The Sunday Haul (on 24-07-18)

I came across many crime writers (like Jake Arnott, Ross Thomas, Peter Blauner ) at Abids by pure accident. I liken such finds to finding a gem in the dust. Last Sunday I found one such gem at Abids but I did not know it then that it was a gem. When I saw ‘No Beast So Fierce’ by Edward Bunker I had a hunch that it could be a good book and even the blurb on the cover about it being made into a film starring Dustin Hoffman confirmed my hunch. So I picked it up for a mere thirty rupees. Later when I Googled the title I was intrigued by Edward Bunker’s background. Edward Bunker took to crime at a very young age, went to jail, wrote a book, became famous and wrote scripts, acted and produced movies. This I plan to read right after finishing Ross Thomas’ ‘Out on the Rim’ that I am engrossed in at the moment.

I found yet another book on writing-‘The Modes of Modern Writing’ by David Lodge. It is an academic tome that discusses things I’ve never heard before like ‘metonymy’ and has sentences like this-‘the poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination’- that left me reeling. Nevertheless I bought it- for a hundred rupees. It looks impressive to have titles like this in one’s bookshelf.

There’s this pile of Rs 30 books that the Best Books people have in the lane beside Dayal’s that is beginning to throw up many good titles. The previous Sunday I had picked up ‘Mirror Maker’ by Primo Levi and ‘Mildred Pierce’ by James M. Cain from this same pile. Last Sunday I found another wonderful title in that pile. As soon as I spotted the copy of ‘The Emigrants’ by W.G. Sebald I jumped on it. Anything I write about this book would seem insignificant so I will just mention that it seems to be fictional accounts of four people-Dr. Henry Selwyn, Paul Bereyter, Ambros Adelwarth, Max Ferber.

This was one Sunday when all my Abids friends- Uma, Daniel and Jai seemed to come together. Though Jai did not spend much time with us, we three talked for a long time about our usual topics over chai. It just seemed like one of those old days of the past when all was well with the world.