英语书籍：The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop（3）ZT
=====TODAY'S BOOK=====================
THE YELLOW-LIGHTED BOOKSHOP
A Memoir, A History
by Lewis Buzbee (nonfiction)
Published by Graywolf Press
ISBN: 9781555975104
Copyright (c) 2006 by Lewis Buzbee
YELLOW (Part 3 of 5)
======================================
(continued from Tuesday)
This rainy afternoon my wife and daughter are out of the house, and
I've got a few hours to kill. An odd phrase that, time to kill, when
we almost always mean to bring back time, increase time, re-animate
time, actually hold it more tightly. What better place to enjoy the
stretched hours than a bookstore. I pop around the corner to our
local store, which I've already scoured twice in the past three
days, but it seems worth another try, and besides, the weather is
perfect for it. I may be in the store for five minutes or an hour,
it doesn't really matter. I do know that I'll leave with some book
and head home to spend hours, both lost and found, in the perfect
solitude of my sagging green easy chair.
I cruise my usual route through the store, past the stacked faces of
new hardcovers and the wall of recent paperbacks, once around the
magazines. Even though I was here yesterday morning, every day
brings new arrivals, and while there's nothing startling today,
there's still pleasure in looking at the same books again, wondering
about that one on the history of the compass, or admiring the
photograph of the moon on this novel, the bulk and sheen of all
these books. I'm in a secretive mood--because of the rain, I
imagine--and I'm drawn into the Fiction section by the
claustrophobic air of its narrow canyon.
The other customers are evenly distributed throughout the store as
if they've chosen their interests by the space around a given island
of books. Everyone is holding a book. Some are reading from the
text, others only the backcover copy. I recognize one of the
browsers from the neighborhood, an elderly man dressed in black and
a squashed cowboy hat. He sports a thin, braided ponytail and a gray
Walt Whitman beard and carries an ornate silver-knobbed cane. Today,
he's flipping through the top shelf of Mythology, angling the
volumes out from their neat row, quickly scanning them.
I'm enough of a book snoop to know that this man, a nodding
acquaintance, usually reads either pulpy-looking Science Fiction, or
Greek and Latin classics in their originals. The habit of book-
snooping is, I admit, an annoying one, peering over the shoulder of
the person on the bus, or at a cafe trying to decipher the cover of
an open book someone's busy reading. There's no judgment in the
titles I uncover, it's mere curiosity, for the most part, with a bit
of selfishness to it. I might find what I'm looking for in the arm
of a passing pedestrian.
I turn to the Fiction wall and regard the face-outs, the stacks of
new and popular titles whose front covers are revealed. They're all
pleasing, but nothing catches my attention, so I tilt my head to the
right and follow the closely packed spines of the other novels and
stories. Nothing grabs me, and I feel adrift for a moment. After
seventeen years of working in bookstores, and even more, before and
since, as a victim of book lust, I've gazed at millions of feet of
shelf space, and I should be quite over the allure, the slight
magic that's entranced me, but I'm not. I continue to graze,
unappeased. And then, there it is, on the bottom shelf, the book
I've been looking for the last few days, even though I didn't know
it existed.
Andrei Platonov's "The Fierce and Beautiful World," a collection of
short stories. The title alone is irresistible, but it's the book
itself, the object, that sways me, its beauty and feel. Platonov, I
learn, was a daring Russian writer who wrote during, and against,
the Soviet regime, the author of many novels and stories, a cult
figure in his own lifetime. The editorial copy describes his stories
as harsh fables of life in a totalitarian state. It's not a new
book--it was written before WW II--and this reprint is already a few
years old. "The Fierce and Beautiful World" is a thin paperback but
solid, graced by a black-and-white photograph of a futurist
spherical building; the title appears in a purple box with bright
red and white type. The spine uses the same colors, space-age purple
and red, with elegant, simple typography. I stoop to retrieve the
book from the bottom shelf, dust my hand over the cover, weigh the
fit in my folded palm, and open it. The pages are thick and creamy,
and thumb nicely. The end papers, unusual in a paperback, are
colored, that riveting purple again. I tuck the book under my arm.
Sold.
But I won't leave the store just yet. Like the rest of my fellow
customers, I'm happy to be here in this cozy and solid place, happy
to be alone among others.
Like many book-lust sufferers, there was nothing in my past that
would clearly lead me to my obsession with books and bookstores. I
grew up in San Jose, California, a prosperous though decidedly
unliterary suburb fifty miles south of San Francisco. In the early
1970s, when I was in high school, San Jose did not boast any
world-class bookstore--no City Lights, no Shakespeare and Co., no
Blackwell's, no Strand--but there were bookstores.
I became a voracious reader and book luster at fifteen, after
discovering "The Grapes of Wrath." For several years, I cared little
about a store's atmosphere or reputation; I was concerned only that
it carried books.
When I wanted new books, I hung out at the local B. Dalton located
in the dark basement of our biggest shopping center, or at a tiny
Little Professor tucked into the back end of a nearby strip mall. I
bought mass-market editions of Steinbeck (every single one within
six months), Cheever, Updike (for the respectable naughty bits),
Vonnegut, Heller, Barth, Barthelme, Pynchon. I read with no
particular aim or agenda and allowed the blurbs on the back of one
cheap paperback to lead me to the next.
Each Thursday night, I accompanied my mother to the Valley Fair
mall, and while she was getting her hair done, I'd wander to the
neighboring department store's book section, where I purchased my
first hardcover, the Modern Library's "Complete Tales of Saki." I
knew nothing about Saki except that it was a pseudonym (a fact
irresistible to a teenager), but I loved the red and blue and green
cloth covers of the Modern Library, and Saki was the cheapest at
$2.95. A year earlier, I'd shoplifted a book from this same store, a
hardcover copy of "Lennon Remembers," tucking the book into the
large pocket of my brother's Marine Corps field jacket. But then,
after discovering Steinbeck and the thrills of reading, I could no
longer bring myself to steal a book.
I often ventured into San Jose's disheveled downtown and wandered
the mazes of the cavernous used bookstores near the state college. I
was ignored by the clerks while I sat for hours, skipping from book
to book, with an occasional detour through the stacks of used
"Playboys."
(continued on Thursday)
=====TODAY'S BOOK=====================
THE YELLOW-LIGHTED BOOKSHOP
A Memoir, A History
by Lewis Buzbee (nonfiction)
Published by Graywolf Press
ISBN: 9781555975104
Copyright (c) 2006 by Lewis Buzbee
YELLOW (Part 3 of 5)
======================================
(continued from Tuesday)
This rainy afternoon my wife and daughter are out of the house, and
I've got a few hours to kill. An odd phrase that, time to kill, when
we almost always mean to bring back time, increase time, re-animate
time, actually hold it more tightly. What better place to enjoy the
stretched hours than a bookstore. I pop around the corner to our
local store, which I've already scoured twice in the past three
days, but it seems worth another try, and besides, the weather is
perfect for it. I may be in the store for five minutes or an hour,
it doesn't really matter. I do know that I'll leave with some book
and head home to spend hours, both lost and found, in the perfect
solitude of my sagging green easy chair.
I cruise my usual route through the store, past the stacked faces of
new hardcovers and the wall of recent paperbacks, once around the
magazines. Even though I was here yesterday morning, every day
brings new arrivals, and while there's nothing startling today,
there's still pleasure in looking at the same books again, wondering
about that one on the history of the compass, or admiring the
photograph of the moon on this novel, the bulk and sheen of all
these books. I'm in a secretive mood--because of the rain, I
imagine--and I'm drawn into the Fiction section by the
claustrophobic air of its narrow canyon.
The other customers are evenly distributed throughout the store as
if they've chosen their interests by the space around a given island
of books. Everyone is holding a book. Some are reading from the
text, others only the backcover copy. I recognize one of the
browsers from the neighborhood, an elderly man dressed in black and
a squashed cowboy hat. He sports a thin, braided ponytail and a gray
Walt Whitman beard and carries an ornate silver-knobbed cane. Today,
he's flipping through the top shelf of Mythology, angling the
volumes out from their neat row, quickly scanning them.
I'm enough of a book snoop to know that this man, a nodding
acquaintance, usually reads either pulpy-looking Science Fiction, or
Greek and Latin classics in their originals. The habit of book-
snooping is, I admit, an annoying one, peering over the shoulder of
the person on the bus, or at a cafe trying to decipher the cover of
an open book someone's busy reading. There's no judgment in the
titles I uncover, it's mere curiosity, for the most part, with a bit
of selfishness to it. I might find what I'm looking for in the arm
of a passing pedestrian.
I turn to the Fiction wall and regard the face-outs, the stacks of
new and popular titles whose front covers are revealed. They're all
pleasing, but nothing catches my attention, so I tilt my head to the
right and follow the closely packed spines of the other novels and
stories. Nothing grabs me, and I feel adrift for a moment. After
seventeen years of working in bookstores, and even more, before and
since, as a victim of book lust, I've gazed at millions of feet of
shelf space, and I should be quite over the allure, the slight
magic that's entranced me, but I'm not. I continue to graze,
unappeased. And then, there it is, on the bottom shelf, the book
I've been looking for the last few days, even though I didn't know
it existed.
Andrei Platonov's "The Fierce and Beautiful World," a collection of
short stories. The title alone is irresistible, but it's the book
itself, the object, that sways me, its beauty and feel. Platonov, I
learn, was a daring Russian writer who wrote during, and against,
the Soviet regime, the author of many novels and stories, a cult
figure in his own lifetime. The editorial copy describes his stories
as harsh fables of life in a totalitarian state. It's not a new
book--it was written before WW II--and this reprint is already a few
years old. "The Fierce and Beautiful World" is a thin paperback but
solid, graced by a black-and-white photograph of a futurist
spherical building; the title appears in a purple box with bright
red and white type. The spine uses the same colors, space-age purple
and red, with elegant, simple typography. I stoop to retrieve the
book from the bottom shelf, dust my hand over the cover, weigh the
fit in my folded palm, and open it. The pages are thick and creamy,
and thumb nicely. The end papers, unusual in a paperback, are
colored, that riveting purple again. I tuck the book under my arm.
Sold.
But I won't leave the store just yet. Like the rest of my fellow
customers, I'm happy to be here in this cozy and solid place, happy
to be alone among others.
Like many book-lust sufferers, there was nothing in my past that
would clearly lead me to my obsession with books and bookstores. I
grew up in San Jose, California, a prosperous though decidedly
unliterary suburb fifty miles south of San Francisco. In the early
1970s, when I was in high school, San Jose did not boast any
world-class bookstore--no City Lights, no Shakespeare and Co., no
Blackwell's, no Strand--but there were bookstores.
I became a voracious reader and book luster at fifteen, after
discovering "The Grapes of Wrath." For several years, I cared little
about a store's atmosphere or reputation; I was concerned only that
it carried books.
When I wanted new books, I hung out at the local B. Dalton located
in the dark basement of our biggest shopping center, or at a tiny
Little Professor tucked into the back end of a nearby strip mall. I
bought mass-market editions of Steinbeck (every single one within
six months), Cheever, Updike (for the respectable naughty bits),
Vonnegut, Heller, Barth, Barthelme, Pynchon. I read with no
particular aim or agenda and allowed the blurbs on the back of one
cheap paperback to lead me to the next.
Each Thursday night, I accompanied my mother to the Valley Fair
mall, and while she was getting her hair done, I'd wander to the
neighboring department store's book section, where I purchased my
first hardcover, the Modern Library's "Complete Tales of Saki." I
knew nothing about Saki except that it was a pseudonym (a fact
irresistible to a teenager), but I loved the red and blue and green
cloth covers of the Modern Library, and Saki was the cheapest at
$2.95. A year earlier, I'd shoplifted a book from this same store, a
hardcover copy of "Lennon Remembers," tucking the book into the
large pocket of my brother's Marine Corps field jacket. But then,
after discovering Steinbeck and the thrills of reading, I could no
longer bring myself to steal a book.
I often ventured into San Jose's disheveled downtown and wandered
the mazes of the cavernous used bookstores near the state college. I
was ignored by the clerks while I sat for hours, skipping from book
to book, with an occasional detour through the stacks of used
"Playboys."
(continued on Thursday)
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选择“don't run on pages on this domain”
