It's Always the Lesbian in the Carharts

A new bookstore opened recently. 'Bookstore' gives the wrong impression. It is more of a large, agoraphobic space with many tables, stacked with even more books. A sense of desperation in the air, that this place is some eleventh hour effort to cut losses on publisher overstocks. So many books that they would be more appropriately measured in bulk weight rather than individual copies.

Thomas Pynchon, $1.65/lb. !

I go for it though, the wearhouse aesthetic. Both small, deliberately obscure independent bookstores and big bougeoie chains like Borders, with their tasteful lighting and comfy couches, put me off. Both indulge the pretentiousness of us 'readers.' There has emerged a cult around reading that venerates books enough to ensure that people don't read them. 'Oh, I love books' is the mating call of the North American moron. Really? Even the phone book? Reading shouldn't be considered a sacrament, it should just be the way things are.

In this big, gray room with industrial flourescent lighting, books seem less precious and more as they should: like commodities, like necessities or staples of everyday life. On long row tables these books are displayed like cuts of salmon; in piles they are produce, under exposed air ducts, just as in the local big-box grocery store. And why not? Nectarines are cheap, plentiful and enjoyable, so are a lot of books, why not sell them in the same way?

There is little order to the book pile-ups, alphabetical or otherwise, which gives browsing the fun, predatory edge of snapping up an unexpected find. The Nanny Diaries lies next to Cormac MacCarthy. Maxine Hong-Kingston, Gunter Grass and Shopaholic find themselves in an unlikely three-way.

Shopaholic. The Nanny Diaries. 'Chick Lit' is too polite; 'Clit Lit' is more appropriately tasteless. One hopes that if Zadie Smith ever encountered the authors in some dark Knopf hallway that she would--very cogently--beat the shit out of them. Impale them with their own stilettos for setting literacy back farther than could the oeuvres of Jewel and Paris Hilton combined.

No, I am wrong. Paris Hilton wrote a book. That the handlers of this television-made sexbot felt it necessary that she write a book and--what's more--that there are readers for this book, shows how literate our society really is. Even the celebrity wet/dry vacs among us write books! And there is a market for them!

If I had ghostwritten her memoir though, I would have titled it Paris Hilton: An Oral History.

I bought ZZ Packer's Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Only five dolla! My cup runneth over. For the puropses of that moment, and that moment only, the free-market seemed to be working surprisingly well.

Inspired, I decided it would be best if I read it while drinking coffee elsewhere. There are about four coffee places I go to and am sort of a regular at all of them. So much so the java jockeys start my order when they see me walk through the door. Often I would actually like something different, but I don't have the guts to tell them. Plus I easily develop crushes on whomever serves me my caffeinated fixes. All the more reason to drink coffee elsewhere.

There was a rumor of an undiscovered cafe across town, so that's where I went. Turned out to be sort of a lesbian dive. Would that be a muff dive? And the only thing worse than a cafe with too many people is one with only a single table of people, as their conversation tends to be unignorable. I tried to concentrate, but their banter kept finding its way into my book. The story was about rival girlscout troops. I knew I wasn't reading as closely as I should when one of the protagonists said "Shit, after a couple beers, I'd tap that too!" The peel of laughter from the table across the room snapped me out of it. Nope, it wasn't the protagonist, it was the lady with the mohawk and Carharts.

It's a strange moment when your confusion is actually resolved by the lesbian with a mohawk.