The Remainder Bin

Rob Spence (who arrived yesterday with wife, Elaine) told me about this poem by poet, essayist, critic Clive James and I found it on the New York Times Papercuts blog (where you can read it in its entirety). I thought this portrait of an author gloating about the "downfall" of a rival, when he finds his books at the equivalent of one one of our warehouse sales, so funny. Authors can't be this bitchy, right?

Here's the first stanza.

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book --
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seemingly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.

I laughed even more when Rob told me that he had read it in James' book (The Book of My Enemy: Collected verse 1958 - 2003) when it was, itself, remaindered!

I love the honesty with which Clive James once told poet Peter Porter on ABC Radio:

I think the control I had over my work was less than adequate. There was nothing wrong with the good bits in my poems, it’s just that they were packed around with lots and lots of bad bits, and I think that the only way I’ve improved in the last several decades [. . .] is that I’ve learned to leave out the bad bits. I’m not sure you do improve beyond that.