Yesterday, to celebrate the beautiful day, B and I took a drive out to Oak Park to visit her parents. Along the way we stopped at the Brown Elephant in Oak Park’s “Arts District” to scope out some vintage bargains. The cool thing about the Brown Elephant is that proceeds go toward helping uninsured gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people at the Howard Brown Health Center, including clinical, educational, social service and research activities. B was in the market for dishware, as she’s a fan of vintage-style designs for plates and bowls and glasses, and I wanted to get my hands on some used books. I really don’t like going to used bookstores in urban areas because I always end up disappointed; usually the shelves are filled with Dean Koontz or Bridget Jones’ Diary and everything is completely picked through. Oak Park obviously isn’t as urban as Chicago proper but the citizens of this sleepy village are often classified as educated and being such are more likely to be readers. Now the Brown Elephant isn’t your normal thrift store. Sure, it has all the donated crap that one expects upon entering a thrift store but some of the stuff is really nice. I sat in a 70s leather desk chair that would be a perfect reading chair; too bad it was $200. I had never been in the Brown Elephant before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But as soon as I saw their book section, I was converted.

I approached the book section with trepidation, thinking that if I could just find one diamond in the rough the day would be successful. At first I saw the Best American Non-Required Reading 2005 edited by Dave Eggers with introduction by Beck; I’m a fan of the Non-Required Reading series and I didn’t have this one — score! But then more books started popping up. Martin and John by Dale Peck, one of the instructors at New School while I was there, was on the shelves. “Cool,” I thought. “I’ve been meaning to read this.” Then Jhumpa Lahiri and Gertrude Stein and Faulkner and Hemingway and Auster and Beckett. This used books section was a veritable trove of vintage glee. All told, I picked up 12 books. Then I started thinking about the prices. Maybe I would have to release some of these finds back into the wild. None of the books had prices on them, so I searched around for a legend or menu of some sort. My eyes lit up when I found it. Trade paperbacks and hardcovers were $1 each and mass market books were $.50. Are you kidding me? My total cost for 12 books: $11.50.

A couple of these books were particularly good finds for me. I was really happy to pick up an older edition of Faulkner’s Sound and the Fury; it matches my edition of Absolom, Absolom! and just looks really cool. What’s even better about it is that on the title page of the book, a previous owner had embossed a raised seal, much like the seal of a notary public, that reads “Library of Kenneth J. White” and in the center of the seal is his monogram, “KJW.” The pages are browning but it’s still in excellent condition, the spine isn’t even broken, no writing on the pages; if I didn’t know any better, I’d say this vintage copy had never been read once. This one cost me $.50!

While this one is a little more beat up, I was still really excited about the cover of this edition of Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill. I’ve never actually read this play, which is hard to believe, but now that I have this excellent vintage edition I know that I will get around to it someday soon. Off to my library with you, Gene!

And finally, probably the coolest of all, is this vintage hardcover edition of Something Happened by Joseph Heller, dust cover and all. This is a book club edition and it appears as though it’s from 1974. The top edge of it is red, while the bottom and side are natural; I can’t tell if the previous owner had colored it or if it came like this. Yes, it only cost $1.

It was a very good haul indeed. The complete list of treasures found is as follows: Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, A Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill, Something Happened by Joseph Heller, the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein, Three Lives by Gertrude Stein, a Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, Light in August by William Faulkner, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, the Best American Non-Required Reading 2005 edited by Dave Eggers, Martin and John by Dale Peck, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, and Moon Palace by Paul Auster. Not too bad, I must say.