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Harper Perennial has published the original(ish) paperback, "The Revolution Will Be Accessorized: Black Book Presents Dispatches from the New Counterculture" ($13.95). The wordy title repackages articles from the past 10 years of Black Book magazine.
Having been one of the many revolving-door editors at the quarterly, bi-monthly, wheneverly, I couldn't possibly comment objectively. Especially after my contribution (on not quitting smoking) was excised in favor of pieces by the likes of William Vollmann and Augusten Burroughs.
But it reminds me of my first day there, when I asked Christopher Hitchens to write for me for virtually no money. He graciously agreed, contributing two essays: a beautifully nasty review of a Dalai Lama book, the other about his friend Salman Rushdie.
All went well until Hitchens attempted to cash the check, which bounced. Hitchens objected. The publisher sent a letter of apology.
Then Hitchens called to say that a bounced check was one thing, a letter that began, "Please except my apologies" quite another.
Oxford University Press has just come out with its "New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes" ($29.95), edited by John Gross. Rather than an update of the 1975 version edited by John Sutherland, 90 percent of this version is said to be new.
You can scour biographies, from Chaucer all the way to J.K. Rowling. And there's enough here to suit all tastes: from Agatha Christie calling Poirot "an egocentric creep" to this 1951 tale from a New Mexico bar:
"William Burroughs took the .38 out of the bag and said to Joan, as if it was an old party trick: 'I guess it's about time for our William Tell act.' Joan placed an object on her head and turned sideways on to her husband, who was sitting 6 feet away. He fired, shooting her through the temple. Marker said, 'Bill, I think you've killed her.'"
In baseball, the home run has become the whole point - a punctuation of excitement, the money-shot of America's pastime. Now comes an exhaustive history of the four-bagger, from Babe Ruth to the present: "Dingers: A Short History of the Long Ball" (ESPN Books, $16.95) by ESPN columnist Peter Keating. His graphic-friendly book is sidebar-crazy, with frequent dips into arcana, such as the Pythagorean theorem related to a Mickey Mantle HR and the odds of knocking one out in a one-hit game (it happens about once a season).
Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
