The Vogue for Questions Continues

Evelio's Meme (Blindheit) {click here}

Thanks to Evelio for sending me the following questions.

1. Total number of books I've owned:

About 8000 (figuring
about 100 per box,
I moved recently and
gave away or sold 40 boxes
and moved 40)

2. Last book I bought:

I bought 6 books at McIntyre
and Moore in Somerville, on
Memorial day. They were:

*Theodore Dreiser's "Every Month"*
edited by Nancy Warner Barrineau.
Hardbound, Unversity of Georgia Press,
1996. Paid $9. Theodore Dreiser's
earliest writings, October 1895-
September 1897, published
in a piano music magazine
of the era. Dreiser's brother
was a songwriter. Many of
these articles are intensely
political and anticipate Dreiser's
first novel *Sister Carrie*.

Mircea Eliade, *Journal III:
1970-1978*, Hardbound,
University of Chicago Press,
1989. Paid $9. Eliade's journals
are classics in the form. "17 October.
Joint seminar with Paul Ricoeur on
hermaneutics in philosophy and
the history of religions. Ricoeur
gives an excellent historic
overview, from Aristotle up to Kant."

Anne Sexton, *A Self-Portrait in Letters*,
edited by Linda Gray Sexton and
Lois Ames. Hardbound,
Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1977. Paid $7.50. The
famous volume, 433 pages.
Possibly a first edition.
"Perhaps now I have learned
only one thing, a very American
thing- that to fail (the endurance
shattered, broken into small
unimporant pieces) is the ultimate
humiliation. How does one muddy
oneself with failure in this
'literary marketplace' and survive?"

George Orwell, *Essays,
Journalism and Letters*,
three volumes: 1: An Age Like This,
1920-1940; 2: My Country Right or Left,
1940-1943; 3: As I Please, 1943-1945.,
edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus,
David R. Godine, 2000. Softcovers,
paid $9 a volume. "As I write,
highly civilized human beings are
flying overhead trying to kill me."

3.
Last book I read.

Cathy Yardley, *L. A Woman*,
Worldwide Library, 2002.
Another in a welter of novels
coming out of contemporary L.A.,
probably engendered by
the novels of Kate Braverman,
including *Wonders of the West*,
1993, and *Palm Latitudes*. In
Yardley's LA Woman, sedate
Sarah leaves suburban Northern
CA for LA and becomes wilder,
and wiser. Subway reading,
a little on the trashy side, but I
enjoyed it. Purchased for $1
on an outside shelf at Ivy's
Books on the Upper West Side.

4.
Four books that mean a lot to me.

Lynne Dreyer,
*Lamplights Used
To Feed The Deer*,
Some of Us Press, c. 1975.
"And then I looked down I/
saw not only thousands of people
/but thousands of people making/
noises, wailing"

Nada Gordon, *V. Imp*,
Faux Press, 2003.
"Poetry...I too.../my head...I won't go into it"

Douglas Messerli, ed.
*The Gertrude Stein Awards
In Innovative Poetry*, Sun and Moon,
1995. "Suspend craft,
hesitation, influence,
and dramatize/inherent
wilderness (light side of sin..."
- Sheila Murphy, "Floor Piece #4"

Daniel Davidson, *Product*, e.g., 1991.
"Humans are planning made
easy, all the thorny, perplexing,
tedious situations that sell."
***************************************
Passing the baton to:


Phaneronoemikon (Lanny Quarles) {click here}

and

Elsewhere (Gary Sullivan) {click here}