"The book of my enemy has been remaindered"
A lovely mock-heroic poem by Clive James, switching between that style and the contemporary, with much gloating and self-deception.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n10/clive-james/the-book-of-my-enemy-has-been-remaindered (if that free link no longer works, you can probably find it somewhere else):
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered.
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy’s much-praised effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
...
Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,
Though not to the monumental extent
In which the chastisement of remaindering has been meted out
To the book of my enemy,
Since in the case of my own book it will be due
To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error –
Nothing to do with merit.
...
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