My buddy Percy sent me this book for Christmas, a book that has no internet presence whatsoever. It’s like an old-school zine, available in photocopy style only, no ISBN or nothin’ like that.
Here’s an tiny bit from Why I Am Disgusted Today: “Sometimes when you get constipated, you get an abnormal urge to eat, as though the new food is going to push out the old shit. It’s the same with writing.” The guy felt compelled to keep writing, even when he had nothing to say. I relate to that.
I remember Crad Kilodney from Toronto in the 1980s. At that time I was twenty-something and my life consisted of working part time as a library clerk, drinking lots of beer, smoking pot, and writing a terrible novel. Rent was cheap, like 150 a month for a room in a co-op house, so an easy, lazy life like that was possible in them days. I feel bad for today’s kids with their lives of precarity and scarcity in the midst of apparent plenty.
Crad Kilodney was a guy who stood on the streets of Toronto selling books he’d written and published himself. I think they cost five bucks, maybe ten. I remember Crad Kilodney was a bit intimidating to approach, like he was bitter and unhappy about having to sell his art that way. The thing is, his books weren’t actually very good. I used to buy them though. My favourite was a short story collection called Lightning Struck My Dick; in the title story a distraught mother laments the death of her son Richard, who was struck by lightning. In other words the title is a total fake-out and the whole story exists only for the sake of a single solitary joke.
Anyhow I did a book tour this past summer around BC, trying to flog my books Stag and A Lady Under Siege. I decided at one point that I’d try to pull a Crad Kilodney and sell my books on the streets of Kimberley and Cranbrook. I’d call it The Crad Kilodney Cranbrook- Kimberley Community Komparison Street Clash or something like that (I love alliteration), a competition to see which town was more receptive to an itinerant author selling their wares. I’d put a sign around my neck like he used to, something like Pointless Drivel or Pretentious Dilettante, and see what happened. It didn’t work out too good. In fact it didn’t work out at all, for reasons that will be explained in future posts.