faces fade, voices dim. seize them back, whispered the sepulturero.

so this weekend my local library has been purging its shelves of old books and selling them out front -- i guess they are the ones that no one has checked out in a long time or something -- and on sunday i took the short drive down there to rent some dvds. i often do this because it's free and this particular library has a movie collection that nearly rivals netflix.

on my way out i decided to take a look, just for the hell of it really, because for 50 cents they would give you a plastic bag and instruct you to fill that bag with as many books as it could hold, and i figured maybe i would find something there that was worth 50 cents. in reality, though, i wasn't all that hopeful since this sale had been going on for a couple of days already and if there had even been any good books there in the first place they would surely have been gone long before i got there.

but to my lasting astonishment, as i was skimming the names on the spines, i found lying there amongst all these unwanted books a copy of Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark -- one of the more obscure books by my favorite writer, and one that i did not yet own! so, my expectations greatly exceeded, i snatched it up, along with a book about french poets, and gladly handed over 50 cents to the bearded man with the money box.

and then when i was home looking the book over and removing the plastic library covering i noticed on the copyright page that there was only one year listed and at the top of the page it said "First Printing." so, my curiosity aroused, i hopped on the internet to do a little investigating and this is what i found:

http://www.manhattanrarebooks-modernfirsts.com/mccarthy_outer_dark.htm

when i saw my book on that webpage my jaw dropped. and when i read the value of the book listed there, it actually came unhinged.

the library discard which i purchased for 50 cents -- actually 25 cents -- is a rare first edition worth probably something between five hundred and one thousand dollars.

goddamn.