Sleep Well, Dear Books

I like the way my books look. Comfortably wedged together in the cheap handcrafted bookcases that line my walls. Their lives equate to a collective dinner party of sorts. Mr. Chekhov slips suggestively to another shelf to discuss The Cherry Orchard with Ms. Welty. Larry Brown and Harry Crews talk about the implausible merit of Charles Bukowski as if the old guy wasn’t sitting between them yelling obscenities to Toni Morrison (Hey Tones! Sula. Sula, Goddammit. You write one book of consequence and people call you a Goddamn genius? Jazz? Tripe! Tripe, I say! That Sula, though? That was a good one.). Shel Silverstein and Ralph Ellison make fun of James Dickey who challenges E.E. Cummings to a drinking contest. “Count me in!” bellows Hemingway from the third shelf. Tom Perrotta talks about a sense of time (and what that entails) with E.L. Doctorow. They can’t agree on anything. Kaye Gibbons is having an episode because Katherine Anne Porter asked her how the antidepressants were working out. Good ol’ Kate, subtle to a point. Tim O’Brien stands against the wall. He’s too handsome to be mad, right? Right! John Irving politely says hello to all and then disappears to rewrite something as compelling as The Cider House Rules.

The books are handsome to behold. I have a few signed first editions that I am prepositionally proud of. I have been lucky enough to meet Harry Crews, Larry Brown, Kinky Friedman, John Dufresne, Tom Franklin, Chris Wallace Crabbe, and a couple others. (Don’t get me started—I can drop names all night. I’m classy that way.) The books please me. I like to handle them. I like the way they feel when I open the covers. The giddiness that meets me halfway when I read that first sentence. The memory of a perfect ending. Thank you, Papa, for something so outstanding as “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” I like the way they smell; and I like the way they sound when I turn their pages or roll their names around on my tongue like a lozenge. I like the way they commit to me unconditionally. They are mine for as long as I decide they are. And they don’t hurt when I neglect them. They remember fondly the love I felt for them once long ago—and the love I surely still harbor. They are forgiving and love me back. They would never ask me to change. They embrace my quirkiness as I embrace theirs.

Sleep well, Dear Books. I covet your creators.