Bookish Thoughts

As I was fixing my exciting dinner of scrambled eggs and put-by asparagus from the summer Market, I flicked on the National Book Awards, momentarily forgetting that the Awards were actually presented last Wednesday and this was merely a recap. The confusion became pronounced when they announced the winner for fiction (Lily Tuck) because suddenly I thought, wait a minute, this sounds familiar. Didn’t she win last year? Try last Wednesday, ye of feeble mind and even feebler memory.

But my post is about something else. Several small points were made in the course of the Awards Ceremony and before I turned the whole thing off (how can you take seriously an Awards Ceremony where half-way through, the host, Garrison Keillor, says “and now let’s all get to our dinner here; we’ll get back to the prizes after we’re done eating”), I did take note of the following: only 96 million Americans read any fiction whatsoever. The announcers thought this was tremendous. I thought it was paltry. Another stat: the vast majority of sold books are never read. Fine, I admit I am a sinner here: I covet fresh books like others covet microbrewery beer or a good night’s sleep. And I do not finish a number of them. But is it really the case that most purchased books aren’t even cracked to the first page?

In a sense it is a relief. If I ever write the First Great Novel, I needn’t worry about delivering my message with aplomb. All I need to do is cozy up to someone at Borders and get them to display it at one of the front tables and issue one of those store-people cards that says “hey, like wow! You really need to read this! It was a favorite here among the Café employees and the noon-crowd too!” To fully appreciate the import of such a statement you need only go one day to Borders at around twelve and take a look at the noon crowd.