In The Paris Review, Jane Stern writes about strange things she has found in books:
Here are some things I have found: a Seattle traffic ticket for jaywalking, the luggage slip for a first class flight to Paris, to-do lists with some very curious items like “pick up the whip” or “explain cremation.” Often I find ticket stubs (Hamilton !). Once I found a check fully made out for $375.15 that was never given away, and just today I found a yellow card from Pacific Photo Express that offered to transform my images into a “photo fun button.” I am not sure I want such a pin: the illustration shows a creepy little girl getting cozy with Frankenstein’s monster. I can’t quite imagine the right occasion on which to wear that.The strangest thing I’ve found in a book: this list. But this receipt means more.
Stern’s essay found via Oddments of High Unimportance.
comments: 5
Your post reminded me of something I put up back in 2006. I've touched it up and posted it at http://dreamersrise.blogspot.com/2022/03/from-archives-letter.html
That’s some letter. I think the sender and recipient must have had very well-calibrated humormeters.
Perhaps the letter was by Lee Israel, writer and forger and subject of book and movie, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
What struck me was the price. It reminded me of my reading list--all the thingsI wanted to read once I graduated from college and had some free time. In 1969 I graduated, took a job, moved into an apartment, and bought a car (Toyota Corona--a new enough import that drivers tooted horns at one another when spotting a fellow Toyota on the road.) And I ordered a stack of paperbacks--plays by Chekov and Ibsen in particular. They cost about 35 cents each.
If it was Lee Israel, she should’ve been more careful with the date (see Chris’s post).
One of the oldest paperbacks I have sold for 35¢ — The Blackboard Jungle (a surprisingly good novel).
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