Superbowl Sunday: Literary Showdown

Superbowl Sunday! Either you've waited for it all year or you're just in this for the snacks and funny beer commercials. Unless you're me, in which case you completely forgot that football existed until Carl proposed a literary showdown between writers from this year's rival cities (Baltimore and San Francisco, if you've been living under the same rock I was).

Let's see the line-up!

From SAN FRANCISCO:

Lawrence Ferlinghetti - The patron saint of indie bookstores and the heart & soul of this ragtag team of miscreants. If they win this thing, he's taking a gatorade shower.
Tobias Wolff - Crowd favorite. Makes short work of the opposition.
Charles Schulz - insists the Charlie Brown football schtick was not a self-portrait. We'll see.
Shirley Jackson - assumes the ceremonial coin flip augurs darker things to come. Doubts anyone will be "going to Disneyworld."
Jack London - thinks Shirley Jackson is optimistic.
Lemony Snicket - thinks Jack London is cheerful.
Allen Ginsberg - will probably streak at half-time.


Aaaaaand east coast! From BALTIMORE:

Edgar Allen Poe - With a team name like the Ravens, this guy's the clear MVP. Has big-name draw but isn't exactly known for his happy endings.

Gertrude Stein - renowned for dizzying duck-and-weave tactics and elaborate touch-down victory dances.

Upton Sinclair - or "Jungle Fever," as his teammates call him. This is a dirty business and he's in it to win.
Emily Post - will tackle you with her pinky out.

Ogden Nash - endears himself to the cheerleaders by improving their rhyme schemes.

John Barth - is all about the mind games. He'll sneak off the field and into the media box to give voice-over commentary. Says Baltimore is winning but we have no way of knowing that's true. Or even that this game is real.
Tom Clancy - his strategy involves a CIA mole, international espionage and the Goodyear blimp.

Holy cow, folks. It's anyone's game. We'll be pulling for Frisco, if only because we've got a huge crush on City Lights.

The Thrill of The Hunt

I used to be a collector. Be it baseball cards, jazz LPs, matchboxes, comic books, rare books, oil cans, I, at one time or another, had a collection. College and two cross-country moves obliterated my somewhat prized possessions. The purge felt great. It was a weight lifted off my checklist notebooks.

Lately i've been feeling the urge to collect again. Or pick up an old collection. More specifically, i've been looking around for old City Light Pocket Series books. Right now I have about 1/3rd of the entire catalog. Quite impressive, to me at least. It's taken me close to 10 years to find what I have. When i tell people this, they say "Why don't you just buy 'em online?".

Fair enough. I could do that. But where's the fun in that? Buying stuff online isn't collecting, its hoarding. It too easy. No getting dirty or going on road trips or seeking out used book stores or antique shops or flea markets. When I look at my collection, there's a story behind how I found each title. One I found in a dollar bin somewhere in West Virginia. One I found in Gloucester buried in a box of newspapers. It was my birthday. It was a cold early winter afternoon. I was hungry. It was either the book or food (Ended up with both, but for dramatic effect...). For me, its the thrill of the hunt, the chase. Its bartering with dealers and working my mojo. Walking the line between fairness and being ripped off. In most cases, the cost is merely an after-thought (I'm married without children. I can do this).

I suppose the gist of this post is to encourage folks to not be lazy. Don't simply cop out and scour ebay on your off-nights looking for that Frenchman's poetry book. You'll probably end up finding it under a heap of dirty linen in some old grand-ma-ma's basement shop or next to a box of spark plugs at a flea market in west central Ohio.

If you care to, leave a list of what you collect in the comments field! If its book related i'll check our shelves. here be mine:

City Light Pocket Books
Rubber Stamps
Dell Comic Digests from 60's and 70's
Old comics (western themed or involving radioactive insects)
Type (both metal and wood)