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“Fantômas is the Lord of Terror, the Genius of Evil, the arch-criminal anti-hero of a series of 32 pre-WWI French thrillers written by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain. He carries out the most appalling crimes: substituting sulfuric acid in the perfume dispensers at a Parisian department store, releasing plague-infested rats on an ocean liner, or forcing a victim to witness his own execution by placing him face-up in a guillotine. Fantômas is the master of a thousand disguises and the leader of a vast army of “apaches” (street thugs). His spies and henchmen are everywhere, spreading the seeds of chaos and terror. Fantômas is anyone and no one, everywhere and nowhere, waging an implacable war against the very bourgeois society in which he moves with such ease and assurance.

Fantômas’s crimes are scenes of sublime horror: a rebellious henchman is hung in a huge bell as a human clapper, smashing from side to side and raining blood, sapphires and diamonds onto the street below. Masked bandits brandishing revolvers crash a city bus through the walls of a bank, sending money flying everywhere. Under grey Parisian skies, a horse-drawn cab gallops down the road, a wide-eyed corpse as its coachman. Fantômas strips the gilded gold from the Invalides dome each night; he poisons his victims with deadly bouquets; he crashes passenger trains and destroys steamships. And he escapes justice every time.”

We borrowed that wonderful, juicy description from the marvelous and comprehensive website www.fantomas-lives.com.

Doesn’t that sound like the best kind of book to jump into? We thought so too. Although we were a little familiar with the band of the same name, after reading a story in the newest issue of Arthur Magazine about the long-running series of turn-of-the-century French novels by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, we were entranced! We don’t see the Fantomas books themselves here at the store very often, but we felt like we should make a recommendation anyway! Regardless, you CAN find your own copy of Arthur Magazine here at the bookstore or at finer record and/or book emporiums near you. If that doesn’t work, or if you need to feed your jones immediately, you can download a PDF of the recent issue of Arthur at their website, and learn about these classics of terror for yourself. Oui!

Did you know Myopic has our own online bookstore? So true! At a super-secret warehouse we keep special tomes that we don’t want to just put on the shelves here in our retail location. Not that we don’t love our regular off-the-street browsing customers, but there are some titles we have to protect with our lives, and that means no touching it until you buy it! Trust us, folks. We have some goodies in that secret warehouse!

After years of super-duper secrecy, now we have been cleared to allow you, the customer, to peek in at this amazing stash! In fact, we’re fully prepared for you to go check it out right now by following this handy

link!

That will take you to our catalog listed on the Abebooks.com website. Dozens of categories, hundreds of titles, all for you too oogle! Over the coming weeks we’ll highlight some of our more amazing titles, and you can snap them up. How does that sound?

It was a dark and stormy–er, snowy–night when we decided to sit down and while away the winter drear with the queen of crime, Agatha Christie. Yes, yes, we know, you are book snobs like us, and you are much more interested in reading your Pynchon, Nabokov, and catching up on your McSweeney’s–but why not take a little detour? With 80 mysteries to her credit, Christie has been translated more than any other author and in her time was only outsold by the Bible.

Why read such drivel, you say? Surely, it’s just smoke and mirrors–crime before it had the clipped pace of Hammett, the melancholy of Chandler, the punch of Fleming…but no–we found the works to be genuinely suspenseful, witty, and charming–filled with observations about human nature and psychology. “And Then There Were None,” “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Three Blind Mice” all find a group of strangers thrown together and stranded. While the first group is on an island, the second on a train, and the third in a guesthouse, all are unable to leave–and are often picked off, murdered one by one, as your potential murder suspects dwindle.

We found these stories riveting, especially on a winter night, shared with a lover under some warm covers. We had our doubts, of course, but then suddenly it was 2AM and we kept reading, pushing through to find out “who did it”! And yes, we know it’s not Tolstoy or Faulkner. And you won’t impress anyone by saying that you finished it (we know that’s why you clawed your way through Ulysses!) but hey, for thrills and fun, and to just survive the brutal grey of Chicago winters, you can’t do any better than ol’ Ag. She might not be the one author you would take with you on a desert isle, but she might be the one you were very grateful someone else packed, as a welcome respite from your Proust.

So, if you want to give her a shot, come on in–we have over 30 titles at the moment anxiously awaiting your arrival in the cavernous, cobwebbed basement…

Spanning over a hundred years and six generations, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks, much like Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, has little to do with architecture (or trout). Donald Harington’s rowdy, picaresque novel chronicles one family’s history in the Ozarks, from the time the first white settlers built a log cabin in a virtually empty landscape through to the coming of television in a little town called Stay More. However, this description tells you little about its quirky prose, its sexually charged scenes, its riotous humor, and its breadth of time–its look at the folly which is the human race.

Furthermore, Harington has the ability to pull back from his narrative and comment on the telling, including himself in the novel, as a witness and an active participant in the lore and legend of this now abandoned village in the Ozarks. He is a storyteller in the grand oral tradition, not worrying too much about his facts of his history but nevertheless spinning his tale for an rivited listener, or in this case, reader.

It is not often that a book provokes tears for us jaded misanthropic myopians. But alas, or perhaps aha! this lovely book brought them, along with longing, and joy, and hearty belly laughs. We strongly recommend it!

Myopic has nearly 3,000 rare, out of print books that are a great gift for that booklover in your life! Whether you are celebrating the winter solstice, kwanzaa, hannukah, or christmas, a signed first edition copy of their favorite author is sure to ingratiate you with your sweetheart, sibling, or parent…

Our first editions currently include:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, (1st edition, 2nd issue) $300
Daniel Clowes, Ghost World, $290
Klaus Kinski, All I Need is Love, $250
James Joyce, Chamber Music, $225
Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, (1st US edition) $200
Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance, $190
William Gaddis, The Recognitions, $185
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72, $175
J.P. Donleavy, Ginger Man, $175 (original hardcover, Olympia press edition)
Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, $110
J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey, $80
Samuel Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape and Embers, $65
Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird, $95
Hubert Selby Jr., Last Exit to Brooklyn, $65
Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor, $65
David Sedaris, Barrel Fever, $70
Denis Johnson, The Incognito Lounge, $65
J.G. Ballard, Crash, $50
Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, $45
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, (First Edition, Third Printing), $45
William Faulkner, The Mansion, $45
John Gardner, Grendl, $45
Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, Selected Poetry $30
Susan Sontag, I, etcetera, $20

Our signed first editions include:
Saul Bellow, Herzog, $170
Dave Eggers, A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius, $125
Spaulding Gray, Morning, Noon and Night, $125
Kenzaburo Oe, An Echo of Heaven, $95
Jim Harrison, Sundog, $100
George Foreman, By George, $95
Neil Gaiman, American Gods, $60
Michael Moore, Downsize This!, $55
Howard Bloom, How to Read and Why, $30
Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, $25
Margaret Atwood, You Are Happy, $45
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin, $33
Spike Lee, That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It, $35
Richard Russo, Straight Man, $35
Denis Johnson, Already Dead: A California Gothic, $35
Armistead Maupin, Babycakes, $20
Mike Royko, Sez Who? Sez Me, $25
Irvine Welsh, Porno, $24
Johathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn, $45
Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated, $40

Other rare books of interest include:
William Steig’s classic children’s story Shrek!, 1st edition, $60
Glen E. Friedman, Fuck You Heroes, 1st Edition, $85. Color and black and white reproductions of Friedman’s photographs of musicians, skateboarders, and fans.
Haymarket Scrapbook, an anthology of essays, newspaper accounts and historical documentation of the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Riots. With black and white illustrations and photographs. $25
And hundreds of other books on artists, architects, philosophers, and misfits!