And now, back to our roots… it’s been a while since we’ve been down to Lower Marsh in Waterloo, home of such wonders as Radio Days, Honour, the brilliant Scooterworks Cafe and the now-gone but much-lamented Last Chance Saloon (descendants of which can be found at the Aquarium Gallery and Nude Magazine). But professional concerns sent us South of the river (outer darkness, wailing, gnashing of teeth et cetera) to the wonderful Crockatt & Powell, a bookshopper’s delight.

C&P was set up by Adam & Matthew, two former employees of the Pan Bookshop, Daunt Books, and the big W, who’d had enough of “We could do better than this” conversations in the pub and decided to prove it. The result is lovely. Many independent bookshops, for all their wonders, can feel like they’re either just piling up whatever the wholesaler sends them, or struggling not to turn into a remainders merchant, but at C&P everything feels like its been selected for the shop.

For those intrigued by the process of setting up an independent bookstore - and what litgeek doesn’t want to do that when they grow up? - they’ve got the obligatory blog on which you can follow their progress (origins and original attempt here). They’ve just set up a mail order department too, but as ever we highly recommend actually getting off your arse and going down there in person - AC Grayling’s a regular apparently, so who knows who’ll you bump into.

One of the highlights for us was their large stock of Cabanon Press books and bits, featuring the work of Tom Gauld and Simone Lia, who we’ve been a fan of for ages - ever since Tom did that short-lived ‘Moving to the City’ strip in Time Out. We highly recommend Tom’s Three Very Small Comics and Simone’s Fluffy for the best in monsters, robots, border guards and paternally confused bunny rabbits.

“I once punched a man for saying that Hawk The Slayer was rubbish.”
“Good for you.”
“Thanks. But the point is, I was defending the fantasy genre with terminal intensity. What I should have said was: ‘Dad, you may be right. But let’s give Krull a try and we’ll discuss it later’.”

Their image may be tarnished (if not downright wrong) in the popular imagination, but we are so, so far past that old chestnut “Comics: not just for kids!” that I’m likely to set fire to anyone who hasn’t read at least one thing from Vertigo, Titan, Dark Horse or the host of tiny, independent houses out there (another personal favourite). More of the books later (promise): first let’s mention some of London’s finest emporia, so there’s absolutely no excuse for not checking this stuff out.

Despite earlier, somewhat derogatory comments, STML spent much of his youth in the Western Lands, cavorting on the banks of the Thames and hunting venison in Richmond Park. Hence, such a review can only begin with the wonders of Thirtieth Century Comics on the Lower Richmond Road in Putney. Run by two of the nicest comic store guys you’ll ever meet, 30th Century is a proper bookstore, with both the latest books and boxes and boxes of vintage material from the mainstream to the hand-printed - a story related before. They also, as many comics stores do, run a proper subscription service, so you don’t have to worry about missing an issue, and can drop by to pick up your latest editions any time you like. Just try to spend less than an hour in their basement.

Another fantastic and very local shop is Mega City Comics in Camden, on the enduringly lovely Inverness Street. If you can fight your way through the goths and junkies (and that’s meant in the most loving way: they’re all pushovers. Literally) Mega City has tonnes of excellent manga and Indies alongside the standard fare. (”Skunkhashweed?”)

Nestled around the British Museum are a number of fine bookshops, such as Ulysses, the LRBS, and Atlantis, but it wouldn’t be complete without Gosh! at 39 Great Russell Street, practically mooning at the old beast over the road. Probably the best place to go in London for hardcovers, graphic novels and collections, there’s also an occasional gallery of cartoon and comic art in the basement. It is allegedly part-owned by Jonathan Ross, which is, frankly, irritating, but that aside, it can’t really be beat.

It’s certainly a lot better than Forbidden Planet, which we have to mention simply because if nowhere else has it, they probably will, but they’ll also have 8,000 harassed parents buying light sabres for their demented progeny, and the fifth android from some obscure Sci-Fi Channel Trek imitation signing laminated photos of their holographic codpieces. Now at 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, the old store on New Oxford Street contained an excellent, laid-back basement atmosphere noticeably lacking at the new address, but as a last resort, it occasionally must be done.

“Hey, Derek, Babylon 5’s a big pile of shit!”

And next time, we might explain why.

[The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted our new Linkblog in the sidebar. (Over there –>) Check back regularly for STML-sympathetic linkage, if you’re interested…]

It takes a lot to draw STML into the Western Lands - but, ah, what perfumed gardens await us there! Wide boulevards and fragrant airs abound; even the light is brighter and clearer. And such people as you would marvel to behold! The quality of their vestments has to be seen to be believed. In all truth, it was not garments but the promise of fine Spanish cheeses that brought STML to the King’s Road, but I digress.

Entering John Sandoe Books in Blacklands Terrace is a bibliophile’s dream: everything is right. In tiny rooms, fat hardbacks are stacked ten deep on the tables. Upstairs, the paperbacks are stored in standing cabinets on rails, pressed together like archives. Their wheels squeal, seeming almost to giggle, when you part them. And so they should, when their straining shelves contain such sweet delights.

Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, first published in The New Yorker in 1997, practically threw itself off the shelf. Such a topical tale should not be missed, if only so you can be smug by the time the movie arrives. (It’s only 58 pages.)

It’s a gem of a story, and quite beautifully told. Sixties ranchers Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar come together for one glorious summer on Brokeback Mountain, “gettin paid to leave the dogs babysit the sheep while you stemmed the rose”, in the words of their unimpressed employer.

The years after are spent mostly apart, but there is never any doubt of the seriousness or depth of feeling, even if neither man is prepared to speak outright.

“You know, I was sittin up here all that time tryin to figure out if I was - ? I know I ain’t. I mean, here we both got wives and kids, right? I like doin it with women, yeah, but Jesus H., ain’t nothin like this. I never had no thoughts a doin it with another guy except I sure wrang it out a hunderd times thinkin about you.”

There is no happy ending to the tale, but there is the time lived, the meetings in dusty, rodeo towns, the fishing trips - “that line hadn’t touched water in its life” says Ennis’ sad wife. What is central to the tale is Proulx’s skill in detailing that which makes such a life possible, hence believable, and actual.

Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows and mountain drainages, horse-packing into the Big Horns, the Medicine Bows, the south end of the Gallatins, the Owl Creeks, the Bridger-Teton Range, the Freezeouts and the Shirleys, the Ferrises and the Rattlesnakes, the Salt River range, into the Wind Rivers over and again, the Sierra Madres, the Gros Ventres, the Washakies, the Laramies, but never returning to Brokeback.

This extension of life into the old lands of other myths is the key to rereading and retelling, to seeing in old places and old people a life lived but untold, until now. There is a duty to uncover stories from the past as they become relevant in the present.

And so the quest for the perfect bookshop continues. As regular readers will know, STML was recently in Paris (on a very romantic tryst, sshhh…) but still made time to drop in at some of the City of Lights’ finest literary emporiums. As well as visiting the wonderful Shakespeare & Company (where we acquired a lovely poetry anthology by London’s own Iain Sinclair), the whistle-stop tour took in another few librairies of note.

Les Cahiers de Colette on Rue Rambuteau is one of the finest little temples to the word in a very wordy city. Bucking the left bank trend, Colette Kerber has been doling out books to the cultural quarter around Beaubourg and the Centre Pompidou (whose current Dada exhibition is well worth a look) for almost twenty years. Mme Kerber can frequently be found in Le Bouledogue, the bar on the other side of Rambuteau, from which she may be prised if your desire to purchase a good book is deemed sufficiently consuming, although when STML called she was ensconsed in a corner with a visiting author, and the vin blanc was in full flow. Francophones can read all about the shop here, and follow the rather bizarre saga of Colette’s targeting by ACT-UP, for the allegedly discriminatory sacking of a HIV+ employee, here. As L’amant put it, “Bloody hell! I’d find it hard to believe an old fag hag like her would have fired anyone for being positive…”

Further into the Marais, we come to the Rue Ste Croix de la Bretonnerie, a humming little street and home to Paris’ finest gay bookshop, Les Mots a la Bouche, which, like gay bookshops the world over, seems to serve as bulletin board, newsstand and cruising spot for the community alongside it’s more commercial functions.

Unlike Colette, Les Mots… has an excellent English-language section, allowing us to purchase a beautiful Black Sparrow Press edition of John Fante’s Ask The Dust, and an advance copy of Dennis Cooper’s God Jr., as yet unreleased in the UK, and of such a marked diversion from his previous work that we hope a review will not be far off…

Les Mots… also has an basement, not unlike that of Soho Books on Brewer Street, filled with glossy coffee-table books of photography and strange, weighty reference tomes, with the exception that the French version, while light, has a yet more sinister feel, with a certain dungeonous, Roissy-esque appeal…

Finally, after a hard day’s book-buying and boulevarding, there is only one possible rest-stop: the quiet and sophistication of La Belle Hortense at 31 rue Vieille du Temple, still in the heart of the Marais, and just around the corner from Les Mots A La Bouche. Named for a pulpy 19th century romance set in the surrounding quarter, and combining the finest qualities of the classic French bar (approachable zinc bar, aloof but not unwelcoming barmaid, smoking throughout, lashings of pastis) and a small literary bookstore, it boasts a hand-lettered sign which should appear in all bookshops the world over:

N’approchez pas les livres avec un verre dans votre main.
As if we’d ever do that…

[STML is off to Frankfurt for the next week. Look out, at some point in the future, for our report]

An old friend of STML, Housmans Booksellers on the Caledonian Road (just up the way from the scary pub, opposite the “hemp” bakery) is celebrating its diamond anniversary this month. The ground floor houses a vast array of worthy (and less so) titles, while the basement is a veritable mine of books, with a shaft sunk a good thirty feet under King’s Cross to tap the area’s rich vein of pulp.

I’ll let them tell you all about it:

“On 26th October 1945, Housmans first opened its doors at a shop on Shaftesbury Avenue. It has served the British peace movement ever since. Sixty years on, we are still here while other radical bookshops have come and gone, with 2005 alone seeing the closure of Greenleaf in Bristol and the Index Bookcentre in Brixton.

“Number 5 Caledonian Road has been home not only to Housmans Bookshop since 1959, but also to the editorial offices of Peace News, along with many other campaigning groups: Gay Switchboard, the Campaign Against Arms Trade, and the McLibel campaign, among many others, all started life in the building.

“Housmans and number 5 continues to be the focal point for radical and local community groups to this day. To celebrate our survival we shall be holding a week of events between 21st and 28th October to reflect the diversity of our supporters over the years: from The Battle of the Beanfield, through CND and War Resisters’ International, to the Caribbean diaspora. This week will culminate in an anniversary celebration at the shop on the evening of the 28th at which we will launch the 2006 Housmans Peace Diary, now in its 53rd year.”

You can find out about all the events here.

Apologies for the hiatus, but STML has been out of town. And not just out of town, but down to Waterloo, under the Channel (Champagne’s free on the Eurostar, you know), and into Paris, home of one of STML’s favourite bookstores in the whole wide, wide world, Shakespeare and Company, that enduring edifice on the left bank of the Seine.

If you don’t know the shop, I advise you to get there by hook, crook, or jetski, ASAP. Failing that, you should read its remarkable history, as well as this delightful piece by its founder, the legendary George Whitman, who wonders “if all along I have just been playing store on one of the back alleys of history, putting obsolete books on dusty shelves while people are riding the information superhighway from one end to another of the global village.” There are worse things to do.

The shop is frequently stuffed with American students, both as staff and customers. Not naturally an Americaphile, neither am I a -phobe, and I was much cheered by the following exchange, overheard in the shop. Student one to student two: “I have so many books at home, I don’t know why I’m buying more.” To which student two archly replied: “You’re not just buying a book, you think you’re buying the time to read it.”

Books, like the love affairs which Paris itself so artfully inspires, exist outside the currents of normal space and time, in the hearts and minds of the beloved and the enthralled, and as such endure long after their physical passing. The trouble with both is finding time.

Ah, the joys of London in the summertime. Many readers may think that STML, staunch supporter of the little guy, the small player, the esoteric and the exotic over the large, the fat, the corporate and dull, would be a firm opponent of 3 for 2 offers, the oft-derided practice of plugging away those bestsellers with little hope for the undiscovered gems. But you’d be wrong. I love 3 for 2s.

3 for £2 that is!

Yup, it’s the return of the book bank. Worryingly, Tyrone, hero of Stroud Green Road and King among Booksellers, has not been seen for some time. Search parties have been dispatched, Metropolitan Police Forensics teams have been combing the thickets of Finsbury Park and riders have been seen, passing from beacon to beacon, upon the heights of Crouch Hill. All for naught. Instead, a cheery Irish fellow laid his sheets down outside Tesco’s yesterday and, with a flourish, produced his wares. And what an embarassment of riches! The complete works of David Eddings! Old beardy Sex manuals! Bizarre cookbooks!

Nevertheless, no good book goes unturned, and our eye was ecstatic to fall upon that ancient and venerable work, Simon Bond’s 101 Uses For A Dead Cat, last seen by the loo in my parent’s bathroom circa 1986.

There has been a bit of a resurgence in the dead animal comedy cartoon genre recently, what with the phenomenal (and deserved) success of Andy Riley’s Bunny Suicides, but you can’t deny that Bond got there first. Which makes it all the more cheering that a real proper organisation with an office and everything is trying to preserve his work for future generations (Click on ‘The Collection’ to see more).

One down, two to go. It is my Mum’s birthday today, and what could be a better gift than a guidebook to her favourite holiday destination: Exploring Paxos and Antipaxos, a skilful interweaving of walking guide, history handbook and mythological treatise, by Susan Valerie Oman. Cheap, moi?

Moving swiftly on, and a little seriousness was called for. Regular readers will know, STML is not one to turn down a good NEL. And there she was: Militant Suffragettes (1974) by Antonia Raeburn, with a lovely cover of a policeman gazing sternly at some uppity ladies.

“…what kind of women were these Suffragettes - man-hating, shrieking viragos or attractive, intelligent, sensitive members of their sex?” J.B. Priestley, from his introduction

A fascinating account, in fact, of a period about which I know shamefully little, and far from the usual NEL shoutiness. The account of Christabel Pankhurst’s first taste of disorder - a Liberal hustings at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1905 - compels one to read on:

Christabel and Annie listened attentively to Sir Edward Grey’s speech. Twice he was interrupted by men whose questions he answered, but the women waited quietly until he had finished. Then Annie Kenney stood up: ‘Will the Liberal Government give the vote to women?’ There was no reply and the chairman called for other questions. ‘I rose again and was pulled down by two enthusiastic liberals behind me. We then unfolded the flag [a small banner with the words VOTES FOR WOMEN] and that was enough.’ Roars of laughter and catcalls filled the hall, and Annie was surrounded by Liberal stewards who forced her to sit down. ‘Why doesn’t he answer my question?’

The Chief Constable of Manchester came down from the platform and advised her to present it in writing and accordingly Annie sent a slip of paper up to the platform: ‘Will the Liberal Government give votes to working women? Signed, on behalf of the W.S.P.U., Annie Kenney (member of the Oldham Committee of the Card and Blowingroom operatives).’ She added that for the sake of the ninety-six thousand organised women cotton workers, of whom she was one, she wished her question to be answered. Her note was passed round, read with amusement, and set aside.

Once again she rose to speak and, as the stewards seized her, Christabel leapt up to defend her. Elbowing away the plain-clothes police who had arrived, Christabel jumped on to a seat and called out the question again before she was pulled down. The two weomen were dragged into the gangway and swept out of the hall past the platform. ‘You’re a coward,’ Annie called to Sir Edward Grey. ‘If I leave this hall I shall hold a meeting of protest outside.’ Struggling to resist her escort, Christabel halted directly below the speakers, and looking straight up at Sir Edward she asked the question once again. ‘I remember thinking that suitably wreathed and attired he would have looked exactly like a Roman emperor. Pale, expressionless and immovable he returned me look for look.

Finally outside, Christabel, who had studied law, did one thing she knew could get her arrested. She pretended to spit at a policeman. Duly charged with obstruction, the campaign of the Suffragettes had begun.

This week, in case you hadn’t noticed, is rather big on politics. STML is disappointed, but hardly surprised, that it is not attending the Edinburgh parade itself, but hopes that many, many people are. Failing attendance, there are a couple of places in London you can, nay, should visit in order to inform yourself.

Freedom Press is the world’s oldest Anarchist publisher, and maintains the excellent Freedom Bookshop at 84b Whitechapel High Street, rather inappropriately tucked away behind KFC. It is possibly the most intimidating bookshop in London however; last time I visited I was scorned by the man behind the desk for my petit-bourgeois ways. Finding myself out of cash I told him I was just going to nip out to the bank, to which he sneered: “Oh, going to buy some money at the money shop, eh?”

This didn’t prevent me returning to pick up Ken Knabb’s excellent Situationist Anthology (read the text online here) as well as a commentary on the work of uber-egoist Max Stirner, in Freedom Press’ own edition.

Housmans, at 5 Pentonville Road, is another Radical Bookseller, and again of some vintage, sharing the building with Peace News since 1945. I wandered in yesterday with the intention of killing fifteen minutes and ended up spending an hour on my knees in the basement sifting through the Porcupine Bookcellar. While upstairs is a combined bookshop and anti-war jumble sale, downstairs is a musty heaven of secondhand glory, mostly political non-fic, but with one corner of sheer old book joy, a Matterhorn of unsorted bookstuff. I mined the seam well, and definitely impressed the radical socialist lady on the till upstairs with my choices.

Killer in Drag by the legendary Edward D. Wood Jr. tells the hard-boiled story of Glen/Glenda, a transvestite mob assassin. The Angora Press edition retains the original 95 cent cover, and there’s even a review at The Complete Review. To compound my revolutionary credentials, I also purchased a copy of Different Strokes by Phil Andros, a collection of his stories from the late 50s and early 60s, including the wonderful classic, The Sergeant with the Rose Tattoo. Phil Andros, as previously mentioned, was the nom de guerre of legendary gay writer Samuel Steward, who provides a bibliographic foreword in his own name. The lovely Tom of Finland cover is unfortunately unavailable on the web, but it is at least published by Perineum Press. If you don’t know why this is amusing, this is the perineum.

Oh, and Housmans has a Naked Shopping Night in July (date TBC), to celebrate the launch of Bare Britain. See you there.

I believe in Magic, and I hope you do too. A lot of slightly crazed people think it should be spelled (ha ha) Magick, but they are just a little too serious. It’s a hidden history within literature, but it’s been there for a while – notable examples are The Magician by Somerset Maugham, and Gravity’s Rainbow, where Pynchon’s magical learning is disguised somewhat by his extraordinary erudition in every other area as well. Magic is also the primary occupation of some of London’s best little bookshops (and I’ll leave it to you to figure out which of those two adjectives is dominant, and how they interbreed).

Watkins Books (19 Cecil Court, off Charing X Road) is a seriously estimable proposition, a sort of Hatchards for esoterica. They hold a wide range of occult stuff, excellent resources on the weirder side of every religion from here to the Northwest Gate, and staff who know what they’re talking about. They recently got me into the Corpus Hermeticum and the books of Wei Wu Wei, one of the greatest spiritual teachers I’ve come across – if you don’t mind your spiritual teacher laughing at you behind his hand occasionally. My only gripe is that they’ve recently degraded themselves by opening (mercifully two doors down) ‘Watkins’ Esoteric Centre’, a crystals and incense emporium for the credulous, which brings us neatly to…

Mysteries (9-11 Monmouth Street, Covent Garden) is designed for die-hard New Agers, but fight your way past the patchouli and whalesong and it has a great books section, heavy on high-gloss magick and witchcraft for Buffy-watching teens. There are often some unexpected gems, such as Aleister Crowley’s autohagiography (£10 second-hand last time I visited). Crowley, a name that should become extremely familiar (if it isn’t already) through future readings of this column, details his journey from young Mountaineer, including his disastrous attempt on Kanchenjunga, through young buck ripping up the magical establishment (his apartment on Jermyn Street contained two rooms, one painted entirely white with an altar at the centre, the other entirely black, with a skeleton; unsurprisingly, his friends didn’t come round very often), to aged, drug-addled goatfucker in the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily. Ripping stuff. And in turn, we get to…

Atlantis Books (49 Museum Street, between New Oxford Street and the British Museum). Atlantis has been around since the turn of the last century, and was indeed a regular haunt of the above Mr. Crowley. Some say it still is… It’s run by a witch (and I mean that literally and lovingly) who’s possibly the best bookstore owner in London. Two years ago I was living in a block of flats called Shipton House in Chalk Farm. When I found out that the pub on the corner (now the Fiddler’s Elbow) used to be named the Mother Shipton I started researching the old lady. A Yorkshire Prophetess who lived sometime in the 15th-16th Centuries, she was an English Nostradamus, and widely known and read for centuries. When I asked in Atlantis for any books on her, the proprietor couldn’t help, but took my details and promised to call if anything came in. Two years later, out of the blue, I got the call, and there it was: Mother Shipton: Witch and Prophetess by Arnold Kellett (George Mann Books, 2002). When Amazon has that kind of service I’ll buy online. Until that moment, I’m sticking to the backstreets.

Special mention of the weekend goes to Word On The Street, one of two bookstalls on Chapel Market in Islington (the other is composed of the most astounding collection of saga books I have ever clapped eyes on: acres and acres of Mills & Boon, Danielle Steele and pastel covers). Word On The Street has got trays and trays of Penguins and Pelicans (which I don’t hate at all, whatever I said), including a whole box of Modern Poets I want to go back for, and plenty more besides.

Not only did they help me trawl for NEL books, they sorted me out with one copy of the previously mentioned Epic of Gilgamesh for £1 and one of Nearly Roadkill: An Infobahn Gender Adventure by Kate Bornstein and Caitlin Sullivan. Nearly Roadkill (1996) is a rather interesting piece of earlyish cyberculturalism in a style that’s pretty much disappeared - breathless excitement at a world of possibilities that died with cybernannies, amazon, lastminute.com and the dominance of the WWW over BBs, newsgroups and IRC. But let’s not be geeks about it.

Bornstein and Sullivan are academics, writers and gender refuseniks who write animatedly about the possibilities of mind meeting mind on the interweb without all the preconceptions of the flesh: two protagonists who steadfastly refuse to reveal their physical gender while battling Registration, the government-mandated process by which everyone must give all their personal data over so that the corporations can target them more efficiently. While the latter is not exactly a fantastically original concept, this is surely one of the first to put it in the context of the newly web-enabled world. It reminded me a lot of Surfing the Internet by J.C.Herz, the book that got me to swap the (then) all-dominating CompuServe for a dial-up connection way back when in 1996. The ex-Wired columnist related stories of MUDs, MOOs and online gender-swapping that flipped my tiny little mind, which is basically the point of books; fiction, non-fiction, or somewhere in between.

As I said, this genre has basically died with the corporatisation of the Internet, a few office-email-affair novellettes notwithstanding. Even my early cyberculture theorist faves like Douglas Coupland (now so maudlin as to be barely readable) and Douglas Rushkoff seem to have gone off the boil. And if you think Science Fiction is the answer, let me remind you that the mighty William Gibson didn’t go online until long after Neuromancer, the novel that invented cyberspace.

So, to continue where I left off from my last Tyrone update. No, I haven’t managed to read all the Mishima yet. In fact, long before I got anywhere near them, Tyrone was back and so instead of butter for the table and bread for the hungry mouths of my weeping, jaundiced offspring, I spanked all my cash on:

In Patagonia - Bruce Chatwin (suitably foxed)
Flesh and the Word - ed. John Preston (nicely stained)
The Other Face of Love - Raymond de Becker (surprisingly presentable)

I haven’t started the Chatwin yet - although I read Songlines last year and was quite excited: it blew apart the notion of a travel book, that it had to be a needless recitation of events and became instead a meditation on nomadism and tradition. That said, there’s nothing wrong with a really great journey - and we might return to my personal theories about possible links between Thesiger and Chatwin at a later date…

Great story about Chatwin: A man after my own heart, he considered a famous London address one of life’s Gentleman’s essentials. He found one in Eaton Square, but due to limited funds, took a place so cramped that a ‘friend’ who came around was electrocuted in flagrante by putting their toe into an electric socket.

I’ve mentioned Preston before, in the last Tyrone post, and once again he comes up with the goods. Flesh and the Word, subtitled An Anthology of Gay Erotic Writing, is much more than simply porn - although it’s very good at that too - it is an overview of a certain kind of gay men’s (and straight women’s) writing stretching back for 50 years. Articulating both the changes in society and in gay mens’ lives over this time, Preston starts with Samuel Steward, protegee of Gertrude Stein, sometime English Professor and Tattoo Artist, and moves through the 60s, ‘liberation’ and the AIDs crisis (during which Preston was one of the first to call for and write and Safe Sex erotica). Authors include Edmund White (A Boy’s Own Story), Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst, and Anne Rice - yes that one - who writes some of the filthiest stuff in here.

Finally, The Other Face of Love is just the kind of dog-eared, faux-Pelican, sensationalist scholarship I enjoy. The first two chapters cover animals and pagan tribes, before launching into a massive reappraisal of the oldest piece of literature on the planet, the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, essentially outing Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and his friend Enkidu, the first characters in literature. Quite a coup. I’ll keep you updated.

Oh, bollocks. Another independent bookshop set to close.

First Compendium, now another excellent little Camden bookshop goes the way of all that is good and honest and cheering in this city. Reckless has got a For Sale sign on it too, following the closure last year of Rhythm Records.

As Brian Schwartz, owner of the Offstage Theatre & Film Bookshop, puts it: “It is the end of an era. Camden is more kid-orientated. It has become relentlessly teenage and attracts the wrong customers for books. It’s more touristy and a lot more druggy than I remember it.”

As a sometime resident of Camden, and admitted Camdenphile, it pains me to agree with Radical Philosophy’s eulogy for Compendium: “the degeneration of Camden into squalid Eurotrash tourism [is] a transient moment of its ineluctable conversion into high-price, high-rent mallification.” Well, first it pained me to understand, then it pained me to agree.

I should point out, however, that Camden is still home to Camden Books in the Lock, an excellent Books for Amnesty shop on Eversholt Street, and Walden Books on Harmood Street. And that’s still a good record for London.

I went to Walden Books last summer, just before the the ineluctable high-price, high-rent mallification forced me out of Camden, looking for some Conrad and a good Veggie Cookbook. I emerged with a collection of Dadaist manifestos and a leatherbound copy of the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. That’s bookshopping.

Tyrone is in his 30s/40s, dresses like an old punk squatter, and sells books off the pavement on Stroud Green Road, North London. He runs what is possibly the best, and definitely the smallest bookstall in London. This blog is going to contain a lot of random yet undeniably Londoncentric bookstuff, and there isn’t a better person to promote than Tyrone. This man is, or at least embodies, the reason I do what I do, and why I want to have my own bookstore. All books are £1.

My first meeting with Tyrone about a month ago yielded the following:

Skinhead, Richard Allen (NEL 5th Printing)
Suedehead, Richard Allen (NEL First Edition)
Confessions of a Mask, Yukio Mishima (Battered Old Penguin)
Forbidden Colours, Yukio Mishima (Ditto)
Thirst for Love, Yukio Mishima (Ditto)
The City And The Pillar, Gore Vidal (First UK Pbk)
Hustling: a Gentleman’s Guide to the Fine Art of Homosexual Prostitution, John Preston

I first heard about Allen in the writings of Stewart Home, neoist extraordinaire. As Codex has it:

“Richard Allen” is the best-known pseudonym of pulp fiction guru James Moffat, an archetypal hack who measured writing time in bottles. Despite Moffatt’s moralistic condemnation of journalists who “encourage” juvenile delinquency, his Richard Allen books, such as Skinhead, Suedehead and Boot Boys, were all violent exploitation novels. They fed the Skinhead movement which in turn fed the author’s ego, an almost preternatural feedback loop that literature did its best to forget, until Codex author Stewart Home revisited these “classics” and gave decent society its biggest kick up the ass since Pa Ubu went to Poland.

Anyway, I was a bit surprised at the (low) quality of the writing - which I’m sure Home would denounce as bourgeois adherence to established modes of writing, or something - but they deserve their reputation as underground hack classics.

I’ve been meaning to read Mishima for ages, but haven’t got round to them yet.

I’ve read Vidal, but at least I can give my boyfriend his copy of City back now. As long as I’ve got one about the house… John Preston wrote a really good essay entitled ‘How Dare You Even Think These Things?’ about his life as a pornographer in High Risk, which I read last year. I’ve been looking for other stuff by him ever since - and this doesn’t disappoint. It does exactly what it says on the cover, from guidance on hustler phone etiquette, to what you should keep about the house if you claim to be into ‘heavy play’, and the linguistic complexities of the term ‘versatile’. Essential.