Sixpence House and a return to blogging

It’s been a long couple of weeks. Between starting at a new job and being the stand-in managing editor of the Rumpus for a week, and then going back to the job for a couple days, all before Isaac was safely back at the helm of the Rumpus, I just worked ten fairly packed days in a row. But finally 3 o’clock on Sunday afternoon arrived, and the striving could stop for a little while. I’d have a couple days off and no reason apart from whim to work on anything in particular. So I bought a Sunday Times and another book from my store (Sixpence House), then I bicycled home, showered, made a martini, and sat on the couch in my bathrobe and relaxed. Tried to write a couple times but couldn’t muster the right frame of mind, and I finally decided to just settle into a “weekend” (Monday & Tuesday) of making music and seeing friends and reading.

The Times has been pretty dull so far and I regret having bought it, the way you regret buying a disappointing sandwich. (Should have gone for the tunafish.) But Sixpence House, by Paul Collins, cost half as much as the newspaper did, and it has given me ten times the pleasure. It’s about the time when Collins was living in Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh border, a town of 1500 people and 40 bookstores, the modern-day center of the antiquarian book trade. He eventually started working at one of the biggest bookstores in town, the Castle (which occupies a castle, duh), and the book is turning into the story of his adventure there.

Somewhere along the way today I lost the bookmark I’ve been using and, out of the house without any paper on me, I was obliged to use my comb to keep my place. I was reading in Four Barrel, regularly distracted by a woman sitting behind Torrey; she reminded me of a girl I had an intense crush on in junior high. I’m thinking that the name Adrienne would suit this woman too, whatever her actual name is. I have a hard time keeping my eyes off her — it’s strange what power these old emotional intensities can have over us, even almost twenty years after the event in question. Eventually I focus again on my book: Collins overhears two booksellers complaining about the Internet, that “nobody makes money on it” and that you can’t see the book before buying it, and condition is everything in antiquarian books, so what’s the use?

I am tempted to interrupt, to correct them, and then I decide: no, let it rest. I buy antiquarian books online all the time; for a scholar who depends on old books, it is a wondrous tool. And people do make money from it. But when you search online, you generally already know what it is that you are looking for. To look for a specific book in Hay is a hopeless task; you can only find the books that are looking for you, the ones you didn’t even know to ask for in the first place. You come to Hay so that you can pick up a magazine you’ve never even heard of and read about Leibnitz’s talking hound.

As it happens, Sixpence House itself was a book that found me. I was putting a bunch of books on sale out front, and it was in the stack, and having just blogged about something Collins has been up to lately, I decided it was meant to be, and I held it back for myself, and I’ve set aside all other reading in order to enjoy it exclusively since then. But then again, a lot of books that relate to books and bookselling have found me recently, before I was even consciously looking for a job. My current reading list has bloated to the point where I’m juggling six books, soon to be seven or eight, so I think the only sensible plan is to read them all, one at a time, and share extracts here as I go.

Today we went to IKEA and solved several problems with an investment of 2 hours and $150, and then ate such a big lunch, we’re having strawberry shortcake and champagne for dinner. Viva la vida! This is exactly what it means to me to be leading “a cheerful aimless life.”

posted: 10 August 10
under: Open Folio