The Pleasures of The Bookstore

by Lewis Buzbee

The odds on my becoming a book geek might not have seemed to be great. I grew up in a decidedly unliterary subdivision of San Jose, 50 miles south of San Francisco, that was prosperous thanks to Cold War industries but still haunted by vivid memories of the Depression. My mother had planned to go to college, but was derailed by meeting my father and by World War II. My father, an Okie sharecropper’s son, had left school in the eighth grade.

Like many of their generation, my parents were determined that their children get an education in order to rise up; they always made sure there were books in the house. In the hallowed living room (as opposed to the TV-centered family room) was a long shelf of novels, including Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and selections from the Family Book Club (suitable for all ages), some biographies and history and even science (Jacques Cousteau’s The Silent World, on my own bookshelf today), a family Bible, a huge dictionary, and a colorful atlas, whose pink and green and yellow countries mesmerized me.

At the county fair the summer I turned five, my parents purchased a full set of the World Book encyclopedia; it came with its own special bookcase, which my parents must have paid a fortune for. Although I used it for my share of “reports,” (Father Junipero Serra, Brazil, and Vermont), I spent many long hours on the scratchy green carpet in our living room, leafing from subject to subject, having gone to the encyclopedia for one piece of information, on, say, Dirigible, and ending up in the middle of Dunkirk, alphabetically just below that, or moving on to Hydrogen, as prompted by the keyword highlighting.

My parents took turns reading to me at bedtime from much-thumbed copies of The Tall Book of Fairy Tales and the Volland edition of Great Children’s Stories, new editions of which I read to my own daughter. I imagine that her pleasure is much different than mine. She is hearing the stories for the first time and must find the illustrations startling and unique. I see and hear the stories through a filter, remembering being tucked safely in bed, the day ordered, punctuated by the telling of a story, my parents at last whispering, “Blow out the light.” I whisper the same to my daughter.

My mother has been preserving boxes of my childhood world all these years and is slowly returning bits of that world to me, for which I’m grateful. The books that have returned aren’t the classics, but rather a random accumulation of titles that have been forgotten by nearly everyone. Among those she’s kept alive are some Little Elf books, from the noted travel publisher Rand McNally, and, while I remember them fondly, I now find their travel themes to be jingoistic propaganda: Muggins Takes Off is about a rather saccharine mouse who hops a ride aboard a Mercury space flight; Volksy the Little Yellow Car makes a loveable character out of the first compact to come to the U.S.; and Choo-Choo The Little Switch Engine is a parable about the efficiency of the railroad....

Lewis Buzbee (ZYZZYVA 37) is the author of the novel Fliegelman's Desire. A bookseller and publisher for 20 years, he teaches in the M.F.A. program at the University of San Francisco. E-mail: lbuzbee@mindspring.com