Got rid of some books today—traded some in at the used bookshop I frequent, others I put in a box to take to the office to give away to colleagues. Anyway, I read these, reviewed many of them on the site, and in some cases enjoyed them—but I can’t see myself ever rereading them or returning to them for anything. And, uh, I hated some of them too.
Marshall Brook’s memoir-in-essays, Paperback Island arrived at Biblioklept World Headquarters today. Brooks’s book snagged me into an hour of reading I hadn’t planned on doing, even from the preface (I usually skim or skip prefaces, but Brooks’s hooked me—he opens at Tuli Kupferberg’s funeral and then talks about reading a book that required him to actually stay in the author’s apartment). There’s an opening memoir about an adolescent friendship that revolves around books; this essay could easily tread into schmaltz but instead intrigues and foregrounds what comes next. The following essay, “Sid,” is about Sidney Bernard’s book This Way to the Apocalypse, which I now want to read.
This is followed by a piece on Tuli Kupferberg, whose funeral seems to serve as a galvanizing force throughout the essays. Anyway, I kept reading, and this is obviously not a review, just an enthusiastic entry on the blog, a sort of, yes, this is a beautiful, perhaps melancholy, but beautiful book, a book about books, writers, libraries…full review to come.
“On the Tram” by Franz Kafka
I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might rightly advance in any direction. I have not even any defense to offer for standing on this platform, holding on to this strap, letting myself be carried along by this tram, nor for the people who give way to the tram or walk quietly along or stand gazing into shopwindows. Nobody asks me to put up a defense, indeed, but that is irrelevant.
The tram approaches a stopping place and a girl takes up her position near the step, ready to alight. She is as distinct to me as if I had run my hands over her. She is dressed in black, the pleats of her skirt hang almost still, her blouse is tight and has a collar of white fine-meshed lace, her left hand is braced flat against the side of the tram, the umbrella in her right hand rests on the second top step. Her face is brown, her nose, slightly pinched at the sides, has a broad round tip. She has a lot of brown hair and stray little tendrils on the right temple. Her small ear is close-set, but since I am near her I can see the whole ridge of the whorl of her right ear and the shadow at the root of it.
At that point I asked myself: How is it that she is not amazed at herself, that she keeps her lips closed and makes no such remark?
Biblioklept 