A Saturday in March. Sunny, cold. I found myself downtown for non-literary reasons and decided to stop in Exile in Bookville. I haven’t been since it was The Dial and was everyone’s favorite place to Instagram (and hopefully purchase a book while there). I remember, the one time I went there, they had the stairs closed off so I had to take the elevator to the second floor where the bookstore is located. “What a waste,” I’m sure I thought, but this was also an opportunity to take a ride in one of the last elevator’s in the city with an in-person operator. So I appreciated the novelty, although I can’t tell you when that was or what I might have purchased at the store or if I posted anything on Instagram.
[The elevator will continue to be in operation through the end of the year, until the building completes some modernizing upgrades. So it goes.]
On this particular Saturday, the stairs were open. No anachronistic elevator ride for us, sadly. My companion and I walked up to the second floor, greeted by signs saying that the Mitski event will begin at 4 PM. There was some sort of pop-up with black and white photographs of the musician along the wall. And of course, an opportunity to sell merch. My detective abilities told me this was why Exile in Bookville was extra-crowded that day. I could barely get into the fiction section, where I noticed no Jesse Ball on the shelves (or I glazed over the books I already have of his) and decided that it was a bit too claustrophobic and didn’t allow for the wandering that I was hoping to do that day.
So we decided to leave the shop, empty-handed, a rarity for me. We biked over to Open Books in the West Loop. I used to volunteer there, I’ve done a reading there, I’ve helped with other readings there. I started working at a different bookstore, and it was hard to find the time to still volunteer at Open Books so I drifted away. Time passed, a pandemic happened. Things change. I’ve been to the new store in Logan Square but hadn’t been back to the West Loop. I’ve bought and donated back so many books to that store. I wondered how many books I’d previously owned still lined the shelves as I walked in.
Iggy Pop greeted us over the speakers. Every bookcase felt taller, like it had another four shelves on top of it from where it stood five years ago. Everything felt towering over me. I struggled to remember where some sections were. Fiction, naturally, along the entire west wall. I looked for Ball and found a hardcover of his 2018 novel Census. It was about as near as “like new” condition you could get for a new book, so off the shelf it went. Sadly, nothing else of his that I don’t already own. For such a prolific author, who teaches at the Art Institute, it’s sad that so few bookshops carry his work, beyond maybe one or two titles. I don’t think Book Cellar had any when I was there last - City Lit might have had two. So it goes.
Since I was in the area, I wandered to the literary criticism section, and other books about writers writing about writing. Through the looking-glass, I know. But I’ve been reading a lot of fiction and non-fiction and haven’t been reading much of those in-between books. My TBR pile has sometimes failed to interest me, because I see all these books that I know have stories with beginnings and middles and ends and I want something a little bit more squiggly, crinkly, wrinkled, rumpled, scratched up: something different. It’s the never-ending quest with what I read. Sometimes I like a straight-forward narrative, but most of the time it feels like popcorn to me: it tastes alright, but there’s no nutritional value, and I’m not really digesting it fully.
I found a book by Umberto Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. I’ve never read a book by Umberto Eco. I tend to gravitate toward shorter books, and that’s not quite Eco’s wheelhouse. I’m sure I’ve picked up and put down Foucoult’s Pendulum three thousand times. But I’ve never been in a place where I felt like I need to read it. So should I read what he has to say about writing and storytelling if I’ve never read his writing or stories? A review on the back suggests that “reading [these chapters] is indeed like wandering in the woods…” and wandering is what I came to do at the bookshop. The first page references Italo Calvino. One of my favorites. Seemed like a good sign. But I just got here. I’ll browse around a bit more.
Further down the shelf, I see a book of collected conversations Charles Juliet had withSamuel Beckett and Bram van Velde, between 1968 and 1979. This feels very in-between, maybe exactly what I’m looking for and what I might need at the moment. But again, I’ve got a lot of store to peruse. I tuck that Dalkey Archive paperback away in my mind for later.
I flip around the other side of the shelf looking at poetry. I contemplate Flowers of Evil, a beautiful pink hardcover that has the poems both French and English. I’ve been reading Richard Hell recently, and Baudalaire is one of his favorites. I consider it, flip through it, it’s beautiful, but I put it down. I find some books by Mary Oliver. I’d recently watched the movie Nyad, and an Oliver poem, you know the one (and if don’t know the one, here it is) is shared twice in the movie. Erica commented how she had read the poem earlier that day as well (it was World Poetry Day after all). Alas, none of the books there had this particular poem, but it still felt like sure enough sign that I should purchase one of them. The Pulitzer Prize winning American Primitive doesn’t seem like a bad place to start. The sticker on the back says the book came into the shop two weeks earlier. Good timing. I see a poem titled “Skunk Cabbage” and I’m reminded that’s another bookstore I need to check out. Off the shelf she goes.
And then: I cheated. I pulled out my Goodreads. I looked for some names on the to-read digital shelf. Many are small press authors, or from other countries, or out of print. But I found a book by Paul Hoover, Saigon Illinois. It’s kind of a beat up copy, a little bit of water damage, previously owned by Ernesto in Newton, MA (if the inscription is to be believed). I flip through to get a feel for the rhythm of the prose. I find a paragraph that mentions how ENTs commit suicide at a higher rate than dentists. That’s an eye-catching enough line as it is, but I’d coincidentally just scheduled an appointment with an ENT in a few weeks. I was in Arizona a few weeks previous, and got an ear infection after taking a swim. I’ve had earwax issues before and thought it was just that again, but nope: swimmer’s ear. I couldn’t hear too well for the following week. Then it got better. Then I saw the doctor. Then it got worse. I got some antibiotics which helped the infection. I went to the doctor again and he scraped some more wax out. At this point, I’m mostly better and my hearing is back to normal, thanks for asking.
So anyway, not a lot of books are writing about ENTs. Add the Chicago-setting of the novel, and the fun Vintage Contemporary books that Jason Diamond loves and into the basket you go. Yes, I have a basket by this point - Erica is loading up on cookbooks. The music has switched to the Replacements.
Wandering some more. Italo Svevo catches my eye. But the quality of the books isn’t that great. I put them back on the shelf. I tell myself that I shouldn’t buy any more white guy writers anyway. But wouldn’t you know it - I find myself, again, at the back of the shop. Eco and Juliet/Beckett/Velde are still there so I sweep them into the basket. Five books is enough for me. For today.
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Post script: On Monday I find myself killing time in Andersonville. I stopped by the Understudy for the first time. I’m overwhelmed by the small yet amazingly well-curated selection of drama/theater. I opt for some familiar names: Sarah Ruhl and Wallace Shawn. I grab a coffee, find a seat at the bar along the window, and dig into to Ruhl. The w(a/o)ndering life is a life for me. Hard to pin down the time these days, but it fills my cup when I can.