Confessions of a Bookseller

I listened to Simon and Thomas’ most recent podcast at the always entertaining and erudite Book Based Banter about the subject of Bookshops. It’s great hearing an in-depth discussion about favourite bookstores, thoughts about what makes an ideal bookshop and the possible fate of bookshops in the future. Hearing Thomas’ description of working in a bookshop where the staff had specialized knowledge and an enthusiastic interest in reading made me think back to my own brief period of working in a bookshop in Boston. I wish there were fond memories about it as being surrounded by books all day should have been a dream come true, but my experiences were anything but idyllic.

In the summer of 1997 I was nineteen years old and had just completed my first year as a scholarship student at a small college near Fenway. I dreaded the prospect of returning to my parents’ home in Maine for the summer. It was something I could have done but ever since I had come out to my parents we had a tense relationship. My father was accepting and loving (if baffled by the whole thing). He frequently travelled with his job so that left me home alone with my mother who had a really difficult time accepting it. The prospect of going back to a house where we’d be stuck together for long periods that involved shouting, cruel insults from both sides, dish breaking and – even worse – long periods of angry silence wasn’t something I could face so I decided to stay in Boston until my sophomore year started. A brilliant theatre teacher at my college generously offered to let me stay at her place near Forest Hills. While she travelled out of state doing theatre workshops the place was mine as long as I did odd chores for her.

My accommodation was taken care of, but I was broke. Not that I minded. Roaming the city was free. All I was interested in was burrowing away in books and theatre. I acted in an experimental theatre company that put on weird shows in an art gallery near Harvard Square which was brilliant but didn’t pay at all. I could have spent all my time rehearsing and reading. However, after a month and a half of living on scraps and staring into an empty refrigerator I realized that I did need to eat some time. I applied for a couple of menial office jobs but didn’t make it far. I guess it isn’t surprising thinking how I must not have been that presentable with my baggy clothes and shy nature. Even a fast food restaurant I applied to didn’t call me back. Since I didn’t have the money to buy books I sometimes went into bookstores to stand amongst the shelves reading new books that weren’t in the library yet. This was before the comfy chair bookshop culture with in-store Starkbucks. I’d read several chapters a day before I sensed the staff getting annoyed by my presence and move on.

So I was stuck until late July when I went by the Barnes & Noble in Kenmore Square and saw they were hiring temporary staff for August. They supply books for Boston University so needed extra help to stock and sell preparing for the students’ return. I applied and was thrilled when I got a call back hiring me. Working in a bookshop was something I should have thought of before since I spent so much time in them anyway and I liked the prospect of being able to work with staff who I assumed would also be enthusiastic readers.

On my training day there were about a dozen of us who were swiftly taken through an induction that taught us about stocking and learning the computer system. It was hurried and very confusing. I really didn’t understand the process of tracking down books on the computer and the managers training us were really overstretched as the shop was very busy. I asked for clarification but only received angry impatient responses. So I felt a little lost. The guy training us was a big buff guy who I tried to make light conversation with him asking what he liked to read. He looked at me in confusion saying “Read what?” I said I assumed he was into reading since he worked in a bookstore. He just laughed and shook his head, “No way man. I like to work out.” So much for talking about books.

On my third day working at Barnes & Noble I was asked with a few other men to help move bookshelves to a temporary space at Boston University they were setting up to sell course books. Not being very strong this was a struggle. I lugged and pushed shelves while the buff manager stood near me angrily saying “Come on, hurry it up man!” I went home that day worn out and with several bruises. Over the next few weeks the store was increasingly busy as students arrived back in the city and wanted their text books for upcoming classes. I still didn’t understand the computer system so helping them out was really difficult. Huge queues of people gathered at my till and angry teenage faces filled my vision as they thrust course lists with innumerable text books at me. I tried to stretch out my lunch breaks as long as possible hunkered down in the fiction section reading some book or other till they’d call me over the intercom back to the academic textbooks floor.

When it neared time to move back into my dorm and start my Fall semester Barnes & Noble said that I could stay on staff but only be on call if they ever needed me. Unsurprisingly they never called. So my short stint as a bookseller was a bit of a let down. It’s understandable it was a special sort of job as it was aimed specifically at supplying text books for the university. I’m sure if I worked in a general bookshop full time the vibe would have been different. I love going in shops in London like Gay’s the Word, Kennington Bookshop, Clerkenwell Tales or Daunt Books and hearing the friendly knowledgeable staff talk about recent books they’ve read or how they are able to easily navigate the shelves to find what I’m looking for. Not that I think anyone should romanticize it too much; I know it's a hard business. I’m fortunate enough now to be in a financially secure position where I can buy whatever book I’d like. This is something I’m really grateful for thinking back to times when I could barely afford to buy a 99 cent Dover Thrift book. Since living in London I’ve seen a lot of the used bookstores I used to love on Charing Cross Road and other places close down. The enormous Waterstones in Piccadilly Circus used to have a much better vibe with enthusiastic staff and frequent reading events by quality authors. These days their policy seems to be more towards only pushing the top sellers and the atmosphere has changed to being more brisk and businesslike. So I’m very grateful that there are still some fantastic independent bookstores with caring staff here. Long may they continue!

Young Skins by Colin Barrett

Colin Barrett’s writing immediately gripped me with his richly descriptive language and evocative dialogue. It’s a display of real talent when characters can rise fully formed off the page through distinct inflections in the tone of their dialogue so you can almost hear their voices in your ear. The stories in this debut book describe a cast of characters on the margins of Irish society ranging from wild teenagers to dispirited middle-aged men. Pubs are often the spots where these two diametrically opposed sensibilities cross paths – though very seldom do they meet. Each story invokes a particular place and set of characters struggling with internal conflicts which are brought to the forefront through events which are sometimes calamitous and other times subtly transformative.

‘The Clancy Kid’ follows two boys in their mid twenties who take revenge upon a girl for slighting one of them. They seem unable to move on with their lives as they don’t know what they should be striving for so they are trapped in repeating the same behaviour over and over. At one point the narrator remarks “There is the comfort of routine in our routine but also the mystery of that routine’s persistence.” The circular routines they go through night after night reflect their inability to emotionally progress and grow. Only at the end does the narrator seem ready to cross a literal and metaphorical bridge so that he can leave behind him the resentment and things he’s been clinging onto.

‘Bait’ focuses on another couple of close young male friends who stick to a routine. The narrator’s friend Matteen is a pool shark who makes money by luring people in to challenge him at the same pub every night. The narrator is drawn away from the lively pub by a couple of girls who seduce him like sirens and then seize him in a gripping and unsettling scene.

If men in some of these stories aren’t able to progress in their lives the character of Val in the story ‘The Moon’ is definitively left behind by a young woman he’s been seeing as she moves to go to university. There’s a really subtly written feeling of melancholy as he understands their relationship can’t progress beyond a certain point and there are boundaries which will always keep them at a distance from each other.

In ‘Stand Your Skin’ a man nicknamed Bat is haunted by an act of senseless violence perpetrated upon him by someone who “couldn’t stand being in his own skin, and couldn’t stand the rest of us neither” which has left Bat slightly impaired and his face scarred. He’s a solitary figure that has let his hair grown very long and is cautious in his social interactions – the horrendous attack upon him having been reduced to a barroom anecdote.

A seedier side of a small community is shown in ‘Calm with Horses’ where Douglas (nicknamed “Arm”) acts as a thuggish guard or “loyal skin” to a drug dealer named Dympna. This is the longest story in the book and it builds tension slowly where the threat of violent retaliation seems to hide around every corner. Points of horrific violence are paired against tender scenes where Arm cares for his mentally-disabled son Jack who likes to regularly go to a stable to spend time with horses as part of his therapy. Barrett beautifully describes nature and the sky particularly as a reflection of the character’s moods. When a man’s life is being threatened he looks up “at the scratchy stars and that cute old sphinx-faced cunt of a moon, up there watching and still keeping schtum after all these years.” This conveys all the anger and feelings of helplessness living in an impassive world that he experiences in a moment of high distress. Later on when Arm is in a state of crisis “the night sky looked like something precious and crystalline had been smashed repeatedly against it.” Here he perfectly evokes the state of mind of his character whose ordered life has been destroyed while giving a vivid portrait of the environment he inhabits.

Barrett describes the heart-crushing weariness of alcohol addiction in his story ‘Diamonds’ where a man’s best convictions to go sober are undone after an encounter with a woman he meets at AA. The mechanics of sliding back into the habit as well as engaging in an affair with a married woman whose husband spends most of the year away working in a mine are told in a way that seems so natural as to seem inevitable. All emotion and regret seem as totally blunted as his senses in his alcoholic state. Only wistful memories of an adolescence filled with athletic promise offer any brightness in his life, but hope now seems like an anonymous stranger. The tragedy of his fate is portrayed in stark realistic detail.

Two men sit in a pub drinking and try not to think too much about the funeral procession which will soon be passing by outside in the story ‘Kindly Forget My Existence.’ Feelings of loss hang heavy in the air as they make awkward conversation with the foreign barman who recounts his time engaged in the Bosnian war. While the men have a complex relationship based on years of being in a band together and sharing a lover, all feelings of resentment and bitterness seem not worth fighting for and can be left behind like the jacket one leaves behind as they depart to join the funeral march.

Each story in “Young Skins” explores masculinity from a different point of view. Raucous emotions often simmer beneath the surface and only find expression through violence or surly disengagement. However, melancholy is also often superseded by surprising turns of humour expressed in the characters lively dialogue. The image of skin – the surface of our bodies which is forever changing but always with us – repeats in varied and surprising ways throughout the book. The cumulative effect of this made me ponder the boundaries between our social lives and inner private lives. This is one of those books whose stories are so skilfully crafted and engaging I found it difficult to put down when going to bed at night.  

Here is an interview with the author published in a county Irish newspaper where the stories are set: http://www.mayonews.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18947:interview-author-colin-barrett&catid=51:staying-in&Itemid=145

Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas

It’s interesting having read Tsiolkas’ first novel so recently to now read his fifth and most recent novel and see the common themes which he still carries through. ‘Barracuda’ is also about a teenage boy with a fluid sexuality rebelling against the world, yet it carries his story further than the protagonist of ‘Loaded.’ The central character of Danny is extremely ambitious and seeks to become an Olympic champion swimmer. However, his dreams are dashed leaving him bereft of purpose: “without my dream, I was just a hole, an absence, that’s all I was.” The novel charts his journey moving back and forth in time from his headstrong adolescent years training at a prestigious private school he hilariously nicknames “Cunts College” to his downfall and the long hard process of finding value in his life again. While I felt large parts of the first half of the novel was like treading water as it was mired in Danny’s arrogant belief in his own abilities, his growing maturity and deepening complexity really hooked me and kept me reading till the end.

I think what I find frustrating is that, despite trying to engage with issues of capitalism and this fragmented antagonistic society, Tsiolkas’ arguments don’t progress much further than an adolescent level. The stance which comes from this book and his first novel ‘Loaded’ feels very much like a teenager stomping his feet, calling out all of society’s problems and slamming the door instead of offering any solutions. The petulance is true in some parts of ‘Barracude’ as well: “let the world burn and choke itself in greenhouse gases: no one wants to give up anything, no one wants to sacrifice anything for anyone else.” Maybe this is because Tsiolkas chooses adolescents as protagonists for these two novels so he’s reflecting their character or perhaps the author himself doesn’t have the optimism to think beyond resolutions other than petulantly shrugging his shoulders and giving up. I wouldn’t be so bothered by all the harsh judgements being made about practically everyone in society if it didn’t come with a sense of entitlement and a smug feeling that the protagonist is better than everyone else. I think that’s why Tsiolkas’ writing feels so abrasive. Of course, these are sentiments really typical of teenagers and I don't feel it's necessary to like characters in books in order to appreciate them. In Danny’s case I know that his inflated sense of self is a sort of strategy for survival because he’s looked down upon by so many people at his college. Perhaps if the character was more self-deprecating in an endearing way I would feel more empathetic. I was drawn closer to him the more the book progressed and when he was humbled. Danny is harsh on himself. When his dreams of being a championship swimmer fizzle he struggles with issues of weight and self esteem. The book says a lot about the dangers of ambition. His discipline and single-minded goal left no room for his personality to become fully rounded. It takes a while to get there, but the journey is worth it.

Danny is a fiercely independent and solitary person. He finds great strength there, but it's a sign of immaturity that he refuses to engage with other people. Tsiolkas makes a striking remark when he observes “There was no loneliness in silence. Loneliness could be found in conversation, it lurked in words.” I can really sympathize with this statement in that I only feel really myself when alone and when in social conversation sometimes feel lonely and misunderstood. However, it feels like for Danny there is a lack of development and self-absorption that he shuts out people who love and believe in him. There are frequent scenes where someone is talking to him but he doesn’t even listen to what they’re saying. This changes slowly as he gets older and shows his development when he’s finally brave enough to at least try to listen and communicate. Similarly he’s often unable to say what he really wants to and holds in how he's really feeling. “Words. The words inside are not the words that come out into the world.” As a consequence he blocks people out with silence or pushes them away with violence. This partly has to do with his issues with language itself. Encouragingly it’s through reading that Danny is able to reconnect with the world through words. “Dan had discovered that he had been mistaken, that books did not exist outside of the body and only in the mind, but that words were breath, that they were experienced and understood through the inseparability of mind and body, that words were the water and reading was swimming.” He’s able to connect the process of reading with the vibrant enthusiasm for life he used to find when swimming. After this he really comes into himself and pursues what he truly wants.

Where the story comes alive the most are in short passages about Danny’s later job as a care worker or his time in prison which are interspersed with the main narrative of Danny’s teenage struggle for stardom. This line seems to sum up Danny's dilemma in the novel: “He couldn’t think how anyone but himself could be the hero of his own life, but he knew that he wasn’t a hero.” When he realizes that he's not the star he always believed himself to be he has to find a way to go forward. It felt to me like the book could have been cut down in places to remove some repetition and superfluous detail, but the story of Danny's struggle is moving  and I admired the way the author told it moving back and forward in time to create a greater emotional impact. It's heartening to see a maturity having taken place between Tsiolkas' first novel and this new one.

Bobcat and other stories by Rebecca Lee

I received Rebecca Lee's book 'Bobcat and other stories' as a Christmas present. One of the ways my boyfriend and I like to relax in the lazy time between Christmas and New Year is to lounge on the rug in front of the fireplace having mince pies and reading short stories aloud to each other. Usually they have to be quite short short stories or one of us will get dozy and fall asleep before it comes to the end. I'd started reading this book of stories and was quite eager to read some aloud to him despite most of the stories being around thirty pages. Reading them aloud really emphasized Lee's talent for writing gorgeous meaningful sentences and creating witty dialogue in social situations. Many of the stories in this book have at their centre a woman in her 20s or 30s who is often associated with a university. Only one story in the book is written from the perspective of a man. Beyond these overarching similarities the stories are all strikingly unique and many present very funny or uncomfortable situations.

In 'World Party' an academic single mother must decide the fate of a teacher who is politically motivating his students and might be dismissed from the university. In 'Bobcat' a woman decides how to handle a dinner party that includes her male colleague and his wife who she knows is being cheated on. In 'Min' a woman accompanies her male friend to Hong Kong and must sift through women applying to be his wife. In 'Slatland' a woman is determined to find out if her Romanian finance is secretly already married with children back in his native country. In 'The Banks of the Vistula' a student copies an essay out of an old book and then desperately tries to cover up her act of plagiarism. In 'Fialta' a group of ambitious young architects put on a production of 'Angels in America' for their mentor. In 'Settlers' a woman is working over time on a script for a new tv series of Wonder Woman. Many of the stories take surprising turns and reveal details of the characters' fates at startling times.

What I admired most in Rebecca Lee's writing is the way she writes about desire and relationships. If it's true that desire and sex mostly happen in the mind it's artfully demonstrated in these stories where the characters frequently play out romantic scenarios or breakups in their heads before any action happens. A small suggestion can lead the character's imagination to spin fantasies of heightened intimacy or fearful suspicion of betrayal. In dramatic scenarios she conveys characters emotional fragility and the way they guard themselves against being hurt.

Lee frequently ponders the use of language itself. I'm always sympathetic towards writers who are always aware of the limitations of words themselves. A narrator in one story observes: “This is the whole problem with words. There is so little surface area to reveal whom you might be underneath, how expansive and warm, how casual, how easygoing, how cool, and so it all comes out a little pathetic and awkward and choked.” Language is only capable of approximating what we're thinking and can often leave out the deeper feelings brewing, the personality really lurking within. When speaking to someone in person it's often more the expression on someone's face and the tone of their voice which tells you how they are really feeling rather than what they are actually saying. Of course, this is open to interpretation and can lead to misunderstandings so it's easy to feel misunderstood. At least, that's certainly how I feel in many social situations. It's part of Lee's great talent that she's able to convey what's really going on underneath the surface with her characters despite what they say and think. She's an incredibly talented writer I'd highly recommend.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

It’s terrifying to place yourself in the shoes of the protagonist at the start of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. One night Akhmed looks out his window to see his neighbour Dokka being dragged from his house by officials. The house is burned as the man is taken away to some unknown fate and his 8 year-old daughter is nowhere to be seen. This is in the middle of war-torn Chechnya in 2004. Anthony Marra continues to describe the events which led to Dokka’s disappearance and the lives of a small group of characters whose communities have been ravaged by battles and deceit. The subject matter is very heavy, but completely absorbing. Marra’s writing is beautifully composed and the characters feel so immediately real I felt a strong desire to know what happens to them.

Marra heads each chapter with a timeline scale spanning a decade and demarcates the year being dealt with by highlighting it. In this way he slides back and forth in time between chapters showing the way the past influences the present. However, within each year he frequently provides flashes forward for different characters explaining how they flourish or perish in the many years which follow because of what’s occurring at the present time. This produces a curious effect where the repercussions of actions resonate throughout the present causing a swirling interconnected range of consequences. One elderly character named Khassan has spent his life writing a history of Chechnya which numbers thousands of pages. He can never complete it because of the constantly changing political landscape of the country. Marra cleverly offers an alternative understanding of the country based on these individual characters whose lives effect each other in ways unexpectedly and shape the future.

A country that is under siege operates in ways terrifyingly different from the everyday life of developed politically-stable countries where there is a presumption of justice and order. Marra intelligently explores how this affects the psychology of the people. At one point it's observed that “War is unnatural... it causes people to act unnaturally.” It's a state of life that is ruled by fear and suspicion. Friends inform on friends. People disappear. Sometimes they return with fingers or other body parts missing. Or they don't return at all. Rules for civilization are twisted as order breaks down. People who act egregiously can console themselves with the knowledge that “a land without law is a land without crime.” Here people are only guided by their own sense of morality – something which is tragically rendered pointless under the grinding fate of chance and circumstance. When it come to survival the values that people consider an essential part of their humanity can disappear. As the character Ramzan observes: “We wear clothes, and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.” 

Amidst the devastation of war life comes to mean very little. A brilliant Russian doctor named Sonja works faithfully in a nearly-deserted hospital seeing to the hundreds of people who need limbs amputated after stumbling upon land-mines. For someone who must deal with pain and loss on such a large scale a part of her must remain stoic when faced with so many deaths. Akhmed is at first alarmed by this: “In her indifference he saw the truth of a world he didn't want to believe in, one in which a human being could be discarded as easily as pocket lint.” In these circumstances entire communities of people are swept into larger historical events. Individual lives are grouped into impersonal figures reported as casualties as it is easier to dismiss them and avoid facing the true horror of many personal losses.

What Marra does beautifully in this novel is elevate individual lives giving them a nobility and honouring them in a way that the statistics of war leave out. In a way similar to how the character of Akhmed memorialises the “disappeared” of his village by drawing portraits of those who have been taken and posting them around the streets and forest, Marra presents dynamic descriptions of striking individuals who would otherwise be ignored and forgotten. The author also shows the connections which join people together even in the most desolate circumstances. There is a distillation of feeling so that people understand what is really necessary. “Love, she learned, could reduce its recipient to an essential thing, as important as food or shelter, whose presence is not only longed for but needed.” There is a tenderness found between some of the characters in this novel more believable and hard-won than in many other books I've read.

Marra also meditates on the philosophical meaning of love. There is often an assumption that the person we love is someone we discover. However, he counters that “Perhaps our deepest love is already inscribed within us, so its object doesn't create a new word but instead allows us to read the one written.” I've meditated a while on this statement and I think it has multiple meanings. You could take it as having a romantic notion that the person you love was always a part of you. Or it's possible to interpret it as meaning that love reveals something about one's own essential self that the self doesn't understand without this connection. In any case, it's a fascinating way to think about the interplay between love as a projection of feeling and an emotion that leads to personal revelation.

As well as showing the deeply-felt personal stories of the individuals Marra also hints at the mercilessness of life in the grander scale of things. In one chilling statement he surmises “There is something miraculous in the way the years wash away your evidence, first you, then your friends and family, then the descendants who remember your face, until you aren't even a memory, you're only carbon, no greater than your atoms, and time will divide them as well.” No matter how much anyone strives to leave their mark on the world through accomplishments or progeny we'll all eventually be reduced down to the essential elements which are recycled and distributed again throughout the universe. It's only when considering the agonizing pain people are capable of causing each other as cited in this novel that such a cold hard truth can be considered consoling rather than horrifying.