Longtime Employee Arnold Herr Pens a Hilarious Montage of Cosmopolitan

by Paul Hunt

It had to happen, and happen now.  You just knew that somebody would eventually write about the biblio madness, the highs, the lows, the weirdness of selling books in Hollywood. But why now?  The easy answer is that most of the old time employees of Cosmopolitan Book Shop are dead.  They are now up in that book shop in the sky, running to imaginary library sales, rooting through the wispy fog of estates, chatting it up with our dearly departed leader Eli Goodman, who has traded in his baggy pants held up by a piece of string for a beautiful white robe.  Which leads to the eternal question, most on everyone’s mind:  Is there book dust in heaven?  Have any silverfish found there way up there?  Are books piled up everywhere in gleaming palaces?  We will all be disappointed soon enough, so why rub it in now?

So the last man standing, Mr. Arnold Herr, has penned his memoirs.  Eli Goodman, the subject of the memoirs as a fictional character named Mickey Tsimmis, sent me a message via a small capsule attached to a white dove that landed on my van this morning, where I am temporarily residing.  I carefully unrolled the fragile little piece of paper and read it.  “Please tell Arnold that I should get 10 percent of the sales, since without me there would be no book.  –Eli.  And ask him why in hell did he throw away the big bag of rubber bands I had behind the counter to wrap up the customers books?”

Here’s a quote from Paul Hunt at BookstoreMemories.com:

“If you’ve ever wondered what really goes on behind the scenes in a creaky, dusty bookshop crammed to the rafters with books, and run by Los Angeles’ number one champion tightwad, catering to an assortment of university professors, literary high steppers, book collectors, and the sweepings of Hollywood crackpots, then here it is. Arnold’s story is bold, screamingly hilarious. His pen pops with laughter. If you don’t get the hoot of your life reading this, then please check into the morgue immediately, ’cause you’re part of the walking dead.”

You can order this book from the publisher Poltroon Press (click here)