英语书籍：The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop（4）
=====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 4 of 5)
======================================
(continued from Wednesday)
My bookstore obsession grew to the point where I'd search for new
shops during family trips, as though that were the reason for our
travel. In cities up and down California, I came across stores--in
Monterey, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Berkeley--where
the atmosphere was markedly different from my neighborhood haunts.
In these stores books were not treated as mere commodity, and there
was a palpable sense of reverence for books and the time it took to
read them. Since this was the 1970s, such reverence was often made
evident through the decor--dark, rough paneling, potted ferns, and
faded tapestries. For the last two years of high school I was
unaware that such a place, Upstart Crow and Co. Bookstore and
Coffeehouse, had opened a short bike ride from my home. I had to
trip over it to find it, and when I did, I was trying to impress a
date.
Upstart Crow was located in the Pruneyard, a rambling, two-story,
upscale outdoor mall done up in neo-Spanish colonial style, with
flowery, covered walkways, tiled fountains, a fake bell tower, and
terra-cotta roofs. The Pruneyard painted shopping as a leisurely
stroll, a perfect California day of spending, and I'd heard it was
quite the place for impressing a date. Mine was no ordinary date; I
was with the fair Selinda, and yet it became increasingly hard to
maintain my teenage cool after stumbling upon this cave of wonders.
Decades ahead of other book retailers, Upstart Crow's owners had
created something of a theme park, where the atmosphere (I'm sure
they thought of it as "ambience") was as much a draw as the
merchandise. There were foreign periodicals, ches*****oards, plenty of
big tables and comfy chairs, and summoning the tradition of the
English coffeehouse--shades of Dr. Johnson, "The Tatler," those who
made the eighteenth-century coffeehouse an institution--Upstart Crow
brought the first espresso bar to our neck of the woods.
The walls of this coffeehouse and bookstore were covered with framed
prints and photographs of writers who were surely famous, even
though I had not yet heard of them: Geoffrey Chaucer, Rudyard
Kipling, Virginia Woolf, Edith Sitwell, Graham Greene, E.M. Forster
(who for some reason appeared in his photo in drag as Queen
Victoria), and dozens of others, mostly British. Typed labels
identified the writers, and I whispered these names aloud to
remember them. There was a close sense of history in this brand-new
place, a sense of the importance of the past and its legacy, a sense
of history I found remarkable, growing up as I had in pastless
California. What struck me most, however, was that these famous
writers lived on. Their photos were more than decor; their books
stocked the store's shelves.
The name of the store was enough to make me feel connected to a past
I could as yet only intuit. The Upstart Crow is Shakespeare, so
named by an envious contemporary of the Bard, Rob't Greene, who
wrote,
yet trust them not: for there is an Upstart Crow, beautified with
our feathers, that with his Tygers Hart wrapt in a Players hyde,
supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best
of you...
The quote appeared on the store's bookmarks, along with a Leonard
Baskin drawing of a crow. I "knew" it: here was proof that there
were people in the world, adults who weren't high school teachers,
who understood the importance of Shakespeare and books and writing.
I still have one of those bookmarks, along with a few other things
from Crow, a captain's chair and a plain white coffee mug, both of
which I stole after four years of happy employment. But I don't have
the orange book bag with the perfect-length shoulder strap. That,
and much else, has been lost.
It was more than the atmosphere that grabbed me. There were the
usual stacks of beautifully photographed and reasonably priced cat
books, and rows of mass-market Self-Help and Romance, but also
stacks of books by the writers whose photos graced the walls, and
many others, all engagingly displayed. The books I'd sought in other
stores were always stuffed into a far corner or downstairs, but here
every book was promoted. I wandered the shelves and tables with a
gape-mouthed reverence, gravitating to the S's in Fiction, where I
found a book that I had already purchased and read, but whose
present incarnation amazed me.
"The Long Valley" was one of my favorite Steinbecks, mine was a tiny
mass-market edition. Upstart Crow carried a Viking Compass edition,
a trade paperback with beautiful type and a serious, Expressionist
cover. This edition made me feel the power of its words before I'd
turned to the first page.
Selinda and I sat in the coffee bar, sipping Cafe Mit Schlag, a
drink I ordered for its name and which thankfully came festooned
with whipped cream. On the way out that night, I paid for "The Long
Valley" at the front counter and asked for a job application.
It's a good thing bookstores are places for hanging out, spending
more time than money, because Upstart Crow didn't hire me for nearly
two years, although not for lack of trying on my part. I was there
nearly every week, as if I might be hired by sheer obstinance, and
three times I filled out an application, which was a written test of
literary knowledge. The first time I took the test I missed only one
question: What category of books does Donna Meilach write? (Arts and
Crafts). Charlotte, the manager, was always friendly but leery of
hiring a high school student. The summer after my freshman year of
college, Charlotte brought me on for temporary help with shelving,
finally tired, I imagine, of listening to my wheedling. I was so
certain I'd be taken on permanently, I left a thriving career as a
7-Eleven Slurpee jockey.
During my first week at Crow, I did nothing but shelve box upon box
of Penguin paperbacks. At first I was hesitant, ferrying small
handfuls of green, black, and orange books from one wrong section to
another, but soon I was arm-loading twenty to thirty at a time, all
now broken down by subject and precisely alphabetized. I was
thrilled by the weighty order of the books, and by the vast web of
names and titles I did not know; this may have been the moment when
I realized there would never be enough time in my life to read
everything.
At the end of that first week, passing the new hardcover releases,
I happened upon a book that would not let me go, John Steinbeck's
"The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights," a posthumous work,
recently published, with a cover in imitation of an illuminated
manuscript, deckled (or rough) pages on the fore-edge, maroon cloth
under the dust jacket, and perfectly pristine. I had read every
Steinbeck in existence, and knew, I thought, all there was to be
know on the subject, so such a book seemed impossible to me. And
there were five copies! Charlotte tried to talk me out of buying it,
and she was right; I would have to shelve for five hours to pay for
it, even with my discount. One of the other clerks, Greta Ray, came
up next to me, stroked the book lightly with the palm of her hand,
and said, "It really is beautiful, isn't it?" It was beautiful, so I
bought it.
I knew that I had found what I could only describe then as a cool
job, although the feeling was more profound and complex. I felt as
if I had found the proper city in which to dwell. What I knew that
day, what drew me to the bookstore, I would not be able to
articulate for many years. But my inability to describe the feeling
did nothing to diminish its power over me. Books, I knew then and
now, give body to our ideas and imaginations, make them flesh in the
world; a bookstore is the city where our fleshed-out inner selves
reside.
While I shelved the last of that day's shipment, the books appeared
like a city's lighted windows, seductive glimpses of the lives that
dwelled between their covers. This was more than retail, this was
pleasure, both intangible and sensual. I also sensed that the
customers and clerks who wandered the streets of this city were
like-minded souls, who believed that the book and what it held were
one and the same, both common and rare.
(continued on Friday)
=====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 4 of 5)
======================================
(continued from Wednesday)
My bookstore obsession grew to the point where I'd search for new
shops during family trips, as though that were the reason for our
travel. In cities up and down California, I came across stores--in
Monterey, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Berkeley--where
the atmosphere was markedly different from my neighborhood haunts.
In these stores books were not treated as mere commodity, and there
was a palpable sense of reverence for books and the time it took to
read them. Since this was the 1970s, such reverence was often made
evident through the decor--dark, rough paneling, potted ferns, and
faded tapestries. For the last two years of high school I was
unaware that such a place, Upstart Crow and Co. Bookstore and
Coffeehouse, had opened a short bike ride from my home. I had to
trip over it to find it, and when I did, I was trying to impress a
date.
Upstart Crow was located in the Pruneyard, a rambling, two-story,
upscale outdoor mall done up in neo-Spanish colonial style, with
flowery, covered walkways, tiled fountains, a fake bell tower, and
terra-cotta roofs. The Pruneyard painted shopping as a leisurely
stroll, a perfect California day of spending, and I'd heard it was
quite the place for impressing a date. Mine was no ordinary date; I
was with the fair Selinda, and yet it became increasingly hard to
maintain my teenage cool after stumbling upon this cave of wonders.
Decades ahead of other book retailers, Upstart Crow's owners had
created something of a theme park, where the atmosphere (I'm sure
they thought of it as "ambience") was as much a draw as the
merchandise. There were foreign periodicals, ches*****oards, plenty of
big tables and comfy chairs, and summoning the tradition of the
English coffeehouse--shades of Dr. Johnson, "The Tatler," those who
made the eighteenth-century coffeehouse an institution--Upstart Crow
brought the first espresso bar to our neck of the woods.
The walls of this coffeehouse and bookstore were covered with framed
prints and photographs of writers who were surely famous, even
though I had not yet heard of them: Geoffrey Chaucer, Rudyard
Kipling, Virginia Woolf, Edith Sitwell, Graham Greene, E.M. Forster
(who for some reason appeared in his photo in drag as Queen
Victoria), and dozens of others, mostly British. Typed labels
identified the writers, and I whispered these names aloud to
remember them. There was a close sense of history in this brand-new
place, a sense of the importance of the past and its legacy, a sense
of history I found remarkable, growing up as I had in pastless
California. What struck me most, however, was that these famous
writers lived on. Their photos were more than decor; their books
stocked the store's shelves.
The name of the store was enough to make me feel connected to a past
I could as yet only intuit. The Upstart Crow is Shakespeare, so
named by an envious contemporary of the Bard, Rob't Greene, who
wrote,
yet trust them not: for there is an Upstart Crow, beautified with
our feathers, that with his Tygers Hart wrapt in a Players hyde,
supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best
of you...
The quote appeared on the store's bookmarks, along with a Leonard
Baskin drawing of a crow. I "knew" it: here was proof that there
were people in the world, adults who weren't high school teachers,
who understood the importance of Shakespeare and books and writing.
I still have one of those bookmarks, along with a few other things
from Crow, a captain's chair and a plain white coffee mug, both of
which I stole after four years of happy employment. But I don't have
the orange book bag with the perfect-length shoulder strap. That,
and much else, has been lost.
It was more than the atmosphere that grabbed me. There were the
usual stacks of beautifully photographed and reasonably priced cat
books, and rows of mass-market Self-Help and Romance, but also
stacks of books by the writers whose photos graced the walls, and
many others, all engagingly displayed. The books I'd sought in other
stores were always stuffed into a far corner or downstairs, but here
every book was promoted. I wandered the shelves and tables with a
gape-mouthed reverence, gravitating to the S's in Fiction, where I
found a book that I had already purchased and read, but whose
present incarnation amazed me.
"The Long Valley" was one of my favorite Steinbecks, mine was a tiny
mass-market edition. Upstart Crow carried a Viking Compass edition,
a trade paperback with beautiful type and a serious, Expressionist
cover. This edition made me feel the power of its words before I'd
turned to the first page.
Selinda and I sat in the coffee bar, sipping Cafe Mit Schlag, a
drink I ordered for its name and which thankfully came festooned
with whipped cream. On the way out that night, I paid for "The Long
Valley" at the front counter and asked for a job application.
It's a good thing bookstores are places for hanging out, spending
more time than money, because Upstart Crow didn't hire me for nearly
two years, although not for lack of trying on my part. I was there
nearly every week, as if I might be hired by sheer obstinance, and
three times I filled out an application, which was a written test of
literary knowledge. The first time I took the test I missed only one
question: What category of books does Donna Meilach write? (Arts and
Crafts). Charlotte, the manager, was always friendly but leery of
hiring a high school student. The summer after my freshman year of
college, Charlotte brought me on for temporary help with shelving,
finally tired, I imagine, of listening to my wheedling. I was so
certain I'd be taken on permanently, I left a thriving career as a
7-Eleven Slurpee jockey.
During my first week at Crow, I did nothing but shelve box upon box
of Penguin paperbacks. At first I was hesitant, ferrying small
handfuls of green, black, and orange books from one wrong section to
another, but soon I was arm-loading twenty to thirty at a time, all
now broken down by subject and precisely alphabetized. I was
thrilled by the weighty order of the books, and by the vast web of
names and titles I did not know; this may have been the moment when
I realized there would never be enough time in my life to read
everything.
At the end of that first week, passing the new hardcover releases,
I happened upon a book that would not let me go, John Steinbeck's
"The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights," a posthumous work,
recently published, with a cover in imitation of an illuminated
manuscript, deckled (or rough) pages on the fore-edge, maroon cloth
under the dust jacket, and perfectly pristine. I had read every
Steinbeck in existence, and knew, I thought, all there was to be
know on the subject, so such a book seemed impossible to me. And
there were five copies! Charlotte tried to talk me out of buying it,
and she was right; I would have to shelve for five hours to pay for
it, even with my discount. One of the other clerks, Greta Ray, came
up next to me, stroked the book lightly with the palm of her hand,
and said, "It really is beautiful, isn't it?" It was beautiful, so I
bought it.
I knew that I had found what I could only describe then as a cool
job, although the feeling was more profound and complex. I felt as
if I had found the proper city in which to dwell. What I knew that
day, what drew me to the bookstore, I would not be able to
articulate for many years. But my inability to describe the feeling
did nothing to diminish its power over me. Books, I knew then and
now, give body to our ideas and imaginations, make them flesh in the
world; a bookstore is the city where our fleshed-out inner selves
reside.
While I shelved the last of that day's shipment, the books appeared
like a city's lighted windows, seductive glimpses of the lives that
dwelled between their covers. This was more than retail, this was
pleasure, both intangible and sensual. I also sensed that the
customers and clerks who wandered the streets of this city were
like-minded souls, who believed that the book and what it held were
one and the same, both common and rare.
(continued on Friday)
选择“Disable on www.wenxuecity.com”
选择“don't run on pages on this domain”
