Saturday 11/18/23
Saw the cover below for Wild Sea Bender, by Torkel Kane--which I think we can safely assume was a pseudonym--in a vintage paperback group this morning.
Obviously this is ridiculous, but I do like seeing older covers, because there was far more of an attempt to catch the eye than what you get with almost all covers now, which are so safe, boring, bland, and look like I could have knocked them out on a 1983 Apple computer back in the day. And it was "proper" books that could have distinctive covers, too. But no more! All must be rote!
But this was once the stuff of ribaldry. A curious misuse of the word "bender," which almost always pertains to alcohol. I guess you could go on a work bender, or a sex bender, but it's a drinking thing, like at the close of William Faulkner's Pylon when the main character ends the book by saying he's going off on a bender. Drink-drink, glug-glug.
It's not a very good book. I don't think much of Faulkner. A certain kind of person makes like he's remarkable, but I don't think they ever believe it. Pylon is lesser Faulkner anyway, and there's not a lot there, but there is a rhythm to that end part. I read all of his letters when I was seventeen. They tend to be about the business of writing. Not uninteresting--I have a nice hardcover volume. F. Scott Fitzgerald has the best letters, I'd say. And Van Gogh. The latter was a better writer than he was a painter. Artful letters. Fitzgerald's are full of life, wisdom, spirit. He was a strong man in his way. An admirable person despite his flaws. There's a fundamental goodness to Fitzgerald and you see that in his fiction (and his nonfiction, too, come to think of it). You'd have to possess true goodness to write "Winter Dreams" and "Basil and Cleopatra." Ring Lardner has some nice letters as well, a number of which were written here in Boston at the Lenox in Copley Square. I always think of him when I walk past. The summer before my senior year of high school I sat outside and read The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! I read those on my own. Powering through books. I didn't have anything else to do, save work at a Starbucks.
I had to read J.M. Coetzee for an honors class for that upcoming year. I thought, this guy is fucking boring. Scintillating, though, compared to Don DeLillo. They're like the writer versions of Blanche DuBois, but whereas she relied on the kindness of strangers, they rely on the gullibility and/or fraudulence of shills who tout them so that they may be seen a certain way. Who does such a person ever really fool, though, besides people like themselves, but without even fooling themselves?
Here's the summary that was used to sell this bit of sleaze from 1964: "Orgy phone calls brought the group together...and more revealing was the intimacy that her new acquaintance, Carol Shole offered her."
First of all, we need a second comma after Shole. Secondly: Is Shole supposed to be some sea-centric pun? Thirdly: What the hell is an orgy phone call? The sexualized precursor to the group chat?
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