sjælens fissehår

picked up some old-school penguin paperbacks (updike's the music school, d.h.lawrence sons and lovers) and an original olympia press version of lolita at the booktrader in copenhagen.



the store owner lars has been collecting books with one-letter titles and has them lined up along the front wall with this james joyce quote:

"Books you were going to write with letters for titles.
Have you read his F?
Oh yes, but I prefer Q.
Yes, but W is wonderful.
Oh yes, W"

i was going to take a picture of it, but the store was closing and i didn't get a chance. luckily a quick google search turned this up. here are some of my faves and the story behind lars' search for the whole alphabet:










"After having read the Joycean quote, I decided to try gathering a complete alphabet of books that only had one letter for titles. After three years of intense collecting, the whole alphabet was on display in my shop, however lacking the two Scandinavian letters Æ and Å. Believing that those two book titles simply didn't exist, I left the collection as it was, and it took a further three years before my friend, Odd Noreger, from Stavanger Antikvariat (aka The Odd Bookshop), triumphantly arrived with the two titles. We celebrated the completion of the alphabet with a bottle of Norwegian Linieakvavit. Later, my other true friend, Georg Oldskov, has written a short story about the alphabet collection and another, not less fascinating collection of secondary alphabet literature. The short story is included in Oldskov's anthology, Sjælens fissehår (The Pussy Hair of the Soul), published by The Booktrader."