Lonesome Dove is the main book I’m currently reading. But it is about 900 pages in length. 858 to be precise. And the font is, I’m speculating, about 10-point Times New Roman. I felt the need to get up and peruse some other books. Augustus and Deets and Call and the other fellas would be here when I got back.
“I’m going to go to one of the bookstores,” I said to CJ.
“Oh, you need another one?” she quipped.
“No, I just need to see what’s out there. There’s a Barnes & Noble and a Books-A-Million just down the way. I’ll be back in a few,” I said.
I grabbed my wallet, laced up my On Cloud running shoes, borrowed our daughter’s car keys, kissed CJ on the cheek, walked out the door, boarded the elevator, and walked towards her vehicle downstairs in the parking lot.
A summer rain had been on and off again throughout the day. The sky was that muggy FL haze common in summer. The traffic was light but constant on US HWY 98 between Destin and Panama City. I read the tags on the vehicles: TN, TX, KY, GA, and lots of local FL ones.
Fifteen minutes later I arrived at the Barnes & Noble. I walked in, eager to see how this one would be arranged book-wise. Again I was disapppointed to see there was no Classics section. Instead there were sections of Manga, Mystery/Thriller/True Crime, Romance and Fantasy, Bibles, New Age, Philosophy, a small Poetry section, and sections for what Barnes & Noble called Young Readers. And there was all manner of gifts–journals, coffee cups, bookmarks, stationery, pens, toys, etc.
Once I discovered that the classics would be hard to find, I went to the Fiction section and looked for what I took as the basics they’d surely have. I did at last find some Dickens, Faulkner, Hemingway, McCarthy, McMurtry, Powers, and Wharton, and Whitman. Hope, at last.
I pulled Powers’ Bewilderment off the shelf and read the first few paragraphs. Like his other books, I found them marvelous and instructive. Powers is focused on what’s being done to the natural world in the name of progress, and he has my ear.
A young man in his twenties appproached near where I stood reading. He kept getting closer and closer, such that I looked up to see if I was perhaps in his way, perhaps blocking his view. He never made eye contact. But he kept standing right next to me. It gave me what my deceased grandfather called the “heeby-jeebies,” so I reshelved the Powers novel and moved on to the Poetry section and perused some Whitman and other poets.
After the creeper moved on, I returned to the Fiction section and thumbed through some familiar literary friends’ books–Larry McMurtry, Edith Wharton, William Gaddis. I lost track of time. I knew CJ and the family would be making jokes of my being in a bookstore and likely would have wagered I’d return with a bag of purchases. But I didn’t give in. I simply made note of volumes I’ve yet to read, but that had caught my interest. There was one called Mailman by Grant that looked like a fun read. Plus I love the region that served as its primary setting.
Nothing really stood out to me–other than the fact that reading seems to be marketed to what sells, not necessarily what is actually lasting and good. Maybe that’s just the old codger coming out in me. That lament has probably been part of bibliophiles’ sentiment since Gutenberg blessed the world during the Reformation.
Back at the beach house now. The sun has popped out. And I’m back with McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and saddled in with Call and Gus and the boys en route to Montana, to see what happens.
We’re going out for seafood this evening. CJ will want some (no, many!) crab legs, and I’ll be on the hunt for grouper and shrimp.
MIND & MATTERS 