Arjun and the Good Snake, being an ophidiological account of six weeks in India without Alcohol, by Rick Harsch…10€/9€ in the stricken hemisphere where the Americas remain hydraviral
The latest version of Arjun and the Good Snake arriving to the coast
here is the summary of the book on the site goodreads:
This is a memoir about alcoholism and venom, all things Indian and some things half, for instance the author’s son. Rick Harsch is a writer living on the coast of Izola where great wine is cheap and suicide is on his brain. He determines on a trip visit his Indian wife’s family in Chennai, India, that he will stay dry, spend his six weeks writing, searching for snakes, carving coconut masks with his son, and rambling about Chennai. The book refuses to spare the author as he takes his dull machete through the gruesome jungles of the unforgiving terrainof his confessions, striving to reach the placid stasis of architectural analysis, the humor of his relatioinship with his son, even the salubrious emetic of rage against forces arrayed against him, real and apparent and maybe, often illuminatingly historical–you will never want to visit Vasco da Gama’s statue again–and, finally, above all exoterica, the snakes of India.
The author would add that or largely this is a philosophical book, potently soteriological, though perhaps, like a sanatorium, not for everyone.
Voličina
I don’t recall how many of the books were originally printed, but my friend Ivo, who lives in Maribor, found these copies of the originals–two in their printshop wraps still (pristine!)–at his family home in Voličina, which I have taken a pleasing photo of that may morph into the logo for corona/samizdat. Here are the books and the protologo:
rickharsch 