“This unbelievable book is so, so good.
If you like Hunter S. Thompson or maybe Kerouac, but if you’ve got low tolerance for how some of those guys and their pretenders act like they’re totally awesome and not at all pathetic, this is your jam.
I picked this up on a whim almost 10 years ago, and what a great decision it was. I got it in my favorite bookshopping place on the planet: The small/indie press section at Powell’s on Burnside in Portland, OR.
Sadly, this section is no longer what it once was. It’s fading fast, occupying just a small space where it was once the entire wall. I loved that spot. It’s where I got all my first bizarro books, tons of little things that you’d never see on a bookstore shelf anywhere else unless someone with great taste died and their relatives, who were not posessed of such taste, gave all their shit away. The fools.
I kind of hated Powell’s for awhile because they reduced my beloved section. But I have to be an adult about it. It can’t be easy to run a bookstore, and just because that section is where my heart will live forever doesn’t mean they were making any money there.
For now, let’s call that the place to spread my ashes, okay? Maybe that act will bring some cachet back to the small/indie press section, and maybe it’ll be weird and gross and spooky again. Just like I won’t be around anymore, that section might not be around anymore, but we’ll both go down together. “