Demonology (29 page)

in your construct,
the penitent, always has the upper hand, always has control, hidden from you, present and absent, both;
yes, an uncomfortable position, holding the shoehorns in this way, arched over myself, while he took command of the penlight,
while he tried to neglect his responsibility, and I mean uncomfortable in a lot of ways, I mean that I didn’t want to watch
his expressions of remorse, I didn’t want to think about what I was doing, I was better off looking at the stuccoed ceiling,
an interior style that always made me feel really claustrophobic, the simulated remodeling ease of stucco, and if at this
point the penlight didn’t do the job, didn’t illuminate, what did I care, now, alone or married, fertile or infertile, pregnant
or barren, what did I care that he had gone now and left me on the kitchen table, had gone to the bedroom, I could hear him
now padding away, the door only partly ajar, I could see the dim clamp light on his bedside table illumined, I could see him
brushing his teeth in that furious inconsolable way he had, he sawed at his gums, and now he was reading, of course, reading
in volumes that no longer comforted, reading to repair the differences, what was all this talk, all these pages, all this
prose, all these sentences, what was it all for, I thought, on the kitchen table, holding two shoehorns in this way so that
I was open to the world, its first citizen, its first woman, its original woman, naked on the kitchen table, like a repast,
I left off talking, my outrage lapsed, what had we been arguing about, what was the source of the argument and where did it
take us,
don’t leave me here like this,
all your broken bindings, your printing presses, your history of histories, I climbed down off the table and began straightening
things up.

N
ote:
Dawn in Springfield, where I am writing these words, dawn, hue of oatmeal, Springfield, city of former industrial glory.
Something, some animal, has overturned the large aluminum trash barrel I recently purchased from a national discounter, scattering
two insufficiently sealed bags across the backyard, one containing a number of the
sexually explicit magazines
that have served as my companions in the last several years. How I wish I were making coffee. Maybe I will make coffee; in
fact, maybe I will embark herewith upon description of my expensive
home brewing station
of a Germanic or ersatz-Germanic design; my coffeemaker has a timer and a grinder; I will confess,
bibliophile,
that frequently I allow the coffeemaker to serve as my alarm, my
carpe diem,
first a high-pitched screech, no more than a second or two, then the beans that I have scooped into the grinding portion
of the technology during the prior night’s rash of scotches, these beans, in a clockwise motion not
unlike the movement of planets around the sun, not unlike the sun’s motion around the galaxy, not unlike the galaxies as they
helix around the circular nothingness of
creation,
these beans fall upon knives, roasted and seasoned beans slipping down through the grinding stage of the Germanic
home brewing station,
and then into the filtering area, where a reusable Mylar filter with
thousands of tiny filaments
will begin trapping and collecting this elixir of Araby to allow it to achieve maximum viscosity; about this time, where
I am lying on a full-size box spring that induces unbearable lumbar pain, I begin to hear the blubbering of the local fluori-nated
tap water in the
stem section
of my German
home brewing station.
The water is beginning to achieve its electrically induced convection current, in the stem section, the water is beginning
to reach its boiling, I can hear it, as the grinding noise has penetrated the scrim of my disappointment and I have reluctantly
opened my eyes and concluded, again, that I need to launder the sheets, which duty, by nightfall, I will have abjured; never
mind all that, I can hear the buoyant chemistries of the German
home brewing station,
and now I can
smell
the beverage, my addiction, my blessing, my nightingale, my helpmeet; it is drifting from the kitchen, across the dining
room, across the thick wall-to-wall in the dining room with the Beaujolais stains and the woolen gobs hacked up by my incontinent
Abyssinian, down the little corridor, the smell of my coffee, the certain basis for any claim of the Divine, coffee, all the
beans, all the varieties, I have lingered in the boutiques of shopping malls devoted to its worship, Eritrean beans flavored
with betel juice, perhaps a bit of almond or absinthe, perhaps some Percocet or Vicodin to further amplify my caffeinated
comforts, a frame or two of my lost childhood snuck into this taste, ice cream cones past, double scoops, my lost parents
and the liqueured desserts, I admit it, even
house blends
can seduce me, even
house blends
suggest the high art of roasting and flavoring, even house blends suggest a sunrise when the non-union farm laborer is hunched
in the mottled shade of the glorious shrub picking green fruits, a dream fit for a victorious conqueror, even the production
of these notes (on books I’m featuring this quarter) were composed in a Javanese ecstasy. I have searched among the possessions
of dead people, pinchpennies, those with obsessive-compulsive disorder, those who never read, I have searched in second-hand
stores in towns like Rockville and Cincinnati, and I did it all for coffee, oh coffee, of thee I sing, profits, lives, loves,
passions, all this for thou, oh muse, oh goddess, oh bean, oh coffee.

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,
I
don’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 will
recognize, 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,
I
had 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 the
Back 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 authors 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.