(Jackson Street) Books on 7th is around the corner and on the internet tubes. We strive to be your full-service new and used bookstore, emphasizing good literature, progressive politics, and, of course, books about baseball. Opened in Hoquiam October 1, 2010
We're going to take a small break today, so please use the comments to recommend your recent literary finds. I'm finally getting around to reading Brock Clarke (Arsonist's Guide to New England Writer's Homes) in anticipation of his upcoming novel Exley. I loved Exley's novels and it's a delight to find this quirky obsessive novelist will be tackling this one. It's been a busy week, We've gotten some shelves moved to the bookstore and discovered we'll need a truck to move the ones that couldn't fit into the van. Next week promises to be even busier as we count down to a rapidly approaching Saturday. Keep your finger crossed, as I may have big news soon about a special musical guest at the opening party.
(image from The Daily World)
Finally, here's a newspaper article you might get a kick out of. Subscription is required to view the pictures (of yours truly) and read the whole text, but it's free for the time being.
More pictures are on Facebook, please be sure to "Like" us while you're there.
You can always browse our books at Jackson Street Books and other fine Independent bookstores.As always, books ordered here will have a freebie publishers Advance Reading Copy included as a thank you to our blogosphere friends.
Aerik wore orange so he would blend in with his surroundings. Nice camoflauge don't ya think? The nasty psychedelic Dreamsicle has been turned into a nice terra cotta.
Book packing begins tomorrow. You just know, the one book we put in the bottom of the box will be ordered and we'll have to search through all of them to find it.
American Taliban, How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right, by Markos Moulitsas (Polipoint Press $14.99)
I had planned on talking about American Taliban today, in order to let you know about Markos Moulitsas' upcoming appearance on Virtually Speaking Monday evening. Markos has agreed to sign some bookplates for us and you can get your very own signed book from us. Jay Ackroyd will be discussing the book with Markos at the Virtually Speaking Studios in Second Life and it will be broadcast live on BlogTalk Radio. You can attend virtually or tune in to BTR and ask questions in the chat area. The Cafe Wellstone folks are happy to help you get Second Life figured out, how to download the best viewer, help you get the sound going, or even take you shopping for good hair. You can send me an email (info at jacksonst-books.com), or just send an Instant Message to BookemJackson Streeter or Michele Mrigesh inworld and we'll find someone to help you.
... How dare the author compare the American right to the Taliban. Sure, we both hate sex, reproductive choice, secularism, government regulation, homosexualism, and masturbation. We both want to establish godly governments that enforce scriptural law. And, we both justify our wars on the basis of religion. But the similarities end there...
If you missed it, go back and read it. And be sure to vote for it!
Markos at Netroots Nation in Second Life August 2010
If you found your way here from a little sign in a window on 7th Street, Welcome! We'll continue to use this blog from our online store, with a slightly altered title. Over the next two weeks, you'll see us busily moving boxes & shelves until opening day on (hopefully) Oct 1. We'll call October 2 the grand opening and mark the date with a bit of a party. We hope to see you then!
We have the keys now and got to look around and decide where things will go. It actually feels bigger once you're inside. It has that boomy, echo-y sound as you talk. It'll be nice to have the books inside to help diffuse that.
I had the big ABA poster from when we were in Seattle, so I taped it into the window. That should make a nice announcement to the folks attending Mama Mia! tonight.
We've signed a lease, and tomorrow we meet with the landlord to note any damage to the space and get the keys. Then, the fun can begin.. moving shelving and books and stand-ees and bookends and posters and books and the big table and the desk and books and.. and..
I keep thinking of more things I'll be needing over there. Of course, we already have all of it, it's just a matter of getting it into a box and moving it 4 blocks. I have been hoping we'll have dry weather and can move most everything by foot, on a handtruck. It'll be nice bragging rights to say this was an entirely Green move.
Revisiting The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler's penultimate Philip Marlowe novel (pay no attention to the last Marlowe novel, Playback, which isn't very good), is to be reminded of how great an American novelist Chandler was. He transcended genre in perhaps no other way, with perhaps he exceptions of Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick. I think The Long Goodbye is his greatest achievement, though there are Chandler enthusiasts who prefer The Big Sleep or Little Sister.
The plot is straight forward enough. PI Philip Marlowe has been aroused late at night by his friend, Terry Lennox, who asks Marlowe to drive him to Tiajuana, as he is in trouble. Marlowe has met and developed a friendship with Lennox over the course of several months, during which he has learned that Terry is alcoholic, war-scarred and prematurely white-haired, and married to a rich young woman. Or recently re-married to her. Marlowe take Lennox to Mexico, and upon his return, is taken into custody by the LAPD for criminal assistance. Marlowe refuses to divulge anything to the police and is only released after Lennox's confession to his wife's murder and subsequent suicide emerge. Marlowe resumes his life and is asked by a New York publisher to help one of their best-selling novelists escape from a self-inflicted and alcoholic-induced writers block. The writer is Roger Wade, and he, too, is married to a beautiful woman, Eileen. The two cases do not seem related at first, but, as these things go, they are.
But more than a plot with twists and turns (I think of the famous story of William Faulkner trying to write the screenplay to The Big Sleep and calling Chandler in the middle of the night to find out who has killed a certain character, and Chandler not knowing; but they were boozehounds, so who knows?), Chandler was as good a prose stylist as there was in 20th Century America. To wit:
From now on I wouldn't tell you the time by the clock on your wall.
Next morning I got up late on account of the big fee I had earned the night before. I drank an extra cup of coffee, smoked an extra cigarette, ate an extra slice of Canadian bacon, and for the three hundredeth time I swore I would never again use an electric razor. That made the day normal.
I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between the stars.
Chandler is also critical of the Hollywood milieu, and the rich as well. There's no sneaking admiration as a F. Scott Fitzgerald might have fawned (the rich being different than you and me, but they have great, lavish parties). They are no different than the mobsters who dog Marlowe and warn him off the Lennox case. In fact, both the rich and the gangsters are quick to remind Marliowe of how much clout they can and do exercise. But more than this, The Long Goodbye is a mediation on friendship: how far does it extend, what can we be reasonably expected to do, and what can we do when that friendship is abused and betrayed. The Long Goodbye belongs on the same bookshelf as anything by Hemingway, Steinbeck or Faulkner. If you haven't read Chandler, do so.
Which brings me to the film adaptation of the book, released in 1973, and directed by Robert Altman from a screenplay by the science fiction writer Leigh Brackett, who also worked on the films of The Big Sleep and The Empire Strikes Back. Ask any Chandler enthusiast how they liked the movie and almost to a person, it is loathed. I'm not sure why. The movie deviates from the story in places, especially in the ending, but the main themes remain. And it is as well done as anything Altman ever directed. The social satire remains. Only it is a Philip Marlowe who has been transported to a 1970's LA, and lives in an apartment next to a commune of brownie-eating young women who do their Yoga exercises on the porch only partially clothed. Marlowe still drives a '48 Lincoln, but he tries to adapt. "It's all right by me", he keeps telling everyone he encounters. Only it isn't ok and his dislocation is such that, while he does try to help his friend, it seems the only one he can love is his cat. Who abandons him. Beautiful movie, with a great performance by Elliot Gould, Sterling Hayden as the author, Henry Gibson as a quack head-shrinker and ex-baseball pitcher, Jim Bouton as Terry Lennox. And, oh, it has one of the most shocking scenes in cinema history, featuring director Mark Rydell as a gangster dogging Marlowe.
The Long Goodbye is still in print from Vintage Books ($14.95) and available from Jackson Street Books and other fine Independent bookstores.As always, books ordered here will have a freebie publishers Advance Reading Copy included as a thank you to our blogosphere friends.
Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain (Harper, $26.99) Ten years after Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain is back with another brutal culinary tell-all. The sub-title A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook sums it up well. Many of the chefs he talks about fare well, he admires those who work hard and are honest with their audience. Teevee personalities and celebrity chefs are dished and dissected.
In the chapter Go Ask Alice, Tony serves up the back story to Alice Water's now famous crusade to "revolutionize" the White House kitchen and garden and why her hypocrisy was so offensive. He takes her to task for not having voted in 40-some years, but having the nerve to dictate a kitchen & staff she had not bothered to consider. He asks if her ideal world were to be realized, who would be willing to get up at 5am to gather those delicate local vegetables that all might eat organic, regional food in season? But even by the end of this rant, he concludes that the world is a better place for her bringing attention to the way our food is produced and consumed.
Perhaps the most scathing chapter is Alan Richman is a Douchebag, where he writes of their long standing feud, and how Richman came to write an ugly review of the restaurant Bourdain used to work at 10 years earlier. But that is not what makes Richman a douchebag in his eyes. It is the snarky review of the New Orleans food scene soon after Katrina which draws his hatred. The article isn't available online, but the responses to it sure are.
Bourdain is equally unflinching in self-examination. He realizes how lucky he has been, and that the path through his early addictions surely brought him to this place. He is giddily happy with life now, and the reason for that is his two year old daughter. Parenthood will change all perspectives. He revels in being un-cool while utterly, devotingly doting on this miracle in his life. I recommend his "Black Ops" chapter Lower Education to any parent wishing to counteract the insidious propaganda of McDonald's on young minds.
Anthony Bourdain also has a challenge for all you would be foodies. Answer this question on his website and you might just get picked by him to be published in the paperback edition of Medium Raw: Medium Raw is available from Jackson Street Books and other fine Independent bookstores.As always, books ordered here will have a freebie publishers Advance Reading Copy included as a thank you to our blogosphere friends.
As always, books ordered here will have a freebie publishers Advance Reading Copy included as a thank you to our blogosphere friends.
