Bonanza!

I’ve killed a fair amount of time addressing my reading needs in the secondhand bookshops of South East Asia. Whilst the heinous state of the modern publishing industry and the crisis in contemporary fiction are certainly both in evidence on the shelves of South East Asia, I have always been able to find something or other that I actually want to read. Onerous exchange terms no longer make me wince. I am still baffled and nerdily entertained by shelving protocols. Samuel Beckett’s Dream of Fair to Middling Women was shelved in the self-help section of a bookshop in Pai, in between The Surrendered Single and Healing Back Pain Naturally, just a few down from Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus and a book assessing Nabokov’s contribution to lepidoptery. Genius! Memories like this bring me real pleasure. They also make me wonder whether spending too much time on my own is warping my idea of fun beyond any hope of repair.

Anyway, browsing away in Luang Prabang I came across this book.

Everything about this, I love. I love its refusal to entertain any of the nuances which might accumulate to the title. I love the expression on Ralph E. Baney’s face. I love that the photographs are authentic. I love the old-school yellow scuba gear. I really love the many stand-in phalluses. It’s a goldmine.