Speaking of auctions involving Richard Hell, the St. Mark’s Bookshop, as you know, held a live auction Thursday to raise funds for its move to a smaller location in the East Village. Though 11 books, including Music of Chance by Paul Auster and Drown by Junot Diaz, were up for grabs, a Baggage Battles-style bidding war didn’t exactly ensue: the event drew just a dozen people, and brought in a modest $100 via Anne Waldman’s First Baby Poems and The Milk of Universal Kindness.
But as owners Bob Contant and Terry McCoy tell us in the above video, the beat goes on: a broader selection of 54 books by authors such as Yoko Ono and Patti Smith are available online till Dec. 15, and a first-edition boxed set of Maus, signed and heavily annotated by Art Spiegelman, has already drawn a $2,500 bid.
Additional footage by Melodie Bouchaud.
Correction: Due to an editing error, the original version of this post misstated the number of books available online.