Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Monday, April 14, 2003 The Pitch: It's like Moonraker meets Driving Miss Daisy! Odd. This morning, at Glen Park, at the second bench from the downhill escalators was a copy of Jonathan Franzen's Strong Motion in paperback with a torn slip of grey paper on top on which someone had written, in pencil, "Free!" There was nobody around when I came across this.I thought for a moment about taking the book, even though I already owned a copy and had, in fact, read it back in November. I could take this copy and lend it to somebody who I thought would enjoy it, or give it as a gift outright. Or I could trade it in for money at Green Apple. But it seemed somehow contrary to the spirit of the enterprise--the idea seemed, barring poisoned pages, or spring-loaded tranquilizer darts, to pass along a book for someone else to come across. Surely whoever had owned the book could have, if they wished, given it to somebody they knew. Unless they thought it was awful--in which case, they could have sold it. (And besides, Strong Motion wasn't awful. I had thought it a good novel--younger, sprier and more ambitious, in a way, than The Corrections because Strong Motion tried to be a sharply observed social novel with a satisfying beach-read overlay--evil plots and true love and like that. The Corrections is, however, for this very reason, a stronger novel because it stays truer to the social observation and moves deeper into its tone of mean-mouthed exorcism). I dug in my pockets looking for a pen so I could write, below the pale "Free!" something like "Good book!" While I did so, I imagined Jonathan Franzen crouched behind a pillar nearby, peeking around to see who would take it. I didn't have a pen, and continued to dig in my pockets, circling the perfectly positioned book, the perfectly positioned scrap. I wanted to crouch behind a pillar, too. I wanted to see who would take it. More people came down the escalator, crossed in front of the bench and I watched carefully. An African-American man in his forties, with a thick mustache and a gathering of skin tags camped on his left cheek, walked by, looked over, hesitated, then kept walking. A few more people passed, some not even looking down. Then a man in his mid-40's came. He looked a little like Harry Dean Stanton or Dan Hedaya--same hairline, same wolfishness to his features--and he looked at the book, looked around, then sat next to it. What interested me was the way he focused more on the paper than the book. He flipped it over and back quickly. He looked around again. His fingers pushed the grey paper quickly over the cover of the book, playing with it. Again, he looked around and then, cautiously, he took color advertising supplements from the Sunday paper out of his coat pocket and put them quite neatly over the book, hiding it. This bothered me for reasons I still can't quite understand. I assumed it was just petulance on his part: he didn't want anyone to see the book until he decided whether he really wanted it or not. But then the BART came, and he carefully picked up his advertising supplements with the book hidden from sight underneath them and I think this bothered me more. He was taking the book secretly, in the manner opposite in which it was given, and it didn't bode well for Strong Motion's future. But then I lost sight of him as I got on and tried to find a seat, and soon I was safely lost in my own book, and the whole thing was behind me, observed but beyond understanding and so, in its casual way, unseen. posted by Jeff Lester | 9:58 AM | |
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