BOOK REVIEWS

      I have dispensed with my 'Books of the Year' postings  which covered the years 2009 and 2010, and now attempt to review a selection of books that I have read both good and bad, in editions old and new. Much of what I buy is often based on suggestions by others, or some train of thought that makes me think "maybe I should try..." so they are not necessarily all strange/supernatural fiction.

       With many small press books costing around £35-£40 each, and some seemingly worthy tomes changing hands on the second hand market for many times that, these reviews may also give the potential purchaser some indication of what they might receive for their money. Needless to say, my opinions should not be given any great value as I bring my own foibles to every review and these may change at any time.

Timothy D'Arch Smith


'The Times Deceas'd'

Teitan Press 2011
pp124  $45.00

    This is a delightful book.

    During his time at the bookshop Smith changed its focus from a dumping ground of The Times lending library and repository of leather bound sets of authors works to something more edgy and subversive, as he began to acquire, as much for his own interest as anything else, books by Aleister Crowley, the decadents, occultists and pursuers of 'amatory unorthodoxy'.

    Thus although ostensibly about the subject of the title, the bookshop acts more as a canvas upon which Smith presents pen portraits of the authors and collectors and eccentrics who have crossed his path. This is in addition to interesting diversions into his own literary forebears (the Frankaus) and the practice of Ritual Magic which he performed in a small Hampstead flat with scarcely enough room to swing a sword.

    We read of the large ivory phallus (with detachable foreskin) which Montague Summers kept on his desk, the bookseller George Sims who kept a guest book where visitors could record their likes and dislikes, the 'lapses of delicacy' that occured when Smith visited the poet A. L. Rowse, R. A. Caton and the Fortune Press, Gerald Yorke (the Crowley scholar) and of course books themselves.

    Signed 'Draculas', the letters of Baron Corvo, much on the Uranian poets (as one might expect from the author of 'Love In Ernest'), 'Moby Dick', the manuscript of 'Under Milk Wood',  'My Secret Life', Gothic Novels etc.

    All this is told in an enthusiastic and cheerful manner a million miles away from the stereotypical view of booksellers as dour and taciturn. It is laugh out loud funny, a very rare thing for me when reading.

    The style belies the fact that Smith is one sharp cookie and he makes some very interesting connections in the course of the book which I found myself mentally (attempting to) file away as 'things to look out for' on my own book hunts.

    Entertaining and informative. If I maintained by 'books of the year' recommendations this would certainly be one of them. Go and buy it.

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