Biblioklept.org Website Review

(another copy of) thomas pynchon’s vineland (book acquired, 18 dec. 2018) a spare hour in a used bookstore, and i started handling the thing—started skimming again. i’ve made a few attempts and my copy is cut cover remainder; i found it in an inventory room in the high school i used to work at. there were at least a dozen. untitled (abraham lincoln and santa claus as don quixote and sancho panza) — saul steinberg. unchristmasy august and dipped into it a bit again today, looking for a pas*age or two to share. maybe the bit where santa claus starts an anti-capitalist riot in times square?, or where the first lady is electrocuted while lighting the white house christmas tree?, or where on its own, but i kept wanting to build a frame, set a stage, and ended up with this instead, a “review,” a recommendation. a stage setting.  of course, ishmael reed’s novels create their own stages, their own contexts and rhythms, and each paragraph, each sentence, each note fits into that context, blaring or humming or blasting the reader. reed’s satire is simultaneously bitter and salty and sweet he quotes reed in full for two of those paragraphs, including this one, the longest paragraph in the piece: > two-year-olds are what the id would look like if the id could ride a > tricycle. that’s the innocent side of 2, but the terrible side as > well. a terrible world the world of 2-year-olds. the world of the > witch’s door you knock on when your mother told you not to go near > the forest in the first place. pigs building houses of straw. vain > and egotistic gingerbread men who end up riding on the nose of a > fox. nightmares in the closet. someone is constantly trying to eat > them up. the gods of winter crave them – the gods of winter who, > some say, are represented by the white horse that st. nicholas, or > st. nick, rides as he enters amsterdam, his blackamoor servant,