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I've just learned that the record for the most expensive sale in the history of AbeBooks, held for 12 long years by a first edition of \u003Ci\u003EThe Hobbit \u003C\/i\u003Ewhich went for US $65,000, was broken practically as soon as it featured here in January (\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.co.nz\/2015\/01\/fetish-vessels-of-cash-when-books-cost.html\"\u003EFetish vessels of cash: the world's most expensive books\u003C\/a\u003E)!\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat honour now belongs to a rare book of ornithology published in Italy in 1765. Its five volumes of hand-coloured engravings of birds took the two illustrators ten years to complete, and have garnered attention throughout its 2.5 centuries of life for how the birds, with their \"lively posturing\" (as an AbeBooks expert described it), seem to reflect the \"human comedy\" of 18th century Italian society. That's what it said, 18th century, but this raptor reminds me a lot of a certain 20th century Italian dictator!\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ctable align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" class=\"tr-caption-container\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ctbody\u003E\u003Ctr\u003E\u003Ctd style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.abebooks.com\/images\/ornithology\/bird8.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"\u003E\u003Cimg alt=\"A Natural History of Birds\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.abebooks.com\/images\/ornithology\/bird8.jpg\" height=\"207\" width=\"400\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/td\u003E\u003C\/tr\u003E\u003Ctr\u003E\u003Ctd class=\"tr-caption\" style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003Ephoto: AbeBooks\u003C\/td\u003E\u003C\/tr\u003E\u003C\/tbody\u003E\u003C\/table\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe lively birds are the first six-figure sale for AbeBooks, the anonymous collector having shelled out US $191,000. The \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.abebooks.com\/rare-books\/most-expensive-sales\/ever.shtml\"\u003Enews item on the AbeBooks website\u003C\/a\u003E about the sale lets you see, besides a slideshow of some of the engravings, what other books they have on sale at that cost, namely:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cul\u003E\u003Cli\u003EAn inscribed first edition of \u003Ci\u003EThe Sun Also Rises\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThe birds of Europe, \u003C\/i\u003Ea 19th century ornithological book in ... fancy that, five volumes\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EA second folio edition of Shakespeare's \u003Ci\u003EComedies, Histories and Tragedies\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\u003C\/ul\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENow you're talking! A second folio! I can't believe this hasn't been snapped up yet. What are these rich people doing with their disposable income? \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAbeBooks has some ideas. For the same amount, they say, you could get one of these:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cul\u003E\u003Cli\u003EA brand new 2015 Ferrari California\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EA one-bedroom flat in central Manchester with a roof garden\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EA diamond ring featuring a six-carat ruby\u003C\/li\u003E\u003C\/ul\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWell! As it happens, last year I was invited to a Ferrari meet and got to take a turn around the track in a California. I wasn't driving it, I was riding shotgun, but I did get to push the start button. And wear an official Ferrari owner hat, given to me because the California is a convertible and the sun was turbocharged that day. (I didn't realise that the hat said 'Ferrari Owner' and experienced some gleeful moments when people would ask me which Ferrari was mine, before the truth was broken to me.)\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-15i1G0_XPK0\/VPva8o0guDI\/AAAAAAAAA08\/pEg0bvDwb3U\/s1600\/Start%2BLine.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-15i1G0_XPK0\/VPva8o0guDI\/AAAAAAAAA08\/pEg0bvDwb3U\/s1600\/Start%2BLine.jpg\" height=\"180\" width=\"200\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003EIt was truly a high, a communion with the beauty of the machine taken to a whole new level.\u0026nbsp;What can I say?\u0026nbsp;If I were so rich that I could take care of everyone and still have $200,000 burning a hole in my pocket, I don't know if I'd spend it on a Ferrari, but if it were $500,000, I might buy the Second Folio \u003Ci\u003Eand \u003C\/i\u003Ea Ferrari. There is, however, a key difference between the two, which is that I would never want to give the Second Folio up, whereas I'm not convinced I would keep a Ferrari once the newness wore off.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEight people in the world have spent that kind of money to buy themselves a book which is neither old nor irreplaceable, but which comes with something rarer and more exotic than a Ferrari, even: \u0026nbsp;a moon rock.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis novelty is the brainchild of publisher Benedikt Taschen, the man who started out back in the eighties, still a teenager, by selling his comic book collection, and never looked back, moving on to remaindered art books, and then reprinted (by him) art books, before making his name in publishing with a genial new kind of affordable art book whose maximum expression was the series of 1000 photographs of some thing: record covers, tattoos, chairs. Was the choice of 1000 over the more usual 100 a first hint of the now-overt megalomania of the man who claims that from the start, his goal was to make the greatest books in the world? Who prints on the title pages of his company's great (size, subject, workmanship and price) art books that they are \"Directed and produced by Benedikt Taschen\"?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EThe production in question is \u003Ci\u003EMoonfire\u003C\/i\u003E, a book which Taschen put out in 2009 in a limited edition of 1969 copies, to mark the 40th anniversary of the Apollo ll moon landing. And in what can only be seen as perfect casting, the text is by Norman Mailer, a new reprise of his coverage of the moon shot for Life magazine. This is the author whose ego was so big that, as someone pointed out, he not only decided to run for mayor of New York, but continued to think he could win even after he'd been convicted of stabbing his wife with a penknife, possibly because she was taunting him about being a lesser writer than Dostoevsky, at a party for his campaign.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe last 12 copies of the limited edition, numbers 1958 through 1969, contain a piece of moon rock. Not one of the rocks gathered on the moon by the Apollo astronauts, though you'd be forgiven for thinking that, seeing as the term used for this special edition of the limited edition is \"Lunar Rock Edition\", but a piece of the moon, nonetheless, from an asteroid of lunar origin.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHere's Book No. 1,969 (cost, about US $ 520,000):\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ctable align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" class=\"tr-caption-container\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ctbody\u003E\u003Ctr\u003E\u003Ctd style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-eHRQY5ixtpI\/VLT83Z5bL3I\/AAAAAAAAAwI\/Ixl1L3lYqzI\/s1600\/Moonfire_cover.JPG\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-eHRQY5ixtpI\/VLT83Z5bL3I\/AAAAAAAAAwI\/Ixl1L3lYqzI\/s1600\/Moonfire_cover.JPG\" height=\"133\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/td\u003E\u003C\/tr\u003E\u003Ctr\u003E\u003Ctd class=\"tr-caption\" style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.taschen.com\/pages\/en\/catalogue\/artists_editions\/all\/06315\/facts.norman_mailer_moonfire_lunar_rock_edition_no_1969.htm\"\u003Ewww.taschen.com\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/td\u003E\u003C\/tr\u003E\u003C\/tbody\u003E\u003C\/table\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt comes in a designer case which playfully resembles a coffee table, with aluminum legs shaped like the Apollo 11 landing module struts, and a surface which reproduces the lunar surface.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.gizmag.com%2Fgallery_lrg%2Fmarc-newson-lunar-rock-edition-of-norman-mailers-apollo-ii-tome-3.jpg\u0026amp;container=blogger\u0026amp;gadget=a\u0026amp;rewriteMime=image%2F*\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg alt=\"The coffee table featuring aluminum legs shaped like the Apollo II struts\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/images.gizmag.com\/gallery_lrg\/marc-newson-lunar-rock-edition-of-norman-mailers-apollo-ii-tome-3.jpg\" height=\"148\" width=\"200\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHere's its rock:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ctable align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" class=\"tr-caption-container\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ctbody\u003E\u003Ctr\u003E\u003Ctd style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-G4jHydcJwnY\/VLT7JZQe63I\/AAAAAAAAAv8\/9LZKkLvyuus\/s1600\/Moonfire.JPG\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-G4jHydcJwnY\/VLT7JZQe63I\/AAAAAAAAAv8\/9LZKkLvyuus\/s1600\/Moonfire.JPG\" height=\"115\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/td\u003E\u003C\/tr\u003E\u003Ctr\u003E\u003Ctd class=\"tr-caption\" style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003Ewww,taschen.com\u003C\/td\u003E\u003C\/tr\u003E\u003C\/tbody\u003E\u003C\/table\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEight of the twelve Lunar Rock editions have been sold, but four are still available, at a price.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhat's priceless is Mailer's prose.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThe television image was improving. It was never clear, never did it look any better in quality than a print of the earliest silent movies, but it was eloquent. Ghosts beckoned to ghosts, and the surface of the moon looked like a ski slope at night. Fields of a dazzling pale ran into caverns of black, and through this field moved the ghost of Armstrong. There were moments when one had the impression it was possible to see through him. His image was transparent.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EAldrin descended the ladder, then jumped back on the lowest rung to test his ability to return to the Lem. The abruptness of the action broke the audience into guffaws again, the superior guffaw a sophisticate gives to a chair creaking too crudely in a horror movie. Now two ghosts paraded about, jogging forward and back, exchanging happy comments on the new nature of hopping and walking, moving faster than a walk but like much-padded toddlers, or overswathed beginners on skis. Sometimes they looked like heavy elderly gentlemen dancing with verve, sometimes the sight of their boots or their gloves, the bend of their backs setting up equipment or reaching for more rocks gave them the look of beasts on hindquarters learning to think, sometimes the image went over into negative so that they looked black in their suits on a black moon with white hollows, sometimes the image was solarized and became positive and negative at once, images yawing in and out of focus, so the figures seemed to squirt about like one-celled animals beneath a slide -- all the while, images of the Lem would appear in the background, an odd battered object like some Tartar cooking pot left on a trivet in a Siberian field.. It all had the look of the oldest photographs of expeditions to the North Pole -- there was something bizarre, touching, splendid, and ridiculous all at once, for the feat was immense, but the astronauts looked silly, and their functional conversations seemed farcical in the circumstances.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\"What did you say, Buzz?\"\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\"I say the rocks are rather slippery.\"\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EYou can read it in a later, non-limited edition of \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/search.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz\/?itemid=|library\/marc\/supercity-iii|b2502558\"\u003E\u003Ci\u003EMoonfire\u003C\/i\u003E \u003C\/a\u003Efrom the library, and the amazing photographs and maps are there too. Norman Mailer didn't get to see the special edition either; he died in 2007. The New York Post reported that one of his sons, an actor, had sung \"Candle in the Wind\" at his funeral. How ridiculous, said Stephen Mailer. A forest fire in a hurricane is more like it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EYou can read more about Taschen's limited collector's editions on the \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.taschen.com\/pages\/en\/catalogue\/artists_editions\/all.1.htm?\"\u003ETaschen website\u003C\/a\u003E. A monograph on Ai Weiwei which comes wrapped in a silk scarf, with its own marble bookstand, anyone?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E--\u003Ci\u003EKaren\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/feeds\/4434997584098628616\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2015\/03\/the-book-that-comes-with-moon-rock.html#comment-form","title":"0 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/4434997584098628616"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/4434997584098628616"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2015\/03\/the-book-that-comes-with-moon-rock.html","title":"The book that comes with its own piece of moon rock"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Karen Craig"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/18310967522076681423"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"23","height":"32","src":"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-WaLn2rFYxqE\/UNvHlimMvBI\/AAAAAAAAABY\/ceYnAw1lZEk\/s220\/The%2BLibrarian.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-15i1G0_XPK0\/VPva8o0guDI\/AAAAAAAAA08\/pEg0bvDwb3U\/s72-c\/Start%2BLine.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"0"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501884760724421053.post-5186583883111572397"},"published":{"$t":"2009-09-01T03:30:00.000+12:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2014-09-27T01:53:18.688+12:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"boxing"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Hemingway"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Karen"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Nick Tosches"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Night Train: The Sonny Liston Story"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Norman Mailer"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Best books about boxing"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"When I was growing up I always thought of my father as someone who looked down on sports, but later I realised that it was just team sports he didn’t like. He loved top performers. He watched Wimbledon. He watched the Olympic divers and sprinters and skiers.  And he watched boxing. He saw Sonny Liston lose the heavyweight championship of the world to Cassius Clay, and I remember overhearing him say that Sonny Liston had thrown the fight. I wanted to know what it meant, and I guess once I knew that I asked why. Never one to underestimate children, he would not only have mentioned organised crime, but probably attempted an exposition of the Faustian bargain as well.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-I_GoFE6gLS0\/VCVvf7brIYI\/AAAAAAAAAmo\/UdalHkBtMMM\/s1600\/night%2Btrain.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-I_GoFE6gLS0\/VCVvf7brIYI\/AAAAAAAAAmo\/UdalHkBtMMM\/s1600\/night%2Btrain.jpg\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003EWell, it was a fascinating riddle to me and it must have lodged itself inside my brain, so that last week, when I was looking up a biography of Jerry Lee Lewis by Nick Tosches on the library catalogue and discovered that he had written a book about Sonny Liston, I found myself rushing upstairs to grab it off the shelf, like the brainwashed agents in that old Charles Bronson spy movie who twenty years later are reawakened by a line of poetry and compelled to go and blow up missile sites.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENick Tosches is a writer I’ve always liked. In the first photo I saw of him he looked a bit like John Cassavetes (though he doesn’t really) and the first book  of his I picked up had a great dedication, with lines like “to those who broke and entered with me \/ into the cathedral of the heart, \/ to those who took my back \/ in right and in wrong.” That’s what his prose is like, Little Italy tough-guy with moments of sentiment but not sentimentalism, and an echo of Dante, except that Dante was never brutal, and he rhymed.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe book is called \u003Ci\u003ENight train\u003C\/i\u003E, after the song Liston liked to work out to, and I read it in two nights. I would have read it in one if I hadn't had to go to work the next day. It’s dark and disturbing, like Sonny Liston, who turns out to have been the archetype of “bad”. I didn't know. The book quotes Liston comparing boxing to a cowboy movie, with the good guys and the bad guys. “’The bad guys are supposed to lose. I change that,’ he had said. ‘I win’.”  But Tosches's take is, “He rode a fast dark train from nowhere, and it dumped him at that falling-off place at the end of the line.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.syndetics.com\/index.aspx?isbn=9780393039764\/mc.gif\u0026amp;upc=\u0026amp;oclc=\u0026amp;client=elgar\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.syndetics.com\/index.aspx?isbn=9780393039764\/mc.gif\u0026amp;upc=\u0026amp;oclc=\u0026amp;client=elgar\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003EOn the lighter side, this book was directly responsible for me watching the DVD of \u003Ci\u003EFight Club\u003C\/i\u003E last night. I had never wanted to see it because I had imagined it as something World Wrestling Federation types watched, not to mention the problem of pretentious Brad Pitt, but it was proposed to me, and after \u003Ci\u003ENight train,\u003C\/i\u003E men beating each other up didn't sound so shallow after all, so I watched it. Once I would have cried “foul” about the scene where the narrator pounds the guy’s face into pulp, but not any more. Now I’m looking forward to the book, my first Chuck Palahniuk novel ever. I see a whole new world opening up here.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EVice versa, here’s a book I've read which everyone should read: \u003Ci\u003EThe fight\u003C\/i\u003E, the book Norman Mailer wrote about the Rumble in the Jungle -- the famous match held in Zaire with which Muhammad Ali won his world championship back from George Foreman. Boxing fans have deemed it the best book ever about boxing, but I just love it for how convulsively funny it is, not to mention exceedingly sharp, and, just often enough, from-the-heart eloquent. It's Mailer totally in command. Here he is on George Foreman:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.syndetics.com\/index.aspx?isbn=9780141184142\/mc.gif\u0026amp;upc=\u0026amp;oclc=\u0026amp;client=elgar\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg alt=\"syndetics-lc\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.syndetics.com\/index.aspx?isbn=9780141184142\/mc.gif\u0026amp;upc=\u0026amp;oclc=\u0026amp;client=elgar\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\"He came out from the elevator dressed in embroidered bib overalls and dungaree jacket and entered the lobby of the Inter-Continental flanked by a Black on either side. He did not look like a man so much as a lion standing just as erectly as a man. He appeared sleepy but in the way of a lion digesting a carcass.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd lastly, there's Hemingway’s classic, great story about the shadowy world of boxing and the mob, “The killers”, which you can now read online -- hard to believe, if you are acquainted with the Hemingway family’s possessiveness with regard to their precious “brand”, including their attempt to stop the Hemingway look-alike contest in Key West from proceeding as not being respectful enough (or not having paid them enough).\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis from the family that had the bad taste to bring us the Ernest Hemingway line of rifles! I saw the advertisement in an U.S. magazine with my own eyes.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ERead \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.geocities.com\/cyber_explorer99\/hemingwaykillers.html\"\u003E\"The Killers\"\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd get from the library\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/search.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz\/?itemid=|library\/marc\/supercity-iii|b1317080\"\u003ENight train\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003Eby Nick Tosches\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/search.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz\/?itemid=|library\/marc\/supercity-iii|b2444166\"\u003EFight club\u003C\/a\u003E (DVD)\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/search.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz\/?itemid=|library\/marc\/supercity-iii|b1192570\"\u003EFight club\u003C\/a\u003E (the novel)\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/search.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz\/?itemid=|library\/marc\/supercity-iii|b1432910\"\u003EThe fight\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003Eby Norman Mailer\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/feeds\/5186583883111572397\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2009\/08\/what-im-reading.html#comment-form","title":"0 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/5186583883111572397"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/5186583883111572397"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2009\/08\/what-im-reading.html","title":"Best books about boxing"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"tosca"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"28","height":"32","src":"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-DKeaBNqmKUo\/VBStvJvL4cI\/AAAAAAAAR4M\/ZsfOjoSDymI\/s1600\/*"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-I_GoFE6gLS0\/VCVvf7brIYI\/AAAAAAAAAmo\/UdalHkBtMMM\/s72-c\/night%2Btrain.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"0"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501884760724421053.post-6382485084735151433"},"published":{"$t":"2009-07-01T03:30:00.000+12:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2013-05-06T23:56:12.698+12:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Karen"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"literary archives"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Norman Mailer"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"From Norman Mailer's typewriter"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"I find author relics almost always entertaining. An example of an exception could be John Ruskin’s umbrella, sorry, that's John Ruskin's \u003Ci\u003Elast\u003C\/i\u003E umbrella, which I saw at a little museum in the Lake District where we had gone looking for the original \u003Ci\u003EAmazon\u003C\/i\u003E from \u003Ci\u003ESwallows and Amazons\u003C\/i\u003E, which was supposed to be there but was not.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut I'm enthusiastic about a trip to Duchcov Castle in Bohemia, where Casanova lived out his final years. There were local boys in period costumes sword-fighting in the courtyard and, inside, a somewhat dusty dignitary in mufti who, when he heard that my sister was a Casanova scholar, insisted he must show us the very chair Casanova had died in. He then led us carefully into a room where, bowing from the waist, with a sweeping gesture he indicated one of four absolutely identical chairs.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENow the TLS reports that the Harry Ransom Center in Texas, the Emerald City of literary archives, has just acquired an Ezra Pound collection which contains, besides mere unpublished poems, a walking stick (but no umbrella) and a lock of Pound’s baby hair. From the \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.hrc.utexas.edu\/collections\/guide\/special\/\"\u003E“Personal effects”\u003C\/a\u003E page of the HRC website where I went looking to find out more, I learned that the HRC holds lots of author relics, including such gems as George Bernard Shaw’s letter opener, which may have opened 100 letters a day, and a pair of Arthur Conan Doyle’s underwear, special characteristics unknown.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt also houses a perfect replica of Perry Mason author Erle Stanley Gardner’s workroom where “one can view the desk, chairs, cabinets, artifacts, and slightly suspicious decorations from Gardner's 1960s study”. I’d love to have any suggestions as to what those might have been.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.syndetics.com\/index.php?isbn=9780805060188\/sc.gif\u0026amp;client=elgar\u0026amp;\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.syndetics.com\/index.php?isbn=9780805060188\/sc.gif\u0026amp;client=elgar\u0026amp;\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003EAnd Norman Mailer’s typewriter. Yes, Mailer fans, typewriter fans, \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.hrc.utexas.edu\/research\/fa\/mailer.scope.html\"\u003ENorman Mailer’s archive\u003C\/a\u003E at the HRC, a huge collection initially begun by Mailer’s “friend and biographer” Dr. Lucid (I kid you not), contains the typewriter Norman Mailer used to type his novel \u003Ci\u003EThe naked and the dead\u003C\/i\u003E, my favourite, the one that starts out at night (how many books do that, think about it), throbbing with tension, soldiers trying to sleep who the next day will climb onto assault craft to be landed on a Pacific atoll, and never lets up. War is hell.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECould Mailer have used that same typewriter four years later to write the letter to Lillian Ross, published earlier this year by the \u003Ci\u003ENew York Review of Books\u003C\/i\u003E in a three-part selection of Mailer letters (at the Central City Library or \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/22431\"\u003Eonline\u003C\/a\u003E), which contains these lines about \u003Ci\u003EThe old man and the sea\u003C\/i\u003E, which had just come out: \u003Cbr \/\u003E“I thought it was good and would have been better if it hadn’t been so full of shit. I thought the best thing about it was the conception of the story, but I just can’t bear his prose. It sets my teeth on edge. At least Hemingway’s prose of 1952 which has lost all of the simplicity it used to have. I think if he had written the story twenty years ago it would have been half as long and twice as good.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAlongside this intrepid opinion which I regret wasn't available to me when they made me read \u003Ci\u003EThe old man and the sea\u003C\/i\u003E in school, Mailer retained a great respect for Hemingway at his best, the person who made us see \"as no one else ever has, what the potential strength of the English sentence could be\". Mailer said that in an interview in the \u003Ci\u003EParis Review\u003C\/i\u003E in 2007, the year his last book, \u003Ci\u003EThe castle in the forest\u003C\/i\u003E, was published and the year he died.  (You can read it \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/parisreview.com\/viewinterview.php\/prmMID\/5775\"\u003Eonline\u003C\/a\u003E, or get \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.elgar.govt.nz\/record=b2352390~S2\"\u003E\u003Ci\u003EParis Review Interviews Vol 3\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E from the library and you can read interviews, too, with John Cheever, Jean Rhys, etc. We have all three volumes and I highly recommend them.) The 84 year old Mailer also says, then,  “I almost wouldn’t trust a young novelist who doesn’t imitate Hemingway in his youth”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EI once read an article about insects in the old Encyclopedia Britannica which said that from an evolutionary point of view, men have an excess of energy compared to male insects whose purpose is done once they have mated, which they use for making war, betting on horses, and writing literature. Hemingway and Mailer both. Oh, and don't forget boxing. They both loved boxing, too.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EI recommend:\u003Ci\u003E \u003C\/i\u003ENorman Mailer's great novel about World War II\u003Ci\u003E \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/search.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz\/?itemid=|library\/marc\/supercity-iii|b1193908\"\u003EThe naked and the dead\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E and his account of the Ali-Foreman Heavyweight Championship fight in Zaire,\u003Ci\u003E \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/search.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz\/?itemid=|library\/marc\/supercity-iii|b1432910\"\u003EThe Fight.\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/feeds\/6382485084735151433\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2009\/06\/from-norman-mailers-typewriter.html#comment-form","title":"0 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/6382485084735151433"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/6382485084735151433"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2009\/06\/from-norman-mailers-typewriter.html","title":"From Norman Mailer's typewriter"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"tosca"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"28","height":"32","src":"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-DKeaBNqmKUo\/VBStvJvL4cI\/AAAAAAAAR4M\/ZsfOjoSDymI\/s1600\/*"}}],"thr$total":{"$t":"0"}}]}});