By Rachel Shteir
When I was in my twenties, I went often to the Strand Bookstore, less to buy books than to discover them: the hardcover by an author I’d read about but never read; the tattered, out-of-print paperback that had been mentioned, obscurely, somewhere. The idea was to change my life. I spent hours on these treasure hunts, somehow made sweeter by the inhospitable setting: the grimy floor and high, cramped shelves, the narrow, dark aisles that required you to turn sideways and inhale when another browser needed to pass by. And then there was the staff, who responded to flubbed title requests the way I imagined Parisian waiters might respond to mispronounced orders.
I have continued to visit the Strand, and I have continued to think of it as a place you can get lost in. Until a few weeks ago, that is, when, wandering to the back of the first floor, I found myself in what looked more like an Ikea showroom than the ragged used bookstore of my youth.
No comments:
Post a Comment