Those are the opening lines of Conversations with Professor Y, published more than half a century ago, though you'd never know it.

La vérité, là, tout simplement, la librairie souffre d'une très grave crise de mévente. Allez pas croire un seul zéro de tous ces prétendus tirages à 100.000! 40.000!... et meme 400 exemplaires !... attrape-gogos ! Alas !... Alas !... seule la "presse du coeur"... et encore... se défend pas trop mal... et un peu la "série noire"... et la "blême" ... En vérité, on ne vend plus rien ... c'est grave !... le Cinéma, la télévision, les articles de ménage, le scooter, l'auto à 2, 4, 6 chevaux, font un tort énorme au livre... tout "vente a tempérament", vous pensez ! et "le week-ends" !... et ces bonnes vacances bi ! trimensuelles !... et les Croisieres Lololulu !... salut, petits budgets !... voyez dettes !... plus un fifrelin disponible !... alors n'est-ce pas, acheter un livre !... une roulotte ? encore !... mais un livre ?... l'objet empruntable entre tous !... un livre est lu, c'est entendu, par au moins vingt... vingt-cinq lecteurs... ah, si le pain ou le jambon, mettons, pouvaient aussi bien régaler, une seule trance ! vingt... vingt-cinq consommateurs ! quelle aubaine !... le miracle de la multiplications de pain vous laisse reveur, mais le miracle de la multiplication des livres, et par conséquent de la gratuité du travail d'écrivain est un fait bien acquis. Ce miracle a lieu, le plus tranquillement du monde, à la "foire d'empoigne", ou avec quelques façons, pars les cabinets de lecture, etc... etc... Dans tous les cas l'auteur fait tintin. C'est le principal !

I was sitting in a bar one night, talking rather loudly about a person I hated -- and a man with a beard sat down beside me, and he said amiably, "Why don't you have him killed?"

"I've thought of it," I said. "Don't think I haven't."

"Let me help you to think about it clearly," he said.

You can read the rest courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.

Really.

Americans wounded in the Iraq war are being ferried back to the scenes where they were maimed to help achieve psychological closure, the first time such visits have been tried while a war is still in progress.

Carl Weissner, author of Death in Paris, his latest thriller, was bemused:

Bill Hicks is biting his ass in frustration for having to miss out on this one. This is worse than all the styrofoam Flat Daddies in the world. Dante, in fact, is weeping uncontrollably he's so frustrated and feeling left out.

Papers will be written at the Army War College on the healing action of business-class-cum-red-carpet all the way. Guys who have never flown business class, they automatically achieve closure; the minute the flight attendant says, 'Take yr legs off or whatever, boys, make yourself at home...' It's a medical fact.

To steal a quote from the Command Sergeant Major, "It's the new Iraq." Or to quote the walking wounded, "Hoo-ah!"

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

I'm not exactly a Darwinist -- or any kind of ''ist." Certainly not a Creationist. Evolution theory is only 150 years old. Flat earth lasted a whole lot longer. And every generation has its own version of a flat earth theory. Look at how smoking turned around in 30 years. Doctors used to say it was GOOD for you. And global warming. In 1976 scientists were so concerned about global COOLING that they were considering dumping soot on the North Pole. If Darwin was right, I only hope we can figure out what it was that made a fish turn into a rhinoceros and get ourselves the heck out of here. Human is a terrible state to be in. We've had thousands of years of carnage so far. If "flying wombats" is next let's get on with it.

Burt was a baseball fan, so that made sense. It didn't occur to me until I dialed the number, unsuccessfully of course, that it was missing a numeral. For several years in the 1990s Burt sent me mysterious postcards. They came from New Jersey, but there was no return address.

I mention all this because the other day Burt turned up in The New York Times. The article, Portrait of the Artist: The Burt Britton Collection, said his fabled archive of writers' self-portraits was being sold at Bloomsbury Auctions on West 48th Street.

Great, I thought. I'll go, and maybe, just maybe, I'll catch him there. Of course he didn't show up. But I stayed for the auction.

According to my notes, 68 lots sold -- out of a total of 213.

There were many surprises. Some self-portraits that I thought would sell, either for their artistic quality or for the eminence of their authors, didn't -- like the drawings by Tomi Ungerer, or Frank Gehry, or Jorge Luis Borges -- even at prices well below the pre-auction estimates. In fact, with very few exceptions, the portraits that did sell went for considerably less than their estimates.

Nearly half of the lots -- 29 in all -- were purchased by Lansing Moore, the director of The Dongan Collection. He told me he represented a group of buyers eager "to capture a piece of New York social history." Not to mention its literary history.

"I'm surprised at the lack of bidding," Moore said. "Anyone who knows New York should have known these were wonderful pieces. At these prices, it was a missed opportunity." He attributed the poor sales to a prevailing mood rather than to a poor economy. "It's the psychology of not buying," he said. "That's what happened."

The buyers Moore represents, whom he declined to identify, are eager to keep their part of the collection together, he said, "and we will be displaying it in the future." His purchases included self-portraits by Edward Gorey ($1,400); Maurice Sendak ($2,800); Edward Abbey ($1,900); David Levine ($300); Saul Bellow ($2,200); Brassai ($1,400); Italo Calvino ($1,000); Truman Capote ($1,800); E.L. Doctorow ($300); John McPhee ($700); Joyce Carol Oates ($1,400); Gloria Steinem ($850); Tom Wolfe ($2,800); Arthur Miller ($1,500); and Herbie Hancock ($1,000). Unsold lots are still for sale. Moore, who spent more than $18,000, said he may not be finished buying.

By my unconfirmed count, total sales came to $102,495. The most expensive item on offer, largely due to its rarity, was the self-portrait by Philip Guston. It went unsold. There were no takers at less than half the price of the $20,000-$30,000 pre-auction estimate.

Here were the top 10 sales: David Hockney ($16,000); Richard Avedon ($5,000) (see correction below); John Updike ($4,200); Ralph Ellison ($3,800); Kay Thompson et al. ($3,500); Anthony Burgess et al. ($3,200); Cormac McCarthy ($3,000); Red Grooms ($2,800); Tom Wolfe ($2,800); Maurice Sendak ($2,800).

And here's something peculiar. My self-portrait found a buyer. I suppose I should mention it was part of lot 132 with 26 other self-portraits by the likes of James Laughlin, Norman Podhoretz, Michael Korda, and Barney Rossett. Somebody actually paid $500. Which means we went for $18.50 each. Uh, call it an opportunity taken.

Correction: The Avedon self-portrait did not sell. (It's pre-auction estimate was $10,000-$15,000.)

Postscript: The Borges self-portrait, which had gone unsold, has since found a buyer. It was purchased for $5,000. (Pre-auction estimate: $6,000-$8,000.) Ditto for the Robert Motherwell self-portrait. (Pre-auction estimate: $10,000-$15,000.) Finally, for anyone interested in Burt, it's worth reading Howard Kissel's column about him. I hadn't seen it until after my posting.

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

Four days of events in New York are to begin Oct. 7 at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and to continue at the Fales Library of New York University's Bobst Library on Oct. 8, The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Columbia University's Butler Library on Oct. 9, and the Little Theater at the School of Visual Arts on Oct. 10.

An exhibit of paintings, works on paper, and "shotgun" paintings by Burroughs, who died in 1997 at 83, is also currently on view at the Stellan Holm Gallery. It continues through Oct. 31.

The New York celebration follows others already held in Paris; Lawrence, Kansas; Chicago; London; and Bristol, England. Another is scheduled in San Francisco, in November.

The homage at the Poetry Project -- largely devoted to readings from Naked Lunch by friends, fans, and associates of the author -- is to include a showing of Kate Simon's photo portraits of Burroughs and an excerpt of Andre Perkowski's montage film based on another Burroughs book, Nova Express. First-night participants are Eric Andersen, Victor Bockris, John Giorno, Jan Herman, Thurston Moore, Simon Pettet, Jürgen Ploog, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Anne Waldman, and Nick Zedd.

Eric Andersen, singer and songwriter. After emerging from Greenwich Village's folk scene in the early 1960s, Andersen went on to issue more than 25 albums including Beat Avenue (2003), whose 26-minute title track was a jazzy poem relating his experiences among San Francisco's beat community of artists on the day of President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

Victor Bockris, author and biographer. He has written about Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, Keith Richards, Terry Southern, Blondie, Patti Smith, and Muhammad Ali. His important book With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker transcribes conversations between Burroughs and a wide variety of prominent artists and writers.

John Giorno, poet and performance artist. He is the author of ten books, including You Got to Burn to Shine, Cancer in my Left Ball, Grasping at Emptiness, Suicide Sutra, and has produced 59 LPs, CDs, tapes, cassettes, videopaks and DVDs for Giorno Poetry Systems.

Jan Herman, writer and publisher. He edited the San Francisco Earthquake, a little magazine of the 1960s, and founded the Nova Broadcast Press, which published Beat, post-Beat and Fluxus writers, including William Burroughs. He cowrote Cut Up or Shut Up with Carl Weissner and Jürgen Ploog, collaborated with Burroughs and Antony Balch on a video, and edited Brion Gysin Let the Mice In. A former journalist, he is also the author of A Talent for Trouble, the biography of the Hollywood director William Wyler.

Thurston Moore, musician, singer, songwriter, and co-founder of Sonic Youth. He has participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well as running Ecstatic Peace! records. His latest solo album is Trees Outside the Academy (2007), and in 2009 Sonic Youth released The Eternal. In 2004 Rolling Stone ranked him among the greatest guitarists of all time.

Andre Perkowski, filmmaker. His montage film of William Burroughs' Nova Express, seven years in the making, had its debut to great acclaim at the recent Naked Lunch @ 50 homage in Paris.

Simon Pettet, poet. An English expatriate living on New York's Lower East Side, he is the author of many books, including Hearth, his latest collection of poems, and two collaborations with photographer-filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt. He also edited The Selected Art Writings of James Schuyler for Black Sparrow. Pettet's Selected Poems is available from Talisman House.

Jürgen Ploog, German writer and cut-up maestro. He is the author of many books including the collaboration (with Jan Herman and Carl Weissner) Cut Up or Shut Up, for which William Burroughs provided a "tickertape" introduction.

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, English performer, musician, writer, and artist. He first gained notoriety for his work with COUM Transmissions and industrial band Throbbing Gristle, then moved on to chart-topping success with Psychic TV. After meeting Burroughs in 1971, P-Orridge produced the first commercial releases of Burroughs' cut-up tape experiments and was responsible for saving the films Burroughs created with Antony Balch.

Kate Simon, photographer. She has documented music, art, and literature with photographs that have become icons of modern popular culture: The Clash on the cover of the debut album, Debbie Harry on the roof of her apartment, Bob Marley by the pool, David Bowie in the studio, Led Zeppelin rehearsing, The Sex Pistols fighting, Miles Davis contemplating, Patti Smith on a rocking horse. For over twenty years she photographed William S. Burroughs, and her pictures grace many of his publications.

Anne Waldman, poet. She is the author of over 40 books of poetry including Kill or Cure, Marriage: A Sentence, Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble, and Manatee/Humanity (2009) (all published under the Penguin Poets imprint), as well as Fast Speaking Woman (City Lights) and the Iovis trilogy (Coffee House Press). She co-founded The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics with Allen Ginsberg at Naropa University.

Nick Zedd, filmmaker and author. While producing the Underground Film Bulletin in the 1980s, he wrote the "Cinema of Transgression Manifesto," thus giving a name to the generation of filmmakers and artists known for shock tactics and black humor. He is the author of two books, Bleed and Totem of the Depraved.

Admission is $8 / $7 for students or seniors. (All proceeds benefit the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church.) The Poetry Project is located in St. Mark's Church at 131 East 10th Street, New York. (Google map)

Postscript: Oct. 8 -- Speaking at New York University's Fales Library, the German writer Jürgen Ploog talked about the legacy of Naked Lunch and his own fascination with Burroughs.

Max Blumenthal, reporter: Who do you think is more dangerous, Al Quaeda or Obama?

Protestor: Obama.

Reporter: Obama's more dangerous than Osama?

Protestor: Absolutely.

And so, belatedly, we turn to U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, a former criminal prosecutor and white-collar defense lawyer with a reputation as "one of the top jurists on the topic of white-collar criminal law."

He tossed out the proposed settlement between the Security Exchange Commission and Bank of America, in which the bank agreed to pay a $33 million fine for secretly authorizing $5.8 billion in bonuses for Merrill Lynch execs just before taking over their nearly bankrupt brokerage.

Not only was the fine measly by comparison with the bonuses, which came to almost 12 per cent of the $50 billion acquisition -- a bailout backed by taxpayer dollars, no less -- but the settlement was egregiously unfair and the logic behind it pointedly absurd:

"The S.E.C. argues that this is just," Rakoff continues,

Besides being unfair and unreasonable ...

And now for Rakoff's kicker:

The judge has ordered the bank and the S.E.C to file a plan by Monday to have the case ready for trial on February 1. Ain't that cute.

Their lede asks, "What do you get when you combine the worst economic downturn since the Depression with the first black president?" And answers:

A surge of white racial resentment, loosely disguised as a populist revolt. An article on the Fox News Web site has put forth the theory that health reform is a stealth version of reparations for slavery: whites will foot the bill and, by some undisclosed mechanism, blacks will get all the care. President Obama, in such fantasies, is a dictator and, in one image circulated among the anti-tax, anti-health reform "tea parties," he is depicted as a befeathered African witch doctor with little tusks coming out of his nostrils.

For the next 1,600-plus words, with one example after another, they illustrate and prove what the headline calls The Recession's Racial Divide. And they draw the appropriately grim conclusion that "despite the right-wing perception of black power grabs, this recession is on track to leave blacks even more economically disadvantaged than they were." Noting emphatically:

Does a black president who is inclined toward bipartisanship dare address this destruction of the black middle class? Probably not. But if Americans of all races don't get some economic relief soon, the pain will only increase and with it, perversely, the unfounded sense of white racial grievance.

Give Ehrenreich this year's Pulitzer for Commentary already. She oughta win hands down.

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

Please don't be fooled.