Read This #13 - The Shadow of the Wind

We all have our little favorites, don't we?

I had this novel by the Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafon forced on me by an extremely enthusiastic and aggressive bookstore employee about a year ago. While my first instinct was to turn and run, a quick glance at the book jacket gave me some reason to feel hope. The novel was about books.

Best described as a Gothic novel, with its rich visual imagery and textures (lots of dark shadows and creaking staircases and the like), the story is set in Barcelona, just a few years after the Spanish Civil War.

The City is still very much shrouded in secrets and a lingering shame. This setting is very important. The Spanish Civil War was unique because it was almost entirely based on political ideologies, turning brother against brother, as opposed to being a territorial dispute between regions or countries. The effect it had on the people of Spain was profound - you can still see that terrible angst and fragmentation in the paintings of Dali and Picasso from that period. It tore families and friendships apart.

The story is written from the point of view of a boy still mourning the recent loss of his mother. His father is a bookseller and in an effort to console his son, he takes him to a very mysterious place - the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

The boy, Daniel, is allowed to choose one book to take home, or rather, it chooses him. It's called "Shadow of the Wind" and is by an unknown author named Julian Carax. He loves the book, and searches for other titles by the same author. However, he realizes someone else is systematically destroying every book that Carax has ever written and that he might possess the last remaining copy!

Soon he is pulled into a dark world of mystery and murder.

Aside from the great myriad of twists and turns of plot throughout this novel, it is also full of great characters, including one of my favorites, Fermin Romero De Torres, a sidekick who is every bit as loyal and humorous as his great literary predecessor, Sancho Panza.

Definitely one of the most satisfying and sumptuous reads I have had in some time.

Laying the Groundwork for Lofty Aspirations

At what point does the bibliophile evolve into a bookseller?

After all, they do seem to reside on the opposite sides of the spectrum, don't they?

The stereotype of a true collector is that of Hunter and Gatherer, systematically building up his hoard to the extent that the very foundations creak under the weight of each new tome added lovingly to the piles balanced precariously through out his home.

But the bookseller sees these things in an entirely different light, doesn't he? First and foremost a mercenary, he regards each little beauty that comes into his shop with the shrewd detached eye of a mathematician, his mind racing over the calculations of wholesale versus retail, less operating costs. If there is any love, then surely it must be a love of profit.

Happily, the above scenario is entirely fictitious. By all accounts, there is very little, if any, profit to be made from the sale of books, and this small fact quickly winnows out the "in it for a buck" types that dominate so many other retail businesses. Any person looking to make their fortune in this business is in for a rude awakening.

So why sell books?

While I can not speak for others, my motivation for the jump into the domain of the bookseller lies in the desire to be more often in the company of things cherished. Realizing a profit will be my goal, but only because it will allow me to both extend my time with these wondrous objects and add to the quantity and quality of my collection.

But perhaps the most exciting thing of all about a book lover/writer becoming a bookseller lies in the philanthropic ideal that each book contains a part of the person that wrote it.

By becoming a bookseller, it will be much like running an adoption agency - each discarded paper soul arriving at my doorstep unwanted and unloved, to be sheltered and protected until a worthy and appreciating new owner arrives to take them away. Not all will find its intended owner, but many will, and facilitating this process will be most rewarding.

And feeling that esoteric satisfaction will be important, as I'm quite sure there will be many frustrations along the way...

Don't Read This #1 - The Final Solution - A Novel of Detection

Being a fledging writer myself, I'm hesitant to openly criticize the work of another author.

However, I'll make a rare exception in the case of Michael Chabon's novella "The Final Solution".

Because there are so many outstanding books available to read, I generally try a shorter work of an author that interests me before taking on some of their lengthier efforts.

Chabon had come to my attention years before when he won his Pulitzer prize for "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" and he's considered to be one of the young bright lights in today's literary scene.

So, in all fairness, I picked up this book with some pretty lofty expectations in mind - I expected to be "WOWED".

I wasn't. This was the hardest 130 page piece of writing I've ever endured, and I don't mean that in a good way. Verbosity to the point of inducing laughter. Pages and pages of narrative that go nowhere. Adjectives piled upon still more adjectives, creating a verbal muck of impenatrable bulk and unnecessary complexity. The mind-numbing chapter written from the parrot's point of view!?! The ridiculous metaphors and the painfully silly similes. I'm sorry, but it was that bad.

Chabon supposedly wrote this as a homage to the Sherlock Holmes stories, but seemed to forget that the equally complex Holmes tales were generally about 100 pages shorter. Why? Because that's all Doyle needed to effectively tell his stories!

I couldn't help but think of this as simply a case of a successful writer reading too many of his own press clippings. The phrase that kept coming to my mind as I slogged through this mire was "literary masturbation" - as there was indeed a great deal of self-love evident.

It's clear this person has a lot of talent, as some of the word choices are very interesting. And they don't just mail out Pulitzer Prizes to just anybody, so clearly there are a LOT of people who see something I don't here. But perhaps someone should remind Mr. Chabon that Ernest Hemingway wrote his perhaps his cleanest and most perfect novella, "The Old Man and the Sea" AFTER he had won his Noble Prize. It IS possible to ignore those press clippings and to simply just get on with telling the damned story.