03 December 2005

Tonight I had to iron my copy of Tony Tost's Invisible Bride.

iron tony tost

So I did.

7 RIDERS:

At 05 December, 2005 11:44, Blogger Heidi Lynn Staples said...

I do hope you first placed a bit of cloth between the aforementioned Invisible Bride and the hot face o' the iron. Otherwise, the delicate fabric doth burn and pucker most unfortunately.

By the by, I recently had my collected Kenneth Koch steam pressed. Most pleasing result.

 
At 05 December, 2005 12:16, Blogger shanna said...

oh! i thought i was the only one! i too iron my books!

 
At 05 December, 2005 14:25, Blogger CLAY BANES said...

I'd never done it before. After I set off the smoke detector and the neighbors stopped screaming at each and started banging on our wall, I cottoned to the cloth-laying idea.

I hadn't known Invisible Bride. I've been reading his damn blog (I don't mean "Tony Tost's damn blog": I mean I just put the word "damn" before the word "blog" when I'm speaking). I couldn't find the book anywhere. (I sell books in Berkeley, CA. It was lightly appalling.) I ordered it from a seller through Abebooks.com. (Note to self: owe Tony Tost a couple of dollars—after the hearty handshake). The book was described as being in "perfect" condition. When it arrived, it appeared it indeed had been when it left Concordia Books in Kirkland, WA, some days before. It was shipped in a heat-sealed, clear plastic envelope-bag, wrapped in a sheet of tissue and its packing list. Not with anything rigid, say, a piece of cardboard. It looked like it had been water damaged (it hadn't). Its spine was crooked, its cover and pages audibly mottled and dinged from the slings and arrows of outrageous transport. A wrinkly, crinkly mess. It was horrible really.

All's well now. I wrote the bookseller, explaining everything. They thanked me for the cardboard idea and particularly thanked me for the tricked I'd learnt to do, which they'd never heard of, with an iron. They were especially enthusiastic about that.

They didn't apologize.

 
At 06 December, 2005 06:47, Blogger shanna said...

eek. perhaps tony is cursed. i received my first copy of invisible bride and it was torn through the spine and i had to order another one. the mailman (i call him the mangler) did it, but it was also because of the way the american academy of poets packed it. and if there's one thing i've learned after all these years of stuffing books into envelopes it's to write or stamp (there are stamps made just for this purpose) DO NOT BEND on all thin packages--especially if they are going media or printed matter mail rate. otherwise the carriers assume they are catalogs or something and roll them, bend them, and otherwise abuse them. it's enough to make ya cry.

 
At 06 December, 2005 10:51, Blogger CLAY BANES said...

Yeah, and I cry easily.

 
At 08 December, 2005 06:48, Blogger Heidi Lynn Staples said...

you two crying and ironing is concerning as to the risk of electric shock so be sure to unplug them irons once the tears start in.

for the official wrecked word, far as i recall, my copy of invisible bride arrived in good shape. i ordered from amazon--would that make any difference?

 
At 09 December, 2005 23:05, Blogger TT said...

All the pages of my copy are stuck together.

 

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