The Magic Bookstore

This is the final week of Border’s going-out-of-business sale.  The selling area has moved inward like Fantasia growing smaller under the attack of the Nothing in the film “The NeverEnding Story.”  The children’s department, the art books shelves are barren. 

My feelings on entering were mixed.  I felt like a scavenger robbing corpses on a battlefield, but there was a pleasanter change.  All the discounted best sellers, new arrivals, and other popular trash displayed as you enter were gone, and it seemed the store had turned into a shop where a person with esoteric tastes and moderate means could find a treasure. 

At 80% off, I got a book of essays by John McPhee and Six Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  There was a poetry shelf where I found Flower and Hand by W. S. Merwin, Auguries of Innocence by Patti Smith, and The Poets Laureate Anthology published in association with the Library of Congress.  It says in the forward that the poet laureate Joseph Brodsky wanted to place poetry books in motels and supermarkets.  Imagine finding Longfellow or Sylvia Plath next to the Gideon Bible. 

Delight was still tainted with guilt.  I saw a stack of unsold Good Poems, American Places selected by Garrison Keillor.  It’s a wonderful book for dipping into at odd moments, and I got a copy from Amazon.com. 

It had been so convenient – just a few keystrokes and some clicks of the mouse and it arrived at my door.  Why drive to the mall, find the shelf and take the chance it wouldn’t be there?  It was this that did Borders in.  I was not only pillaging the aftermath of a lost war; I had fired some of the enemy shots myself. 

At these prices the enchanted shop was filled with book lovers and some others whom the magic never touched. A man was paging through a large atlas, his visage bathed in delight.  His wife’s face revealed her opinion that she had married an idiot.  “Is it just maps?” she asked.