A New Copy of Dhalgren: Caution, BookCrossing
I bought my first copy of Dhalgren in the late 70s. If memory serves, I accidently dropped it in the sink shortly thereafter. It swelled up and got sorta lumpy, even after it dried.
A few years ago I decided it was time to get a replacement. Now, I received a review copy of the imposing new trade paperback edition from Vintage Press a while back, with a big blurry red skyscraper on the cover, but what I wanted was the original 1975 Bantam edition (at left), which captured my imagination 35 years ago. Before it sank beneath the suds in our kitchen sink while I was supposed to be washing dishes, anyway.
It takes a while to find a pristine, unread copy of a 35-year old paperback, even on eBay. But before too long I had one, tucked snugly away with my other Samuel R. Delany, and I packed the old one away in the basement.
Except, now I want to read it. No point looking for the one I’d buried in the basement months ago (you’d understand if you saw my basement) — and anyway, who wants to read a book that’s all lumpy? I could read the new one… but man, I paid handsomely to have a pristine copy. Dhalgren is 890 pages — not exactly easy to read when you’re trying not to bend the spine.
So I did what any rational person would do. Back to eBay to find another copy.
This is the kinda thing that drives Alice crazy (Miss “Explain to me why you need a fourth copy??”), but I was very happy when it arrived today. And then I found this hand-written note on the inside cover:
BCID: 361-4144887
Dear Stranger,
If you read this book, please visit bookcrossing.com and say so. This book is traveling from hand to hand – better to be read by many people than to gather dust on a shelf. BookCrossing tracks it so that we readers know where it goes and what others think of it. Just go to the website, enter the BCID above, and leave a brief journal entry (anonymous, if you prefer). Then leave it somewhere to be read again.
Thank you!
Apparently, this thing is legit. The website checks out and everything. I entered my BCID and discovered my new copy of Dhalgren had been read by someone named Vasha and then “released into the wild” in a cafe in Ithaca, New York on August 2, 2006.
It’s hard to describe the delight in Alice’s eyes when she saw this. “You should pass it along!” she exclaimed. “Put it on a park bench or something.” Get it out of her house, she means. My wife’s sanity depends on defending as much square footage as she can from the encroaching book madness. In her fondest dreams, this process involves a flamethrower.
It’s hard to add much about RE Howard to what’s been said here, but I’ll try.
To write something on the occasion of Robert E. Howard’s birthday is a bit, well, intimidating. As imposing a presence as the Texan was in life, his reputation a century on has approached the status of myth. Not only that, but his work is the subject of formidable scholarship of the sort seen over at 
In the age of fat fantasy series, doorstop thrillers, and historical epics it’s often impossible to find a short, satisfying read. Gone are the days of the 60,000 word science fiction novel, or even the novella doubles series Ace once put out. Long a standard of genre fiction — both the worlds of SF and of fantasy having a host of renowned novellas and short novels considered classics in their respective fields — these short, sharp stories are increasingly ignored for multi-book works of massive length. But, sometimes, it’s nice to get a book done in a day or two, it’s nice to explore an idea, premise, or setting without committing to dozens or hundreds of hours with it.
When people ask me what I like to read I usually answer with a simple ‘everything,’ but of course that’s not strictly true. I don’t read trigonometry textbooks or Romance novels, celebrity memoirs or cookbooks, monographs on the evolution of sheep shearing or anything by Dan Brown (in fact, just give me that thing on sheep first). But when I say ‘everything’ I’m being figuratively if not literally honest, because my tastes — especially when compared to the average reader — are very broad. I don’t read only one kind of thing. I’m a generalist.
James Enge’s Morlock stories have been some of the most popular fiction we’ve published in Black Gate. His first Morlock novel, Blood of Ambrose, published by Pyr in April, was very warmly received, and described as “A future classic… this novel succeeds beautifully” (The Great Geek Manual) and “Like Conan as written by Raymond Chandler” (Paul Cornell).
The place is here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we’re about to watch could be our journey.