By Richard Edenfield
Strand bookstore, NYC.
I collect anything scribbled in books. I don’t care if edition’s a masterpiece, but I care when someone’s written: “For Mom, 1953, so you’ll know what it is to be young again.” “Remember milk and page 24.”
My apartment’s wallpapered with forgotten inscriptions. Errant lists. Timetables. A monument to lost affection and random thoughts. I’m putting a book together with all these things called: “Don’t forget eggs.”
I reach toward dog-eared copy of The History of Toothbrushes. Open it. “For my newborn daughter. Keep smiling. Your loving father.”
“Pick up unemployment check at noon.”
I head to register.
Good one. Hooray, too, for the Strand.
Thanks man. Used to drink with my friends at The Strand. Hid a bottle in our coat. We got ripped and tried to find the most obscure book we could. Whoever got the most obscure, won, and then got dinner free. I found the toothbrush book. Got hotdogs at Nathan’s. Love Gotham bookmart, also, in the city. I remember when Edward Gorey had a show of his work there. Thanks for comment.
You’ve “hit a nerve,” Richard. I often come across bits and pieces of paper (usually used as old bookmarks) in library books, etc., and wonder about the folks that put them there. This is a good one!
I know. It is amazing. I found a love letter from Dorothy Parker to Robert Benchley in a book when I worked at a rare bookstore. So so groovy. Thanks for comment.
Got a used Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn, with a recipe for egg salad — complete with black olives and red onion. Cool story.
Is there anyplace better for an egg salad recipe with black olives and onions than Revenge of the Lawn! I used to hang out in North Beach, SF, and I got to know the once bartender at Enricos. Brautigan used to write poems on napkins, there. No one on the planet knows this. No biography. No one. He gave his napkin poems to the bartender who was a caligrapher and I tried to talk him, the bartender, into putting together a napkin poems book. Drank at Specs where he did. Etc. Brautigan and I are both Aquarians. I think the abortion is underated. Also, An Unfortunate Woman. Thanks for your comment. I want that recipe.
I’m living in Sweden now so that Brautigan book is stateside — in a box in the basement of friends (hopefully keeping my Kenneth Patchen collection in good company). I don’t remember the recipe having too many ingredients, just that black olives and red onions made it a little different. Of course it has MAYONAISE — obligatory in any Brautigan egg salad, eh? — and a little Coleman’s mustard to give it some bite. Olive oil. Salt, pepper to taste. Probably a dash of paprika to pretty it up a little. That’s pretty much it to my memory. Yeah — The Abortion is a classic, Vida and the Library, growing flowers by candlelight, the trip to Tijuana. There’s a fairly new Brautigan biography out on Astrophil Press that I want to check out — doubt it mentions those napkins.
Do you mean Jubilee Hitchhiker by William Hjortsberg? That is an amazing Biography. It is 800 + pages. Incredible detail and anecdotes. Of course, the MAYONAISE will be used last when preparing Brautigan egg salad! It is like a secret Brautigan handshake where our tongues will whisper “MAYONAISE” to each other as we pass through the creative doors of a psychedelic soul eternity. I remember my grandparents using Colman’s on sandwiches when I was little. When I got older I used Colman’s and it felt nice to bring back lost time with just a bite of mustard. Maybe I will end my novel with “Colman’s Mustard.” Like a Ginsberg reality sandwich.
Keith Abbott wrote it. Downstream from Trout Fishing in America, Astrophil Press, 2009. Looks like a keeper.
https://plasticlovemonkey.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/keith-abbott-%E2%80%94-downstream-from-trout-fishing-in-america/
Keith Abbott wrote it: Downstream from Trout Fishing in America, Astrophil Press 2009. Looks like a keeper. I tried to send links with reviews, but they didn’t take for some reason.
Great story 🙂
Thanks.