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Recently in Salon Books

Book Bag
"This is it!"
The author of "The Blue Flower" picks five novels that rocked her world.
By Penelope Fitzgerald
[08/02/99]

Reviews
"Italian Fever"
In the land of Bernini and amore, an unassuming New Yorker discovers herself.
By Stephanie Zacharek
[08/02/99]

Ivory Tower
When things fall apart
Last month's brutal massacre was just another crime by Nigeria's most-feared criminal organizations, student cults. But just who these cultists are is a matter of some dispute.
By Hank Hyena
[08/02/99]

Summer reading
What the hot, the cool and the controversial are reading this season.
By the staff of Salon Books
[07/30/99]

Reviews
"Tipping the Velvet"
An exuberant, lusty novel about a lesbian adventuress follows its heroine through the underworld of Victorian London.
By Peter Kurth
[07/30/99]

Complete archives for Books

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A pleasant looking young woman comes up to me and asks if we have any books on taxidermy.

"Like stuffing road kill?" I joke.

"Actually, no. I've had this squirrel in my freezer for months and I don't know what to do with it." She's serious.

I point her in the direction of the taxidermy books, "Look in Guns and Hunting." She makes a face -- she's not a guns-and-hunting kind of girl.

"So this is serious for you? Like love?" I ask.

"Maybe just a romance, who knows where it will lead?" she says. I mention the Museum of Natural History. "I know, best program in the city. Hard to get into, very competitive," she says.

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A young German woman says, "I'm looking for a book. Veal-ah Kay-zer."

I haven't got a clue. "How do you spell that?"

"Wih, ih, ella, ella ..."

"Oh, Willa Cather."

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Worst moment: In the back office P. finds some old signed books he can't return or put on the floor. He says he'll destroy them. I say, "That's murder!" He asks if I want them. They're cheesy science fiction titles. I shake my head, no. He rips them down their spines and throws them in the trash.

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"Why are people gay?" asks an attractive young woman in the staff lounge.

Another woman pops up, "My friend told me a girl rejected him. That's why he turned gay."

"They're born that way," I butt in.

"Well then their parents are sick and they're sick. If a boy rejected me you wouldn't find me with no girl," she says. I can't believe this conversation is occurring in 1999.

"Sea gulls are gay, some monkeys are gay, it's normal among all animals," I say. Actually I'm not sure about the monkeys. The conversation takes off without me among the six other people there. My break is over. I go to the time clock and someone near me is hypothesizing that the book business attracts so many gay people because it's "creative."

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A woman comes up to me. "R?" she asks. I type it in: "R."

"R ... ?" I ask helpfully, inviting the next letter.

She looks at the screen. "No no no no no. Rrrrrr," she says."Rrrrr."

I type in. "No no no no." I give up. I hand her a pen and piece of paper.

She writes, "Art." She's French. I point to the Art section.

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"I'm looking for 'Letters to Penthouse.'" A beat. "For a friend," the guy explains.

A friend. Sure, I think.

As I'm keying in the title he says, "I bet you think that's odd." I tell him, No, not compared to some I've heard. I tell him about the taxidermist who had the squirrel in her freezer.

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"I'm looking for a book. It's the true-life story of a boy who brought his polar bear on the Titanic." For a moment I cannot respond. I feebly send her down to children's books. What else can I do? I tell J., my co-worker this.

He says, "Oh, 'Polar the Titanic Bear.' It's about a big bear, but it was released at the same time as the movie 'Titanic.'"

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My colleague Wendy comes up to me. I ask how she is. She says, "My heart is like a squashed tomato." I think about this a moment. She continues, "And the worst part is, when I look real close, I can see my footprints in it. I did it to myself."

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A man comes into the bookstore and my first impression is one of unnatural, astonishing beauty. When I glance back, my second impression is that he has had way too much sex -- not that he has enjoyed it but that he has been used for it. He is perhaps a prostitute or kept at some "high" level, among the rich. His pants are exquisitely cut black leather so subtle that you don't even notice at first that they're leather. He has perfectly mussed moussed black hair. He seems oversteeped in sex. Sickened. I grieve a moment for what his beauty may have cost him in humanity, in normal living (in my projection), before he jauntily disappears downstairs. He reappears at the information desk a few minutes later asking, "Do you know where I can find a copy of the illustrated 'Kama Sutra'?" His gaze is cold, cut-off. I direct him to the sexuality shelf in the self-improvement section.

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