Read Books Eagle Rock

• 

  Steven Mounts Offensive Upon His Steed

  Part III: Portland Diary

Thursday 8/26 Bicycles for Bipeds
“Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
~ Orson Wells in The Third Man.

Portland is too damned relaxing. What with its pleasantly inebriating breweries, easily navigable streets, and unintimidating street people, one can exist here carefree. Do they have jobs in Portland? If the answer be yes, then why doesn’t everyone live here? I’ll tells yuh why I won’t: all this urban tranquility will screw an honest, surly man up something awful. My third morning here, and I lay in the hotel bed like an elephant that lost a fight with the tranquilizer gun. Give a man a little alcohol and few worries, and you got yourself a decidedly un-dangerous man. But I wanna’ be dangerous, ma’! Is it surly will power that shall move me from repose, or is it the promise of free croissants and hard boiled eggs at the continental breakfast in the lobby?
  
Fueled by coffee and yolk, my family and I venture east into congenially sleazy Chinatown, where we meet up with an unthreateningly tattooed young entrepreneur who rents us four hipster bikes, and offers encouragement for free. Today when we traverse the broad sidewalks of Waterfront Park, it is all elevated and aloof upon our wheeled pedestals. The pedestrian sea parts for all of Portland’s chosen people on two wheels. It’s like Holland without the abnormally tall people and their crazy windmills. We travel the bike path until it’s no longer a path, but a mere deserted waterfront street. And then it’s a path again, until it’s not. We hit a dead end at something called South Waterfront District, and then move back into town into the University District.

Sufficiently south, we stumble onto the elusive 4th Street food trucks that we had been unable to locate on our previous sojourn. Oddly enough, they’re located on 4^th Street. Although the eggs have barely settled in our stomachs, culinary temptation must be endured. We are strangers in a strange land, and their strange food strangely demands our attention. A $3 Vietnamese baguette sandwich serenades my and Debbie’s bike callused posteriors, while Steven & Donald hear the siren song emitting from a food truck that hawks something called “The Fat Ass Jerk Burger.” I’m sure Portland is just kidding us; they’re far too nice here to mean it. Just up the street, Portland State University is, of all things, really pleasant. It’s green, and pretty, and collegiate, and close to food trucks, and surely a great place to lounge around and listen to the rhythmic tick-tock of cuckoo clocks.

   With our jiggling bellies swaying left and right like a bobbling bubble in a level, we depart downtown via the Hawthorne Bridge, which takes us uphill toward the Hawthorne District. We see a pod of food trucks at which we do not stop. That’s strange. Due to the increasing incline of the street, Debbie and Steven decide to leave the biking to Donald and I, while they take to walking their bikes as if the inanimate things were overly excited dogs that required a calming hand. Down boy; let the other dogs— the rowdy, silly dogs— run ahead up that silly old hill, while we amble along at a more sensible pace.

Further up the Hawthorne hill, Donald and I, we impassioned pooches, find the Excalibur Comics shop. Tongues a-wagging, Donald buys a couple of Silver Surfers, and I purchase an old Classics Illustrated of The Jungle Book. We exit the premises just as Debbie and Steven approach on hooves. Rather than risk the downhill rapids of busy, steep Hawthorne, we four circumnavigate our return on the relatively car-less residential streets. Oh man, I could live here in these pleasant homes situated just around the corner from urban streets. I’d get a job at Powell’s, open up a martial arts dojo, tutor wayward Portland children, or maybe just learn how to repair cuckoo clocks.

   Before re-crossing the Hawthorne Bridge into downtown, my boys and I detour beneath the bridge onto a bike trail that takes us past the OMSI and drops us off onto the “River Corridor Trail” heading south. Three miles along we exit the trail at the Oaks Amusement Park, which looks to me like the place where Los Angeles people who go to Chuck E. Cheese’s would go if they were Portland people living in Portland. Steven asks if we can park the bikes and go on a ride. I tell the truth when I say “no,” and then lie when I say “maybe tomorrow.”

    After meeting up with Debbie, we re-cross the bridge into Portland and spend the rest of our bike time reading in the waterfront park. Steven and I finally finish our duo, dramatic reading of Murder on the Orient Express. I perform all the women voices in all sorts of accents, while Steven goes manly in monotone. We note that the lawn we are sitting on is an odd whitish-green color, and that there are many ducks on the lawn. Thank god I have no sense of smell. Once again, I am spared unpleasantness by having been a teenage smoker!

   On the way back to the bike rental office, Steven and Donald decide to bike through an area where water spouts in intervals from the ground. For reasons none of us can fathom, least of all Steven, Steven crashes his bike into Donald’s, and both pinball, fly, and land. Donald rises from the ground and performs a rather bad humored imitation of Steven’s facial expression at the moment he had been launching his surprise attack. I take a picture of Donald imitating Steven, show it right there to the family, and we all agree, Donald grudgingly, that the imitation makes Donald look a lot sillier than Steven could ever hope to look. And Steven is very ambitious when it comes to looking silly.

   It is twilight when we pass the food trucks nearest our hotel, and twilight is as good a time as any to eat food truck food. Most of the trucks have already closed, but Donald is satisfied with a Chinese chicken dish and Steven eats sushi from the same ambiguous Asian truck. Speaking of ambiguity, the guy who sells me and Debbie our gyros and kefta kabob is a Greek-Lebanese man from Brazil. About the only food they don’t seem to have here is Swiss.

Rip Torn Plays Choke-a-Chicken with Norman Mailer

READ Books Serial Newsletter: Part II; LITERARY FIGHT CLUB

Literary Fight Club Background: After taking nominations from our readers regarding the toughest authors to ever attack the written word, we came up with 16 surly scribblers. The editorial staff rated them from 1-16, taking into account real life fighting experience, and then pitted them against one another in a tournament format. Each fight takes place in a ring without the benefit of typewriters or sundry weapons. Winners advance to the next round. Losers presumably return to their day jobs, or to the grave as the case may be. Below is the first round and quarterfinals.

• Fight Club Preliminary Bouts:
  
  Louis L’amour: Education of a Wandering Man (1) versus Gertrude Stein: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (16)

Did you ever participate in an NCAA basketball pool? If you have, you should know that the #16 seed never beats the #1 seed. Ever read a cowboy novel? If you have, you know that the hero doesn’t traipse about punching women in the mush. This fight is going to be the opposite of competitive. Let’s go ahead and call it non-competitive.

We have the makings of a potential stinker here. In Stein we get a durable, if obtuse, brawler with questionable conditioning and an even more dubious skill set. But she is a stocky one. L’amour’s top seeding is due to his versatility: He was a professional boxer who sparred with Pete Petrolle, brother of the great Billy “The Fargo Express” Petrolle (and a helluva boxer himself), and Louis picked up various martial arts during a stint as a merchant marine in Asia. Though literary critics opine that Stein’s style is often perplexing, do not expect the well-versed western author to be confused. He’s an uncomplicated guy who’ll simply need to find a way to secure a decision victory without actually striking a lady. 

Expect dull & merciful with lots of clinching. From a distance, Louis plants a restraining palm upside her forehead and utilizes his monkey arms to keep Gertrude at a distance as she flails away like a windmill in cartoon futility. When his arms tire, he draws her into a clinch where he waltzes her gently around the ring, attempting to engage Ms. Stein in a kind of literary salon in motion, discussing favorite authors and whatnot. The crowd boos. It wants blood. But the cowboy retains his decency and garners a unanimous decision.

Leonard Gardner: Fat City (2) vs. Fyodor Dostoevsky:  Crime & Punishment (15)
Was it not James Brown who quipped/sang that he did not know ka-ra-te, but he did know ka-ray-zy? While crazy just might take the day when matched against inept & scared stiff, it’s never gone too far when pitted against substance & skill. As the skilled light-heavyweight champ (and sporadic bar room battler) Billy Conn once opined, a professional boxer fighting a street fighter is akin to “hitting a girl.” Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s just not fair or sporting.

Fighting out of the blue corner we have the adept Leonard Gardner, author of the greatest boxing novel in the history of ever— Fat City—a for-real amateur boxer, and a fairly rough customer hailing from the mean streets of Stockton. Fighting out of the red corner we have crazy Fyodor, who for his part was purported to be a wee bit mad, which probably explains his nomination to this event by a sadistic reader of this newsletter. He who nominated Fyodor did him no favors. 

Crazy D, upon finding out that weapons & sharp objects are not allowed in the ring, is understandably uneasy and increasingly twitchy in the eyes. The fight commences with Dostoyevsky bounding around the ring like a nervous kangaroo lacking only the bounce in his step. Feinting & shuffling, Gardner gradually cuts off the ring, patiently waiting for his foe to tire himself out. Between the excess movement & the bulky overcoat that he dons, Crazy D eventually finds himself trapped & exhausted in a corner, pining for 19th century weaponry, instead finding himself recipient to a flicking jab from Gardner, which leads to a merciful first round KO.  

Sterling Hayden: Wanderer (3) vs. Charles Bukowski: Ham on Rye (14)

Oh, this one has the potential to get ugly. But then, what event involving Bukowski would not have the makings of a grotesquerie? Sterling Hayden was first & foremost an actor who made a career out of giving voice to great lines such as: “I’ve frisked hundreds of young men in my days” (Godfather Part I) and: “You’re a no-good, nosey little tramp who’d sell her own mother for a piece of fudge, but you’re smart along with it. Smart enough to know when to sell and when to sit tight… Shut up! You got a great big dollar sign there, where most women have a heart!” (The Killing). After having gotten too cooperative with HUAC during the Hollywood Blacklist era, Sterling grew progressively disgusted with himself and his career, and spent his later years writing a long memoir and an even longer novel. More important to these proceedings, Hayden was a huge, athletic man and a bonafide WWII combat hero.

Bukowski was pretty much a drunken swine harboring either a surplus or deficiency of sensitivity and talent, depending on one’s literary affiliation. Whereas Hayden dealt with his self-loathing by working & exercising, Bukowski was more partial to working & drinking & acquiring venereal diseases. Whereas Hayden fought men in war and was victorious, Bukowski scrapped with his wife in a documentary of his life and more or less earned a draw. He boasted about having been smacked around a few Los Angeles bars in his salad days, thus he’s probably accustomed to taking a punch.

So the fight… It begins with Hayden bellowing (at no one in particular): “Don’t bone me!” (The Asphalt Jungle) before moving his lithe, hulking body across the ring. The audience collectively cringes at the brutality that ensues. Upon waking up in a bar several days later, Bukowski stumbles home to his typewriter to compose an account of the fight as he recalls it.

We’ll give Chuck B. the last word: ”He hit me in the mouth. It knocked my last tooth out. I crawled to the stool in the corner and swallowed a shot of whiskey. There was a real looker in the first row. She lifted her skirt a little and flashed me a nice, long leg. I stood up and spit blood. I took a swing at Hayden and missed. He hit me in the mouth. He knocked my last tooth out. I crawled to the stool in the corner and swallowed a shot of…”

Jack London: The Call of the Wild (4) vs. Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead (13)

In London and Mailer we have two boxing enthusiasts whose accomplishments in pugilistic journalism & literature far exceeds their exploits in the ring. For London’s part, he wrote several first rate boxing stories—the best being “A Piece of Steak”—and helped coax James Jeffries out of retirement in a vain effort to wrest the heavyweight title from Afro-American Jack Johnson; London’s famous socialist sympathies did not necessarily extend to the duskier races, as he wrote instigating articles calling for Jeffries to win the title back for whitey. Mailer wrote a solid 239 page essay (239 pages is an essay? For Norman it’s an act of self-restraint), The Fight, about the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire. London, of course, was a rough adventurer who enjoyed a good shipyard scrap. Mailer was an intellectual Brooklyn boy bent on proving that a Jew would fight, and in his twilight years he enlisted the services of Puerto Rican light heavyweight champ Jose Torres as his personal boxing instructor.

Both men knew a few things about the science of fisticuffs. London had advantages in stature & experience, though he tended to be drunk during his waking hours. Comparatively, Mailer was clean living (comparatively, I said!) and perhaps more technical due to his association with Torres, but he was a short man who wasn’t getting any taller, and getting into shoving matches with the likes of Gore Vidal at cocktail parties ain’t exactly the same as exchanging blows with longshoremen on the Barbary Coast.

In Mailer’s case, there is filmed evidence of his fighting prowess (or lack thereof): a hard-to-find movie set imbroglio between our hero and a kooky, young Rip Torn about 20 years pre-Larry Sanders. Rip essentially attempts to brain Norm with a small hammer; Norm drags Rip to the ground with Rip inconveniently on top. Rip lies atop our hero rapping oddly on about how Norm should calm down and accept the hammer blows for the sake of art, while Norman chews on Rip’s ear, and Norm’s wife pulls Rip’s hair and lectures him about scaring the b’Jesus out of her half-naked hippy children. In Norm’s favor, he did persevere through a few hammer blows (good chin?), and offered a carnivorous resistance to boot. On the other side of the ledger, his take down attempt was horrid, and he partook in an awful lot of kvetching in his fruitless effort to talk Rip off of him.

Reason & rationale have their place in this world, so I’m told, but it’s a misplaced sentiment in a fist fight. Still, I’m figuring that anyone who can take Jack London and his John Barleycorn ways a few rounds deep into a fight has a damn good chance of prevailing when Jack passes out in a pool of his own vomit. But Jack won’t give Norman that chance. He’ll hold Norm’s head down with one hand, and slap his face into salami with the other. Norman will explicate on the errors of Jack’s un-sportsmanlike ways in elegant, panicky prose, while Jack, as is his custom, simply gets to the point. Thwack. Owww. Thwack.

John Irving: A Prayer for Owen Meany (5) vs. Chuck Palahnuik: Fight Club (12)

In our fourth fight of the evening, we have writers from somewhat similar fight disciplines. Irving has a fine wrestling pedigree. Palahnuik has large muscles, so I suppose he wrassles with cumbersome weights. Weightlifting is a fine compliment to real skills, such as wrestling, boxing, and jujitsu. On its own, it’s kind of like somebody who types a lot, but doesn’t know how to tell a story or create a poem. It looks pretty impressive from a certain distance, but it doesn’t amount to a whole lot up close and on its lonesome.

Relating to distance, Irving will be looking to close it immediately. Chuck P. windmills his bulging arms and thrusts them in the direction of Garp’s noggin. Like any good wrestler has been taught to do, Garp bends his knees, gets underneath the punches, and shoots in on the bulky fella’s legs. He scores a takedown. Once on his back, Chuck endeavors to bench press his smaller coeval, but he discovers that displacing an experienced grappler from your chest is entirely different than heaving dead weight skyward. Garp twists Chuck into pretzel-like positions, occasionally knocking upon his skull as if it be a stubborn door that refuses to open and let him in on a cold winter’s eve: Anyone home? C’mon! I know you’re in there; I can hear you being hollow! And though bleed he may, Chuck will enjoy every second of his tedious beating, because we know that he meant every word of Fight Club.

Ernest Hemingway (6): The Old Man & the Sea vs. Claude Brown (11): Manchild in the Promised Land
Here we have another compelling contrast of styles. In Hemingway we encounter a barrel-chested prodigy from the well-heeled suburbs of Chicago. A less likely candidate for literary accolades, Brown was a product of the streets of Harlem. Brown grew up fighting because he had to; Hemingway fought because he enjoyed it. At the height of his fame, Ernie would hold impromptu sparring sessions with guests in his Cuban home. He was a rugged sports enthusiast who reveled in physical contact. While there may have also been a degree of sport involved in the street fights of Brown’s youth, the culture of the streets was less forgiving than that of Hemingway’s drawing room. Withdrawal from a fight was simply not an acceptable option.

While Hemingway enjoys a bit of a size advantage, Brown most likely possesses superior speed. Hemingway, though a layman in the sport, employs a minor degree of proficiency in the art of boxing that will give him further advantage. 

Size and a simulacrum of boxing technique allowed Hemingway to intimidate his crew of sycophants and literary types, such as George Plimpton, who he’d coerce into sparring matches and bully with his size and aggressiveness, but when faced with a more capable adversary, such as big, drunk Brooklyn Dodger pitcher Hugh Casey, Hemingway would resort to kicking the testicles. Dirty tactics will not be sufficient in his quest to make the smaller, street smart Brown quit. Expect Brown to be a more willful and sober participant.

Hemingway learned a few tricks palling around with boxing legend Gentleman Gene Tunney. He feints with a left jab, and then crosses a right over Brown’s guard, staggering the urban writer. He hooks off the jab, grazing Brown’s chin and putting him on his butt. Brown immediately springs to his feet and returns to the battle refocused. As Hemingway’s work-rate decreases, Brown scores with some glancing flurries. Hemingway occasionally staggers the smaller man with crosses and hooks, but he cannot discourage him nor put him away.

Hemingway is tough, but with a bully’s mentality. When the bully cannot force his opponent to quit, he throws in the towel. That’s what happens here. Brown takes his lumps, but he persists. Hemingway takes less lumps, but quits when faced with his opponent’s intractability. Subsequent to surrender, Ernie invites his new friend over to his home for drinks. Perhaps at a later hour their combat will continue in a drawing room, and Hemingway’s penchant for heavy drinking and nut sack booting will give him the advantage when both men are sufficiently soused. In the official fight though, Brown pulls off the upset. 

James Jones: From Here to Eternity (7) vs. Charles Johnson: Middle Passage (10)
 A true MMA harbinger, this contest pits a boxer (Jones) against a traditional martial artist (Johnson). Though Jones’ background was strictly amateur, it was competitive nonetheless. On the other hand, Johnson has been practicing karate & kung fu for years, but not on a competitive level. And we’d be wise to recall that Jones was a combat marine in WWII. I somehow recall that Jones was a combat marine. World War II, I think.

This fight comes down to will and distance. When the encounters occur at long range, Johnson is able to get off kicks from angles that Jones is unaccustomed to defending. When Jones is able to close the distance, his short, hooking punches rattle Johnson. While Johnson sporadically slows Jones’ forward progress with low kicks, Jones’ dedicated body punching consistently wears on his foe’s stamina. Lacking the energy to dance away from the brawling boxer, unable to keep the requisite kicking distance, Johnson is mauled inside. Jones is awarded the decision in a sloppy, but spirited scrap.

Thom Jones: The Pugilist at Rest (8) vs. David Mamet: Glengarry Glenn Ross (9)
They say that styles make fights, and this one should be a doozy. In one corner we have Jones of pugilistic short stories fame, and an amateur boxer & ex-marine to boot. In the other corner we have Mamet the playwright, an aggressive Chicago boy with a Brazilian Jujitsu base.

The well-schooled boxer beats upon theatre boy’s mug with the staccato rhythm of a Mamet monologue as he steps in and out of range with a skewering jab. Being of amateur pedigree, however, Jones lacks the knockout pop required to finish off his adversary. Though his face is cut more profoundly than the final edit of one of his films, Mamet eventually times a jab correctly, ducking low and inside, and get his hooks around Jones. He drags him to the $%&#*% ground, where, Jones inadvertently gives up his back in an effort to regain his feet. Potty-Mouth Dave chokes him out. He chokes him the $&#^ out.

Quarterfinals 

(1)  Louis L’amour (Cowboy Boxer, MMA) vs. (9) David Mamet (Profane Brazilian Jujitsu Practitioner)

Though he was a prolific writer in the western fiction genre, guns aren’t allowed in our literary ring, so L’amour’s most significant work pertaining to these proceedings is his single foray into biography, the excellent Education of a Wandering Man. In it, he abstemiously chronicles his many forays into fisticuffs both organized and dis: He boxed professionally, sparred with at least one-half of the great Petrolle brothers, studied Asian grappling arts, and experienced a few harbor tussles as a merchant marine. In short, he was a mixed martial artist before such a moniker existed.

In the canon of Mamet’s work, only his most recent film, Red Belt, directly relates to the science of combat. Mamet, unlike L’amour, began his martial art training at a relatively advanced age. He is an ardent Brazilian Jujitsu student who has earned a purple belt, and his characters cuss like sailors. But here’s the quandary: L’amour was an accomplished fighter in his physical prime, while Mamet is reaching his martial peak around the age of sixty. Mamet’s best chance rests on L’amour taking him lightly, and then taking the western author to the ground where he might find a neck to choke, or a wing to break off. Standing up, Mamet stands as much chance as a bottle of Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day. And L’amour, indubitably, must be an Irish name, yes?

L’amour was far too serious and experienced a man to enter a fray casually. He’d witnessed and partaken in enough fights to have learned the importance of vigilance & ruthlessness in combat. Mamet will intelligently look to shoot in on L’amour and force a clinch. Being stronger, younger, and possessing an athlete’s reflexes, Louis is able to thwart & repel the playwright’s advances. He bides his time, looks for openings, and creates proper spacing. When Mamet makes the mistake of shooting for a takedown from too far a distance, L’amour sets his feet and lands a short right hand on the point of Mamet’s chin, putting him to sleep. Upon regaining consciousness a few minutes later, he thanks his conqueror for the encounter, and states that he very much enjoyed the $&%*#* experience. Who wouldn’t?

This here is the classic contrast of styles: wrestler versus boxer; 500 pages of quirky character development butting heads with 200 pages of terse adventure prose; Garp in battle with White Fang (dual meaning, you shall see). These two scribes are likely to stir up the partisan juices in both literary and fight fans.

London was reputed to have an amateur boxing pedigree, but records being what they were over a hundred years ago, this is hard to document. In any case, he was an avid boxing fan who, much like Hemingway after him, was known to seek sparring matches with pretty much anyone fortunate enough to cross his besotted path. His main sparring partner was his pugnacious wife, which compelled the turn-of-the-century gentleman to develop a much better defense than offense. Also worthy of mention in things athletic, London waged a life-long war with John Barleycorn, eventually succumbing to death by alcoholism.

Irving, being a modern man, possesses a relatively well documented wrestling history, having nearly won a New England high school championship in the 133 pound weight division. While attending the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, he frequently grappled with the fabled Dan Gable. There are photos extant that show Gable leg sweeping Irving some 15 feet into the air. This all proves at least three things: John Irving is a pretty bad man on the ground, smaller than Jack London, and he got his ass beat on a regular basis by the baddest wrestler on the planet. His fighting moniker, me thinks, shall be “Garp.” Goofy, yes, but intimidating, no?

Keeping in mind that, due to their ubermenschen ability to cut weight, a 133 pound wrestler is really a 158 pound man, Garp probably gives up some 25-30 pounds (and considerable reach) to Fang. The larger man knows enough to keep the smaller man at the end of his jab, and in the early going he does so successfully. Garp, however, has been trained to keep his weight low, and thus keeps his chin out of harm’s way, taking most of the punches on his forehead as he bends at the knees.

When Fang takes to stabbing his jab at the smaller man’s eyes, thus opening up a cut on his brow, Garp moves hastily to close the gap. Having learned to box in an era when clinches were a normal activity, Fang welcomes the clinch as if it were a respite, thinking he’ll lean his greater weight on little Garp, rub the laces of his gloves into his eyes, and target the body with short uppercuts. Marquis of Queensbury be damned, Garp surprises his antiquated foe with a vicious foot sweep, subsequently landing on top of Fang in side control.

Garp’s plan is to maintain top control without taking unnecessary risks, but he finds Fang an unwilling partner in his sweaty-man-mat-dance. Having spent many an evening on the Barbary Coast, Jack has few qualms—make that no qualms—about barring no holds. Garp soon regrets having entered this fight with a healthy coif of bushy hair, two eyes, and a full set of testicles with nerve endings built in. Utilizing fingers, teeth, and a firm nut sack grip, London renders Garp’s occupancy of top position a surprisingly unappealing advantage. But perhaps he goes too far when he begins to nosh on Garp’s ear. White Fang indeed.

One should never underestimate the resiliency or conditioning of a wrestler, nor the lack of both traits in a lush. Aching in his lower regions though he is, Garp is especially offended (and motivated) by London’s foray into cannibalism, and offers a head-butt and two insistent forearms as rejoinder to the opposing author’s teeth. The more London fouls, the more Garp aggressively pursues his ground & pound techniques. Initially, London welcomes the gutter fighting, and he even regains his feet on several occasions. But every time London attempts to land his right hand, Garp shoots under for his legs and a takedown is the result.

Being tossed and dragged to the ground by a well conditioned wrestler is an arduous adventure best not taken on by one who prefers training in saloons. Fatigue, as the sages say, makes cowards out of all men. Observing the cause and effect relationship between his fouling and Garp’s retaliating, London eventually decides to acquiesce to his foe’s grappling superiority, noting that when he refrains from eye gouging, the other man is reflexively less insistent on the pounding and the choking and the head squeezing. Quirkmaster Garp is thus satisfied in pinning the adventure hero to the ground, and gradually lays and prays his way to a unanimous decision, but not without alienating many fans, who find his fighting style decidedly less appealing than his prose.

(3) Sterling Hayden (Freestyle Adventurer) vs. (11) Claude Brown (Street Fighting Memoirist)

NOTE: One of our remaining fighters is about to exit the fray, involuntarily, with an injury. We are currently taking nominations for a replacement fighter. Email us.

• Book List
  • 10 Funny Books
    • 1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
    • 2. The Education of Hyman Kaplan by Leonard Q. Ross (Leo Rosten)
    • 3. Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
    • 4. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
    • 5. Frog & Toad Treasury by Arnold Lobel
    • 6. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    • 7. Barrel Fever by David Sedaris
    • 8. Raney by Clyde Edgerton
    • 9. Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
    • 10. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
    • Honorable Mention: Gates of Eden by Ethan Coen

BOOK CLUB
We are currently reading “Travels with Charley” by Steinbeck. Our next meeting will be on Saturday 3/19. Contact us for more information.

READ Books Serial Newsletter: A newsletter in several, brief installments.

• Part I: Anniversary Issue

Four years is a helluva long time if you’re, say, five-years-old. Listen, I know a few five-year-olds that have been bumming around our bookstore since we opened in February of 2007, and they’d be mightily impressed to know that our bookstore is their contemporary (our kindergarten clientele possess this sort of vocabulary). If they continue to spend time here for the remainder of their lives, or if the world is to end today, we’ll be able to claim that we have been a chief influence on their lives. But who’d be listening, right?

Four years… Boy, if you were sitting here right now, plastered to our couch that we stole from the late, great Yarn Store, I could tell you some stories. And they’ll be mediocre stories, and you’ll want to get up and leave, and you’ll be made to feel intense discomfort as I blink spasmodically, foam dribbling unaccountably from my stubbly lips. And I’m guaranteed to laugh at all the wrong moments—the uncomfortable moments. But you’ll stay and listen, because you’re unflaggingly polite. I’m banking on that very politeness, the kind that we shall call unflagging, to get you to the end of this newsletter in my company. Here, take my hand, cupcake.

We’ve got us some wonderful neighbors. There’s Toros, the extraordinarily talented pottery guy, on our left. He’s an artist, a teacher, and he makes his own wine that he lets me taste when I behave myself. Little known fact: In his tempestuous youth, Toros was arm wrestling Yokozuna of Armenia. On our right we’ve got Lady Boutique, with its wily proprietor Camille. Word on the street is that her clothing shall one day attire all of Eagle Rock, regardless of one’s sex. When she’s sober, she tells us that we’re her favorite neighbor. When Toros serves her a few free glasses of wine, she tells Toros that he’s neighbor #1. I’d arm-wrestle him for the honor, but the guy’s a ringer, and my Trader Joe’s wine cannot compete with his handmade (foot made?) libations.

Across the street we got us the old gentleman and his crew of semi-homeless crack-heads; if they’re not selling drugs out of that sketchy parking lot, then they’re doing a hell of an impression of a drug dealing enterprise. So long as they stay out of the medical marijuana racket, they should be able to avoid the ire of our community. Several times a year, various 50-something-year-old guys with neck tattoos visit us, walking an ominous beeline from across the street, and they want to sell us books that are invariably stolen, or sundry odd items such as a car lock picking gadget with which I suppose we could steal our own books.

“What the hell’s this?” I’d asked the ex-ex-con who wanted to sell me this peculiar gadget, which I was now giving the Helen Keller treatment: poke, rub, smell: what are you?

“Oh it’s for, uh, it’s what tow truck drivers use to break, uh, get into cars that are locked. To get the keys, I guess.”

“I don’t think we have any tow truck drivers buying books here. Or they haven’t identified themselves as of yet. Anyhow,” I pointed out by way of apology, “this ain’t a book.”

“Oh!” His eyes lit up, “you want books. I can find some of those soon enough.”

“Perhaps you will be needing this,” I suggested, handing him back his lock picking gadget.

Crime’s a hell of a thing, though not as prevalent as we often imagine. I’d say that 95-99% of the people we’ve encountered here have been unflaggingly polite (10% discount to anyone who can accurately count how many times I use the word unflaggingly in this newsletter), and chose not to steal from us. Thank you all. Those few who have attempted to sell us stolen books looked like they often slept in prisons. Those who we’ve suspected of stealing books from the store have often looked suspiciously like me, or sometimes like me if I were a slightly younger woman with a head of hair. Beware of lower-middle-class white men with facial hair, bad stories, poor comedic timing, and a love of free literature. Have I ever told you about the guys who kept coming into the store to try and sell us Omaha Steaks from their truck? Or the guy who sold us a neon sign but did not give us one?

People who encounter my children in the bookstore like to tell them how lucky they are, what with the growing up in the presence of books that their parents won’t let them take home to read because: “somebody might just walk in the store tomorrow and want our only copy of Hugo Cabret, but will they be able to buy it? No! Why not? Because it’ll be at home, lying forgotten beneath your pee-stained blanket in your stinky little bed. And then how will we pay for your college? Who’ll send you to college then?” Which is, of course, completely absurd— My kids aren’t going to college. They’re going to work here for minimum wage, and they’re going to share their earnings with their damn parents. Yeah, next time you’re in, come tell them how damn lucky they are, how much you envy their childhood. Just be a good guy, and please don’t call child services. If my wife and I get thrown in the pokey, the bookstore is coming down with us. Remember, we’re all in this together. Unflaggingly.

Disclaimer I: My children do not, nor never have, really wet their beds. That was me. I substituted them for comedic effect. Perhaps I should have left it as me.
Disclaimer II: Since I have yet to purchase drugs from any of my neighbors, I have no legal proof that any of them are pursuing the pushing professions. So when y’all go over there hoping to score, please do not drop my name. And no waving; I do not know you.

• Book Club

We are currently reading Mark Kurlansky’s protracted tome on salt. It’s called Salt. We are meeting on Saturday evening (2/12), at the bookstore, to discuss the book, eat salty foods, and choose our next read. All are welcome, but please RSVP your attendance. This is what we call a “Pot Luck Affair,” and we all need to have a rough idea of how much food & drink to bring.

Next Week: Part II; The Return of Literary Fight Club & Reading Recommendations.

Our current book is “Salt: A World History” by Mark Kurlansky. We will meet at the bookstore on Saturday, 2/12 @ 6:00 to discuss the book and share a pot luck dinner. Please RSVP your attendance, as food is involved.

Our next Book Club meeting will be on Saturday 1/15 @ 5:00. Brief meeting in which we will choose a new book & plan a menu for next meeting. All are welcome. Except for that one guy. You know who I mean.

Happy New Year

A Tasty List of Gift Books from READ Books

• “Make me laugh, elf.”
  Holidays on Ice (David Sedaris).
  This book is a perfect, hilarious, kind of pathetic gift. Seriously. David Sedaris guides the reader through his traumatizing experience as a Macy Elf, and I guarantee that the reader will not want to put the book down, and will revel in tears of laughter.
• “I am not a geek; I am gallant!”
  Suburban Knights: A Return to the Middle Ages (E.F. Kitchen).
  All LARPing, Dungeons & Dragons, and Warhammer geeks will love this book. I mean, pictures and encounters between….knights. Yeah, the ones that wear shiny armor and go around saving princesses. Apparently, they still exist.
• “Those who forget history are condemned to, uh…”
  Pictorial History of the Second World War; 5 Volume Set (Wm. H. Wise).
  Extraordinary photo compendium commencing with Chamberlain in ’39, and concluding with atom bombs in ’45. Original hardcover printings (1944-46) totaling 2559 pages.
• “The Ambulance Chaser”
  - Now Pitching: Bob Feller (Bob Feller);
  - Living at the Movies (Jim Carroll).
  Who remembers READ Books now defunct “Soon to be Deceased” author contest, which sadly concluded when some genius predicted the timely demise of John Updike? Well we still have our “Recently Deceased” book shelf, and sitting atop the pecking order are signed books by a jock (all-time great pitcher, Feller) & an ex-jock (high school basketball phenom turned poet-junkie, Carroll).
• “I’d like mine signed.”
  - Psst… I Have Something To Tell You, Mi Amor (Ana Castillo)
  Two versions of the same play; Castillo’s depiction of Sister Diana Ortiz’s real life rape & torture by U.S. sponsored Guatemalan troops in 1989. This book is signed by both Castillo & Ortiz.
  - Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (Grace Paley).
  Seventeen stories from the brilliant, abstract Ms. Paley. And this one she signed!
• “Do you have any Dick?”
  Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (Philip K. Dick).
  READ Books used to have a customer who would regularly enter the store & ask: “Got any Dick books?” And then he’d proceed to buy any book we had of the sci-fi master. Well, he’s moved up north, so now there’s enough Dick for everyone. This particular volume is a somewhat scarce 1^st edition hardcover with 21 stories spread over 476 pages.
• “My yard is purtier than yours.”
  Bruce and Sharon Asakawa’s California Gardener’s Guide (Asakawa).
  Classic California gardening guide with close-up color photos of plants that will grow well in different regions of the state.
• “I’m a Christmas book… if you don’t buy me now, then when?”
  - The Night Before Christmas Board Book (Charles Reasoner)
  - La Navidad de Max (Rosemary Wells)
  - The Christmas Alphabet: A X-Mas Pop-Up Book (Robert Sabuda)
  - Cajun Night Before Christmas (Trosclair)
  - A Christmas Memory, One Christmas, & Thanksgiving Visitor (Truman Capote)
  - Miracle on 10^th Street (Madeline L’Engle)
  - Charro Claus and the Tejas Kid (Xavier Garza)
  - A Little House Christmas (Laura Ingalls Wilder)
  - A Charles Dickens Christmas (Charles Dickens)
• “Let’s do it for the children. Will somebody please think of the children?”
  - Your Friend The Rat (Jim Capobianco)
  A lovely, informative Little Golden Book from the Ratatouille people that tells a young child all he/she needs to know about our friend the rat.
  - The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Brian Selznick)
  Hugo Cabret is on a spellbinding journey that takes place in 1931 in a Paris train station. This book is 50% young adult novel, 50% picture book, 50% graphic novel, and 50% film. You do the math.
  - Warriors: All the Truth, Tactics, and Triumphs of History’s Greatest Fighters (James Harpur)
  Spectacular interactive young adult title with fold-out pages, posters, and more. Learn the history of warriors from Assyrians to Aztecs, with gladiator, samurais, Zulus and other tough guys.
• “Get me the hell out of this place.”
  The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World (Lonely Planet)
  A two page spread for every country in the world, with beautiful photos and a short, clever, summary for all two hundred and thirty nations, some which you may never even knew existed.

10% off any book in the store if you can prove that you read this entire newsletter by saying: “I read the entire newsletter, God help me.”

READ Books has gift certificates for the holiday season. Hell, we got gift certificates for the non-holiday season. Pick your poison.

READ Books, TOROS Pottery, LADY Boutique
4^th Annual Holiday Block Party
Live Jazz with “The Eastside Organ Trio”
& Peruvian food from
Lomo Arigato Food Truck
Saturday December 4^th
*20% off all books & 10% off all mags (11:00a.m.-11:00p.m.)
*Food Truck (6:00-10:00)
*Live Music in the Courtyard (7:00-10:00)
*Highly illegal dreidel game in dark parking lot!
@ READ Books

We have a new batch of Images of America titles: Eagle Rock, Highland Park, & Garvanza.  Also have new Eagle Rock Centennial 1911-2011 Calendar published by the Eagle Rock Valley Historical Society. Antique hunters may be interested in our 1934 Franklin High School Year Book, which features Franklin graduate Bobby Riggs. Who’s he, you ask? You tell me.