12 January 2008
Browsing and finding Paul Auster
)Published on January 12th, 2008 @ 02:08:25 pm, using 381 words, 72 views
I love pacing up and down, along and around those shelves, my head tilted to the right at an angle that will allow me to make out the titles and authors without inviting strangers to frown in quizzical judgment. I love waiting for whatever it is in me or those books that will force us together – will make the marriage of eyes and words, hands and pages, inevitable.
The day before yesterday it was Paul Auster’s turn to speak to me from behind those rows of book spines to whisper those magic words New York and Solitude and fashion those whispers into a sound that, though quiet, commands attention. There’s always something behind what we loosely call choice - or beneath it… or behind it. Somewhere there is chance. Chance, as in both luck and opportunity.
I reached for The New York Trilogy and The Invention of Solitude both by Paul Auster and removed them from their rightful place on that shelf and paraded around the bookstore with both on hand, laying them down every so often to leaf through other titles. I was hungry for words. Endless rows of them. All crowded, crazy and dripping sweat like in a rock concert. Milan Kundera, Philip K. Dick, Alain de Botton, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster again. The deriving question is always ‘Why?’ Why The New York Trilogy and The Invention of Solitude? Why not something else? An FAQ that can never be answered quickly enough.
It’s always been my experience that the unfolding of mysterious selection, from squinting, tilted glance to reaching to credit card swiping has a reason for being. There’s something needed before the need is revealed.
At the cash register, the sales guy smiled and said ‘The Invention of Solitude is really good’ or something to that effect.
‘Oh, yeah?’ I smiled back.
He nodded and kept smiling.
My skin tingles with the anticipation of discovery.
Sometimes we don’t pick the books we read - they pick us.
(The Hurricane)This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Bookstores, Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy, The Invention of Solitude, pacing, selecting, reaching, chance, words, pages, shelves
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