of amphetamines all over that scroll.
On the Road was my Catcher in the Rye. It was the book that I read at just the right age to send me over the edge, at least until I turned twenty. I dug that book; I "grokked" that book. That book opened my mind to new ideas that were both enticing and dangerous.
I began reading books heavily during my senior year of high school. I didn't think I was going to college; I wasn't into sports, so I spent all of my academic time reading whatever I wanted. With the help of the school librarian, I was soon reading Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Gary Schneider, and of course, Kerouac. At the time, On the Road didn't seen that influential, but I think the culminating effects of all those writers changed me into a rebellious yet conscientious young man.
For a graduation present, my sister bought me a one-way ticket to Honolulu leaving from Seattle. I have no idea where she found it as this was before the internet and we both lived in Colorado. Having just finished Kerouac's book, I decided to hitch-hike to Seattle, a naive move on behalf of my then rosy-cheeked, seventeen-year-old self.
One memory from the trip (which was packed full of memories) that I'll share is as follows: On the first day of traveling I was waiting for a ride outside of Parachute, Colorado when this guy comes running down the road yelling, "I'm gonna steal your ride!" He was kidding. He was also hitch-hiking, traveling to San Francisco, having just finished a master's program at the University of Colorado. I'm not sure, but I'm going to guess he was a literature student, because not one ride into our time together he pulled out a copy of On the Road and asked if I'd read it.
He was a great guy, yelling "I have more education than you do!" at every car that passed us. We made it as far as the turn off to Moab on I-70 that night and slept in the dirt about 200 yards into the sagebrush. He kept saying he'd wake me up when a train came by and we'd hop it. I was thankful he fell asleep before I did.
We traveled together until we hit Salt Lake City. He wanted to finally jump a train and I found an on ramp heading north. I've never seen him since.
I've told stories from that trip, which include propositions for sex (I'd be getting to money), a ten-night party in some of the finest houses in Honolulu (no, they didn't involve prostitution), and the eventual highway robbery in rural Nevada. I think I owe these stories to Jack Kerouac, and had I not read his book when I did, I think I wouldn't be the person I am today.
Here's to fifty years.

Clown Girl by Monica Drake

Advanced reader's Copy
Soft cover
Near Fine but for a slight bump at the top of the spine
Hawthorne Books, 2006

When I was 19, I was living with some eccentric friends on Navajo Street in Denver. We had one of those televisions that had the thirteen channels and the second knob that got you a few more stations that broadcast Christian and Spanish-speaking shows. We also had four movies on VHS: The Exorcist, Eraserhead, Blade Runner, and Shakes the Clown.
The video that got the most playtime was Shakes the Clown. My house mates and I must have watched that movie over 50 times. It was a companion while washing dishes, and white noise while having company over. To this day, I can still nearly quote the entire movie from opening credits to close -- a talent gone unappreciated by my wife and friends.
When my wife saw an advanced readers copy of Monica Drake's Clown Girl, she knew she'd found me a gift I'd relish. here was a novel with collector's potential that concerned itself with the bizarre world of clowning. Here was a fictional world in which I could enshroud myself, like adorning a cherry-red wig, parachute pants and a Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat Vest.
To further my glee, Drake's novel has an introduction by Chuck Palahniuk, with whom she shared space at a writing workshop, long before the days of Fight Club. In the introduction, Palahniuk says that everyone waited, week after week, for Drake's sessional reading. According to the author of Rant, Drake was his rival, reading enticing tales of poverty and adventure, like how her characters would rifle through trash bins by the supermarket, searching for receipts because $200 worth of purchases got you a dozen eggs for 25 cents.
Drake's protagonist, Sniffles, is just such a character: a down-and-out party clown riding the line between selling-out and selling-art. Sniffles lives on the wrong side of the tracks with her drug-dealing ex-boyfriend and his body-building lover. She's waiting for her boyfriend Rex to come home from clown college and sweep her into a life of performance-art bliss, but has to scrape by until then, dealing with her paranoid house mates, fighting off advances from coulrophiles, and collecting urine for doctor's tests.
While all of these twists make for a really interesting main character (she is in full-clown makeup throughout the novel), most of the plot is obvious; every time the reader thinks something might happen, it does. For instance, Sniffles leaves her jug of urine in the refrigerator, unmarked. What happens next? That's right, someone drinks it. Sniffles doesn't mow the lawn for many months and it goes long and dry and then she wants to try juggling fire in the backyard. What happens? Yup, she burns up the lot. Even the main dilemma, where she's waiting for Rex but meets a cop with whom she takes a shining, is cute but typical in it's star-crossed-lovers approach.
Despite the obvious, Clown Girl had some really good themes. Like Palahniuk's Fight Club, Clown Girl is about the layers in which we hide ourselves. Where Tyler Durdon would say "You are not your furniture," (or in my case, my book collection), Drake's cop Jerrod would say, "You are not your clown uniform." Both Fight Club and Clown Girl are about identity and the societal layers in which we bury ourselves. Clown, cop, teacher, bookseller, librarian, guru, sexologist, or dog food taste-tester, we all dress and act appropriately, and when you're done saying, "You are not your big shoes/holstered gun/summer reading list/sexy hair bun/religious power-point/vibrating cock-ring/indigestion," you have to ask, "OK, so what the hell am I?" In Sniffles case, she's Nita, and Nita decides that beneath all her garb she's simply accountable for the choices she makes.
Hey, I think that's the message behind Shakes the Clown as well! Shakes is hiding behind his alcoholism and not being accountable for his messed-up life. As Owen Cheese says when picking up Shakes from jail, "That's the difference between a clown, and a really good clown."

The Disinherited by Jack Conroy

First Edition
Inscribed
Book: VG/DJ: Good+
Book has a bit of foxing, binding is very slightly cocked, but otherwise tight and clean.
Dust Jacket had five small chips, a little fading and soil, but is not price clipped.
Covici-Friede, 1933

Where do I begin with this wonderful book? Happy Labor Day.
I found this book at a living-estate sale that looked more like a garage sale than anything else. You'll hate me for my luck, but this was my first visit to an estate/garage sale with the intent to look for books (subsequent tours have proven dismally unsuccessful). I'd missed the first day of the sale and had driven out to where the classified ad directed me early Sunday afternoon.
I saw the book and nearly passed it up because of the soiling, but upon opening the book I saw the inscription, "Best wishes to my friend Joseph Singer -- Jack Conroy," so I thought I'd chance it. Furthermore, I thought I remembered seeing that striking cover before: Murray Levin's depiction of a line of hunched workers, beaten down, sans individuality.
When the woman running the sale saw me eying the book she said that it was her father-in-law's and that there was another book on the table by the same author. I rummaged through a few piles and found a 1935 first edition copy of Conroy's A World to Win, also inscribed. The woman told me that her father-in-law was a novice writer and that he had some poetry published in a few anthologies. I looked interested, but nonchalant, and bought both books for five dollars.
Upon returning home I fired up AbeBooks to see what I'd got and was flabbergasted by what I found: The Disinherited was a rare and seemingly sought-after book. There was (and still is) only one other copy on Abe that was both inscribed and had a dust jacket, and it was going for $1250. Conroy's other title, A World to Win, was being offered for $150 with no inscription. I was very happy, finally having something with which to justify my expensive hobby to my wife.
Yes, my wife was elated when I told her of my find. She went online and used her magic-Googling powers to eek out a connection between Jack Conroy and Joseph Singer. She found a few Joseph Singers in the field of socialist activism in the 1930s, but the name was common, and Jewish social activists were uber-abundant in pre-World War II America.
Finally she came across a database listing the artifacts in a collection of Jack Conroy's writings at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Among the letters listed was one from Joseph Singer addressed to Jack Conroy. She wrote the library and asked for a copy of the letter, which arrived without haste. The letter showed that Mr. Singer lived in Salem, Oregon and was not only an aspiring writer, but a bit of an activist as well. He wrote about attending meetings of the hop-yard workers and passing out copies of Conroy's publication, The Anvil. Singer' also remarked on the great use of diction that helped create terrific characters, like Hans, the machine-crippled auto-worker turned socialist.
I found a reader's copy of The Disinherited published in 1963 at the Night Library on the University of Oregon campus and read it while vacationing in Colorado. The story is of Larry Donovan's life of labor: from working at the Monkey Nest Coal Mine near Moberly, Missouri, to working in the auto factories in Detroit. Larry experiences the hardships of the American laborer, struggling to gain a foothold in a world run by bosses and investors.
Most interesting was Conroy's depiction of the Great Depression. It was disheartening watching young, able men and women have their lives cast into arrested development by a system that had exploited them from the first. Also of note was the impact of the automobile on a populace of striving, hungry people and the descriptions of the Hoovervilles across the country. Coming out in 1933, I can see The Disinherited taking it's place among other populace books like The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Three Soldiers by Dos Passos. Christopher Buckley comes to mind as a modern author trying to change the world for the better through literature. I just read Boomsday, and while the scenario presented in it isn't as dire (yet) as the one posed in The Disinherited, I like the call to activism presented in it.
I've got to give it to Conroy and those like him, they saw the injustice and set out to change it. His world brings a Bob Dylan quote to mind, "A lot of people don't have much food on their tables, but they got a lot of forks and knives, and they gotta cut something."
Hmm . . . Happy labor day.

A Tale of Two Fathers

The Road
by Cormac McCarthy
First Edition
As New
Knopf, 2006


Finn
by Jon Clinch
First Edition
As New
Random House, 2007



Yes, that's me in the mylar. The protective covering detracts a bit from McCarthy's jet-black dust jacket.
So I read these books one after another, with Finn first and The Road to follow, as that's the order in which I received my reader's copies from the library. Having read them in such a close time span, I thought I'd cover both titles in one blog, thus propelling myself farther into my library.
I was anxious to read Finn. As I have already stated, I'm a high school English, or as we're called now, language arts teacher and as such I've taught from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn many, many times. I read a review of Clinch's book and began salivating at the idea of reading a book from the perspective of the bigoted, racist, alcoholic Pap Finn.
The review I read was from the New York Times and while I enjoyed it, it released a plot spoiler (which I'll try not to give away here) with almost no warning. The review dropped a big bomb and didn't leave me ample time to shield my eyes. The incident occurred in a manner such as this:
"Clinch creates a dark and dramatic world, a world of moonshine, murder and masturbation. Like watching a train wreck, one feels compelled to push these images out while glancing to the side for more. Spoiler alert: the woman is really a man."
OK, that spoiler would have been for The Crying Game, but you get my drift: if you're going to let go of one of the book's major surprises, give the review reader a little time to put on the breaks, lay down the paper and think about whether or not she or he is going to actually read this book one day.
With that said, the ruined twist was really intriguing, offering a whole new avenue for possible discussion next time I teach from the Huckleberry Finn text, though I don't dare bring excerpts from Clinch's book into the classroom least I have a hunkering to hear from a dozen or more perturbed parents. Perhaps I'll just show the book to the students, tell them what it is about and forbid them to read it in my class. Then I'll make sure it's available at the library.

Over to The Road:
Believe it or not, this is my first time reading anything by Cormac McCarthy. My wife has read most of his other books, even though she doesn't really like them, dismissing them as overly masculine, terse, and (in her words, not mine) too Hemingwayesque.
I read the book in one sitting. I was drawn in by the eloquence of the language and the dramatic circumstances of the plot. Even though I pretty much knew what was around every corner for the father and son in McCarthy's book, I had to read on, least my inattentiveness allow marauders to capture to duo.
I know there are critics of McCarthy's lack of punctuation and simple sentence structure, but I think that if ever these devices were called for, they are employed here superbly. McCarthy's post-apocalyptic world is one where language is dying out along with the populace of the world. The father in this book often reminds his some that the son has to keep talking, as if the lack of spoken word would break the father and son apart, turning them both into the barbaric animals they are trying to avoid.
When the father and son are traveling, they occasionally come across collections of books. These artifacts, much like common speech, are rotting away, unused and unwanted, and these books in conjunction with McCarthy's language demonstrate the death of communication in an increasingly hostile world. I see it today in families that let the television be the thing that ties them together; I see it in the monosyllable mumblings of teenagers on the street corners of Eugene. As the world grows colder, it grows more silent.
Both Finn and The Road are about fathers and sons, and both are about giving someone up for their own betterment. The correlations between Pap Finn and the father in The Road are almost humorous because the one is so caring and a tremendous model of a good, patient father, and the other is a horror of a man, the village idiot having procreated. Both struggle to survive and, well, I'd tell you more, but I'd have to put it under a spoiler alert.

The Quartzsite Trip by William Hogan

First Edition
Book VG+, DJ Good+/VG
Light bit of shelf wear, bottom corner of cover is minimally bruised. DJ is slightly worn at head and tail and corners and has three very small chips. DJ cover has few scratches but otherwise a great, vibrant cover.
Athenium, 1980

As you can see, I'm working on my copy descriptions and my book grading. Also, thought I'd mix it up and shoot the book with my beautiful cat, Charlie.
So, The Quartzsite Trip. In 1962 a team of teens travel to Arizona for a week of fun in the sun. Deeter Moss comes of age in this tale of growth, camaraderie, false pregnancies, and sex in the desert. I think I owe a good deal of my booklust to a teacher much like P.J. Cooper. My Cooper was actually named Mike Dallas; I'll name him here because I only plan to flatter him. Dallas taught senior lit at the high school I attended in Colorado during the early 90s. He was what I would now call an existential teacher: letting his students drive the discussions, focusing more on the big picture that crappy things like grammar.
Dallas also taught Outdoor Seminar, a philosophy class meant to drive us out of our shells. It was in this class that I first read Zorba the Greek, Bartleby the Scrivener, and a hell of a lot of Herman Hesse. It was also here that I heard about The Quartzsite Trip. Dallas noted once or twice that the book was worth reading, and that he always looked for a copy when in a used bookstore. Funny, but when he said that, I thought he must come across copies quite often. I now have at least two dozen books that I look for every time I enter a used bookstore, including The Quartzsite Trip.
Late into my senior year I found a copy of Dallas's esteemed book. It was in my brother's room, uncovered while I was snooping for contraband of one sort or another. I thought little of finding the book then, but now I think more of the matter.
My brother went through some tough times in high school. I'll leave out the laundry list, but let's just say he was an angry youth. Dallas did what he could for my brother: he tried to turn my brother on to cycling, gave him a bike, signed him up for Ragbri in Idaho. Dallas generally took an interest in my brother and, though my brother said all he did on Ragbri was drink, I think Dallas left his mark. My brother finally came through and still cycles, using exercise as therapy. I can only imagine that Dallas gave my brother this copy of The Quartzsite Trip.
As for me, I went on to become an English teacher myself, hounding high school students about their reading assignments and marking up their work with a a bright red pen. I think of Dallas often, but I don't teach like him. I'm hands-on where he was laid back; I dominate a room and he occupied it and observed.
I've read that The Quartzsite Trip was meant to be another teen reader must, like The Outsiders or The Pigman. Aside from the sex, I wonder why it didn't have more of an impact. I love the beginning, where Hogan lays out the political and social mindset of people during thew early 60s. I'm also fond of the narrative shift between characters. Only thing that rang as partially false was the end, where Deeter runs into that mousy girl and she's turned out the be not only successful and smart, but quite a knockout as well. That alone I could swallow, but coupled with the twist that the girl who entrapped Deeter during the trip ended up falling to her death while attending college the circumstances end up being a bit much. But I won't begrudge Hogan for trying to make the point that high school is not the be-all and end-all of our lives, far from it.
So I was thrilled last April when I went to visit my sister in New York and saw the copy of Hogan's book on her shelf. She and her husband had a lot of books, most of which were book club editions, but she said they were trying to get rid of them and I could have what I wanted. After scouring their shelves, I came away only taking the one book, though now I wish I'd taken more.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High by Cameron Crowe

First Edition Paperback
VG - slightly bent corners on bottom of cover and back. small black remainder mark on bottom of book. Number "4" written lightly in pen on bottom of back cover.
Simon and Schuster, 1981

As noted in my last post, Cameron Crowe's Fast Times at Ridgemont High is one of my books that I have yet to read and may never get to read for fear of ruining my only copy. I know how delicate paperbacks are, especially when the binding glue has aged, and am afraid of adding wear to such a fine (or very good to near fine) copy. I'm probably not making any fans among those who think it absurd to relish a book you've never read.
This is not a new dilemma for me. Right now I have four books on my shelves that I won't read until I get a reader's copy; two are new publications that I'm saving as "As New" and the other two are really old books that I don't dare drag to bed with me. I haven't talked about any of these four on this blog yet, but am exited to do so as soon as I've found and read their reader's copies.
Reader's copies: That there's the rub with Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I didn't even know it was a book until presented with one, and I haven't seen another yet. AbeBooks.com lists it's cheapest offering of the self-proclaimed true story at $70, and that's for another paperback in only fair condition; seventy bucks is a lot to spend on a reader's copy. I'd ask my wife to get me a copy through the Eugene Public Library interlibrary loan to read, but I doubt there's one out there, gathering Dewey-decimal dust, waiting to be checked out. For now it will remain one of those "I haven't read the book, but I've seen the movie" things.
So where did I get such a glorious rarity? Not too long ago my friend Chuck was visiting from Colorado (see the entry "Geek Love by Katherine Dunn" June 4, 2007). As a gift, he brought me this copy of Cameron Crowe's book which he procured at "Mutiny Now" at Second South Broadway in Denver. According to the card in the book, Mutiny Now specializes in art, coffee to go, and grossly inexpensive used books that they have not bothered to look up on Abe, BookSence, or Biblio.com. If you're in the neighborhood, you might want to drop in and exploit their oversights.
I say all this because Chuck bought me the book as a bit of a gag gift. You see, when Chuck last saw me I was a copy editor for a small mountain newspaper and have since changed career tracks and have become a high-school grammar and literature teacher, hence the copy of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Neatly written (thankfully in pencil - the folks at Mutiny Now did one thing right) is the price of $7 on the inside blank page. Soon after Chuck left (like within minutes) I fired up the PC and looked up Mr. Crowe's book, ecstatic to find prices for paperbacks ranging from $60 to $1,000. Incidentally, Nudel Books is the antithesis of Mutiny Now.
My friend Chuck doesn't scout books, so he had no idea that I'd take such glee in his gift, and if he did scout them he might not have given me the book to begin with. Ever wonder if your friends will stumble across your blog? Nicholas from "News, Rants, Soliloquies, Reveries" was right, the road to hell is paved with $200 books. I miss that blog.
But blog nostalgia aside, I think I've found my reader's copy - the one that's cheap enough that I won't feel guilty thumbing through it. It's been here the whole time and the cost was only $7! I should have no qualms treating this book like a Penguin Classics purchased at the airport, right? Sad to say, no, I can't bring myself to do it. I'm too glutinous, too shamefully proud to diminish the value of my fine collectible to use it for it's intended purpose. Instead the book goes back in it's place on the shelf, only to be taken down when the right company comes over and says, "Oh, I didn't know that Fast Times at Ridgemont High was a book. Where did you get this?"
I can only hope that my company won't look at my walls lined with titles and ask, "Wow, did you read all these books?" What would I say then?

Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime by John Dunning

First Edition
NF with NF Dust Jacket
Scribner, 2001


For me, it all began with John Dunning. My wife, who's a reference librarian, came home one day saying that she'd come across the name of a mystery writer who owned an antiquarian bookstore in Denver. We both grew up in Colorado and went to college in Denver, so we checked him out (and also checked out his book, Booked to Die).
Turned out he ran the Old Algonquin Bookstore in East Denver on Colfax, where his sleuthing protagonist also ran a shop. I'm not sure, but I think he moved his store to Cherry Creek for a while before shutting the doors in the nineties and taking up residence on the internet. I like to imagine that I have a book that came from his shop. When I lived in Denver, I was dating a girl who bought me a copy of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (Peter Pauper Press - Mount Vernon) from the bookstore of which I am thinking.
Anyway, I read Dunning's mystery and was enthralled with the idea of collecting books. Oh cliche', oh cliche'. The plot, entailing bookscouting in Denver, reminded me so much of time spent in college browsing through the used bookstores, buying reader's copies for my library of cheap yet pompous titles, that I was instantly enthralled by the idea of turning all of those rotting coverless paperbacks into gleaming hardcover first editions. My wife wasn't too thrilled about the idea.
Back to Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime. I knew the book was out there, Dunning's major self-standing novel, and had passed up the opportunity to but it once when I saw it as a later edition. A few months ago, though, I was at the Eugene Public Library booksale and saw it in the aisle and soon had my own copy for one dollar.
I took it home and set in on the shelf, then went to the library to check out a reader's copy. Anyone else do this? I feel cheap and strange every time I check out a book that I have a copy of at home. It's shameful, and it's downright pathetic when you own something you can't read for fear of damaging it and you can't find a reader's copy. Anyone got a copy of Cameron Crowe's Fast Times at Ridgemont High I can buy for under fifteen dollars?
Dunning's novel was entertaining. I'd just read Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos and Chibon's The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay and was glad to read more on the WWII theme. Also, my wife's current writing project had brought me to read Steinbeck's The Moon is Down and I was happy to come across a reference to something I'd probably be hard-pressed to have a conversation about in another book; in his novel, Dunning talks about the controversy created by a play based on Steinbeck's novella about an occupied Dutch town.
Book's like Cavalier and Clay and Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime tell you about specific fields, such as old-time radio broadcasting and the comic book industry, in addition to giving you a riveting plot line and interesting characters in compounded conflicts. The private interests of Dunning and Chabon wrap the stories in rich and provocative detail. Case in point, Dunning's knowledge about the book-selling industry not only entertained me for a few days, but also created a habit that's eaten up weeks of my time so far.