CruelestMonth.com

Hot Child in the City

This has been the best NY weekend yet this year. The sun showed up in force and has left me with a sore forehead and chapped lips. I'm told I'll look tan in a few days as soon as the heat rash settles. Still, the exposure was well worth it.

After reading what I write next you might feel inclined to sneer and make some vulgar mime of self-abuse, but here I go: The New Greek and Roman Galleries at the Met are a boon to the enlightenment of all mankind. I don't know if I'm in a position to say so, being who I am, but I feel almost as if I've grown larger since viewing the exhibit. You need to go.

You might blame my bloated diction on The New York Antiquarian Book Fair which I also managed to drop in on. Some very fancy things going on there. Since I haven't a clue about old books, prints, or maps I was in way over my head strolling through 160 or so booths filled with those very things. You really need a firm idea of what it is your looking for, which is the first thing you learn in I'M A DUMBASS 101, and plenty of ching to get the product home. I did see a copy of Camus's L'Etranger with Aldous Huxley's inscription of ownership on sale for $1250. I thought about it until I stopped thinking about it. A first edition of Joyce Carol Oates's first collection of stories, By the North Gate, went for the same price; and a first edition of Paul Bowles's Sheltering Sky went for $2000. And these were bargains.

I left after only an hour, wincing at the small tragedy of a misused $20 dollar entrance fee, and headed back into the sun and the curious perfume of spring blossoms. Then having read my last sentence, I realize that I might have heat stroke. See you Monday.

Gotham Book Mart in Trouble

A favorite of mine and many, the Gotham Book Mart, which was saved only two years ago by "two white knights," is again in financial trouble according to this morning's New York Times.  However, Andreas Brown, the store's owner, has averred that "Word of my demise has been greatly exaggerated."  I hope he's right.

- MS

Via a post on The Lovely Arc, I came across Turtle Point Press's homepage.  The site sets a nostalgic mood (not that I was alive during the times depicted, but nostalgia has indefinite borders) and lulled me into pre-ordering Notes on Andre Gide by Roger Martin du Gard from their fall list.  There are a few more titles I'd like to list, but won't, so explore for yourself.

NEW STORE!! GO NOW!!

Adam's Books - New & Used - 456 Bergen Street
"That's North Park Slope, Brooklyn, between Flatbush and 5th Avenue."

Go there, if you can.  And if you have anything self-published that needs a home in the marketplace, I hear that they're open to suggestions.

Square Books

A warm thanks to our friends at Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi for their pyramid of poetry display.  Looking closely, I see Sinners Welcome, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection, and Slouching Toward Nirvana.  Well, done.  Sell those books!
Actually, you don't have to look too closely, just click and enlarge.  To read the inaugural, and only, but not last, interview to appear on the Cruelest Month, follow the link--Mary Karr, author of Sinners Welcome. 

Courtesy of CLAY BANES: Elizabeth Bishop, The New Criterion