Oxford, Mississippi's somewhat legendary SQUARE BOOKS recently celebrated its 30th anniversary w/ a champagne toast, a short film on the store's history by Joe York, and a serialized short story written and read by 18 local writers. Truth be told, those unfamiliar with Oxford and Square Books might not find much of interest in the inside-jokey, ultra self-referential "Writer Comes To Town," but contributions by Tom Franklin, Jack Pendarvis (who's got a hilarious new regular column in THE BELIEVER), and especially our hero Barry Hannah, make the project a worthwhile read.Here's Barry Hannah's short but sweet contribution (12th in the series of 18 brief chapters) in complete:
"Farewell town of towns, and to all of us who loved the other so long one of you became ugly and nobody dared mention it. I note in the bookstore window Bill Eggleston's Paris album. My envy.
Never wanted to write at all but rather to get borne place to place on a raft of kind dogs, saying the unsayable always at least half drunk like Bill. When you got a gem your sober secretary would leap to it."
P.S. Don't miss the Square Books 30th anniversary t-shirt designed by WILL BRYANT (designer of first Kitty Snacks issue, Dent May's debut album, etc):
No comments:
Post a Comment