Wolfgang

Some decent finds at Wolfgang today: here goes!

Lately I've been hearing some buzz about this Polish author, Witold Gombrowicz. He died in 1969 so I guess all this excitement has been a long time coming. The big thing I've seen him in connection to is this sort of absurdist roman a clef the name of which I can't recall, but I decided to start with Bacacay, a book of short fiction. The inside flap talks about "a balloonist... beset by erotic lepers..." so I'm expecting good things.

I also picked up Down and Out in Paris and London, which I have been wistfully admiring in book stores for the better part of the year. It was 25% off so I figured I might as well get it over with. I'm a big fan of Orwell's memoir work, much more so than his political allegories, and I've heard very good things about this book. I'm considering reading it alongside Kitchen Confidential since they seem to cover eerily similar ground.

Roethke's collected poems was five bucks so there wasn't much waffling around on that one. It is gorgeous. I'll probably post some things from it later. In the check-out line I also nabbed some Edna St. Vincent-Millay. Dunno why, but it was a dollar.

Some things I loved but regrettably did not have the money to buy, really: Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, Motherless Brooklyn, and some Myla Goldberg stories.

Basically I love it all.