So do you pay the big number and have a tombstone square of paper that you can either read or beat off an intruder and probably be charged with reading a concealed weapon? Twain's book is big and it is expensive. Yeah I know so and so has it for blah blah. Well I couldn't find it anywhere except the little independent bookstore that supported my book and that thirty four bucks is with a ten percent author discount!
And I vacillate. Christmas. Blowing lots of dough on gifts and everything else commensurate with making merry and what I am going to go plunk down thirty four bucks for a book when people are downloading for ten bucks? No. I'm not going to to do it! Even though I special ordered the thing and they got it in and gave me to Friday (today) to come in and pick it up or they would sell it to the next person in line who requested a copy and by the way the publisher is totally backlogged and so good luck finding it somewhere else. Still, I hesitate and sit in the coffee shop across the way telling myself in a very Scrooge like way that it is ridiculous to pay thirty four dollars for a book!
My brother said he would wait for the paperback. Sensible. Very sensible. Wait for the price to fall and of course it will and paying thirty four dollars now for the book is just plain stupid. Why times being what they are that thirty four dollars could go a long way in food or other necessities and of course you can't eat a book and you can't pay your electric bill or gas up your car with a book so it is utterly ridiculous to pay thirty four bucks for something clearly I could do without. I mean I am still trying to finish Jonathan Ferris second novel and it has slowed down and I am reading Dickens again and I am thinking about cracking Portis's True Grit which is in my backpack as well and so it is ridiculous to add this monstrous book to my list and pay thirty four Somalians!
So into the car. Yes, Yes. All done and go pick up the kids and get the tires changed on the car. There. You cant' put a book on your wheels. Tires. Practical. Practical. Keep driving. Yes, well, I'll just stop in and let them know I don't want the book. That is only fair. They close at five and it is four forty five. Yes. Ok. Park the car. Yes. Just let them know. Hello. Oh, you are here for your book....let me get it for you. Wow! Look at the size of that thing. Ha! Wow! Just let him know now that you don't want it. Jesus, it is huge. Just let him know. Now.Well, we had a lot of people who want this book but I held it. So, will that be cash or credit? I stare at him and my mouth moves in the proper direction and I nod and let him know that I will be making the sensible decision right now! Ah, I say, you know what? Yes? Ah, I really think I should....Yes? I should, I should...I should really....Yes? I should, should, should, should, should. Yes? Yes? I should, should should, should, should, should, shoooould... Yes? Yes? Yes? ...PUT IT ON CREDIT!
Fine, I'll wrap it up.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January
Showing posts with label autobiography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label autobiography. Show all posts
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
What Twain's Autobiography Has to Say to us.
The fact that Mark Twain's autobiography is so popular I cannot get a copy through I have trudged through the snow to three bookstores only to be met by the stoical, we can order it for you but we cant guarantee when it will come in, is a very good thing. Also it is damn interesting that this raconteur from over a hundred years ago speaks to us from the grave and we want to listen. One would think with our twittering flittering Facebooking surfing brains we would have no interest in the musings of a man from the nineteenth century, but apparently we do.
Which shows that for all our cyber fascination we still crave what is behind the curtain. Twain's keen sense of irony and play is what makes Huckleberry Finn and the Adventures of Tom Sawyer beat along like a modern novel. If he had lived in our present day he might have been a vagabond or a street person, a rock star, a poet, or a famous author. Or he might have been the man in the coffee house who just wont shut up. He was into just about everything and failed many times in his life as a printer, inventor and real estate speculator. He was broke at the end and scrounging for money like many authors.
But of course you cannot take him out of his time. He lived when a man could travel west and start a fire and burn down thousands of acres around Lake Tahoe which is exactly what he did with a friend. They just wanted to see a big fire. But you could do that in a country of a million people with a great unsettled frontier. He puttered up and down the Mississippi as a river boat pilot and ran his ship aground not a few times. He was admittedly wanting, but of course his days along the Mississippi gave him his greatest material. His wife was sickly and spend much of her time secluded in Victorian gloom and he lost his daughter and that broke his heart.
But through it all Twain wrote and wrote and wrote and left behind his autobiography. I have only read is biography which unfortunately was sorely lacking on Twain's writing besides his novels. This man who smoked cigars like a fiend, drank whiskey, loved billiards, taveled the world, and said exactly what he thought to the point he had to leave several towns for offences he had given, can instruct the modern reader from afar on how the life not planned is a great tonic to our twenty first century obsession with getting it all done.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January
Which shows that for all our cyber fascination we still crave what is behind the curtain. Twain's keen sense of irony and play is what makes Huckleberry Finn and the Adventures of Tom Sawyer beat along like a modern novel. If he had lived in our present day he might have been a vagabond or a street person, a rock star, a poet, or a famous author. Or he might have been the man in the coffee house who just wont shut up. He was into just about everything and failed many times in his life as a printer, inventor and real estate speculator. He was broke at the end and scrounging for money like many authors.
But of course you cannot take him out of his time. He lived when a man could travel west and start a fire and burn down thousands of acres around Lake Tahoe which is exactly what he did with a friend. They just wanted to see a big fire. But you could do that in a country of a million people with a great unsettled frontier. He puttered up and down the Mississippi as a river boat pilot and ran his ship aground not a few times. He was admittedly wanting, but of course his days along the Mississippi gave him his greatest material. His wife was sickly and spend much of her time secluded in Victorian gloom and he lost his daughter and that broke his heart.
But through it all Twain wrote and wrote and wrote and left behind his autobiography. I have only read is biography which unfortunately was sorely lacking on Twain's writing besides his novels. This man who smoked cigars like a fiend, drank whiskey, loved billiards, taveled the world, and said exactly what he thought to the point he had to leave several towns for offences he had given, can instruct the modern reader from afar on how the life not planned is a great tonic to our twenty first century obsession with getting it all done.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January
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