THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

So Jewish Warrior Princess plans to launch an Internet bookstore (which I'll direct you to when it goes live), and among the mountain of stock she's acquired is a hard-to-find one-volume hardcover edition of Irwin Porges' incredible biography, EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS: THE MAN WHO CREATED TARZAN (Brigham Young University Press, 1975).

I would have bought it without hesitation, but the fucking thing is a goddamned five-pound doorstop that would have taken up far too much of my available luggage space, and if JWP can find a buyer online then by all means let her make that cash.

I have this book in the far smaller two-volume paperback edition, but this version would be the perfect complement to my collection of antiquarian first edition Tarzan books and it almost gives me an ulcer to have to leave it behind. But I can't think of any vacation I've ever been on that didn't include at least a minor note of sadness or outright misery, and as far as that dreaded element goes, there are far worse things that could have happened apart from seeing a dream edition being lost to some faceless/nameless Burroughs junkie who isn't me...

(HEAVY SIGH)

But if this motherfucker doesn't sell within a year of JWP's store launch, I'm buying the sumbitch!!!