I am not foreseeing myself writing any fiction tonight, (First seven chapters of Do You Remember When The World Ended are finished, ask to read them if you want to read them) so the blogging will commence.

Days spent in bookstores. Saw stuff I rarely see, emblazoned with crazy-positive blurbs. A Steve Erickson novel, whose Days Between Stations liked quite a bit, got support from Tom Robbins, Thomas Pynchon, and William Gibson. It's nonetheless a rare occasion to come across his stuff. Meanwhile, Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, kind of an acknowledged classic but rarely come across, I came across today. It has this quote on the front from Dylan Thomas, saying "This is a good book to get for your sister if she's a drunk and nasty girl." This is a paraphrase, but I'm striving for accuracy. Then it gets respect from the likes of James Joyce and Updike and all kinds of people. I need to read it.

Also, saw a magazine for vegetarians with the line "Friends don't let friends eat meat" on it, possibly the most untrue statement ever. Does anyone involved with that magazine believe in it? I don't want to say if they did, they would have no friends at all, but theoretically their friends could all be vegetarians, a very insular clique at work at that magazine. But I like to think they would all at least secretly hate each other, what with it being abundantly clear they were all total douchebags.

I looked at We All Die Alone, the coffee-table book of Mark Newgarden work. It's pretty cool. If I were in the coffee-table book market, I might give it a go, but the content's not super-strong for anyone to actually need. If you come across it in a bookstore, give it a long enough flip-through that you feel acquainted with all the content within. One reoccurring thing is a gag cartoon but with a long paragraph of a character's monologue beneath it in tiny type. The one that really got me was a homeless man doing stand-up. Alternately, there's the talk of the work for Topps in the eighties, as the guy behind Garbage Pail Kids, but also such novelties as Barfing Family Candy. Even funnier to me is the idea that never became more than a phrase, "sandwich gum." The name of that book again: We All Die Alone.