Nostalgia

Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor, NY where I gave one of my rare performances in 1980. Founded by the great  Canio Pavone, the store had an ambience you won’t find at the mall…creaky floors, dust, overstuffed furniture, a touch of old Italy, and lots of quality lit, old and new. I use to hang there on Saturday mornings with writers Nelson Algren and Peter Fine.

It was hot java and great gab in a quiet corner by the window. Nelson held forth with unparalleled anecdotes (all of them true), e.g., the inside scoop on his affair with Simone de Beauvoir for god sakes..

Pleased to report the store is still open for business. If you’re in the Hamptons this summer be sure to drop in.

The Gun Show

Two of my Beuyscout posters were chosen for The Gun Show exhibition over at the Creative Action Network.

A lot of nice art on display, check it out.

LINK

Take the Easy Way Out

Rare cut by Opal Nations

from MISSING MYSTERIES

The Scarlet Herring
Alphonse Allais
Hell Map Back edition (1921)
Subgenre: Wiggy Dog

A “wiggy dog” mystery, The Scarlet Herring was written in 1884
and published posthumously in America during the Genre
Famine of ‘21.

The Scarlet Herring has no plot per se, while the story revolves
around a fishwife found bludgeoned in Hester Prynne’s slop
sink. Inspector Luc Filet is assigned to investigate, but gets lost
on his way to the crime scene and winds up investigating a case
next door. Allais sprinkles false clues and bogus confessions
throughout the narrative, so it’s virtually impossible for anyone
to solve. Adding insult to injury, chapters appear out of
sequence, and each begins with a facetious aside, e.g.,
“The butler often contemplated killing her, yet was hunting for seaweed
at the time of the murder. Alas, good kelp is hard to find.”
An adorable map1 of the Prynne estate adorns the back



When unemployed cartographer Earl Benders first proposed the idea of putting
maps on paperback mysteries, he was rudely rejected by budget-conscious
publishers. Bennett Cerf reportedly told him, “We’ve already got shit art on the
front, we don’t need more crap on the back.” However one enlightened publisher—
Hell—saw the potential for luring illiterate readers and, in 1921, launched
the series known as “Map Backs.” The Scarlet Herring by Alphonse Allais was
the first to appear.



Dust jacket of the hardbound
edition published by
Alfred E. Knopf of The Collected
Works of Alphonse Allais:
Vol. I. The Scarlet Herring
(1920). It features an excerpt
from the novel on the back.

from MISSING MYSTERIES: A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF NONEXISTENT MYSTERIES (1840-2013) by Derek Pell

Click here for more

Yes, Virginia, it’s ART OFFICIAL

© 2013 by Norman Conquest

Curtain Up! (Broadway Nostalgia Dept.)