A nice small haul from the hall

Today I quickly stopped by the annual Planned Parenthood Used Booksale at the Earl Warren Showgrounds. This is one of the biggest sales in S.B., and apparently last night’s opening was a madhouse. I wanted to go, but I was teaching class, so I just hoped there would be something left.
I ran into John Ridland, former poetry teacher of mine, and translator (I wrote on his book here). He had some nice words to say about my bimonthly column and this very blog, and I was glad to tell him that it’s back in business. He also had recently gotten into Modern Japanese Lit through a friend and was very much into Junichiro Tanizaki. Yep, Tanizaki is a good one to start with, more so than Soseki. Of course I put in a good word for Kobo Abe.
I didn’t pick up many books this year, but I did get three: Richard Brautigan’s The Abortion (only later did Jon point out the irony of picking this up at the Planned Parenthood sale); Geoff Dyer’s but beautiful: A Book About Jazz, which some blog or another turned me onto months ago. Now it’s too late to thank them/him/her. Finally, the media contact/organizer Stephanie, who had been yakking back and forth with me on email, had saved a copy of Burroughs’ Interzone for me, after I had written about my WSB Binge in my column. Wasn’t that sweet of her? It turned out that book was a first-edition hardcover, too! Niiiiice.