Poet, playwright and novelist Adam Thorpe was born in Paris in 1956 and grew up in India, Cameroon and England. After graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1979, he started a theatre company and toured villages and schools before moving to London where he taught Drama and English Literature. Thorpe lives in France with his wife and three children. His most recent books are a collection of short stories, Is This The Way You Said? (2006); a poetry collection, Birds with a Broken Wing (2007); and the novels  The Standing Pool (2008) and Hodd (2009) in which he depicts Robin Hood as a glorified 13th century gangster surrounded by a group of psychopathic thugs, desperate men preying on the innocent.

We talked recently in Toronto at the IFOA, about the Robin Hood myth, and our apparent need to create heroes to address injustice, to express indignation, and right the wrongs of an unjust world. In the conversation we riff off William Flesch’s contention that fiction satisfies our desire to see the good vindicated and the wicked get their ‘comeuppance.’

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‘The Literary Club’, Canadian Crystals: Poems by Thomas Watson.

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Sale 2209 Lot 122

 

FORSYTH, FREDERICK. The Day of the Jackal. 4 First Printings including two Inscribed and Signed to Penzler in 1999. 8vo, original bindings; dust jackets as issued. London: Hutchinson; New York: Viking; Bantam, 1971-72
Estimate $1,500-2,500

First English Edition. Endpapers toned; dust jacket, light rubbing to corners, price-clipped. Inscribed and Signed by Forsyth to Penzler in 1999 * Advance Reading Copy of the First American Edition. Wrappers, toned. 1971 * First American Edition. Dust jacket, price-clipped, a bit toned, light creases along edges. Inscribed and Signed by Forsyth to Penzler in 1999 * Bantam Books Preview Edition. Small 8vo, wrappers, toned. 1972. In this, Forsyth’s most famous work, a political killer is hired to assassinate Charles De Gaulle. The French authorities learn of the plot and assign detective Claude Lebel to find "The Jackal." Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for the best novel of 1971.*

THE OTTO PENZLER COLLECTION OF BRITISH ESPIONAGE AND THRILLER FICTION goes to auction at Swann’s tomorrow, April 8, 2010

The sale consists of a select portion of the private library of the well-known mystery fiction specialist and bookseller. Collectors will find both famous and obscure treasures in Penzler’s collection. Check out the Online Catalogue here, the 3D Catalogue here

* I have the British First Editions of Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File and Dogs of War, Forsyth’s first three novels. He rented an upper floor apartment suite in my aunt’s Hampstead house during the 70s. May well have written some or all of these books whilst there. At the time I had little interest in collecting…damn it…though not sure, in any case, if I’d have had the gumption back then to get them signed…

maybe I will next time I’m in Londontown.

Over at the Guardian Carol Rumens gives us a splendid reading of ‘The Windhover’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Concise and cerebral, it contains illuminating factual, biographical background, set against simple structural analysis…

The Windhover
To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
      dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
      Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
      As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
      Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing. 

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
      Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! 

      No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
      Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

from The Pond

Music, yes. And more. As Zach puts it in a post over at his blog, quoting Frost’s maxim ‘beware of the sound and let sense take care of itself’: "One has to work very self-consciously against the grain of language for it to lose its link to communication. While I’ve written a fair number of poems that can’t readily be paraphrased because they don’t have an explicit narrative, I’ve never been interested in the Quixotic task of stripping language of its status as tool of communication."

‘The Pond’ is the strongest in a strong collection of poems that I highly recommend you read.  I’ve been carting my copy of Track and Trace around with me during recent Book Hunter travels, reveling in its ‘rust-red lakes’, ‘green archipelagos of stranded Holsteins’, ‘worm lousy apples’, and traitorous breezes. A clever companion. My only beef with the book is its design. Seth’s bold black and white winter-scapes somehow interfere and detract from the warm pastoral valleys, muddy river-ways and fiddle-headed visions of ‘ruddled’ roads that Wells’ words conjure.

Had the pleasure of sharing Frank Wilson’s company whilst scouting out and reviewing used bookstores for The Book Hunter Press this past weekend in Philadelphia. We started off at his place, where I met

‘The General’ in the back yard. The two are planning to produce a multi-media poetry project along with several other collaborators. Keep your eye on Books Inq. for further developments.

First stop on our biblio tour was Bauman Rare Books…located on the 19th Floor of this impressive

looking

building…it was closed. Next was a gallery which although not closed, now focuses on selling prints

and the odd ‘age of  discovery’ volume. Then, Famulous, which appears to have gone out of business, at least at this

location. From here, a walk past "Running Press",

where Frank happened to work twenty some years back, his claim to fame being a billing in this book

as ‘editor’ despite not having touched a word in it. Next stop: the easily spotted Book Corner, then over to

Bookhaven located in the shadows of the Eastern State Penitentiary, famous for its Jeremy Bentham-inspired design, and for dropping solitary confinement thanks to a visit by Charles Darwin in the 1840s whose hackles were raised by the practice. Bookhaven yielded the best booty: a first edition of John Barth’s The Sot Weed Factor. On this high note we sped over several blocks to the Rose Tatoo, ending the afternoon over beer and oysters, in the company of Frank’s charming wife,

Debbie.

I notice that this year’s Poetry Month theme is climate change. Not sure that the best is typically written on-demand or by prescription; George Murray’s Hunter probably wasn’t. I think it one of the best poems written on this topic…

Here’s an excerpt:

The forest lies quiet immediately before the axe,
the desert gives up accelerating the wind.

Let us entreat our wives and sisters to birth monsters,
let us return to the roots of our earliest prophecies.

Here’s part of an appreciation of it I wrote last year for ARC Magazine:

"The poem works then because it attaches itself to canonical words, pushes through intriguing sets of thin, thought-provoking binary opposites, looks at the horizon, and formulates a complicated commentary both on the globe’s future physical environment, and humankind’s perilous rejection of wise thinking in favour of greedy consumption. In short, the poem’s complex ambiguity invites engagement: it’s not too late to save the world from ignorant human behaviour. Alternatively, Murray himself has described the Hunter as angry, and the poem’s ‘Promised Land’ can just as easily be interpreted ironically, apocalyptically, as it can hopefully.

The poem succeeds because neither it, nor its central character is static. He changes, like most of us do, over time. The ‘he’ in the poem evolves from a dissatisfied beast into an insatiable destroyer, from a threatening spirit, to, in the end, a loving hopeful human being struggling simply to stay alive who is intent, possibly, on creating a better world—or at least on trying to save this one. Godlike, beaten, but not dead. Not yet, at least while there is still the capacity to ‘look up’, to hope, despite a barren landscape. Resurrected. Mail fisted"

Incoming search terms:

• george murray hunter
• hunting bearded dragon

OTTAWA & CUPERTINO, California—April 1, 2010 — BookHunterPress.com, Inc. (BHP), today announced that, subject to closing conditions, it has reached an agreement to acquire Apple’s iPad. This just two days in advance of iPad’s country-wide launch. The new AppleBookHunter iPad will be available in all 8,000 US BookHunterPress ® retail stores and most Best Buy stores this Saturday, April 3, beginning at 9 a.m.

BookHunter retail stores will offer a free Personal Setup service to every customer who buys an ABH iPad at the store, helping them customize their new BHPiPad by setting up their email, loading their favorite BookHunter apps from the App Store, and more. Also beginning Saturday morning, all US BookHunter retail stores will host special iPad workshops to help customers learn more about how they can fly using this magical new product.

About Apple:

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

About BookHunter.com

And, because of this new acquisition,  a one year subscription to this on-line database at 75% Off the regular price: just visit here

Press Contacts:
BookHunter Press iPad Acquisition
Media Hotline,
613-842-9800

(April Fool’s)