my two modes are finding a beloved author( barbara comyns orig hardbacks the white whale, only have one “out of the red into the blue” found in obscenely dusty canadian bookshop though was excited to find “the skin chairs” in a free box other day- the green V edition which is now just as rare- no one will republish bc of the weird name) and hoping to find a lost classic which i can then heroically help get republished which means i buy lots of flops in charity shops and its all a fantasy anyway considering skin chairs. Books i feel sorry for but resist buying: all those unreadable and more obscure sitwell men whose books have very funny titles. opened one other day which was completely incomprehensible, couldn’t even tell if novel, memoir, book of criticism. just a general impression of someone shouting in one of those old r rolling accents to a typist.
We suffer from the same condition, maybe: I sometimes kid myself I'm going to make that kind of "lost classic" discovery, and the other day indeed did buy a vol of Sitwellian shouting (Pound Wise by Osbert). Madness. But when I see that first eds of The Skin Chairs go for four figures, I do want to continue the rummaging around, just in case I'm only a bookcase away from a eureka..
my two modes are finding a beloved author( barbara comyns orig hardbacks the white whale, only have one “out of the red into the blue” found in obscenely dusty canadian bookshop though was excited to find “the skin chairs” in a free box other day- the green V edition which is now just as rare- no one will republish bc of the weird name) and hoping to find a lost classic which i can then heroically help get republished which means i buy lots of flops in charity shops and its all a fantasy anyway considering skin chairs. Books i feel sorry for but resist buying: all those unreadable and more obscure sitwell men whose books have very funny titles. opened one other day which was completely incomprehensible, couldn’t even tell if novel, memoir, book of criticism. just a general impression of someone shouting in one of those old r rolling accents to a typist.
We suffer from the same condition, maybe: I sometimes kid myself I'm going to make that kind of "lost classic" discovery, and the other day indeed did buy a vol of Sitwellian shouting (Pound Wise by Osbert). Madness. But when I see that first eds of The Skin Chairs go for four figures, I do want to continue the rummaging around, just in case I'm only a bookcase away from a eureka..