*A Collection of Antiquarian Curios & Relics*
"Christians have their hymns and pages,
Hava Nagila's for the Jews,
Baptists have the Rock of Ages,
Atheists just sing the blues . . ."
--Steve Martin, Atheists Don't
Have No Songs
Many years ago, I met Gabriel Garcia Marquez in a dream.
I was swathed in the smell of freshly minced poppies and newly mown
grass. Much later, I would learn that grass used this particular smell to
communicate to the rest of the plant kingdom, 'Hey watch out for this noisy
machine with the whirling blades! It's decapitating us!' Yet, to
me, it was oddly comforting. There once was a time when we watched human
decaptitations for entertainment.
I opened my eyes. Gabriel Garcia Marquez stood framed before a giant
circus tent with the words 'Karn Evil 9' stenciled in giant block
letters. He wore a ringmasters suit replete with tails that stretched on
and on like the lines from an equal sign. They were expensive threads.
He held up a copy of Chronicle of a Death Foretold (9781400034710) 13.95
and said, "I come to you from far in the future on the day before I
die. April 17, 2014."
And it must have been later in his life. His mustache was the whitest
white like the untrameled Snows of Kilamanjaro (9780684804446) 14.00,
his neck extended like the trunk of an elephant, and he leaned in conspiringly,
"Hemingway may have figured it out eventually. Who's to
say?" The tent flaps opened of their own accord, "Come inside."
There were so many Gabriel Garcia Marquezes inside! Some young, some
old. Each one was preforming a feat of derring-do. Here, he was an
acrobat and his gymnastic talents were on full display. There, he was a
lion tamer and he used a figurative chair of his 'fecund imagination and
exuberant sleight of hand' to keep Michiko Kakutani at bay. Directly in
front of me was my favourite, the jester Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who balanced
himself upon a ball with one foot, and with his calloused hands, he juggled
multiple copies of Love in the Time of Cholera (9780307389732) 15.00 in
a hypnotic swirl of brightly plumed parrots. He repeated ad nauseam,
"Uma, Oprah. Uma, Oprah. Uma Oprah . . ."
I
spun away and fell into the pool beneath the 100 foot high diving
platform. I then found myself bathing in the spittle of Gabriel Garcia
Marquez's unformed words. Words yet to be. I used a ladle to pour
the sparkling soup across my flesh. Hoping, just hoping, that perhaps by
osmosis, I could absorb enough of his talent through my skin to write like
him. From the edge of the divingboard, he cocked a bushy eyebrow and
bellowed, "Don't write like me. Write like you. You may write
your own One Hundred Years of Solitude (9780060883287) 15.99 some
day."
Finally, dressed in a tiger print one piece, the strongman Gabriel Garcia
Marquez pulled me out of the pool by my lapels and whispered, "Whatever
you do, don't let Geraldo Rivera near my tomb. There are some things
better left unopened."
Odds & Sods
We have some more autographed titles available for a limited
time. First of all, we have signed copies of Andy Griffiths' 26-Story
Tree House (9781250026910) 13.99. You may recall that Andy is
responsible for one of my favourite book titles of all-time, The Day My Butt
Went Psycho (9780439424691) 6.99. Priceless.
We also have
copies of Kelley Armstrong's Sea of Shadows (9780062071248) 17.99.
The twins make their annual pilgrimage to The Forest of the Dead, and then
things go awry. Call me crazy, but if I see anything labeled 'The Forest
of the Dead', I'm probably crossing it off of my itinerary . . .
