Friday

Oct. 3, 2008

The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered

by Clive James

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered.
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-praised effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book—
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and the banks of duds,
These ponderous and seemingly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.
It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion
Beneath the yoke.
What avail him now his awards and prizes,
The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,
His individual new voice?
Knocked into the middle of next week
His brainchild now consorts with the bad buys,
The sinkers, clinkers, dogs and dregs,
The Edsels of the world of movable type,
The bummers that no amount of hype could shift,
The unbudgeable turkeys.

Yea, his slim volume with its understated wrapper
Bathes in the glare of the brightly jacketed Hitler's War Machine,
His unmistakably individual new voice
Shares the same scrapyard with a forlorn skyscraper
Of The Kung-Fu Cookbook,
His honesty, proclaimed by himself and believed in by others,
His renowned abhorrence of all posturing and pretence,
Is there with Pertwee's Promenades and Pierrots—
One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment,
And (oh, this above all) his sensibility,
His sensibility and its hair-like filaments,
His delicate, quivering sensibility is now as one
With Barbara Windsor's Book of Boobs,
A volume graced by the descriptive rubric
'My boobs will give everyone hours of fun'.

Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,
Though not to the monumental extent
In which the chastisement of remaindering has been meted out
To the book of my enemy,
Since in the case of my own book it will be due
To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error—
Nothing to do with merit.
But just supposing that such an event should hold
Some slight element of sadness, it will be offset
By the memory of this sweet moment.
Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am glad.

"The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered" by Clive James from Opal Sunset: Selected Poems, 1958–2008. © W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

It's the birthday of American novelist Gore Vidal, (books by this author) born in West Point, New York (1925). He's the author of many novels, including Washington, D.C. (1967) and Duluth: A Novel (1983), a satire of the TV show Dallas.

He said, "Style is knowing who you are, what to say, and not giving a damn."

It's the birthday of Thomas Wolfe, (books by this author) born in Asheville, North Carolina (1900). He had an affair with Aline Bernstein, a married woman 20 years older than Wolfe, who encouraged him to become a novelist. He dedicated Look Homeward, Angel (1929) to her.

It's the birthday of historian and statesman George Bancroft, (books by this author) born in Worcester, Massachusetts (1800). George Bancroft lived to be 90 years old, so he saw most of the 19th century. He taught Greek at Harvard. Then President Polk appointed him Secretary of the Navy, and during his tenure, Bancroft established the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He was later appointed the U.S. diplomat to Britain. While he was there, he wrote his 10-volume History of the United States.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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