Category Archives: Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

Time for a Change

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porter sculpture garden 011Do you ever just feel it, that change is coming? You’re not even sure what it is yet, but the air vibrates with it. You raise your head and sniff into the wind, like an excited hound about to hunt.

My husband pointed out you could also be a rabbit sniffing danger, but he doesn’t like change.

Anyway, it’s not just my sporty new short haircut. It’s not that our town is getting a new manager and a few of the paradigms that boxed small businesses in may have shifted. Something big is on the wind. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve owned a bookstore long enough to know when the books are restless. They sense it too.

You think this is fey jesting? Surely you’ve read Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series with its amazing live libraries and orangutan librarian. L-space: where things are bigger inside than out, and hide more secrets than Horatio ever dreamed of ignoring.

Days of Awe and Wonder are seasonal for Jewish people, but an unexamined life at any time is not worth living. Maybe I’m just taking stock of what works and what doesn’t, how many simultaneous thirsty threads are sucking from the 24 allocated hours of the given day, and which ones need to go.

I don’t know. But on this first day of the autumnal months, the books are restless, and so am I.

The Monday Book: THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN by William Kotzwinkle

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Okay, I hate magical realism. Why I picked up this book, I cannot tell you, but I’m so glad I did. It is laugh out loud funny. I read so many parts of it out loud to Jack, he finally told me to stop, he’d read it later.bear

Aesop’s Fables meets David Lodge in this book about a bear who finds a novel in a briefcase, and decides to turn himself into somebody. Which means going to New York, becoming the toast of the publishing and talk circuit world, and buying a British title. Also lots and lots of pies, cakes, ice cream, pretzels, and potato chips. He’s a bear. He names himself Hal Jam, because there’s nothing nicer than jam, and he can remember how to spell Hal.

People involved in the publishing and/or cult of celebrity world will shriek with recognition at some of the antics of this bear and his team, but everyone is going to love him on some level. If it gives you any insights, the book culminates in a lawsuit about copyright.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes:

The bear looked out the window at the city. “Mine,” he thought. Of course he’d need to shit around the perimeter and subdue some females, but time enough for that.

When I wasn’t annoying Jack by saying, “Wait wait, listen to this!” I was laughing out loud, startling the dogs as they lay by the bed. This book is so very, very funny. It skewers the publishing experience and a few other things besides. And it never lets up.

So when I finally realized I was indeed enjoying a magic realism novel, I thought it had to be because the author was such a good writer. Simple, fast sentences with complex nuances, floating between bear brain and publisher brain. He’s good, this guy.

Yeah, well, William Kotzwinkle wrote ET. Yes, that ET.

Two unopposable bear claws up for THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN.