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Journey East, Cont.
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Kiely, Fulbright Scholar in Literature at Boise State, will be serializing the entire story, Journey East, here in The Arbiter.
T W O
Percy Fenton arrived in the city before one o’ clock. He chuckled having read in the newspaper ‘these people believe the world will end on December 31st. There were full details about the Festival of Literature in the newspaper. The Festival would end on Sunday with a Bookfair and carnival. Percy planned on going to the afternoon’s seminar and both seminars tomorrow, returning home to Imelda and his daughters on Tuesday.
City scenes reassured his festive mood while he endured excessive noise after the countryside. Petrol exhaust fumes and urban stink increased this hot August Friday. Three ribbed container vehicles with secure steel cables stopped him crossing to Bishop’s Bargain Bookshop. Eventually he zig zagged in front of a bus and into the shadow covering the bookshop window which had received its lot of morning sunshine. Behind a line of books along the window slow pyramids of books revolved and Don Bishop talked with DB Poboyler among three young women. Percy lingered outside the shop stooping to read book covers.
Don Bishop cajoled the young students, who were part of the Festival of Literature attendance about his average customer. Shaking his head with an innocent grin he admitted he couldnt sell what wasnt in stock and besides the stock reflected last season’s remainders and everything remaindered up to two or three years ago. Beyond that, he pointed to the classic secondhand shelves down the left side of the shop. Carousels displayed maps postcards dictionaries and the Teach Yourself range. Theatre posters and other coming events were highest on the walls. He smiled at the females infectiously making them smile at his pretence in revealing the mysteries of the secondhand booktrade. The never ending joy of sales. Old buyers reading new books and young buyers reading old books. And those who buy for ornamentation. Props people buying stock for a stage set. Books bought in bulk for pubs clubs and restaurants as mere display. It was a proud business and a slow business subject to the laws of supply and demand, profit and loss and the obscure laws of taste. Who could tell whether a book sold because of the cover contents author title publicity? The author’s genius talent reputation infamy fame oblivion neglect. Then there were variables such as high sales in a season or steady sales over years. There was length brevity gossip gospel scandal sex plot story facts. There was the story without end and the end of the story. The students looked puzzled and he lost credibility and ended. No bag could bury a good book if it’s the book you want to read next.
Percy Fenton came in for the close of Don’s panegyre adding to the smiley gathering. Percy put a travelling bag and a newspaper on the counter solemnly and in reply to the proprietor was certain that it wasn’t easy to read a book which you positively disliked. Well written history wasn’t bunk, only badly written history. Pliny’s over quoted saying no matter how bad a book a reader will always gain something from it, well if a reader is bored then watch out AN Author. Percy pursued the topic of what was reader repellent and combed a beard with fingers.
But to bore was human DB Poboyler insisted as he came from behind a shelf and Percy said that to read on was divine. The bright circle of young ladies surprisingly permitted the dubious chatter of the elders to go unchallenged as of yet. Don Bishop’s face tilted into expressing the unique artificiality of the novel as its prime product status in the movie video TV Internet era. Life included artificiality, Percy clapped hands. And, he stated, the novel fulfils the storytelling needs of society. Ah no, Don was emphatic. Only an epistolary novel, he expected this ancient adjective to get a giggle, is near to life indirectly but no one believes in fictional characters. Percy made the men uneasy mentioning the famed death of Little Nell, its serialisation being momentous once upon a time. Don cut the air with two hands because no place or person or house in fiction is ever real. The novel, despite a genuine magic, is actually as dead as a dodo. He repeated that no house in fiction is ever real.
Percy fired back from bearded eloquence that there did exist a house that never was but always is and furthermore he believed that Emma Bovary actually died because he read about it under conditions of complete conviction. Don laughed triumphantly and said from the corner of his mouth that Emma was never sick a day in her life. Percy lost face and his next utterance was totally misheard except by DB Poboyler who considered such a concept mere mystification masking as profundity. Here the young women in full bloom demanded that the late arrival be given speaking rights. Their politeness came from the festiveness of youth but their faces were beginning to tense with lagging attention.
Somewhat furtively, certainly brought down a peg or two, Percy mutely half claimed that some authors sold him a return ticket to the past. That every author digs from the past for the present in order to write for the future for a reader who will read that past in the reader’s own present. Don wanted to know if he had been swotting up on Wittgenstein? It was beginning to be anything but a light weekend, he sniffed, and admitted that life wasn’t all light and darkened at his own profundity. That depended on what kind of light you meant, said a laughing DB. Percy rose to professorial heights once more in demanding a writer’s necessity to feel down deeply to each word’s worth so the curious skimmer could feel it too. But why, Don said this twice to gain attention, do we give time lovingly to a book. Give freely, he went on dreamily, give above everything else even forget to feed the cat because of reading. The engagement the honeymoon period between reader and text, he glanced at the ceiling unable to conclude. DB contemplating the opposite sex found the experience of curling up with a good Trollope incomparable.
KEVIN KIELY
Special to the Arbiter