Anodyne
Sunday, April 01, 2007
 

I'm Looking For This Book...

(verbal tics and delivery reproduced verbatim)

CUSTOMER: That book...they made a film from it...a documentary-type film...the guy that killed that family, then went crazy.

CJB: You're describing a whole genre there.

CUSTOMER [brightens]: The killer was two guys! [sic]

CJB: And the killers went crazy?

CUSTOMER: No, the guy did...the writer.

CJB'S BRAINWAVE: Pills and booze certainly unmoored Truman.

VERDICT: In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

Same customer:

CUSTOMER: This book...by this famous writer-guy. This guy goes home to Brooklyn. And he meets his, eh, uncle there, in this bookshop, that sells antiquity books [sic], and the guy who works there, the owner, he's been in jail--

CJB: --we all have. You don't get your bookseller's license until you walk out of the pen.

CUSTOMER [soldiering on]: --and he's got this plan to forge antiquity books [sic], and--

CJB'S BRAINWAVE ["Brooklyn" + Smoke]: The writer wouldn't be Paul Auster, would he?

CUSTOMER: Yes!

VERDICT: The Brooklyn Follies, by Paul Auster

And:

DIFFERENT CUSTOMER #1: Do you have The Secret?

And:

DIFFERENT CUSTOMER #2: D'you have The Secret?

And:

DIFFERENT CUSTOMER #3: I'm looking for The Secret...

CJB [channeling Basil Fawlty]: WE DON'T HAVE THE FUCKING SECRET! AND WE WON'T! EVER!

Also encountered this afternoon: the opinionated eavesdropper who took issue with my recommendation of Robert Fisk's The Great War For Civilisation, aggressively demanding me to name "the best book you've read articulating the exact opposite point of view." Recognizing this demand for the wheezy Humanities 101 sophistry that it is (thanks, Plato!) I in turn requested the eavesdropper's favorite book fufilling this criteria, only to learn that he had scanned, but never actually read, the Fisk. Game set and match.

VERDICT: Self-satisfaction. Plus financial satisfaction at watching a customer buy an Italo Calvino novel on the eavesdropper's recommendation, thereby revealing the presence of something approximating shared taste, and watching the eavesdropper buy a Paulo Coehlo novel on the customer's recommendation, a better revenge than I could have ever hoped for.


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