McMurtry's latest offering is a delightful collection of short essays--anecdotes--on his days as an antiquarian bookseller. It seems that this man loves books as much if not more than writing!
We bibliophiles can relate. I will read anything by a booklover.
Having been to San Francisco many, many, times, I especially enjoyed his details concerning the city by the bay. San Francisco takes some getting used to; I chuckle to see Larry struggling to adjust.
Here are some specifics.
57
McMurtry wonders if bookmen are eccentrics and if reading is becoming an eccentricity. Interruptive narrative has become natural. Our technology toys have interrupted our concentrated reading into shorter and shorter sequences.
He wonders if some day our technology toys might lose their freshness and the book, such an old-fashioned thing, will come to hold some interest for the masses again.
I hope Larry is right, but I doubt it.
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He says that many bookmen rarely, if ever, read. I am not surprised. I sell textbooks for a living, and my impression is that most of my fellow textbook sellers do not read either.
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"I'm proud of my carefully selected twenty-eight-thousand-volume library and am not joking when I say that I regard its formation as one of my most notable achievements."
I undertand, Larry, I do understand.
2 comments:
Aren't you glad you took my advice and began reading McMurtry in earnest ;-)
Now I remember! YOU'RE the one who goaded me into reading McMurtry again. Here amongst the 678 books in my library on my current reading list are the McMurtrys. Larry has won out over Twain and William Makepeace Thackeray. He should feel honored.
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