Two students approach the desk for help finding periodicals. I stuff a notepad into my book (actual bookmark at the spot I want to read to by the end of the night) and set it aside.

"Are you reading that?" asks one of the students, nodding at Feed My Dear Dogs.

Has she heard of it? But it hasn't been published in the U.S. yet!

"Yes." I tell her. Does she have any idea how few students who come to our desk express any interest in fiction at all?

"Wow," she says. "It's so big."

It matters a little bit

I was thrilled over the weekend to learn that Ben Murphy and Roger Davis will be appearing at the Western Film Fair here in Charlotte in July. Should I embarrass myself by bringing in my box of Alias Smith and Jones clippings or all my old cassette tapes on which I recorded the audio of the show? I didn't even have a cassette player to record any of the Pete Duel episodes, although I did later make a cassette copy of "The Men That Corrupted Hadleyburg" episode from the recording that I managed to get from a reel-to-reel tape.

In an effort to make this a literary post, I'll provide the two references to Alias Smith and Jones from Martin McDonagh's play "The Lonesome West."

Background:

Valene and Coleman Connor are brothers in Leenane, Galway. Their father was shot in the back of the head by Coleman days before the play opens--accidentally, or so Father Welsh, the heavy-drinking priest believes. Hours after the funeral Tom Hanlon, another member of the community, kills himself. Valene helps Welsh drag the lake for Hanlon's body, then the two return to the Connor home to drink.

Welsh (pause) A lonesome oul lake that is for a fella to go killing himself in. It makes me sad just to think of it. To think of poor Tom sitting alone there, alone with his thoughts, the cold lake in front of him, and him weighing up what's best, a life full of the loneliness that took him there but a life full of good points too. Every life has good points, even if it's only. . . seeing rivers, or going travelling, or watching football on the telly. . .

Valene (nodding): Football, aye . . .

Welsh: Or the hopes of being loved. And Thomas weighing all that up on the one hand, then weighing up a death in cold water on the other, and choosing the water. And first it strikes you as dumb, and a waste, 'You were thirty-eight years old, you had health and friends, there was plenty worse off fecks than you in the world, Tom Hanlon'. . .

Valene: The girl born with no lips in Norway.

Welsh: I didn't hear about her.

Valene: There was this girl in Norway, and she was born with no lips at all.

Welsh: Uh-huh. But then you say if the world's such a decent place worth staying in, where were his friends when he needed them in this decent world? When he needed them most, to say 'Come away from there, ya daft, we'd miss ya, you're worthwhile, as dumb as you are.' Where were his friends then? Where was I then? Sitting pissed on me own in a pub. (Pause)Rotting in hell now, Tom Hanlon is. According to the Catholic Church anyways he is, the same as every suicide. No remorse. No mercy on him.

Valene: Is that right now? Every suicide you're saying?

Welsh: According to us mob it's right anyways.

Valene: Well I didn't know that. That's a turn-up for the books. (Pause) So the fella from Alias Smith and Jones, he'd be in hell?

Welsh: I don't know the fella from Alias Smith and Jones.

Valene: Not the blond one, now, the other one.

Welsh: I don't know the fella.

Valene: He killed himself, and at the height of his fame.

Welsh: Well, if he killed himself, aye, he'll be in hell too. (Pause) It's great it is. You can kill a dozen fellas, you can kill two dozen fellas. So long as you're sorry after you can still get into heaven. But if it's yourself you go murdering, no. Straight to hell.

Valene: That sounds awful harsh. (Pause) So Tom'll be in hell now, he will? Jeez. (Pause) I wonder if he's met the fella from Alias Smith and Jones yet? Ah, that fella must be old be now. Tom probably wouldn't even recognise him. That's if he saw Alias Smith and Jones at all. I only saw it in England. It mightn't've been on telly here at all.

Welsh: (sighing) You wouldn't be sparing a drop of that poteen would ya, Valene? I've an awful thirst. . .

And then later in the play, after the priest is told that Coleman deliberately shot his father, he writes a letter to the Connor brothers and then drowns himself in the same lake as Tom Hanlon. For awhile the brothers, who have been at each other's throat throughout the play, attempt to get along.

Coleman: I hope Father Welsh isn't in hell at all. I hope he's in heaven.

Valene: I hope he's in heaven.

Coleman: Or purgatory at worst.

Valene: Although if he's in hell at least he'll have Tom Hanlon to speak to.

Coleman: So it won't be as if he doesn't know anybody.

Valene: Aye. And the fella off Alias Smith and Jones.

Coleman: Is the fella off Alias Smith and Jones in hell?

Valene: He is. Father Welsh was telling me.

Coleman: The blond one.

Valene: No, the other one.

Coleman: He was good, the other one.

Valene: He was the best one.

Coleman: It's always the best ones go to hell. Me, probably straight to heaven I'll go, even though I blew the head off poor Dad. So long as I go confessing to it anyways. That's the good thing about being Catholic. You can shoot your dad in the head and it doesn't even matter at all.

Valene: Well it matters a little bit.

Coleman: It matters a little bit but not a big bit.

New used books

Bad morning at the used bookstore. Everything looked good, not a good thing when you don't have much money, plus the bunny must have been hiding out in the back room with the cat that bites customers. I tried to determine what a woman was reading at the end of the religion and philosophy aisle that would make her exclaim outloud, "That's amazing," but all she appeared to be looking at was a book that somewhat resembled a yearbook, with rows and rows of black and white old- timey portraits. Maybe she spotted an ancestor.

After putting books back and resisting offers to lower the price on a hardback Play It As It Lays (because my paperback isn't falling apart, no matter its age and multiple readings), I walked away with:

Soloman Gursky Was Here. Mordecai Richler. Richler pere was recommended to me by Book Puddle.

Education of a Wandering Man. Louis L'Amour. This memoir comes highly recommended by Mental Multivitamin.

Fathers and Crows. William T. Vollmann. Dare I attempt Vollmann? It looks extremely daunting.

The Edge of the Sea and Under the Sea Wind. Rachel Carson. Because of Jim Lynch's The Highest Tide.

The Chymical Wedding. Lindsay Clarke. I knew I'd heard of this one before, but couldn't remember good or ill. Looking it up on Amazon I see it won the Whitbread in '89 and a raking over the coals by a reviewer whose name I recognize. I usually love Whitbread winners and books loathed by this particular reviewer, so I'm glad I didn't put this one back.

If you read Ed Champion's 75 Book Challenge, you probably followed his links and read Tayari Jones' suggested guidelines. Sherry at Semicolon applied these guidelines to her reading from last year and I thought I'd do the same. (Because otherwise I have to go to the gym.)

TWO BOOKS by international authors, written in English, NOT set in the U.S.A.

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
Everything You Need by A.L. Kennedy

ONE BOOK that is translated into English

More than one read. First two that come to mind: Bohumil Hrabal's Closely Observed Trains and Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons

THREE BOOKS from small presses

From Bear Manor Press: Alias Smith and Jones: The Story of Two Pretty Good Bad Men by Sandra K. Sagala and JoAnne M. Bagwell
From Free Press: Frankland by James Wharton
and if McSweeney's counts: The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

TWO BOOKS of non-fiction (excluding memoir)

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
Love and Hate in Jamestown by David A. Price

ONE Over-hyped book by an author whose success I resent

None.

TWO of the "classics" that I never got around to reading

Antigone by Sophocles
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

ONE BOOK that receives a TERRIBLE review in a major publication

I think I read a lot of books in this category. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is the first that comes to mind.

TWO BOOKS of poetry by people I don't know.

Jack and Other New Poems by Maxine Kumin
The Casting of Bells by Jaroslav Seifert

ONE avant-garde or experimental title.

Umm, would Ali Smith's The Accidental work here? I'm thinking about Michael's poetry in particular: "Cat urine everywhere became sublime!"

TWO short-story collections

More than two. First two that come to mind: George Saunders' CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Runaway by Alice Munro

ONE novel set at least two-hundred years ago

No novels, but I did read The Odyssey and Ben Franklin and the history books mentioned above.

ONE novel set at least two-hundred years in the future

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller and the final part (I'm assuming) of Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days

ONE novel written at least two-hundred years ago

Don Quixote!

TWO plays

As You Like It by William Shakespeare
The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee

ONE offering by the most recent Nobel Laureate

Nope.

ONE Young Adult Novel

The latest Harry Potter

ONE book on craft.

Nope. Haven't read one in a good three years.

And I think I followed all of Ed's suggestions as well, although I should have read more books by women than I did.

Substituting cats for groundhogs

. . . is a perfectly acceptable compromise in certain pseudo-scientific communities. While the pug more closely resembles a groundhog in appearance, its reliability level is close to none; hence a pug's actions cannot be used to predict seasonal lengths.




Sorry, Puggy Gin.


The first step in substituting a cat for a groundhog is to find one leaving its lair. Oh, look! It's Punxsutawney Phil ---er, El. Hi ya, Ellie. Any predictions for us today?




Well, she darted back into her burrow. Let's turn our attention to a cat who dwells above furniture. Miss Nicholson, Miss Nicholson. Will you cast a shadow today?



Erm, sorry we bothered you. Perhaps we should spend time courting the opinion of the more charitably minded, the more, shall we say, pedigreed members of the household. Good breeding has to count in pseudo-science circles, right?



For heaven's sake, Claudius. I guess it's safe to say that in substituting cats for groundhogs, the laws of physics win out over shadow-casting every time.




Inertia rules.








Check out Friday's Ark and Sunday's Carnival of the Cats, hosted by Enrevanche.

Wikipedia's List of Years in Literature.

A few quick links

I take it for granted that dogs and mums and dads and children and people who have been children and the whole of the rest of everything will die and this will frequently be sudden and insupportable and unfair and in the end I'll join them and I am not even remotely in favor of that, but also I choose not to think of it unless I am over-tired and lack the strength to fight it back. I don't want my existence to seem impractical, unlikely. Plus, I can't deal properly with other people when all I feel is sorry they'll being leaving fairly soon and sad so many unimportant things are so distracting.

The narrator in A. L. Kennedy's "Family With Young Children" receives a series of late-night phone calls from a stranger.

The Morning News has listed the roster of books for its second Tournament of Books. Long may the rooster crow!

Jane Smiley's List of 100 Novels, from 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, is now on-line. (via Diana)