Bizarre Books

[Smilla]

I also rediscovered "Taxi Driver Wisdom" quotes from New York taxi drivers collected by Risa Mickenberg.

I love the Taxi Driver Wisdom book. I read that in college and found it to be remarkably insightful.

My newest contribution to this thread is Jim Carroll's Void of Course. UGH. I have a high tolerance for extremity and the grotesque in art, but this? I had to put it down halfway through, right after finishing a poem about a cat, in which the speaker (warning: graphic spoiler) reminisces about how his cat liked to jump in bed and lick a girlfriend's nipples as well as eat the speaker's semen, which his owner would supply him with by masturbating in the kitchen so the cat could easily lap it off the lineolem.

I'm going to have a hard time wiping the images from Void out of my mind. It's a book so strange, Joyce Carol Oates' novels are much safer places to be.

[trifle]

Sumire, I followed your link to check out the Amazon description of The Magic Carpet and the Cement Wall. There is one lone review, quoting various sources all extolling its virtues...but someone claiming to be the illustrator has commented on the review, saying that when he saw how bad it was that he opted to forego royalties in return for full ownership of his art work. He suggests that the book should be burned.

Now I'm really curious to see a copy. I wonder if my library carries it...

[eclair]

Some of my friends were obsessed with Jim Carroll right after high school after reading the Basketball Diaries and listening to Catholic Boy ("redeemed through pain and not through joy"). We all went to see the awful movie "Tuff Turf" because he had a cameo in it. My friends all went on to deliberately become addicted to heroin, too, because of JC. Well, and the Velvet Underground. I had to check to see if it was the same Jim Carroll. And also to see if he'd actually written an astrology book. I'd forgotten about him, nice to know he's still around, I guess. But I'm not sure I'll seek out this book. I might leaf through it if I come across it. I have to say that I have vivid memories of other things of his I've read, not sure what's from the Basketball Diaries and what's from other sources. I don't remember much about Tuff Turf, however. I think it had James Spader in it and Kim Richards, from Escape to Witch Mountain. I think she's Paris Hilton's aunt...now someone else tie Jim Carroll to Kevin Bacon.

edited for heroin/heroine problems, but not of the addicted kind

[Smilla]

My friends all went on to deliberately become addicted to heroin, too, because of JC.

Yikes. I'm sorry. That is terrible.

I had to check to see if it was the same Jim Carroll. And also to see if he'd actually written an astrology book.

Heh--curiously, I found no discussion of astrology in the book, but the astrology reference in the title checks out. It refers to Carroll's own VOC moon.

[sumire]

Apr 13, 2009 10:04:49 GMT -4 trifle said:

Sumire, I followed your link to check out the Amazon description of The Magic Carpet and the Cement Wall. There is one lone review, quoting various sources all extolling its virtues...but someone claiming to be the illustrator has commented on the review, saying that when he saw how bad it was that he opted to forego royalties in return for full ownership of his art work. He suggests that the book should be burned.

Now I'm really curious to see a copy. I wonder if my library carries it...

Oh my god, thanks for sharing that!

This is possibly one of the most bizarre and badly written examples of childrens literature ever conceived. I opted to to forego all royalties in return for full ownership of my artwork, which poor as it was being student work, I did not want it in the hands of the authors of such a dismal book. Normally I flinch at the idea of burning books but I might make an exception in this case.

Hee! Maybe my parents got his message!

I suspect the book was conceived and written (if not illustrated) on drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.

[Smilla]

How can I have started this thread without mentioning the Bizarre Books, by Russell Ash and Brian Lake? It's an hysterical collection of some of the weirdest books ever published, including:

A Nostalgia for Camels (1957)

Enjoy Your Chamelion (~1979)

Monograph of the Horny Sponges (1889)

How to Avoid Work (1950)

The History and Romance of Elastic Webbing Since the Dawn of Time (no date)

The Elusive Art of Accounting (1966)

and Was Jesus Insane? (1891)

[famvir]

How to Live With a Bitch

I picked this one up thirty years ago at Herters, yes, Herter's, a mid western big box sporting goods/catchall store named after Geo Herter. Maybe the FIRST big box store. This was one of several books he pinned, full of recipes on how to be a good wife (fix dinner and shut up), how to catch fish, and how to prepare moose.

It's listed for $100 on Amazon! $250 new!

(....where's my old copy, where's my old copy.....)

Herter's was a strange store, and as just out of college, no money, need to fill an apartment, it was the best! It was filled with imported goods along with the skinning knives and stuffed polar bears. Kind of a Pier 1 without the trendy prices.

[sumire]

Aug 7, 2009 4:48:30 GMT -4 Smilla said:

How can I have started this thread without mentioning the Bizarre Books, by Russell Ash and Brian Lake?

Oh, that's the other one! EW or some other magazine did a sidebar on that and the similar Scouts in Bondage: And Other Violations of Literary Propriety. I busted a gut flipping through Scouts in Bondage at Borders, but haven't seen Bizarre Books.

Famvir, that whole site is great!

[Smilla]

Had to bump this thread to mention my newest one, which is bizarre, but also hella funny. Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein[/color]. Completely hysterical. Like a cross between a hard boiled mystery from the '40s and a George Carlin routine. I was hooked from the fifth page or so, when the main character gets a case from the president's drug addicted Chief of Staff, affectionately code named 'Needle.' Seriously.

[MrsCatHead]

what about the male and female version of The Dictionary of the Khazars[/color]? I remember loving it but not really understanding what it was supposed to Mean.