A BUG'S LIFE

KAFKA
David Z. Marowitz & Robert Crumb
paper, 2007
$14.95

I can't believe I've waited this long to mention Robert Crumb, one of the most influential contemporary artists of the last 40 years. And there is no more perfect way to introduce his work to this blog than with Kafka.

Essentially an illustrated biography and primer -- I will not use the term: Idiots Guide -- to the work of F.K., with Crumb's dark pen and ink drawings providing a window into the writer's inner world.

RETURN TO THE CLASSICS...

DAUGHTER OF BONNIE & CLYDE
Brent Lynton Wright
1971, paperback
$12.95......out of print

Great, hard-to-find vintage paperback - actually, the novelization of a screenplay (a movie tie-in for a film that was never made) - courtesy of one of the most interesting worst novelists of the 50s & 60s whose work spanned nearly every genre of paperback fiction, from westerns to crime, gay pulp, and sleaze. Wright was also a character actor in more than 200 Hollywood films going back to the the original Three Stooges.

As for the book -- a tale of the orphaned child of gangsterdom's most famous couple and her journey into crime is pure pulp. But that's a good thing.

THEY MIGHT AS WELL BE ...

TOY GIANTS
Daniel & Geo Fuchs
2007, hardcover
$45.00

The duo responsible for this eye-popping book spent over three years photographing the 10,000 piece private collection of Selim Varol, bigger-than-life group and portrait shots of toys and celebrity action figures (from George W. Bush to Bruce Willis to Quentin Tarantino).

NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK

CHARLATAN
America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam
Pope Brock
hardcover, 2008
$19.95 (was 24.95)

In 1917, after years of selling worthless patent remedies throughout the Southeast, John R. Brinkley -- America’s most brazen young con man -- arrived in the tiny town of Milford, Kansas. He set up a medical practice and introduced an outlandish surgical method using goat testicles to restore the fading virility of local farmers and thousands of paying customers quickly turned “Dr.” Brinkley into America’s richest and most famous surgeon.

Eventually, his notoriety captured the attention of the great quackbuster Morris Fishbein, who vowed to put the country’s “most daring and dangerous” charlatan out of business. Their cat-and-mouse game lasting throughout the 1920s and ’30s.

Despite Fishbein’s efforts Brinkley prospered wildly. When he ran for governor of Kansas, he invented campaigning techniques still used in modern politics. Thumbing his nose at American regulators, he built the world’s most powerful radio transmitter just across the Rio Grande to offer sundry cures, and killed or maimed patients by the score, yet his warped genius produced innovations in broadcasting that endure to this day. By introducing country music and blues to the nation, Brinkley also became a seminal force in rock ’n’ roll.

In short, he was the most creative criminal this country has ever produced.

BANNED FROM BLOCKBUSTER - PART 3

THE BROWN BUNNY
2003
dir. Vincent Gallo
colour, uncut X version
14.95

When originally screened at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, Roger Ebert called this "the worst film in the history of the festival." High praise for this minimalist road movie written and directed by star Vincent Gallo and featuring Chloe Sevigny in her now infamous explicit oral sex scene -- probably the best reason to watch this narcissistic bit of celuloid although it does have a few fans, due mostly to its purity as an example of maverick filmmaking. Also stars Cheryl Tiegs!

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

THE BIG BOOK OF LEGS
Dian Hanson, ed.
hardcover, 2009
59.95

Gams and more gams from the publishers of The Big Penis Book and The Big Book of Breasts. Mammoth pictorial history -- from the Victorian Age to present-day -- and tribute to the female leg featuring photographs by Irving Klaw, Peter Gowland, Bunny Yeager, Elmer Batters, and other great masters of leg art.