Fame & Fotune, or, I am not Christopher Buckley
ART IS LONG AND LIFE IS SHORT, and I found a little satisfaction recently when searching for two of my out-of-print letter press books. I was at the library using the Internet for a great web site, ABEbooks.com, which lists hundreds of bookstores and book sellers in the US and Canada. This was one of my first times at the site and instead of typing in a particular tide, I just typed in my name and something like 870 books came up. Major poets such as Philip Levine might have a thousand listings; Tim O'Brien might have twelve hundred. I plowed through all870 and, way back in the 700s, I found one copy of each book I wanted. Perhaps thirty of the books listed for sale were mine. Twenty or so belonged to a British Christopher Buckley who wrote books of military strategy about WWII. Roughly 800 books then were novels by the other CB, and despite celebrity, it didn't seem that many people held on to them. I was happy to pay some high prices for my two rare, beautifully printed books, content with my relative Fortune and Fame, even though I wasn't Christopher Buckley. F
Winter 2005
113