Reading Fred’s post to his blog in July about books his daughter was reading, I was inspired to wonder about The Garden of the Plynck. Back in college (or before?), I had read something by one of my favorite writers, ::wikipedia(”Theodore Sturgeon”,”Theodore Sturgeon”):: in which he had said that that book had inspired him when he was young. I’d been looking for it since, intermittently, but it was impossible to get.
I now see that it has dropped out of copyright, and the Gutenberg Project has it! It’s online at several sites in several formats.
It’s definitely landing on my “gotta read this” list.
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Copies of the original hardcover turned up on ABE every once in a while. They usually went for about a C-note apiece. It really is a charming book, and Karle Baker’s work deserves better than the regional-writer limbo it now inhabits.
I got the PDF… This story somehow reminds me of the music from some composer you played for me on Jordan Lane one evening (possibly more than one evening..) The music was the most disjointed thing I ever heard (before or since). Utterly fascinating.
Hm! If memory serves, that might have been John Zorn’s Spillane, or maybe Naked City. If the book resembles that, I’m even more intrigued!
I too came across Sturgeon’s occasional references to “Plynck” some time in the 1980s, and had no luck finding it until I visited Washington, D.C. in 1986. I read about half of the Library of Congress’s copy while sitting in their reading room.
I’ve been wondering for 20 years how it turns out, so I’m pleased that the Gutenberg Project has made it available.
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[...] A recent post from Joe inspired me to take the book down for a look, and while I wouldn’t put Sara in the same class as Alice as a literary heroine, she rules a patch of literature that’s worth visiting. Now that I’ve printed out the Gutenberg version, I’ll try it out on Dances With Mermaids and she if she, like her dad, learns to stop and read the rose-petals wherever they might fall. [...]
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