The Names

Back in the last week of March I grabbed an old paperback copy of DeLillo's The Names from a shelf in our living room.  It was printed in '83, and we figure we read it in 85.  It's a touchstone book for us, it was very wound up in ideas we were thinking and projects we were planning.  This copy was yellow and brittle, the covers falling off.  I taped it as best I could and put a paper cover over it, but it was still in such poor shape that if I tried to hold it with one hand on the subway, with my thumb jammed into the binding to keep it open enough to read, it cracked.  I told Lori about what bad shape the book is in, and she remembered that we bought a hardcopy some time later.  We looked for it, voila, and that's the copy I finished.

About that hardcopy: it's a first edition (1982).  And, judging from the mark on the bottom of the pages, it had been remaindered.  A first edition of our favorite book by one of our country's great living writers, about themes that completely dominate our times (oilwarterrorismcomplicity anybody?) remaindered.  Not available, by the by, as an ebook.