So much for Hells Angels and the late Hunter Thompson, who picked a hell of a night not to quit shooting himself. Some crazed biker bought the book, and in fact he pedalled up to Lincoln Square all the way from Goose Island, leaving work at five and arriving at the store before six. That cat was SWEATing, man. One whacko book lovin' dude!
But there are other good books left for you to look at. Yes! Piles and piles of them! In fact there is an entire box full of noir classics by all those guys from the forties and fifties whose stories were bought up by Hollywood and turned into Robert Mitchum movies. Books about Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe with maybe two Ls in his first name... And books by Jim- not -our- ex-governor Thompson, whose work I have not personally read but who nevertheless remains quite popular. And a few mass market paperbacks ( read "cheap" ) by my own favorite noiristo, James Big Dog Ellroy. And a bunch of more obscure, to me, writers of the genre. And a book about noir movies!
This whole load landed in one lump a few weeks ago, but it has been somewhat buried and has not been much picked over. Most of the books are trade paperbacks priced at $5 each. The Maltese Falcon and Farewell My Lovely might still be there!
One day last week while leafing through this incredible dreamscape of escapist mayhem, I drifted into a state of semi-consciousness. My eyes lost focus and my body seemed to float above the stacks of precariously piled up books shoved into in the far right corner of the store. I drifted in a soft cloud of disassociated words which seemed to have come loose from the thousands of pages below me. I began to sense a presence at my shoulder and gradually became aware of a soft voice whispering to me the words which I here transcribe. The muse had struck, and this is what she said:
"Her eyes were like razor-sharp ninja knives. They ripped open my chest and dumped my heart, my lungs, my liver, and my poor pulsating prostate onto the baking hot Chicago sidewalk where the pile of guts lay steaming in the sun and I stood there trying to suck my breath through a two foot slice of bleeding meat."
If that's not noirishly hardboiled enough for you, then stop by the store and see how the pros write it.

Today, Saturday June seventeenth, I acquired my first copy in boards ( a " hardback " to you untutored civilians out there ) of Dr. Hunter S. Thompon's fabled book Hell's Angels. In my excitement over this addition to inventory I feverishly composed the following review and now post it here without further reflection on its aesthetic merits. As if.

Greased an Hells

Motorcyles banging down the road
chopping off the miles
spinning spokes, smoking rubber
chrome flash trash talking bikers

Albino outlaws

Thug themed thumbs down dreamers
two hot wheels to hell
they don't smell
too good.

A brood apart from Babbitt
dopers drunks
out of touch
death trippers
citizens of no man's land
nomadic nihilists
wihtout portfolio

Angels of an early death
from crystal meth
or kidney failure
failed by dumping at high speed

too few brains spatulaed along
the center line
skid row slammed forever
damned to concrete
dumbness

saddle jouncing numbnuts
romanticised by dimwits
of the nude journalism

Commercial:
It's ten bucks without a dustjacket.
Paperbacks are called books " in wraps ".
Large books in wraps are called "trade paperbacks ",
and small books ( pocket size ) are called
mass market paperbacks.
Also available is a fine clean group of 54 of the so called
Great Books, a set of books in boards which the
University of Chicago at one time determined that all
educated people should be conversant with or even
display at home as part of a fine library. I cannot
disagree with this sentiment.
Another great set of books currently offered
for your reading pleasure is an 1804 edition bound in
leather of Addison and Steele's The Spectator, that
London periodical of the 1700's so beloved of
college English teachers. It is way cool looking,
and the forty odd volumes are yours for about $450 U.S.

P.S.!!
The foregoing ode to the late Dr. Thompson's book is now
clearly out there in the Public Domain and may be easily
plagiarized by any fifteen year old kid who has long dreamed
of being the hit and run homicide victim of a crazed man at the wheel
of an old Ford van filled with books. In boards, mostly, the heaviest kind.