Anodyne
Thursday, August 10, 2006
 

Withdrawn from Circulation

Much amusement at the shop over the arrival of signed "gift" books, particularly those sporting long, heartfelt, and thoroughly cliched handwritten declarations of love on the flyleaf or the title page (Jonathan Livingston Seagull; Griffin and Sabine). So tonight, when an old flame arrived offering not one, but three Nick Bantock books for sale, I had the good sense to surripticiously check them all, quickly locating the embarrassing handwritten cliches, the all too familiar signature, and the inscription, "Valentine's Day 1992."

Lots of physical symptoms we won't dwell upon, followed by the growing conviction that the book in question is going back into circulation sometime shortly after hell freezes over.

(Update, having just re-read the offending passages with granular attention: flashes of the nascent "uninflected realism" the author would later inflict on the Internet's tubes and on the local visual arts community, plus great dollops of suffering purple prose. Not a total write-off, but, like I say, not for sale at Vancouver's Favorite Used Bookstore any time soon).
- posted by cjb @ 8:45 PM


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