"Who ARE Those Guys?"

Remember in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when the two are are being pursued by the relentless posse? And Butch (I think), amazed at their persistence, says, "Who are those guys?" (Just checked some video: Both Butch and Sundance say the words--link to video.)

Anyway--and this is a weird segue--some (many?) of you know that Joyce and I are slowly selling our library via abebooks.com (our bookstore on the site is DJ Doodlebug Books). And we sell a few each month (unfortunately, we are still buying more than we're selling!).

But what has surprised me is not so much what sells--but what doesn't. What's not selling? Most of the books written by the literary eminences of my youth and young adulthood.

When I was in college (and in a couple of decades afterward), the following names were very prominent in American literature:

• John Updike
• John Barth
• Thomas Berger
• Saul Bellow
• Norman Mailer
• Gore Vidal
• William Styron
• Truman Capote

There are more--but these will give you the idea (lotta guys in the list, eh?). Although we have first printings of many of their works (and some signed copies), I don't believe we've sold any. We have, for example, all of Updike's "Rabbit" novels--1st printings in dust jackets. We have all of Berger's novels (ditto). And the others. But here's the thing ...

Today, I don't read too many allusions or references to the many works of these guys. Most of them are dead now (Barth, 88, is still alive). And it seems as if their prominence has died with them. Although they once graced the covers of magazines and appeared on the TV talk shows, now there is, at least in the popular culture, just the sounds of silence.

And if you mention their names, the reply is often a quizzical look--or that question from Butch & Sundance: "Who are those guys?"

I'm sure that in the (ever-shrinking) circle of American lit specialists, the names are still there--if, perhaps, not so prominently as they were in my youth. (These writers, of course, fail one current test of relevance: They are all white males.)

Do we even teach these guys anymore? I don't know--I'm no longer really in that world. It's too bad if we don't teach them, though, for their works helped me--and countless other readers--to understand American life in the 50s, 60s, 70s.

Anyway, if you're looking for some good copies ... !