2003-12-03 - 4:12 a.m. - novel excerpt.
okay. so i have yet to post any excerpts from the novel here yet. they've all shown up on my xanga and deadjournal which were started for the sole purpose of other places to post stuff where people i don't know might read and comment. well, here is the first time im giving a bit of it up to you folks.this is a revision of what, in the first draft, was one paragraph. the original paragraph worked with the idea of a strange bookshop owner who wanted to organize his used bookstore in some strange way. the original paragraph was short and dealt with the integrity of the author's lives. this is so much more, and so much more what i originally intended.
but, although this is part of the 'second draft', it is essentially a very rough, very first draft of this section. so if you want to comment, be kind but constructive. im curious to see what people think.
oh yes, and it might get kind of fuzzy because diaryland doesn't do Italics. so there are parts when a different voice butts in for long periods of time. this is the bookshop owner. actually, maybe ill go put quotes around it before posting.
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Even I, who will talk to him, know better than to pursue any sort of conversation. This is common sense to those who have spoken to Rodney before. Every conversation I have witnessed, been part of, or heard about with Rodney always finds its back to the same place. That place: Rodney�s plans to organize his bookstore.
This discussion always begins as a seminar. It is as if Rodney has written a thesis on how he plans on organizing his store, and then defends it. He will introduce the idea with a history of libraries. He tells us how the first libraries were born by the Sumerians, and consisted of business and legal documents recorded in Cuneiform and baked into some level of permanence to be studied by the few literates. How libraries became public in Greece although few people were yet literate. How those who were literate, the elite of blood or mind or skill, started their own libraries filled with words of medicine, philosophy, mathematics. And this is where Rodney always grows visibly excited. Where he begins describing The Libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum. By this point the unnatural twisting of his voice all but vanishes beneath his ecstatic monologue: "Oh sweet Ptolemy, that thing you started. And son of Ptolemy, how you watered that seed, let that knowledge grow. I can almost feel the grain of those papyrus scrolls, can smell those reeds being mashed and dried into receptacles for so much knowledge. Of you, son of Ptolemy, and your jealousy of The Library of Pergamum. How you banned the export of Papyrus from your country to hinder their efforts at constructing a library because you were afraid that they would build a better library. And you know what? They did, anyway. Your decision forced them to find a new medium. They replaced your papyrus with parchment. Traded your reeds for the skins of their animals. And it was better. More durable. They stitches parchment to parchment and made books where you only had scrolls. And where was your library? Destroyed by Christians. But you proved it could be done. You created it. Oh, sweet, sweet Ptolemy. Sweet Son of Ptolemy. And then everyone was building on your idea, expanding on it." And Rodney will keep going. Through Rome. Through the Middle Ages. Through China and their documents written on bones, tortoise shells, bronze. Through Japan and their libraries inside Buddhist temples. Through Gutenberg and his press. Through the Americas and their sacred texts, their Puritanism, their desire to make Christians out of heathens. And up to Libraries as we know them now with cards, and carols, and fines. With mean librarians who scare children and wear their hair in buns. And then on to the future of libraries.
Rodney�s plan: to reinvent the system, the pattern of codices. To do away with alphanumeric categorizations. To deny the existence of Dewey and his Decimal. To look within each book and pull organization straight out of their hearts�their prose and facts, their rhythm and intellect. "You will no longer find The Waste Land under �E� for Elliot, no you will find it alongside other texts of Quests and Alienation. It will rest with The Tempest. The Quest for the Grail. The New Testament. And how will people know where to find texts of Alienation and Quests? They will know. They will just find it. There won�t even be a section called Alienation, or a section called Quests, or a section called Alienation and Quests. People will walk into my store, and know what they want, and they will arrive at it. And the books around it will all be relevant. But not relevant because I put them there, as if I declared that they are relevant, but just because they are. How will I do this so objectively? You say. Surely my own thoughts will influence the process. And certainly they will to some extent. How will I do this at all? I will start with one book. Maybe I will know what book it is, maybe I will hand pick it. But even that is too much of myself. The selection could be too political. So maybe I will just throw all of these books into a pile," at which point he waves his arms around him indicating the entire contents of his store, "and I will just dive into them with my eyes closed and grab a book and that will be the first book and then I will just dig through the pile until I find something that belongs next to that first book, then dig until I find something that belongs to that one. And it will be complete chaos but it will make sense. And people will just know where to go. Of course there are issued to be dealt with in regards to how holes will be filled when books are purchased, when the chain is broken. But this is trivial. I could always make the store a library and charge a membership or I could just always be searching for replacement books. For something to fill that hole.
And can you yet see the perfection of this idea? Have you picked up on it? What would happen if a person were to start at the very first book and then move onto the second book, then to the third, the fourth, and on down the line? Can you imagine?
Ah, what a grand narrative.
I become weak just imagining it."
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so yeah, definitely in need of sharpening and a shit load of polishing. but lemme know what you think about the idea.
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