The Road to Los Angeles by John Fante

I was tipped off to John Fante by a teacher who said if I liked Bukowski I'd be into Fante, who was an influence on the former. That and the 1930s-'40s Los Angeles setting was enough to convince me to give him a try. The Road to Los Angeles was the first book of his that I read, and it was also the first book that Fante wrote. Much like Buk's Henry Chinaski, Fante's fictional alter ego was Arturo Bandini, a character he returned to many times throughout this novels. The Road to Los Angeles introduces Bandini as a young man struggling to become a great writer as he works odd jobs to make ends meet. It's not Fante's best but as I said, it was his earliest novel, written when he was 24 years old, with far better things to come.

Christmas themed books (and one audio recording)

I wanted to post something holiday-ish today but I think I went through my only two Christmas-themed books last year. So in case you missed them, here's a look at Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris and The Twelve Terrors of Christmas by John Updike.

And finally, here's my real Christmas gift to you. I linked to a print version last year, but I'm taking it up a notch this time with an audio recording (you can ignore the weird video montage someone has put together) of "Six to Eight Black Men" by David Sedaris. A word of warning: do not watch while sipping egg nog or hot cocoa, as you may spit it out in a fit of laughter. Not kidding.

Henry Darger's Room

Henry Darger is the quintessential outsider artist. He grew up an orphan, escaped from the asylum for "feeble-minded boys" at age 16, led a mostly solitary life working as a janitor, and lived alone in a one-room apartment in Chicago for 40 years. Upon his death his landlord discovered that the tiny room contained more than 30,000 pages of manuscripts and several hundred watercolor paintings. Most of them comprise his most famous work, In the Realms of the Unreal, the story of the Vivian girls, seven sisters who assist a daring rebellion against an evil regime of child slavery.

What most people remember about the paintings is that the little girls have penises. I'm not a betting woman but if I had to put money on it I'd guess that Darger just never learned that girls don't look the same as boys. But I digress...the important thing is that he was a total unknown with an incredible secret life, spending decades writing and painting his life's work without another soul even realizing it.

I first heard his story about ten years ago, and became fairly engrossed in it. I was at first disappointed to learn that the In the Realms of the Unreal has not been published in full (although, quite frankly, how could one publish a 15,000+ page book--and more importantly, who would read it?) but did manage to find a volume excerpting sections of it at the Pratt Library, where I worked at the time.

Anyway...about a year ago I was in the PS1 book store and noticed this on the shelf. It was a little bit pricy but it was well worth the purchase. It's a beautiful little book of, yes, photos of Henry Darger's room, which his landlord has faithfully kept nearly just as it was when Darger died in 1973.

It starts with a series of black and white shots, taken in the 70s just after Darger's death. I like the inspiration wall on the right. Darger was obsessed with protecting children, which, knowing just a bit about his history in the asylum, seems pretty understandable.

Most of them were taken in 1999 and are in color, with this almost golden sepia tone to them. I love how his paints are still strewn out on the table, as if he might come back to them at any minute.

Some original manuscripts of Realms. Some of them were bound by the artist; the rest are tied with twine. I like the wallpaper covers with hand painted titles.

Darger loved children's books with girl protagonists. He owned 13 first edition copies of the Oz books.

Photos of little girls and religious images on the mantelpiece.

Confessions of a Crap Artist by Philip K. Dick

The “crap artist” of the title is Jack Isidore, a socially awkward man who seems a bit obsessive compulsive, fanatically cataloging old science magazines and collecting random objects. He believes that the earth is hollow, that sunlight has weight, and other disproved theories. Broke, he moves in with his sister’s family and joins a religious group that shares his interests in ESP, telepathy, and UFOs, believing the world will end on April 23, 1959.

While the details of the novel involve some paranoiac elements, this is actually a straight fiction novel--nothing otherworldly occurs. Dick wrote a few other mainstream novels early on in his career, some of which were recently reissued by Tor, but for awhile this was the only one of them in print. While I definitely love some of the stranger PKD novels (Ubik is hands down my favorite), this one is certainly worth checking out.

P.S. To the people at Vintage: please repackage these books! They're ugly as sin! Thanks. (Although I guess there is a kind of charm in this level of hideousness. It's almost a way of weeding out the poseurs—only a true fan would be willing to be seen purchasing something that looks like this.)

Virginia Dare by Fielding Dawson

I first heard of Fielding Dawson in an article about him in The Believer a few years ago, which definitely got me interested. A beat-era writer and painter, he studied at Black Mountain College and hung around with Franz Kline and Philip Guston. (A favorite detail about him is that he pitched for the Max's Kansas City softball team. I especially love that there was a Max's Kansas City softball team at all.)

I came across this book when I wasn't looking for it, at Robin's Books in Philadelphia. (A signed copy by a dead author on a now defunct* legendary press...for $8.50. Go figure.) In the book's introduction, Dawson announces that "this book draws to a close my involvement with the first person and autobiography" and that it marks his "entrance into third person fiction, and open endings through transitions," as well as his intent "to undo the corset concepts of beginning, middle and end, as well as lucid description and dialogue in 123-ABC type progressions, and the mistaken dogma that novelistic completion brings, or ties, all loose ends together." Many of the stories are extremely short, a page or two, or even just a paragraph.

I remember feeling disappointed as I read it, but less disappointed in the book than I was with myself for not "getting it." Flipping through it now, the stories kind of remind me of a more beat-like Raymond Carver. I'd like to give it another try, or at least check out another of his books.

Dawson was also a painter and collagist, and there are many photographs and collages scattered throughout the pages of this book, as well as on the front cover.

*I've just learned that though John Martin did retire in 2002 and sold the rights to the works of Charles Bukowski, Paul Bowles, and John Fante to HarperCollins, he then sold the rest of his inventory to David Godine for $1, and Godine now not only distributes the remaining Black Sparrow stock but also publishes new titles under it as an imprint of his own publishing house. But for all intents and purposes, Black Sparrow is, in the classic sense, still defunct in my eyes.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre

This is, as far as I can remember, my first foray into spy novels, and it's a pretty good one--Graham Greene said it was "the best spy story I have ever read." Alec Leamas, a British agent in early Cold War Berlin, is called back to London by Control after his last double agent is killed. Instead of being dismissed, he is given a rather dangerous assignment: play the part of a disgraced agent, a defector, as part of a plot to bring down Mundt, an assassin for the Abteilung, the East German Secret Service.

The novel is of course suspenseful and entertaining, but it also seemed somewhat more literary than I had expected. It's well written and carefully plotted, and Leamas is more of an anti-hero, hard drinking and disillusioned, than some kind of slick action hero. Good stuff all around.

Hunter & Painter by Tom Gauld

Not long ago I spotted this short staple-bound comic by Tom Gauld and quickly snapped it up. I loved his The Gigantic Robot, both for the drawing style and deceptively simple and humorous storytelling approach.

Hunter & Painter tells the story of a cave painter who decides to try a different subject matter, which proves unpopular with his fellow cavemen.

I love the woolly mammoth.