I walked from the computer back to the
shelf, with one of Edward Maya's songs playing through my mind. Yes,
if the book's title really did commence with a "Q", then it
was not there. I went back to the computer. Yes, it was "The
Quest for Winter Sunshine", by E. Phillips Oppenheim, and it
says that it does belongs to this library, and that it is in stacks.
And there certainly was no "Q" book on the shelf for
Oppenheim. My mother walked over, and she could not find it either. I
saw a librarian reshelving books.
"Hi, I'm looking for a book that I
can't find," I said, "Could you help me?"
"Oh certainly."
She went to the shelf where Oppenheim's
books were, and I directed her to the books. She looked, and could
not locate it either.
"I'll go look in the card
catalog," she said. I surmised that she must still be in
possession of that habit from when the library used to have a catalog
of cards for the books. We went back to the computer, and I noticed a
door in the wall. I didn't think it could lead anywhere, as that was
the edge of the wall on the third story. The librarian went to the
computer, that actually still had the book up from when I was
searching for it.
"Oh! That's what it is!" she
exclaimed, "It's a nonfiction book."
"Oh!" I unintentionally
imitated, "I didn't know he wrote any nonfiction books! Thank
you."
I went into the nonfiction stacks area
of the library, which I had hardly explored as of yet, and I located
the nonfiction book by my favorite author.
Tom--I'm going to comment here on the whole triptych.
ReplyDeleteI read the the fantastical one before the other two were up and appreciated it hugely but wondered if the blander offerings wouldn't be a let down after the monumental and glorious silliness of the third. (And I mean to compliment you with the term 'silliness'--true silliness is so hard to pull off without the reader feeling like the stuff is dumb or the writer is dumb or the reader is being condescended to. True silliness might be SJ Perelman or some of Woody Allen's early short stories or 'Tristram Shandy' or Ogden Nash or some of James Thurber. Everyone can be stupid, but it takes talent, suavity, and cool to be genuinely 'silly.' [The word's etymology is interesting.])
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed that. The other two set it up perfectly: it was fascinating to see the slow shifts in the three versions from factual to figurative to over-the-top.
I like what you've done here very much.