[Michael Juster]

As most of you know, I love to prowl used book stores. For all that prowling, I have never seen one of my own books in a used book store until today.

Today I discovered that a terrific store called Raven Books in Harvard Square is selling my hardcover Horace's Satires, which retailed at $34.95, for under ten dollars.

It made my day.

[Martin Rocek]

Congratulations!

Martin

[Rick Mullin]

Ha! Great!

[Norman Ball]

I'm sorry to learn the price point continues to elude, Michael. I bought a beautiful hard copy of Plato's Republic last year for $2.50.

You don't have an enduring classic on your hands until it's $5 or less.

Do you have any clout with the owners or would that be collusion?

[Norman Ball]

sorry, dupe

[Andrew Frisardi]

Very cool. Hurray!

[Michael Juster]

I don't think the price will come down until other unhappy owners start flooding the market with more unloved copies of my book.

I am confident that will happen before long...

[Michael Cantor]

There's at least a poem in there, Mike, and possibly a short story or a rhymed novella.

Rather than just passing on the info, you obtain the name of the previous owner from the bookstore, and confront him in his humble but surprisingly tasteful Cambridge garret. And it turns out he he's a her (use one of those ambiguous names like Sandy or Sydney or AE.) Alabaster skin. A way of brushing her long black hair from her face when she laughs, but still you sense the sadness.

I'm sure you can take it from there.

(Whoops - I just realized that Julie Kane already did something like this - but hers was only a sonnet. The genre needs expanding.)

[Nicholas F.]

You've been used! Hooray!

There's yet another form of arrival, you know. Paul Auster fictionalizes the scene in City of Glass, where the main character, Quinn, finally encounters someone reading one of the mystery novels he writes [with solid anonymity] under the pen name, William Wilson. Of course, the moment of glory never crowns, as the young woman reading the novel seems quite disgusted by Quinn's attention and admits to liking the novel, well, just okay. This being the case, he does not reveal his identity the way he fantasized he might (to stun his fan).

There's a good used book store in Ithaca that frequently stocks warmly inscribed copies of books written by Cornell faculty. The nerve, I thought at first, of selling such a thing off! Then I got to wondering about incomplete wills, estate sales, and the great used bookstore in the sky. It was a gripping realization. Maybe these books come from that one act of rudeness we all commit once, and gloriously, and forever.

Here's to you, Mike. And thanks again for your Laura, who is much lovelier than Durling's, of course.

Nick

[Raul Puzon]

Not bad, Michael. Just bought "The Complete Poems" by Philip Larkin for $1.50. I guess tax was included.

Just think of it as the previous owner's way of sharing not discarding.

I miss Cambridge.

Raul