A couple days ago, Justin and I visited the Kansas City Star's Star store. We didn't do this on purpose. We just wanted to see how far we could get into the bowels of the Star before anyone noticed. But the security guards put a cigarette out on that plan in a hurry. Justin quickly asked where the Star Store was. The guards pointed us downstairs. Once the three guys working in the basement buzzed us in, we discovered that C.W. Gusewelle is making bank for that company -- or thinks he is. Who knows what information Mark Zieman messenger-pigeons him at his fortified compound of deer jerky and dog aphrodisiacs.
The columnist has more books stacked in that sad little retail outlet than any other author. Unfortunately, our managing editor Scott Wilson is a damn ogre with the budget. I asked him if I could get $25 to buy a copy of Gusewelle's The Rufus Chronicle: Another Autumn. He refused, offering me a mere $1.50 -- the price of a Sunday paper. That sucks because the Dallas Morning News called Rufus, "Poetic prose as clean and pure as the brilliant Midwestern sunlight." So you know it's good. Plus, the cover says it comes with color photos of Rufus. Probably the usual stuff: sitting side by side on an empty beach staring at the ocean, bathing together, that sort of thing.
How much Gusewelle could I get for the cost of a Sunday paper? Turns out, a lot, but perhaps not as much as I need. Or dream of.
My quest started at Amazon. I want to make it clear this is in no way meant to infringe on the awesome "Studies In Crap," but if you're reading this, Scherstuhl, and you feel raw about it, you know where to find me.
The first thing you should throw in your cart is
So for a Sunday newspaper budget you get 1,057 pages of pure Gusewelle plus hours of listening pleasure with the man himself. The whole package is only $1.42, so you've still got $.08 left. In Gusewelle's heyday that was enough to buy a ticket on the new steam-powered carriage to any of the 32 states. You could visit a depressed mining town where you would live with good and simple folks and still have enough to buy a dozen red roses for their beautiful, soot-faced daughter who you would leave behind for adventures in parts unknown. Sure they'd all be dead of tuberculosis within a year, but there's no reason you have to include that in your dewy prose recollections decades later.
As a postscript to the Star Store visit, we briefly discussed a Pitch-Mart on our vacant third floor, with hardbound "Daily Briefs" collections, and audio recordings of me doing dramatic readings of my features over Kerry King's guitar work. As much as I'm sure you're all howling for that, we decided it's not going to happen. Sorry.
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