Shelf Monkey

by Corey Redekop

  I phoned Danae one evening. “Hey, do you think we’re snobs?”

  “What’s that, sexy?” she asked. She had lately taken to calling me by a series of pet names, a turn of events I chose to take as heartening rather than condescending. It was our thing. She never made the names sound like she was demeaning me, never went, “Ooh, whatsamatta, schweetie? You depressed? Who’s a good boy? Whoshagoodboy?” Not that I wouldn’t have rolled over for a tummy scratch now and then.

  “Are we snobs? Burning books, making fun of others?” It had been bothering me lately. Two meetings previous, the Monkeys had unanimously agreed to begin a Master List of the Condemned; authors whose total output was so hopelessly inept and useless that discussing the quality of their books in singular fashion was deemed a meaningless exercise and a waste of a good bonfire. Frank Peretti. Nicholas Sparks. Eric Van Lustbader. Books spun off from television shows and video games. Any series based on a trading card game. Anything from Bethany House Publications. They were all just too easy. At the time, I voted yes wholeheartedly, gratified that my earlier promise to William/Valentine Michael Smith to peruse a Beverly Lewis was now moot. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  On the other end of the line, Danae sipped from her coffee cup, transmitting the smutty noise of liquid slurping across shivering electric wiring directly into my brain. Wow. I was whipped. “I don’t get you, Thomas, what’s up?”

  “We get together, all of us, and all we do is cut down authors we hate. At work, we laugh at people who spend their money on evangelical fiction and vanity biographies. I mean, we’re not hurting anyone or anything like that. We just think we’re so much smarter than everyone else.”

  “I’m not seeing the problem here, hon,” she said, boredom threatening at the edges of her voice. “What, this bothers you?”

  “Look, just because someone wants to willingly read a Pat Robertson or a Jerry Jenkins, it doesn’t necessarily make them a bad person.”

  “Doesn’t help.”

  “I mean, in the end, all the authors are doing is trying to make a buck, same as us. Doesn’t matter if it’s awful. If someone wants to read it, if it fills a need, who are we to criticize? Aren’t we just mad because these people make more money than us? That they wrote a book, while we still make minimum wage?”

  “What, you want to write a book?” she asked, suddenly excited. “That’s a great idea, you should do that! I’ve often told Aubrey to —”

  “No, you’re not getting it, I don’t want to —”

  “What would it be about?”

  “What?”

  “Your book. What’s the plot? Could I be in it? I always fancied myself a literary heroine. Someone sexy, strong, yet feminine and graceful. Could you give me bigger boobs?”

  “Oh. Uh.” I was losing my momentum. “Look, don’t change the subject, I’m trying to be serious. I don’t want to write a book, I’m saying that maybe we’re no better than the people we hate. Or not much better. Why do I have an animosity toward Richard Paul Evans? Sure, he blows chunks, but he donates some of his profits to charities. Or he says he does, I don’t know. I mean, do I despise him because he’s a horrible writer, or because he makes me feel inadequate?”

  “Oh, probably a bit of both,” Danae said. “How about a mystery?”

  “What?”

  “Your book. Or a coming-of-age story? You’d be good at that, all those life lessons you’ve learned.”

  “I’m not writing a book. I don’t like writing cheques, for Christ’s sake. What makes you think I could write a book?”

  “Hey, if Fiona Sigler can do it . . .” She made a gagging sound.

  “Who?”

  “Oh, Munroe’s latest. Comes out next month, we got an advance copy. Page made me read it. Called Freedom Fries and War Widows.”

  “Sounds awful.”

  “It doesn’t disappoint on that front.” She let out a deep, throaty, sexy sigh that threatened to resurrect Charles Dickens from the dead to pen another novel. “Look, hon, if you’re having a crisis of conscience or something, look at it like this. What we’re doing is, we’re performing a public service.”

  “We are?”

  “Most certainly. For every book we destroy, we save someone from the peril inherent in reading it.”

  I was intrigued. We didn’t simply burn books. No, that would be crazy. We were protectors of the weak and powerless. Liberators. “Well I must admit, that sounds wholly reasonable.”

  “When we weed a lesser author from the stacks, we make room for a stronger, more capable author to take its place.”

  “I never thought of it like that. Kind of like pruning dead branches from a tree or something.”

  “Yes, only that’s not strong enough.” Danae was getting revved up. Her voice quickened in excitement. “It’s Darwinian, Thomas, that’s what it is. Only the strong survive. We’re hyenas.”

  “We’re thinning the herd.”

  “We’re right, they’re wrong.”

  “You’re either with us or against us.”

  “We’re saving mankind.”

  “We’re superheroes?”

  “We are superheroes, that’s right!” I could hear her jumping in her chair. “This is awesome! I’ll be Libraria, Mistress of the Dewey Decimal System!” She cackled in euphoria. “I’ll shoot classification numbers from my fingertips! Freeze, or I’ll catalogue you!”

  “And I’ll be . . .” Who could I be? I was already Yossarian, I can’t be expected to keep all my aliases straight. “By day, I’m Thomas Friesen, mild-mannered bookstore employee. But by night, under the cover of darkness, I become . . . Captain ISBN!”

  “Just captain?”

  “Well, I hope to work my way up to General, but I’m new at this.”

  “What’s your power?”

  “I can proofread one thousand words per minute.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Can I wear a cape?”

  Danae whooped in delight.

  I tried again with Warren, figuring the possible yet unlikely use of his sexual wiles on me would be less effective. We had spent the day at Assiniboine River Books, a store devoted, whether by accident, design, or sheer laziness (Bingo!), to displaying its wares in no discernible manner. A holistic approach is the only method one could use that would assure success, as you could never hope to find a specific book you were interested in. The guy behind the counter was of no help, immersed, as he was, in one of the less-than-classic whack mags the store also offered by the barrelful. If, however, you allowed yourself the pleasure of a daylong browse through the books heaped throughout in intimidating mountains, you would be guaranteed to find something far more interesting than you had planned.

  After an hour, discovering a passable copy of What’s Bred in the Bone concealed under kilograms of bloated water-damaged trade paperbacks, I asked Warren, “Hey, uh, are we snobs?”

  “Definitely, dude,” he said, sitting on the floor, nose buried in a tattered copy of Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. “We are so much better than everyone else. We are the top of the food chain.”

  “No, seriously, put down the book, I’m serious,” I said. Warren closed the novel, exaggerating a sigh of reluctance. “Warren, we’re snobs, aren’t we? Burning books, making fun of others. What makes us any better than them?”

  Warren scratched his cheek, smiling in amusement. “Thomas, look at me, all right? What do you see?”

  “Seven feet of well-buffed man muscle.”

  He feigned shyness. “I didn’t think you’d noticed. No, seriously, what I am is the wet dream of every college and university sports team. I can dunk, I can spike, I can run the ball up the middle, all that load. It would be so easy for me to make good money at it, if I do say so myself.”

  “And yet, here you are.”

  “Exactly. Because, despite my enormous size and gifted athleticism, I’d rather sit here with you reading books than show off my skills to a fawning public. I figured out a long time ago what I wa
s, Thomas, and I’ve worked very hard to make peace with it.”

  “Your parents must be very proud.”

  “My parents don’t talk to me much anymore.” Warren stuck his hand into the nearest pile, pulling out a random book and reading its cover. “Hey, The Bear Went Over the Mountain! I love this place.” He sighed. “No, the parents, when they saw me shoot out the birth canal, they had dollar signs in their eyes. NFL fullback, NBA centre, NHL goon, they didn’t care, I was their ticket out of lower-middle class. I don’t blame them, but Dad never really forgave me for getting straight As in English and Cs in gym. I could have done better, but I never saw the point, y’know? It’s like when those Doogie Howsers get Fs, even though they could write the textbooks they’re so smart. It was all too easy, and boring besides.” I nodded. “Anyway, to return to the question, yes, Thomas, we are snobs. High quality snobs, of course, but snobs, definitely. But then, so are my parents. To them, sports are more important than other considerations. Myself, I’ll take Doug Adams over Doug Flutie. We’re all snobs, Thomas, some of us just hide it better.”

  “But all we do is make fun of others for something we can’t do ourselves.” I shoved my hand into another lump of books and pulled one out. “Look,” I said, holding it up. “Nora Roberts. I mean, the lady writes books faster than I can blink, for Pete’s sake. Aren’t we just being petty and jealous? So what if she gets published, at least people are reading. All most people want in the end is comfort, they don’t want a challenge. That’s not always a bad thing.”

  “Comfort,” Warren mused. He thought it over for a second. “Huh. Right, look at it like this. You like fast food, Thomas?”

  “Uh, sure, I guess.”

  “Me too. Sometimes, all you want is slop on Styrofoam. But, now, could you actually live and thrive on fast food? We all go to McDonald’s once in a while; you get that sickening craving for a Quarter Pounder, even though you know in your heart it’s equal parts sawdust and cow scrapings, and you have no choice but to slap down your three bucks and devour a pathetic meat-like substance that the fryboy probably pissed on. A fine meal of homemade lasagna dripping with mozzarella and marinara would be equally filling, plus you wouldn’t feel so cheap and greasy. Yet which is better?”

  “Well, the lasagna. But now, that’s only my opinion.”

  “Yes, there’s always going to be room for personal preference. Face it, you like fast food. I like fast food. But we don’t eat it all the time, right?”

  “No.”

  “No, because you’d eventually die from liver failure. Here, same thing. Roberts is fast food.”

  “Filling, but not very good for you.”

  “Exactly, nothing wrong with it once in a while, but it’s all empty calories. There’s no real nourishment, and you end up feeling kind of queasy afterward. You’ll also be hungry again in an hour. You could live on Nora Roberts, sure, have her for breakfast, LaVyrle Spencer for lunch, and Dan Brown for dinner, but you’ll end up bloated and groggy. It was quick, it was tasty, it was easy, it hit all the right spots, but fuck if you don’t actually feel sick after a while. In the end, it’s just not healthy. There’re doctors all over who’ll say a diet of fast food is no good, and it’ll eventually kill you. Same thing with us.”

  “So we’re not snobs. We’re dieticians.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You hungry?”

  “I wasn’t when I came in here, but now that you mention it.”

  “Once in a great while, an author comes along who single-handedly transforms the literary world. An author whose altogether unique perspective and talent effortlessly redefine our notions of storytelling. An author who speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves. An author who reinvents the wheel, so to speak.”

  Harold Kura took a sip from his water bottle, using the moment, allowing the pause to add to the effect, letting his words sink through the many layers of the human cranium, waiting until absolute comprehension had been achieved. An instant vacuum was created as his audience held its collective breath. Behind Kura, Page leaned forward anxiously from her chair, her hands on her knees, her eyes glued to the back of his coif in anticipation. What could he be waiting for?

  His teeth revealed themselves in a bleached smile, dazzling in their ivory purity. His fingers strummed the podium. “Agnes Coleman, God bless her, is just such an author.” A rush of exhaled air filled the store, followed closely by applause of the volume one would normally associate with the Second Coming. Kura’s grin stretched wider. He knew his audience, and would wring every last ounce of adulation from their sweaty palms by the time he was through with them.

  Agnes Coleman. Did ever such a wretch of a writer deserve comeuppance, Eric? I ask you.

  Aubrey, Warren, and I reclined in the back row, the applause rising about us like steam. Coleman’s second novel, Baby, I Was Nothing Before You (written and published with a speed that makes Nora Roberts look like Pynchon), had been controlling the charts since its release, and her appearance had been hyped for weeks. Page had been praised in the Winnipeg Sun as scoring a coup no less miraculous than the reanimation of Edgar Allan Poe’s corpse. Coleman had previously said she would not visit Canada on her book tour. (“Too cold for me, thank you very much,” she quipped on a Tonight Show appearance. “I have no intention whatsoever of visiting a country where polar bears wander the streets.” Leno’s jaw promptly dislodged from convulsions of laughter.) Page had been persistent in her appeals for a visit to the point of fanaticism, however, inundating Coleman and her agent with verbal and written pleas until they had no choice but to visit Winnipeg, lest Page immolate herself on Coleman’s doorstep in a final, tragic dénouement.

  It had all been worth it, from Page’s point of view. READ was full to bursting, fire code be damned. Munroe acolytes lined the aisles, sat atop bookshelves, crowded the stage, swarming about until all semblance of order was ignored and it was all you could do to find enough space to breathe. The line-up for seating had begun to grow before the store had opened that morning, and now, at 7 p.m., it seemed there wasn’t one free square foot of space left in the entire store. Throughout the day, the three of us had each taken shifts to ensure we would have a seat, and now we sat mutely among the hoi polloi, ensconced in a near-religious zeal that would have been funny had it not been so palpably scary. People of all sorts were in attendance on this beautiful September evening. Little old ladies, holding copies of Coleman’s newest as they would clasp a rosary: ten Hail Marys for every disparaging thought on the quality of the book. Intellectual poseurs. Businessmen. Mothers, nursing their babies. Fathers, balancing Coleman novels in one hand while frantically holding on to their children’s arms, fearful of a random trampling. Aubrey leaned over to me, and whispered one word. “Altamont.” I nodded my agreement, chilled. It would take only the slightest extra push to send this group into a rage that would make a gang of unruly hockey dads seem mild-mannered by comparison. For a moment, I envied Danae’s prescient decision to stay at home that evening, not wanting her attendance at the reading to been misconstrued as admiration. But to see a MUNROE RECOMMENDS THIS! in the flesh, in person, to be just that one iota closer to Munroe himself? This was a chance I would never pass up.

  Thanks to Munroe, Coleman’s name was now bandied about libraries, bookstores, and Internet chat-rooms with the same fervour that once accompanied the rerelease of the Star Wars films or the next Harry Potter. After all, Agnes was the first, the most successful of all Munroe novelists, the proof that absolutely anyone can become a sensation. The public is helpless against such a publicity onslaught. You have as much a chance of halting a tsunami with a child’s sand pail as you have trying to convince a Munroe fan as to the non-existent merits of Coleman’s published vomit. If attacking Munroe as an odious slime was akin to heresy, attacking a MUNROE RECOMMENDS THIS! author was at least worthy of a stoning. I wouldn’t have put it past the crowd. If Coleman came out and ordered them all to prostrate themselves before her, writhing in frenzi
ed orgasm, before drinking the grape Kool-Aid, there’d be one hell of a mass suicide to report the next morning.

  Making matters worse was Warren’s constant shifting in his chair. A casual observer might mistake his jittering for nervous anticipation, but truth was, Warren was in near-crippling pain. An unforeseen yet hardly surprising result of a still-in-the-testing-phase men’s impotence cure, Warren was the at first proud then anxious and now quite fed up with owner of a truly monstrous episode of priapism. Having an eternal pillar of fertility between one’s legs would be most men’s definition of Heaven, but after two weeks of hauling around the CN Tower, the glory and glamour of possessing the world’s longest freestanding woody was taking its toll. Warren had taken matters into his own hand — his left, then his right, then alternating — until his arms were sore with repetitive strain disorder, but all the sperm-releasing orgasms he could muster had not quelled his prick’s mahogany strength one iota. Loose pants, while comfortable, were out of the question; the pup tent he displayed could double as a coat rack. Consequently, he wore tight pants and underwear, trying to disguise his discomfort by keeping his chubby as close as possible to his body. While the technique, when combined with overly lengthy sweaters that hung to mid-thigh, served to effectively mask the elongation from public view, the resulting awkward limp would do John Cleese proud, a shambling gait that looked exactly like what it was, a series of hops and slides that could never be interpreted as anything but the futile efforts of a man trying to manoeuvre his legs around one absolutely leviathan (and severely chafed) erection. Compared to this, Portnoy had absolutely nothing to complain about.

  “And so,” Kura said, wrapping up his inordinately long introduction, “it is my privilege, my honour, and my good fortune to introduce to you now, a lady of grace and elegance, a major talent by any standard,” my eyes were now insisting on rolling themselves upward, “I present to you, Winnipeg, Miss Agnes Marie Coleman.” Page bounded to her feet. The noise of the largest herd of buffalo ever to gallop the open plains erupted, as hands slapped hands until blood blisters formed, a sonic blast of love urging Agnes to leave the safe confines of the break room, come forth, bless us, love us, blow us kisses, blow us. It swept her up in aural waves of mania, carrying her to the stage. I swear, she floated; her feet never touched the ground. The sermon from the bookstore was about to begin.