Archive for September, 2009
I am not a monster
Posted in Books, Excerpts with tags Roberto Bolano on 11 September, 2009 by JennaFrom The Skating Rink, by Roberto Bolaño: 
[pg. 14] I know that whatever I say will only make things worse; but still, let me tell it my way. I am not a monster, or the cynical unscrupulous character that you have been portraying in such lurid colors. Perhaps you find my physical appearance amusing. Go ahead and laugh. There was a time when people trembled before me. I’m fat, five foot eight, and Catalan. Also, I’m a socialist and I believe in the future. Or used to. Forgive me. I’m going through something of a rough patch. I believed in hard work, justice and progress. I know that Pilar used to boast about having me as her right-hand man when she met with the other socialist mayors in the province. Well, I always supposed she did, although now, in my new-found solitude, I keep wondering why I was never headhunted, why some big shot never tried to snatch me away from Z and Pilar, and give me a job somewhere closer to Barcelona. Maybe Pilar didn’t boast enough. Maybe they all had their own indispensable helpers and didn’t need anyone else.
—The Skating Rink, by Roberto Bolaño (New Directions, $21.95)
IN STOCK
Event Tonight
Posted in Events on 10 September, 2009 by S&Co.Annie La Ganga (Stoners and Self-Appointed Saints) and Bill Cotter (Fever Chart) read tonight (Thursday) at 7 p.m.
Tomorrow night: Peter Filkins.
Labor Day Weekend
Posted in Books, Excerpts with tags Zeitoun on 5 September, 2009 by S&Co.
We are open Sunday, closed Monday.
An excerpt from Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers:
[p. 95-96] TUESDAY AUGUST 30.
Zeitoun opened his eyes again. He was home, in his daughter Nademah’s room, under her covers, looking through the window at a dirty white sky. The sound continued, something like running water. But there was no rain, no leaks. He thought a pipe might have broken, but that couldn’t be it; the sound wasn’t right. This was more like a river, the movement of great volumes of water.
He sat up and looked down through the window that faced the backyard. He saw water, a wide sea of it. It was coming from the north. It flowed into the yard, under the house, rising quickly.
He couldn’t make sense of it. The day before, the water had receded, as he had expected it to, but now it had returned, far stronger. And this water was different from the murky rainwater of the day before. This water was green and clear. This was lake water.
At that moment, Zeitoun knew that the levees had been overtopped or compromised. There could be no doubt. The city would soon be underwater. If the water was here, he knew, it was already covering most of New Orleans. He knew it would keep coming, would likely rise eight feet or more in his neighborhood, and more elsewhere. He knew the recovery would take months or years. He knew the flood had come.
Store Conversation
Posted in News on 4 September, 2009 by S&Co.Me: Sorry, no, I don’t have the Black Dagger Brotherhood … can I try to find it for you downtown? …
Mom to daughter [in a hurry to leave]: We’ll get it in Billings.
Daughter: I don’t want it in Billings.
What We’re Reading
Posted in Books, Excerpts with tags Methland, Nick Reding on 2 September, 2009 by S&Co.
[p. 41] People around town like to say that Roland Jarvis blew himself up. The sound Jarvis heard immediately following the click of his lighter, though, was not anything like an explosion. It was a very distinct and very quiet sucking sound. It took about a quarter of a second for the ionized hydrogen in the hydrochloric acid to propagate from the lighter’s flame and into the drain. This made the entire basement into a vacuum. Jarvis heard a soft Whoomp! Then came the blast, the force of which blew out the windows and singed Jarvis’s body wherever it wasn’t covered by clothing. In the space of several more tenths of a second, all of his exposed body hair burned off. When he looked down, he saw that his tube socks were somehow no longer on his feet.
– Nick Reding (Methland; $25.00) IN STOCK.
Miles from Nowhere
Posted in Books, Excerpts with tags Miles from Nowhere, Nami Mun on 1 September, 2009 by S&Co.
The novel Miles from Nowhere begins:
I’d been at the shelter for two weeks and there was nothing to do but go to counseling or lie on my cot and count the rows of empty cots nailed to the floor or watch TV in the rec room, where the girls cornrowed each other’s hair and went on about pulling a date with Reggie the counselor because he looked like Billy Dee Williams and had a rump-roast ass. I didn’t see a way to join in, but I didn’t feel like being alone, either. It was cold. Outside the lobby doors, the thick snow falling made it hard to see the diner across the street. The walls in this place were too bright, too lit up in peppermint light. I wandered down the long hallway, walked past the cafeteria and the nurses’ station without saying hi to anyone, and looked for Knowledge.
- Nami Mun, Miles from Nowhere (Riverhead; $14) IN STOCK
