'We Did Not Do So on Purpose'

It felt a little like visiting a speakeasy. I ordered the books by phone on Thursday. John Dillman, the owner of Kaboom Books, told me to go to the door at the back of his shop, the green one with the awning, Friday afternoon, and knock. My masked son and I did as ordered, disappointed there was no password (“Swordfish!”). A masked John came to the door with six books, three for each of us. I gave him my debit card, he retreated inside and returned in two minutes with the receipt. Michael wanted books about Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, so we chatted briefly about sub-Saharan Africa. John said his business was down about seventy-five percent, though he and his shop survived Katrina in New Orleans. “You gotta wonder what’s coming next,” he said. “Locusts?” I suggested.

Despite all the pandemic song and dance, it felt good to be buying books again and to be talking with a book person. Of the three volumes I bought, one I’ve never read before: Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed (1827; trans. Bruce Penman, 1972). I resolved to read it based on Nige’s recommendation. I’m particularly pleased with a one-volume American edition of Charles Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888), published in 1923 by Boni & Liveright, a book first recommended to me by Guy Davenport. It even comes with all the fold-out maps intact.

Finally, a sturdy hardcover omnibus volume, Jean Stafford’s The Interior Castle (1953), which includes the novels Boston Adventure (1944) and The Mountain Lion (1947), and the new story collection, Children Are Bored on Sunday. The collective title come from Stafford’s best-known story, “The Interior Castle.” Obeying an old and pointless habit, I read the final sentence in each book. Here is Manzoni’s:

“But if on the other hand we have only succeeded in boring you, please believe that we did not do so on purpose.”