On our trip to the airport at the end of our North Carolina adventure we stopped for a brief moment in the little college town of Ashville hoping to find some local grub (which later become the NC bar-b-q tale told a few posts down). We found ourselves in a mixed college neighborhood with shop lined narrow streets with high end dress and antique shops next to head shops next to tiny bars across from nuevo-Indian curry stands. My kind of place, really. I may not like the food, or afford the apperal, or drink the micro-brewed beer, but there was more creativity and entreprenuership in one square block of that town than exists in all of Brandon, Florida. And I’ll applaud that all day long until the blisters pop.
As fate would have it the only place I could find to park was next to a used bookstore. My thoughts of hunger quickly receded, replaced with the hopes that only a used bookstore in the heart of a college town can inspire. I can’t properly describe the joy. This was the real deal. I’m not sure what this space was used for long ago, but it wasn’t a bookstore. Brick walls, tin cielings, makshift partisions, badly built new floors added to deteriorating old. Mortar held in place with several decades worth of advertisement. Odd alcoves and makeshift shelves. Every inch of space lovingly maintinaed by a staff of dedicated if not mildly distracted brand of hippies sent down by God to look after great books and in the case of used music, great music.
In one of those hidden alcoves was a staff favorite section. Being hidden and far from direct lighting the only source of illumination were several strands of Christmas lights strung over the top shelf of the display. And there on that top shelf was one of my all time favorite titles, from an author I am honor bound to rescue in the event I should find him or his works neglected in just such a type of establishment. There sat Mark Helprin’s ‘Winter’s Tale’ with a loving anecdote from an appreciative member of the staff telling me what I already knew, which is just how wonderful this work of fiction is. I left the book alone. I figured it was doing more good singing its praises to the masses then it would by being ‘rescued’ by me. Besides, it was clearly loved.
I roamed the stacks, I looked for other authors I feel I have to liberate (Eco, MacDonald, Hammett, Crowley to name a few) and there on a dusty spinning rack full of used DVD’s that no one had touched in a while was a little piece of gold;’Maybe Logic’ by Robert Anton Wilson, co-author of the Illuminatus Trilogy and founder of the Church of the SubGenuis, and, sadly recently deceased. Wilson faces potential obscurity and the world would be lesser for it, do your part, Hail Eris and keep the memory alive.
Also on the bookshelves I found another Helprin title I did not own (“Ellis Island and other stories”) in hard back for a reasonable price. I took my loot to the register where an aging hipster rang me up. I mentioned Helprin and she beamed, we both sang the praises of “Winter’s Tale”. I then tested a theory that has panned out several times before and asked her if she had read another favorite book of mine, “Little Big” by Crowley. Her smile broadened, indeed she had read the book and loved it. My amateur unscientific study gains a little more weight. We briefly chatted a little more about favorite authors and for brief moment all was good in the world.
I asked her where we could eat, what she would recommend. Well, she was a vegan and recommended the veggie burrito from a place up the street. And then it hit me, two people just about as far apart ideologically speaking as you can get sharing in the mutual love of wonderful fiction. How great is that?