A Helter-Skelter , Fear and Loathing, Electric Kool Aid Road Trip through my parents' bookshelf.

I have always loved books.  I love reading them, discussing them, thinking about them, touching them, smelling them.  I even enjoy just kicking back on my couch, and looking at them as they sit on my shelf. Sounds like a fetish, I know.  I started this blog as a way to put out to the world my love for a particular type of book, from a particular time:  I am speaking of paperbacks from the 1970's and 80's.

I grew up in the 70's, and my parents were big readers.  They mostly read the popular titles of the day, which were, being the 70's, some fairly subversive works. I remember being a little kid, sitting on our shag carpet, and peering at all the colorful spines on the shelves made of bricks and planks of wood stolen from a local construction site  (in addition to being readers, my folks were also working-class, outlaw hippie types). The exotic titles were alluring, and in my mind I was sure they were crammed full of all kinds of "grown-up" stuff.  Titles like Looking For Mr. Goodbar, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear of Flying, The Sensuous Woman, Jaws, The Taking of Pelham 123 and Helter Skelter sat there on the shelf , their spines like palisades protecting a fort full of adult secrets.

Eventually, being a curious kid,  I had to start pulling them off the shelf and seeing exactly what secrets they held.  I usually did this before cartoons on Saturday morning, when my parents were still sleeping off their Friday night partying.  Imagine my grade-school shock at Ralph Steadman's illustrations in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or the crime-scene photos in Helter Skelter.  And don't get me started on the erotic passages in The Sensuous Woman, the notorious memoir of a woman's sexual liberation, 70's style.  I also had to have my mom explain to me what all those crazy-sounding things were in the opening few paragraph of Fear and Loathing.  "Mom, what are 'uppers'? 'Downers'? 'Screamers'? 'Laughers'? And what's 'ether' and 'amyls'?"  She gave me the classic one-word mom answer: "Drugs!".  I then showed her the trippy illustration of H.S. Thompson and his attorney all wasted in their convertible.  I asked, "Why do they look like that?" She answered, "Because they're on drugs".  By the way, that was the extent of "the big talk about drugs" in my household.  I have never, ever done "hard drugs" in my life, and I honestly think it is because I didn't want to end up looking like the guys in Steadman's illustration: one eye bigger than the other , big crazy hands, and little bubbles floating around my head.

There can be no doubt that thumbing through these books made a big impression on me.  These were books by grown-ups, featuring grown-ups, and about very grown-up things like drugs, sex, and violence.  I started thinking that the grown-up world was a phantasmagoria of drug-fueled road trips, murder, corruption, and wanton sex.  Of course a lot of these books had film adaptations (many of which I saw at too young of an age) that helped reinforce my still-developing world view. It didn't help that the news at the time was usually packed with stories on Viet Nam, Watergate, Hijackings, Abscam, Energy Crises, etc.  Heady stuff for a little kid.

Cut to my teen years.  I had matured enough to realize that the adult world was not the above-mentioned phantasmagoria. (Well, mostly not).  I had a little money coming in from my paper route, plus I made money pushing audio-visual equipment around my high-school.  This meager disposable income went to movies, comic books, movie posters, records, and of course books.

After school let out,  I would often pedal my 10-speed bike either up to the local library to lose myself in the shelves, or up to the local mall to go to B. Dalton Books, Burrows, or Waldenbooks.  Sometimes I would go to American Book and News, an independent newsstand/bookstore in the neighborhood.  It was run by a guy named Lenny James, a balding, middle-aged guy with an overbite, lisp, and thick glasses.  It seemed like every couple of years, his store would close down suddenly, then magically re-open nearby a few months later. One time it even burned down.  At any rate, his place was a trip: he sold newspapers, magazines, "dirty books", racing forms, candy, etc.  Rumor had it he would even sell you fireworks if you asked him privately.  There were always neighborhood "characters" hanging around the store; mostly chain-smoking dudes poring over the racing forms. And of course, Lenny had loads and loads of musty old used paperbacks.  I was in heaven. One iteration of his store had a beat-up tile floor, high ceilings, very high dusty windows, and aisle after aisle of my beloved paperbacks.  I still vividly remember the late afternoon summer sun cutting through the dust on those windows,  making blades of light in the air, and illuminating the books like treasure.

After he moved from that relatively bright and airy location, he opened a much smaller store a few blocks down that had a dark, dank basement where he kept the books.  I remember going down there, and having to  flip the lights on in order to look around.  I think it was just a few bare bulbs hanging from a low ceiling, illuminating shelves crammed with musty paperbacks.  It was as if David Fincher had opened a bookstore.  I went to Lenny's store from the time I was 12 or so all the way until I got out of college in the early 90's.  I still have many books on my shelf that were purchased at dear old Lenny's charmingly grubby establishment(s).

Around this same time, I would sometimes attend flea markets with my grandparents on the weekends. I started scooping up paperbacks there too, like they were going out of style. I realized I could start buying the "grown-up" type of books that had so intrigued me in grade school. I think a lot of this obsession had to do with me wanting, very badly, to be a grown-up.  In junior high and high school, I was pretty skinny, not very athletic, and painfully shy around girls. I figured if I read these "grown-up" books, that would accelerate my road to adulthood.  Almost like a user manual, or  cheat-sheet.

I should mention that part of the big attraction were the covers of the books and the descriptions on the back. I started noticing that certain authors had the best covers. Covers that seemed to offer tantalizing glimpses of "grown up" life:  I especially remember the titillating covers of books by Harold Robbins, Alistair MacLean, and Sidney Sheldon. They often featured lurid imagery of entwined lovers, glasses of champagne, jet planes, limousines, and the like.  I remember thinking, "Man, I can't wait to be a grown-up! They have it made!"   It's as if I thought that as soon as you turn 30, you were automatically handed a limo, a glass of champagne, a private jet, a beautiful woman in a gown with a plunging neckline, and a job in the "import/export" business where you get to wear suits (or a tux) and drink scotch in your office.

I found out, to my dismay, that grown up life is not quite like that.  But that is a topic for another blog.

At any rate, I began to gravitate to certain authors. John D. MacDonald, Irwin Shaw, and John Updike were, and still are, favorites. I'll start exploring these guys more in-depth in future blog posts. Thanks for reading!