Stories
A. S. Patric
When you work in a bookstore, recommendations are a part of the job, but customers mostly know what they’re looking for. They go with their own judgments or trust in blurbs.
Occasionally there’s a weird request, like an old woman who wanted the address of Shakespeare and Company (37 rue de la Bûcherie, 75005 Paris), an American tourist asking for a book of camel trails through Australia; or the couple who once asked me for erotica. Everything I suggested, from Anais Nin and Henry Miller to Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade was ‘tame’ and ‘passé.’ What was funny was how much the couple looked Born Again Christian.
I had a woman ask me for a recommendation not long ago. Someone she knew was in the hospital and she wanted me to help her find a book that would help her want to live. All the booksellers I told about this woman laughed. Mostly at the ridiculous immensity of this task she was laying on me in my efforts to help her select an appropriate book.
A nice little anecdote right? That’s the trouble with stories. So often they go for punch lines, and a resolution of any kind is a punch line, even if it isn’t funny.
This woman had already enlisted the help of someone else before she came to me. There was a pile of recommended books that hadn’t quite fit the bill. Maybe she hadn’t mentioned the hospital to the other bookseller. Just that the book she was hoping for, couldn’t have suffering in it; no death or dying; it couldn’t be tragic; and preferably fiction.
There’s a laugh here as well. Just take a brief look at your bookshelves and eliminate novels with those elements. What have you got left?
She told me that there was someone in hospital she wanted to buy a book for, and that hopefully she could lift the patient’s spirits. I looked for a few books in biography instead of fiction but we kept missing the ideal gift. Bits of information kept coming through from what we were eliminating but I didn’t feel like we were getting closer.
This was becoming a long search. A recommendation doesn’t usually take longer than five minutes, but this woman had already had ten minutes worth of recommendations before she came to me. And here we were looking for over fifteen minutes. Bit by bit, I got more information to work with but I didn’t really get a clear picture until later.
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This is what I've come to think.
The woman in hospital was the customer’s daughter. She has tried to commit suicide. It wasn't the first time. The customer was looking through book after book, searching for a solution to an unsolvable problem. How might she understand what her daughter had done? How might she find a way to make her daughter want to live again? She left the store without buying anything in the end.
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This is one of the best posts I've ever read. I read it twice, with intensity. I have no answer.
ReplyDeletehuh.
ReplyDeleteMaybe whenever the woman feels the urge to end it all she goes on a hunt for positive books...for herself...but then why the story? Perhaps she is ashamed to be feeling so low. Like people who ask for intimate products at the chemist's and say "It's for a friend".
Geeze, I'm with Mark. Tough to answer - superb post Alec.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to respond with bit of a question - is it also a great tragedy that we do not seem to have art or literature that can convince someone to keep living?
Though I don't know if that's true. I think we do have stories to convince some people to live, but not everyone. Although, I could never understand what drives someone toward suicide.
Once again, excellent post, Alec.
Well, I'm delighted you liked it so much Mark. Questions open things up and answers close them off, so the world's a more interesting place if we keep looking to understand, rather than saying it's all understood. I hope that doesn't sound like an answer. There's a question mark in there somewhere, I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteScreamish, the search for a painless book is interesting but the tragedy of this woman was certainly my point. The most important thing for me was to turn what was just an amusing anecdote into something which revealed the suffering of the woman looking for that painless book.
Thanks for reading Ash, and especially for the question. I used to wonder what I'd read or write if I was dying. And sometimes my answer is, nothing. I would let all the words that I've taken into my soul dilate again. At least I'd hope for that re-emergence of life, thought and passion.
Interesting post, Alec. A few ideas have sprung to mind since reading this a few days ago. Maps and atlases can inspire great thoughts of adventure and hope. How many of us have run our fingers along a map, or spun a globe, and imagined our futures at the tip of our finger. The non-fiction genre also offers a huge variety of choice. Philosophy, gardening, photography, science, mathematics, food porn, etc. Then there are the puzzle books (though I admit that suffering is quite possibly inherent within that particular pasttime).
ReplyDeleteThat is not to dismiss your point, which you have revealed perfectly I think, since the test of empathy with a person's tragic situation is the desire to find a solution.
Cheers.
Hi Brad. It's funny you mention Atlases because I wrote another story about a customer who regularly walks into the store and spends hours at the atlases with a small magnifying glass. This has been going on for years. I found myself wondering what he might be thinking and feeling, looking through that magnifying glass, at those many places on those many pages for those many hours. The story is called 'The Slow Fall' and you'll find it posted on this blog on April 21 if you're interested.
ReplyDeleteAnd in regard to my point (thanks by the way for the kind words) I laid this out as a sketch really, for a story I'm intending to write. The test of empathy might actually be to let go of the idea that we can find a solution to another person's tragedy (since that's likely to be beyond us) but to place ourselves within that person's life. I think that's the definition of compassion.
hi Alec, very compelling post. i don't have an answer either.
ReplyDeleteI work in a (independent) bookshop as well and i know what it is like to deal with strange questions, but i've never dealt with anything like this before. it is part of what i enjoy most working in a bookshop though, the characterful and bizarre people with strange questions. some of the most fascinating people i've met, i've met while working.
i found your blog via overland. i like it very much.
cheers.
Great to have you visit my blog, Wordhome. Glad you like it.
ReplyDeleteI've written about customers so often now I've got two or three regulars who have actually asked to be put into a story. Not too long ago, one of these characters came in and eagerly bought Etchings #8 because I'd already told him he was in it--> He's the guy who carries a Pomeranian dog in a canvas bag everywhere he goes.