The Book About Me
Yesterday, in a used book shop, at the back of a narrow isle in the non-fiction section, I sat on a step ladder and read the introductory page of the first chapter in two Winston Churchill books, the first I hadn't recalled, a leather-bound book of European history from 1926, and reviewed the adequacy and length of the Mount Olympus summary in a large Mythology textbook. I placed the second Churchill book back on the shelf beside a book on his mother, and carried the rest to the cluttered desk in the front. Beside their aged Macintosh computer, there were books for gardening, Bronte illustrations, Winnie the Pooh, which I inspected, and caricatures. I looked through a petite book which claimed to contain the world's knowledge. The first twenty pages were blank, then a centered quote on a single page, and another twenty blank pages. I put the book down and watched the woman write down the prices of my books and deck of cards from Salem, Virginia. She was originally from Connecticut, obvious dialect. She was in her seventies. Original teeth, pin-striped shirt, keen sense of humour, knew the score of the Phillies game, which Tim told me is a Philadelphia baseball team, her colleague in the shop said that their win would tire them for the next few games.
I paid with my bank card, placed the deck in the pocket of my white slacks, and handed the paper bag of books to Tim, additionally containing a massive history of chess for my precious. We walked outside, I questioned if I should apply for my first job, and returned. I explained that I live in Manhattan, go to school there, despite those details, I would like to work in their bookshop of two employees and erase pencil marks from old pages. The Connecticut woman smiled gloriously and laughed when I mentioned that my parents think it's time for me to gather myself a first job. It isn't necessary, and there is no better place for me to work than a musty store of books to the ceiling where I can concentrate among quite and sell books to willing persons. She sent me to speak with the woman in her sixties, I gave her identical explanation, was sent back to the woman at the desk to give my "name, number, address, and all that." I believe I have good standing with her, for I held the door open as she initially entered.
On a long drive to our French restaurant among roads with vines hanging from electrical wires, I decided that I will instead be employed at a used book shop I frequent in Manhattan.
These are excerpts from the first ten pages of the Winston Churchill biography. I chose this book for its portrayals of our evident similarities, in the perspective of an admiring friend. It is so parallel that I feel as though it is also about my self. I read it aloud to Tim and he is equally astonished. There is no one else so close to being like me, aside from my father, he said.
"First and foremost he was incalculable. He ran true to no form. There lurked in every thought and word the ambush of the unexpected. I felt also that the impact of life, ideas and even words upon his mind was not only vivid and immediate, but direct. Between him and them there was no shock absorber of vicarious thought or precedent gleaned either from books or other minds. His relationship with all experience was firsthand.
"My father and his friends were mostly scholars, steeped in the classical tradition, deeply imbued with academic knowledge, erudition and experience. Their intellectual granaries held the harvests of the past. On many themes they knew most of the arguments and all the answers to them 'nothing new under the sun.' But to Winston Churchill everything under the sun was new--seen and appraised as on the first day of Creation. His approach to life was full of ardor and surprise. Even the eternal verities appeared to him to be an exciting personal discovery. And because they were so new to him he made them shine for me with a new meaning. However familiar his conclusion it had not been reached by any beaten track. His mind had found its own way everywhere.
"Again--unlike the scholars--he was intellectually quite uninhibited and unself-conscious. He did not seem to be the least ashamed of uttering truths so simple and eternal that on another's lips they would be truisms. Nor was he afraid of using splendid language. Even as I listened, flowing and vibrating to his words, I knew that many of captious and astringent friends would label them as 'bombast,' 'rhetoric,' 'heroics.' But I also knew with certainty they would be wrong. There was nothing false, inflated, artificial with his eloquence. It was his natural idiom. His world was built and fashioned in heroic lines. He spoke its language.
"...I noticed with deep anxiety that hardly a word had passed between them. In answer to my solicitous inquiries she told me that after an aeon of unbroken silence she made a frontal attack and said to him: 'Do tell me--what on earth are you thinking about?' He replied: 'I am thinking of a diagram' and relapsed into complete absorption. She added: 'I don't like people who make me feel as though I wasn't there.' In later years they became fast friends."
