Anvil’s Early Christmas Book Sale

Oh eto putang ina sa mga addict sa libro at many more! Takbo na sa Pasig at baka maubusan eh magpakamatay pa bago magpasko!!

Vonnegut’s Bluebeard

I just finished the wasak book “Gerilya” by Norman Wilwayco after setting aside The National Kurt Vonnagut Bluebeard (as the old book’s cover would show) for a day to savor the fast-paced near to my heart story of a petty bourgeois trying hard to be an intellectual in the arena of armed struggle and revolution in the Philippines.

Anyway, I got interested with Kurt Vonnegut after scanning one of his book “Breakfast of Champions” and enjoyed the way his words weave with his ideas that captures the craziness of his moment and society.  His tone encapsulates the off-beat ramblings of viewing and interpreting the ways the individual interacts with society and its dynamic interaction creating new thoughts and paradigms to be tested through time.

Anyway, “Bluebeard” represent another of Kurt Vonnegut’s take on the chaos that shapes our world. Its main character,  Rabo Karabekian, the 71 year old painter who just wants to enjoy what the world still has  in store for him, was bullied by a young widow to write his autobiography that brought him back to places and events he has been while grappling with the complexities, imagined or real, caused by the present set-up he is in with the bullying widow, who turned out to be a celebrated author.

I am not finished with the book but it intrigued me to check on abstract expressionism and if there is a painting material called sateen dura-luxe which I am not even sure if it is even real.

(Jackson Pollack’s abstract expressionism)

I still plan to sell the book after reading it but with its continuing deterioration brought by natural and not-so natural causes,  my plan might all come to naught.

musing Jack Kerouac

 

 

I first heard Jack Kerouac from the 10,000 Maniacs song in the 1980s that gave way to almost a decade looking for a copy of his famous books “On the Road” and “The Dharma Bums.”  It was only in 1994 when i got hold of his “On the Road” book in one of the Booksale second hand bookstores in Cubao and happily read it as I calmly work as a cashier in a Toy store in Quezon City. 

It was a great novel reflecting the thoughts of the beat generation and how they view and attack the challenges of their post-WWII America.  The experience of reading Kerouac’s tight narration of the character’s travel and travails across America gave me my favorite line ” Its the trip, not the destination.”

But then i gave up the second hand book and shared it as a gift to a very close friend and ended up dreaming of reading another of Jack Kerouac’s more famous novel, The Dharma Bums. It was in 2002 when i got hold a copy after looking for it at a Barnes and Nobles Bookstore somewhere in California and actually finished reading it while still in the U.S feeling like the free-spirited characters of japhy as i trod along the cliffs of Grand Canyon. 

I still treasure that Dharma Bums copy.  I also found one of his novel, The Subterraneans, in a second hand booksale.  I had a hard time gripping the flow and the rhythm of the story so i quit reading it. It is still in my shelf and now contemplating of selling it.