April 27, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:Poetry hour
Since my co-blogger is offering poems, I thought I'd post one of my favourites:
The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered
Clive James (1939- )
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book --
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seemingly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.
It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion
Beneath the yoke.
What avail him now his awards and prizes,
The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,
His individual new voice?
Knocked into the middle of next week
His brainchild now consorts with the bad buys
The sinker, clinkers, dogs and dregs,
The Edsels of the world of moveable type,
The bummers that no amount of hype could shift,
The unbudgeable turkeys.
Yea, his slim volume with its understated wrapper
Bathes in the blare of the brightly jacketed Hitler's War Machine,
His unmistakably individual new voice
Shares the same scrapyard with a forlorn skyscraper
Of The Kung-Fu Cookbook,
His honesty, proclaimed by himself and believed by others,
His renowned abhorrence of all posturing and pretense,
Is there with Pertwee's Promenades and Pierrots--
One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment,
And (oh, this above all) his sensibility,
His sensibility and its hair-like filaments,
His delicate, quivering sensibility is now as one
With Barbara Windsor's Book of Boobs,
A volume graced by the descriptive rubric
"My boobs will give everyone hours of fun".
Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,
Though not to the monumental extent
In which the chastisement of remaindering has been meted out
To the book of my enemy,
Since in the case of my own book it will be due
To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error--
Nothing to do with merit.
But just supposing that such an event should hold
Some slight element of sadness, it will be offset
By the memory of this sweet moment.
Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am glad.
(courtesy of About Last Night)
One of my all-time favorites! Thanks for refreshing my memory.
Has anyone else noticed that the moment Meg is swamped at work and says she won't be posting for a while we get about a half dozen more posts within 48 hours?
Posted by: Kate on April 27, 2004 07:34 PMBeautiful.
Back in '95, I published a book about Auburn and Alabama football with a co-author. One of the great joys of my life came about two years later, when I saw Steve Spurrier's autobiography, published about the same time as our book, in a remainder pile for a buck--while ours was still onthe racks selling for full price...
Posted by: Will Collier on April 28, 2004 09:19 AMI can't decide which is my favorite Clive James line. Either his description of Marilyn Monroe's success being due to her, "lying under a succession of geriatric strangers".
Or, in his review of The Man Who Skied Down Everest--which ended with the fellow tumbling (about halfway down) and just managing to stop himself a few feet from going over a cliff: "I really enjoyed this movie. Here was a guy who was asking for it...and getting it."
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan on April 28, 2004 12:01 PMLuv it. Very stylish, proper.
My favorite lines:
Is there with Pertwee's Promenades and Pierrots--
One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment,
Sooner or later, I'm sure, I'll be found out. The word will be out that I went around via Google to the various anti-Bush weblogs, and much like a busy little bee, deposited a comment in those weblogs that allow for such.
At one particular weblog I visited, the bloggeuse was at the time in despair. Seemingly, indisputable files documenting Dumb'ya's misgovernance grow thicker and even more nauseating daily. Nonetheless, his lead in the polls increases. And so, Jane, I asked myself a couple questions. What could be going on? What could be the explanation?
Well, here's some of the comment I left. "Nobody cares to admit that their country willfully elevated a nincompoop to head of state. It's sort'a like admitting tha'cher favorite aunt gets her jollies from 'communing' with alligators. Aaay, c'mon, that's the best way I know how to phrase it ... gimme a break. For all we know, the current chairman of the Federal Communications Commission checks up on your website DAILY."
And here's the permissible portion of the comment I left.
"I'd like you to consider reading the text for a "state of the union" address that I believe is imperative for this country of ours. To get to it, all you need do is click on the below enclosed U.R.L
http://www.bcvoice.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=205
By the way, the proprietors of the www.BCVoice.com website have provided a couple ways for you to leave your comments."
Clive James is one of the funniest men alive. The first volume of his autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs, is one of the few books that had me laughing so hard I got spots in front of my eyes.
He's also the originator of that immortal description of Arnold Schwarzenegger as looking like 'a condom stuffed with walnuts'.
Posted by: David Gillies on May 3, 2004 04:04 PMComments are Closed.