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What is the point of bad dates if not to have amusing anecdotes for your friends?
“I’d like the chance to get to know your tastes,” she says, feeling a bit like a character in a porno.
I find slim literary memoirs about little old men whose little old wives have died from cancer to be absolutely intolerable.
“I worry for you. If you love everyone, you’ll end up having hurt feelings most of the time. I suppose, relative to the length of your life, you feel as if you’ve known me a rather long time.
“Yes, she keeps saying that,” A.J. says. “I warned her about giving love that hasn’t yet been earned, but honestly, I think it’s the influence of that insidious Elmo. He loves everyone, you know?”
“I’m familiar with Elmo,” Jenny says. She wants to cry.
But maybe that’s what happens to all children at a certain age. Some children are left in shoe stores. And some children are left in toy stores. And some children are left in sandwich shops. And your whole life is determined by what store you get left in. She does not want to live in the sandwich shop.
Ugh, A.J. thinks. Two of his least favorite things (postmortem narrators and young-adult novels) in one book.
“Or maybe Lewis’s point is that Edmund didn’t need much coaxing to betray his family.” “That’s very cynical,” Amelia says. “Have you had Turkish Delight, Amelia?” “No,” she says. “I’ll have to get you some,” he says. “What if I love it?” she asks. “I’ll probably think less of you.”
“You don’t want to hear my sad stories, do you?” “Sure I do,” she says. “I love sad stories.”
“Friedman gets at something specific about what it is to lose someone. How it isn’t one thing. He writes about how you lose and lose and lose.”
“I hate those guys,” he says. “They make me feel totally inadequate. Tell me something shitty about him so that I feel better.”
“Bah! Books are for nerds,” A.J. says. “Nerds like us.” When the check comes, A.J. pays despite the fact that it is customary for the sales rep to pay in such situations. “Are you sure?” Amelia asks.
Rosie crosses her arm. “That’s one of those things you say to sound smart, right?” she says. “But, really, you’re trying to make someone else feel stupid.”
“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings before,” he says as he puts his pants back on. “The memoirs thing.” She waves her hand. “Don’t worry about it. You can’t help the way you are.”
“Yes,” she says. “But this is not enough. You must find yourself good woman.”
“You think child is enough, but child grows old. You think work is enough, but work is not warm body.” He suspects Madame Olenska has already tossed back a few Stolis.
words. He has been alone for nearly six years. Grief is hard to bear, but being alone he has never much minded. Besides, he doesn’t want any old warm body. He wants Amelia Loman with her big heart and bad clothes. Someone like her, at least.
“You sound like Gollum,” A.J. says. “Who’s Gollum?” Maya wants to know. “Someone very nerdy that your father likes,” Amelia says.
“It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us,” the passage goes, “but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable. Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down a road. And someday, you do not know when, he, or indeed she, will be there. You will be loved because for the first time in your life, you will truly not be alone. You will have chosen to not be alone.”
Their happiness is not her unhappiness. Unless it is. What if there is only an equal ratio of happiness to unhappiness in the world at any given time? She should be nicer. It’s a well-known fact that hate shows up on your face once you’re forty.
It would be so easy, Ismay thinks. You walk out. You swim for a while. You swim too far. You don’t try to swim back. Your lungs fill up. It hurts for a bit, but then it’s over. Nothing ever hurts again, and your conscience is clear. You don’t leave a mess. Maybe your body washes up some day. Maybe it doesn’t. Daniel wouldn’t even look for her. Maybe he would look for her, but he certainly wouldn’t look very hard.
The book is The Awakening by Kate Chopin. How she had loved that novel (novella?) at seventeen.
“The thing about weddings,” he says, “is that they can make a person feel lonely as hell.”
She thinks about driving them both off the road and into the ocean, and the thought makes her happy, happier than she would have been if she’d only killed herself.
the only thing worse than a world with big chain bookstores was a world with NO big chain bookstores. At least the big stores sell books and not pharmaceuticals or lumber! At least some of the people who work at those stores have degrees in English literature and know how to read and curate books for people!
“Why should I calm down? I do not like the present. I do not like that thing and certainly not three of that thing in my house. I would rather you have bought my daughter something less destructive like a crack pipe.”
Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again.
“Well, the thing is, I rather like your brain.” He laughs at her, and she weeps a little.
“You seem remarkably unconcerned about my brain.” “Your brain’s toast. We both know that. But what about me?” “Poor Amy.” “Yes, before I was a bookseller’s wife. That was pitiable enough. Soon I’ll be the bookseller’s widow.”
Yes, Dad. Dad is what I am. Dad is what I became. The father of Maya. Maya’s dad. Dad. What a word. What a little big word. What a word and what a world! He is crying. His heart is too full, and no words to release it. I know what words do, he thinks. They let us feel less.
He will try again. He will never stop trying. “Maya, we are what we love. We are that we love.”
“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on.”
“Love?” he asks. He prays it has come out right. She furrows her brow and tries to read his face. “Gloves?” she asks. “Are your hands cold, Dad?” He nods, and she takes his hands in hers. His hands had been cold, and now they are warm, and he decides that he’s gotten close enough for today. Tomorrow, maybe, he will find the words.
It matters who placed A Wrinkle in Time in your twelve-year-old daughter’s nail-bitten fingers or who sold you that Let’s Go travel guide to Hawaii or who insisted that your aunt with the very particular tastes would surely adore Cloud Atlas.
“Turns out I really like bookstores. You know, I meet a lot of people in my line of work. A lot of folks pass through Alice Island, especially in the summer. I’ve seen movie people on vacation and I’ve seen music people and newspeople, too. There ain’t nobody in the world like book people. It’s a business of gentlemen and gentlewomen.”
I’m telling you. Bookstores attract the right kind of folk.
I do not believe in God. I have no religion. But this to me is as close to a church as I have known in this life. It is a holy place.
