I live in the city of Fullerton, which still has remnants of its
pre-world world war II existence. There
is still an old downtown with buildings that were built in the 1920s, when
oranges were king. But, aside from
downtown, much of Fullerton is not bike-friendly. There are not very many bike lanes. But, even if there were bike lanes, I suspect
most people would continue to drive cars because cars are much more
convenient. In many ways, I feel like a
man born out of time. I don’t want a
car. I want nothing to do with cars. The reasons for this are varied and complex.
Today, after teaching my morning class, I hopped on my bike and rode to
the far edge of Fullerton, to Amerige Heights, where stands the last big book store
in town, Barnes & Noble. (There are, however, comic book shops in town and my own little store BOOKMACHINE). It’s a
difficult ride to Barnes & Noble, because there are no bike lanes along the
road out there, Malvern. Often, I must
ride on sidewalks, but they are narrow, and some of them have large telephone
poles right in the middle, which require me to actually stop my bike, get off,
walk it around the poles, get back on the bike, and continue. And so on.
It’s slow going to get to the book store, but I’m in no hurry. I prefer a slower pace of life. As cars zoom by, I feel like a man out of
pace with the modern world. I am okay
with this.
I arrive at Barnes & Noble, which is situated in a massive shopping
center that used to be a massive Hughes Aircraft plant, back when the Cold War
made people afraid of their neighbors and retreat into the solace of their
houses and televisions. In this shopping
center there are two Starbuckses, a Target, an Albertsons grocery store, a
Souplantation, etc. It’s a fairly typical
Orange County suburban shopping center, with a large parking lot…and no bike
racks. I chain my bike to a metal fence,
and carry my helmet inside. I always
wear a helmet because the lack of bike lanes makes bike riding a dangerous
affair in Orange County. My mom was
recently struck by a car, and fractured her collar bone. My friend Nick was hit about a year ago, and
smacked his head on the asphalt. I saw
the pool of blood. This is why I wear a
helmet.
I’m not looking for a particular book in Barnes & Noble. I want a good novel. Maybe a classic, maybe a new one by a new
up-and-coming writer. I’m just going to
browse, which is mostly what I like to do in book stores. Same with video stores, which are also
disappearing. Most people prefer to do
their shopping online, or in “big box” retail centers like Target. The other day I was in Target, looking in
their “books” section, which is one aisle.
It basically had just the latest bestsellers, most of which were now
either major motion pictures or television shows, or in the process of being turned
into major motion pictures or television shows, a fact which the dust jackets
of the books loudly proclaimed. The book
section at Target is really depressing if you are someone who values
literature, which I am. A man out of
time.
Man, I love book stores. I could
get lost here. I wander to the
fiction/literature section and just, like, browse, occasionally picking up a
book, checking out the cover, reading the dust jacket, reading the first few
pages, seeing if this is the kind of book I would like to invest my money and
time into reading. There are so many
books to read.
Browsing the “new fiction” section is encouraging to me, because it
demonstrates that people are still writing novels. There’s a new one out by one of my favorite
writers, Dave Eggers. He is very
prolific. There’s a new book called The
Childhood of Jesus by the South African novelist J.M. Coetzee, who won the
Nobel Prize. I wrote a paper about his
novel, Waiting for the Barbarians, in graduate school. I learn from the dust jacket that this book
is not, actually, about the childhood of Jesus.
It is, I gather, about two boys from South Africa.
I just read Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut (for the second time)
and absolutely loved it. Maybe I’ll get
another Vonnegut novel. I want something
funny and serious and science-fictiony.
They have lots of novels by Kurt Vonnegut here: Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast
of Champions, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
But I want something new. An
author I’ve never read, or one I haven’t read in a while. I head over to the children’s section. I was thinking of picking up one of the
sequels to Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, either A Wind in the Door or
A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Good children’s
literature is not just for children.
Case in point: I have a tattoo of The Little Prince on my arm.
I browse the graphic novels section.
I dig a good graphic novel, like Persepolis or Maus or American
Splendor. There’s a kid sitting on the
floor right in front of the graphic novels section, reading a graphic
novel. It looks like The Walking Dead,
which is now a major television series.
I want something that is both classic literature AND science fiction. And then my eye catches Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, which I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read. THAT’S IT! I pick up a copy. Fahrenheit 451 is about a dystopian future where everyone watches television on big screens and no one reads anymore. I doubt people ride bikes either. I can’t wait to read it.
