Oates writes on JonBenet Ramsey

Note: The following article is reprinted from a story I wrote for the Boulder Weekly. The interview with Joyce Carol Oates was conducted by phone.


The JonBenet Ramsey murder case is one of the most written about crimes in the history of the United States. In the days, weeks, months and years since her Dec. 26, 1996 murder, JonBenet has been the focus of front-page features in every major newspaper in the country. The strangely lurid photos of the child beauty queen have appeared on the cover of dozens and dozens of supermarket tabloids. Magazines from The New Yorker to Vanity Fair gave the unsolved case serious treatment, as did hundreds of other mainstream publications.

JonBenet’s case has been the subject of at least six true-crime books, including the 1998 bestseller by Lawrence Schiller, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town. In addition to traditional print sources, the Web is also filled with speculation about the murderer’s identity. Typing “JonBenet Ramsey” into Google yields more than 535,000 hits, including more than 1,800 articles about the July 9 apology and exoneration of the Ramsey family by the Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy, based on new DNA evidence.

Into this whirling mass of words, speculation and rumors steps one of America’s top writers, Joyce Carol Oates. Her new novel, My Sister, My Love, is about the Rampikes, an upper-class, dysfunctional family, whose 6-year-old daughter, an ice skating prodigy, is brutally murdered in the family home. It’s a largely satirical examination of the culture that produces children’s beauty contests and of the tabloid media that feast on people’s lives. Oates refers to the setting as “tabloid hell.” Its narrator is the Rampikes’ son, Skyler, who is just 9 years old when his sister is murdered.

It’s not the first time that Oates has sought to illuminate one of the nation’s top news stories through her intense fiction. In her remarkable novel Black Water, she reset Sen. Ted Kennedy’s 1968 Chappaquiddick accident in the early 1990s and told it from the perspective of the woman who lost her life in the car. She wrenched that tragedy from the realm of the political (much has been made of how it has influenced Kennedy’s career) into the world of human drama by focusing on the victim’s thoughts and memories as the water closed in around her.

“When I wrote Black Water, I wanted a character like Senator Kennedy,” Oates said. “I wasn’t writing Senator Kennedy. My character was much older. I’m looking for an equation in these true stories and trying to make it fiction. The characters are fictitious.”

When Oates set to writing My Sister, My Love, she began looking for the true story that might serve as a launching pad for the issues that she wanted to address. It wasn’t so much the grisly details of the murder that fascinated her, although she was familiar with them from writing a piece for The New York Review of Books reviewing the literature of the Ramsey case back in 1999. Rather, it was what the story said about contemporary America that interested Oates.

“I wanted to write a novel from the perspective of a young person from a notorious family, those families that are often in the tabloids and have reporters constantly following them around,” Oates said. “I envisioned a young person, an innocent person, in tabloid hell with no place he could go.”

She toyed with the idea of writing a novel from the perspective of one of O.J. Simpson’s children, and in fact Skyler’s fleeting love interest in the novel is the offspring of a professional athlete who was tried and acquitted of stabbing to death his ex-wife and her male friend. But in the end she settled on the Ramseys because she was intensely drawn to the drama of the children.

“At a certain point I thought of the Ramseys. I must have seen that little girl’s made-up face 500 times,” Oates said. “The photos of her in the beauty-queen outfits were everywhere for a long time. I know literally nothing about her brother Burke Ramsey. I didn’t look up anything. I wanted to write about a young man traumatized.”

Astute readers will almost immediately spot differences between the Ramseys and Rampikes. First of all, the Rampikes live in Fair Hills, N.J., and not in Boulder. Secondly, the mother, Betsey, is an ex-ice skater and is training her daughter to be a figure skater rather than a beauty contestant and dancer. Third, Betsey’s husband, Bix Rampike, is an ambitious young man in his early 30s just entering a high-powered career, while John Bennett Ramsey was 53 at the time of his daughter’s murder and was at the apex of a lucrative career.

Skyler’s narrative reveals a severely damaged person, both as a young child in the Rampikes house of the mid-1990s and in the present day as a 19-year-old recovering addict living in New Brunswick, N.J. The damage has been inflicted by his parents, Betsey and Bix. Oates does an amazing job of imagining what life must be like inside the family of a child prodigy. Almost everything else is shunted aside by the over-zealous mother, including Skyler, in the desire to make her daughter, Bliss, into a skating star. Bix, in pursuit of his career, is almost wholly absent from the lives of his children.

In the two years leading up to the murder, the children are shuttled from one ice rink to another. Both of the Rampike’s children are heavily medicated with psychiatric drugs, while Bliss is also given a regimen of performance-enhancing pills and shots. Skyler describes how his younger sister would perch on the edge of her bed because it would hurt to sit down after her shots.

“I’m very concerned with the pharmacological revolution among children,” Oates said. “A high percentage of children are medicated. You walk around a mall on the weekend, and so many of the kids you’ll see will be taking something. Many of my friends are on anti-depressants. I’m not criticizing it, but in children these drugs must be over-prescribed.”

Contemporary child-rearing comes under fire in My Sister, My Love as Skyler describes a horrific series of play dates in a tone of biting satire. These dates aren’t with children that Skyler likes; rather they are with the children of the town’s movers and shakers. Skyler is just a pawn in his mother’s social climbing. The kids play together in a totally unsupervised atmosphere, while the parents disappear.

At one of these playdates, Skyler and a classmate compare diagnoses. The classmate explains that he is a G.C.S.S. (Gifted Child Syndrome Sufferer), while Skyler can only counter that he is I.D. and I.A.D.D. (Incipient Dyslexia and Incipient Attention Deficit Disorder). The friend helpfully adds that Skyler just might be A.P.M (Acute Premature Melancholia), as well. Eventually, Skyler is prodded to try some of his classmate’s medicine and ends up having a hallucinogenic incident before almost being thrown out of the house.

“In the past, many of these things were just personality quirks,” Oates said. “People of genius have always had different personalities. I don’t think Einstein was normal at the age of 4. Many of the disorders in the book are real, and they are taken from my research.”

As Skyler continues to struggle for his parents’ attention, his sister Bliss is literally being smothered by it. Her workouts, her diet, her hair: all are closely monitored by Betsey. Oates describes Bliss’ skating costumes, largely modeled after JonBenet’s real-life outfits, in great detail. It’s a sickening catalog of inappropriately seductive items. If they weren’t based in fact, they would be written off as the grotesque fantasies of a child pornographer.

In these passages, Skyler’s narrative takes on the detached feeling of a news account of the event. It’s as if the details are too painful for him to remember in his own words. Here’s how he describes one of his sister’s greatest skating triumphs:“The All-American-Girl Ice Jubilee in Bangor, Maine, in early November where in a ‘Vegas showgirl’ costume of glittering white sequins and filmy white feathers, long tight sleeves with ermine-trimmed wrists, stardust in her ‘upswept’ hair and on her eyelids, and crimson-lace panties teasingly visible beneath, Bliss Rampike ravished both judges and audience with a skate-dance performance of that sultry-tango pop-American classic ‘Kiss of Fire.’”

Bliss’ death seems fated in My Sister, My Love. The ice skating star is becoming more and more disenchanted with her role in the family and on the ice. She is suffering from phantom pains and has just come off of a disastrous showing in her latest competition. Her mother is blaming her for the breakup of her marriage, and she can’t seem to learn even the simplest things from her tutors. She’s a portrait of melancholy, pleading for her brother’s help in the middle of the night when she wets her sheets. Still, she manages to attract a bevy of admirers.

“One of the passages is about how it’s so strange that people want some part of Bliss’ celebrity,” Oates said. “They just want to be near her. But she’s just a shy, insecure, unhappy child. When you get through the aura of celebrity, you often just find a wounded person that other people are using.”

Oates’ description of the night of the murder and its immediate aftermath is a haunting work of fiction. She wraps the true brutal events of JonBenet’s murder into the narration of an innocent child. Looking back on it from a distance of 10 years, Skyler still can’t make out the circumstances of the evening, although the reader will come away with a clear sense of who the murderer was in Oates’ version of the crime.

At night, before the children go to sleep, Bliss begs Skyler to draw a red heart on the palm of her hand. He knows his mother will be upset if he does it, but Skyler eventually gives in. We know that JonBenet was found with a red heart drawn on her hand. Later, Bliss wakes Skyler up and asks him for help, but Skyler doesn’t want to deal with his sister’s sheets again so he doesn’t get up. He’s also tired beyond his usual state because he was given an extra dose of medication. At one point in the middle of the night, he wakes up to find his mother working on a letter. He never seems to make the connection to his mother’s late-night writing and the ransom note.

He wakes up to his mother shaking him at 6 a.m., demanding to know where Bliss is, where he has hidden her. Skyler, wracked with guilt and shame and feeling the effects of too many drugs, doesn’t even know if he had anything to do with his sister’s death. Years later, this question still haunts him. The body is found by Bix in much the same way John Bennett Ramsey carried his daughter up from the basement of their home. The ensuing investigation also suffers the same flaws that occurred here in Boulder.

Once Bliss is dead, Skyler is shuttled between psychiatric institutes and boarding schools. Neither of his parents manages to establish a meaningful relationship with him. He only glimpses his mother in the tabloids or on afternoon talk television. His father, thoroughly absorbed in his career, mostly ignores his son. Bix Rampike, a former college football player, only reaches out to his son when giving occasional advice about what it means to be a Rampike man. In fact, Bix’s machismo, along with the macho world of corporate America that he inhabits, creates a wide gulf between the sensitive Skyler and his father.

“That corporate culture is more alive and well than ever under Bush,” Oates said. “I spent a couple of years looking at Fox News. Bix is a sort of Bill O’Reilly — a swaggering, macho, conservative Christian personality. It’s disturbing and alarming how these people come out of the woodwork in an era like this. In other times, the bigotry and misogyny would be there but hidden away a little more.”

Now, 10 years later, Skyler is compelled to write his story. He’s one of Oates’ odder narrators, which is saying a lot when you look at her varied career more than 40 years. His satirical story includes scores of entertaining footnotes and even a novella within the novel, which makes the 560 pages go fairly quickly. There are many stops and starts, and repeated scenes, as Skyler attempts to remember the pertinent events. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the narration is that Skyler is a completely real person. His tale and his world is an exaggeration of many of our society’s worst attributes, and yet the person in the middle of this alternate version of America is lovable and vulnerable.

“It’s meant to be emotional. He’s really struggling with his story,” Oates said. “He’s saying, ‘God I hate writing. I’m trying to make you feel something about these people in the tabloids.’”

In the end, Skyler finds some peace of mind and begins to reconstruct his damaged life. He begins to emerge from “tabloid hell” with the help of a down-to-earth preacher and some caring people.

“One of the answers is to return to simpler values,” Oates said. “Non-charismatic, basic religion on a very human level of helping one another is a start. We need to find community in a small group of people, not in celebrity. We need other people. You can’t look inside your heart all the time for the answers. You need a community.”

They Write About Books?

When it comes to reading book reviews, I'm a snob. I'm much more highbrow in my reading of critiques then I am in my taste of actual books. If the review does not appear in The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books or a paper from London, then it doesn't really attract my interest. Conversely, I'll read just about any book if it features a great cover, touches upon the subject of baseball, involves super heroes or looks respectably risque.

I'm not sure how I got like this. Frankly, most of the writing in The New York Review of Books bores me, and yet I persist. Perhaps, in my addled head, I connect the dry prose with literary respectability. I admit that occasionally I'll read a review in another publication if it's by a writer that I enjoy. I make a habit of perusing the Denver and Boulder papers to keep abreast of what the local residents might be encouraged to purchase at our store. But for the most part, I'm not really that interested in what Newsweek, Time, or most anyone else has to say about books.

I figure if I look hard enough I'm liable to find a good review of just about any book out there. God knows that the publishers find plenty of positive reviews to quote for the paperback releases of their worst dogs. You can practically hear the book barking as you crack open the front cover and read the stirring praise from U.S.A. Today. No thank you. I'll stick to the tried and true for my reviews.

All of this began to change a few months ago, when a magazine of dubious pedigree appeared in our apartment. After a round of bitter marital recriminations, I finally came to believe that my wife's subscription to Entertainment Weekly was an unfortunate error. It seems that a couple of months previous, we had bought a magazine subscription as part of a school fundraiser from the daughter of a dear friend. We were reluctant to take on another magazine, but the student had been a flower girl at our wedding, and to refuse her anything was beyond my capabilities. The problem is that unread, or barely read, copies of The New Yorker, Harper's and Paste already clutter up our minuscule living room.

"No, no honey, you can't throw out that October, 2003 issue of Harper's yet," I plead, every time we try to clean the apartment. "I'm halfway through a fascinating article that debates whether Nader is going to run for President again, after the 2000 debacle in Florida."

Finally, after much humming and hawing and some nudging from our friend, we agreed upon a subscription to Sports Illustrated. I reasoned that at least I'd thumb my way through it in search of baseball news each week. I also pointed out that everyone knows that sports writers are the most literate and talented of all journalists, so perhaps even my wife might enjoy the feature articles. (Disclaimer: the author of this blog is a former sports writer.)

By the time Entertainment Weekly arrived, I had completely forgotten about our subscription to Sports Illustrated. Once we ascertained that a switch had occurred, we'd already received four issues of the wrong publication. What could we do? I suggested browbeating the absurdly cute flower girl into correcting the error and getting us the right magazine. My wife, who was eschewing all of our highbrow literary magazines in favor of Entertainment Weekly by this point, said that we just had to suffer through the subscription in peace and quiet.

Week after week, a parade of celebrities crossed the threshold of our door. One week it was Johnny Depp, the next it was Will Ferrell gracing the cover of the hideous magazine that had brought the tabloid world into the rarified air of our home. It wasn't until the cover featuring Ellen Page of Juno, that I broke down and cracked open the magazine. I admit that I just love that movie. Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed; the magazine was rife with gossip, inane features on celebrities and fawning palaver aimed at dreadful Hollywood fare.

However, I found a curious three-page section of book reviews towards the back. I was flabbergasted. The reviews were concise, well written and featured not just popular books but independent and intelligent titles. I don't recall the exact books that were discussed in that issue, but ever since I have scanned each issue of Entertainment Weekly for the reviews.

I started mentioning the book news and insights that I'd read in the magazine to reps and fellow booksellers. I'd get a few askance glances, but I'd push forward. Making my exposure as a reader of trashy magazines even worse was my habit of referring to the publication as "EW" It seemed that I was on overly familiar terms with Entertainment Weekly. This delighted a few of the people I worked with who were only too happy to catch me quoting a non-snooty publication.

My conversion to Entertainment Weekly, was completed this past week when they released a special double issue featuring the best movies, tv shows, albums and books of the last 25 years. I skipped past the other categories (although I couldn't help noticing that they named the mediocre Spiderman 2 the 36th best movie) and headed right to books.

It's a surprising, quirky and literate list. Cormac McCarthy's The Road earns the top spot and is joined by Harry Potter, Beloved, The Liar's Club and American Pastoral in the top five. It's not just the books they pick -- I personally don't agree with the selection of Philip Roth's American Pastoral, for instance. I'm not sure it's even his fifth best book of the last 25 years. It's the pithy comments that accompany each entry that really provide the hooks.

Here's the write up for #29, Bel Canto by Anne Patchett: "A South American embassy throws a birthday bash for a Japanese electronics mogul. A famed opera singer is on the guest list. The terrorists who swarm in through the air-conditioning vents are not. The diva's performance works miracles even with the terrorists, but it's Patchett who really sings."

I also like #16, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood: "After 1984 came and went without ado, we needed a new futuristic dystopia to haunt our sleep. Atwood obliged, dreaming up the Republic of Gilead, a grim theocracy where women are valued solely for their ability to bear children."

I'm not arguing that this is a definitive list of great books published over the last 25 years. There are some true hits (The Things they Carried by Tim O'Brien, Blindness by Jose Saramago) as well as some books that were wildly popular (The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and Mystic River by Dennis Lehane) but have no business being on a list of new classics.

What EW does so well is to make books appear to be as entertaining as avid readers know that they really are. EW treats books with the same flippancy and zing that they treat movies and music. Anyone can enjoy a great record, and what they are saying in their book pages is that anyone can enjoy a great book. You don't have to be hyper-educated or part of a book club to pick one up. If you want to be entertained, here's some books that are great options.

In a strange way, I think EW does a better job with books than they do with movies and television shows. In the visual mediums, they are such an establishment force, that they have certain things that they must cover. They write about all of the major Hollywood pictures, no matter how unworthy of space they may be. Their book pages aren't as thorough, but they are free from establishment expectations. EW features first novels next to graphic novels, and the latest Janet Evanovich novel in the same issue that they have a full-page article on Ethan Canin's America America.

I used to think that these mainstream reviews didn't really matter much. Who reads EW or People for their book coverage? Well, People featured Nina de Gramont's The Gossip of Starlings a few weeks ago, and the book sold out at all the national distributors within days. Someone's paying attention out there. Perhaps there's really life beyond The New York Times Book Review for books and authors.

Now where did I put the EW featuring pictures of Angelna Jolie's tattoos? I didn't finish reading all of the book reviews in it. "Honey, what do you mean you threw it out?"

Welcome to the Digital World

Can Anyone Use a Computer Around Here?

Buying new books for the store, the crux of my job, can be an exercise in absurdity and futility. It's an antiquated, inefficient system that hardly takes into account the invention of the personal computer and completely ignores the existence of the internet. Here's how it works in a nutshell:

1. The publishers send out catalogs several months in advance of the publications of their new titles. I just bought Oxford University titles that aren't due out until next winter. These catalogs, which look and read like poorly edited magazines, usually feature one title per page. For each title there is a short (a few paragraphs) description, an image of the cover, often an author photo and information on the author's previous titles. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get a humorous tagline that reads something like "a cross between All the Pretty Horses and the Da Vinci Code."

2. I flip through the pages of these catalogs (sometimes 500 or more pages in a single day), going through one at a time to discover the books I want. I dutifully look up old titles by the authors, previous editions of travel books, and books with similar themes or topics. The titles in each catalog are in a seemingly random order that must make some sense to the publisher, but usually befuddles me. For instance, HarperCollins, Random House, Penguin, and Simon and Schuster each may have up to a couple dozen different catalogs. The new hardback fiction titles might be spread throughout as many as ten of these. This makes it nearly impossible to really know how much of any one topic or genre you are ordering during the sales call.

3. The sales rep goes through the catalog with me, highlighting books that the press is particularly excited about, or, more often, books that the publisher isn't really supporting with publicity, helping to guide me to a final number. Since the catalogs are out of date by the time they are printed, a lot of the rep's job during the appointment entails pointing out which terrible covers in the catalog have been changed, mentioning price increases, and informing me about upcoming publicity that was recently booked. They do this at every appointment. Honestly, I don't know how they stay awake.

4. Five or six hours into the appointment, when I've worked through all the titles in the catalog and it's all I can do to keep from dropping off to sleep, the sales rep stealthily whips out a stack of photocopied pages for me to peruse. These are sell sheets for titles that the publisher announced too late for inclusion in the catalogs. Often these books have no descriptions or jacket photos on the sheet. When I ask the reps about them, a shrug of the shoulders is the most common reaction I get. Of course, many of the most important books of the year get released like this, so I have to wade through these pages and pick out the Bob Woodward or Stephen King title lurking among them.

5. Once the rep leaves, my assistants and I enter all of the titles one by one into our computer system from the marked-up catalogs. When the data entry is complete, we recycle the catalogs immediately. It comes to over 100 pounds of wasted paper every few months.

A Better Way to Buy

Several publishers, most notably HarperCollins, are discussing the possibility of moving to an online catalog. I have one word for these publishers -- Hallelujah. It's about time. It was about time five years ago, but this is the book business, and things move at a glacial pace.

The publishers are doing it mostly to cut costs and to get some points for being green. Apparently, the current catalogs cost a fortune to produce and mail out. The bigger houses report that they spend over a million dollars on their catalogs. As far as being green, that's just a bad joke. We are in an industry that doesn't think twice about overprinting and shipping vast quantities of books that will never be sold. Our catalogs might come to 300 pounds a year, but our returns probably run to several tons.

What interests me about an online catalog, if it were done right, is that it could be a much better way to buy from the publishers. As soon as a book has a new cover, I could see it on the site. When new publicity, like an NPR show, is booked, it would be updated online immediately. Never again would my rep and I have to waste time looking at outdated pages. Instead, our appointments could be used to quickly discover the best books for the Boulder Book Store and to determine how best to position those titles. Add-on sheets for late titles would be a thing of the past. Instead, those books would be up and ready to go on the website.

Here's one buyer's vision of how this should work:

1. The catalog would be available online, and each store would access it through a distinct login. All of the information that is currently available on each title in the paper catalogs would be present on the online version. In addition, there could be extended reviews, pages of the text (especially helpful with children's books), author interviews, etc. Buyers would be able to annotate and customize these pages.

2. Each buyer would be able to sort the catalogs however they wanted. Publishers (in my wildest dreams, I see the major houses working together to come up with a standard format) would enable buyers to sort the books in dozens of different ways. How about looking at debut paperback fiction? How about hardback American history under $30? I'd love to sort out fiction with a spiritual theme.

3. The bookstore's computer system would feed into the online catalog to provide sales data on older titles. Why should I look up what John Grisham's last title sold, when the two computers could just talk to each other? We already give the publishers access to our sales information through a program called Above The Treeline; the presses should just feed it back to us on the online catalog. It should come up that I've sold 24 copies of Grisham's latest hardback and 47 of his most recent paperback. Perhaps carpal tunnel syndrome won't have to be the scourge of all middle-age book buyers.

4. An alert system could let buyers know of all the changes or additions that have happened since they last placed an order. Instead of receiving 5 to 10 pesky emails per week from each sales rep, perhaps buyers could just log on to the site once a month or so. I envision three tabs that would keep buyers informed: "New Titles," "New Publicity," and "Price and Title Changes." Bye-bye photocopied sheets.

5. The publisher's online catalog would dump the purchase order directly into our computer system. I know this is problematic due to most stores' (including the Boulder Book Store's) ancient computer systems. But it is still something that we could work towards once we get online catalogs up and running. The amount of staff time this would save is immense.

Words of Caution

HarperCollins held a meeting at the recent Book Expo America in Los Angeles with buyers from many of the top independent bookstores in the country to discuss their plans to implement an online catalog in the next nine months. It was a fascinating study in how people react to change. I was leading the charge into the online world with a handful of other booksellers. Many other buyers were much more hesitant to change a system that has worked for them, despite its inherent flaws. To them, the rush to change seemed reckless.

My biggest concern is that bookstores are some of the most under-capitalized businesses you'll ever find. Most stores do not have state-of-the-art computers and speedy internet connections. If an online catalog features too many bells and whistles, (HarperCollins is planning on having video and audio components to many pages) it could take too long for bookstores to load the individual pages. Staring at a stuck screen for more than an instant is going to bring the whole appointment to a crashing halt. There has to be a quick-loading basic page, with the exciting, colorful features all offered as something booksellers can access only if they want to learn more.

It's true that there are some potential downsides to ordering from an online catalog. It's harder to snuggle up with a laptop than a catalog in bed. Also, there's definitely something alluring about seeing photos on glossy paper as opposed to a computer screen. And a catalog is a lot easier to pass around the office.

However, the potential to revolutionize the buying process, save hours of tedious labor for both reps and buyers, and to make better decisions based on current information is too great to ignore. It's time for publishers to step up and make this happen. I applaud HarperCollins for the strides they've made and challenge Random House (the so-called industry leader), Penguin (publisher to most of last year's mega-sellers) and Simon and Schuster (home of the most useless catalog in the business) to wake up and give buyers a tool they can really use.

Homecoming for a Debut Novelist

Bookstore staffs are populated by struggling writers, hopeful authors and dedicated scribblers who are all a break away from getting published. Many give up, pushing their half-finished novels, ragged drafts of short stories, and marked-up pages of poems to the bottom of a drawer as they move onto more certain and lucrative careers. A few manage to get published, but by the time they do they've long ago left the bookstore behind and are never seen again.

Nina de Gramont worked for the Boulder Book Store in the mid-1990s, and she was one of the more earnest wannabe writers on the staff. Perhaps she knew all the hard work that lay ahead of her, since her husband David Gessner published his superb natural and personal history Wild Rank Place while she was a bookseller. More likely, she was just a bit more serious in her ambitions and much more willing than most of her colleagues to put in the hard work necessary to become a professional writer.

De Gramont, who now lives in North Carolina, returns to the Boulder Book Store on June 26th to speak and sign her new novel, Gossip of the Starlings. It's a magnificent look at adolescents careening towards disaster as they succumb to peer pressure. Her signing will be a rarity in the bookstore world. It's the first time in more than a decade that a former Boulder Book Store employee has had a reading for a published book at the store.

"I'm really looking forward to it," de Gramont said. "I'm excited. I have great memories of working at the store. David (Bolduc) was a generous employer. To me, the Boulder Book Store is a naturally calming space, especially the ballroom where the readings are held. I don't feel like a conquering hero returning, more like a humble servant visiting."

Gossip of the Starlings is a nuanced look at two high school friends, Catherine Morrow and Skye Butterfield. These aren't your typical teenagers. Skye is the daughter of a United States Senator, and Catherine competes at the highest levels of show jumping. Despite their high-class pedigrees, de Gramont manages to make their stories resonate. They are two teenagers caught in a spiraling world of drugs and high expectations. The inner turmoil that consumes them could mirror that of any troubled high school student.

"As a writer, you have to express compassion and sympathy for your characters regardless of their circumstances," de Gramont wrote in an email interview. "Part of what makes the story dramatic is the way in which these characters are willing to gamble with, and in some cases squander, all the opportunity and safety that's been granted them."

Catherine narrates the story in an elegiac tone as she looks back on the fateful year she spent as Skye's friend. This device allows de Gramont to view the wild and impetuous Skye through adult eyes rather than through the harsh lens of an adolescent. Catherine also imbues the entire novel with a hint of foreboding that begins on the very first page. The opening paragraph establishes not only the point of view and the sense of doom, but also the beautiful, meticulous, and poetic language that de Gramont uses throughout the book.

Now, when I see teenage girls laughing, when I see them loosed on a summer evening--
their limbs tanned and gossamer, their imagined freedom radiating like nuclear light--
I can't help but fast-forward two decades or more. I know the curve of their bones has
already made an imperceptible bow to gravity. I see the decay in slow motion, even or
especially through those stunning and immortal years.

"One of the reasons I wanted Catherine to narrate from a remove of years was to accomplish an adult sort of sympathy toward Skye," de Gramont said. "From a teenage point of view, Skye is glamorous and dangerous and very powerful. But from an adult point of view, she becomes quite tragic."

The reader begins to get a clear understanding of the recklessness of Skye's character and a hint of the tragedy that is sure to come in an extended scene that takes place in the eerily empty summer home of Skye's parents on Cape Cod. In the scene, de Gramont touches upon both the exhilaration of being a teenager along with the feelings of ennui that are experienced at that age. Skye's actions are so inappropriate and dangerous that Catherine's other friends clearly see her as a risk, even as Catherine is blinded by her seductive friend.

"I am drawing on some of my own experiences for that scene in particular," de Gramont said. "I wanted to establish the sense of freedom that comes from escaping rules, and at the same time illustrate the dynamics that evolve from new, self-imposed rules. In other words, Skye and Catherine may have escaped the bonds of one culture, but of course they've entered a new one. As a neophyte in the rule-breaking world, Skye doesn't understand the importance of the new parameters. She's as willing to flout her peers' rules as she is her parents', and that more than anything is what makes her dangerous."

The writing is remarkably powerful and emotionally true because de Gramont seems to dig deep into her own experiences and feelings in the narrative. Despite the nostalgic tone, there is an urgency that both teenagers and adults can appreciate in this novel. The drama and the feeling of living life on the edge that are the hallmarks of adolescence are perfectly recreated here.

Surprisingly, the skeleton of the story is based on a real life drug bust from the 1980s. Unlike so many other novels that have roots in true news incidents, Gossip of the Starlings has none of the stiltedness that comes from being bound to the facts of a story. The characters are fully fleshed out and wholly original. Catherine and Skye and those around them take on lives of their own that don't seem to follow a preordained script or fit into a network news cycle.

"In 1984 there was an infamous drug bust involving one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country," de Gramont said. "The incident got some press in the New York Times and even a segment on Sixty Minutes.... The surrounding events lingered in my imagination for years, but they only provided the barest template. I intentionally didn't go back and research any of the old news stories, or conduct any interviews, because I wanted the action to belong purely to the characters in my novel."

De Gramont's fertile imagination has yielded not only a beautifully written novel that perfectly melds tone, character and plot into a riveting narrative, but also an important cautionary tale for teenagers who are just beginning to explore the world on their own.

She might not feel like a conquering hero as she returns to the Boulder Book Store, but coming back to her old stomping grounds with one of the most accomplished books of the season certainly makes her a literary hero.

Nina de Gramont will read and sign her book Gossip of the Starlings at the Boulder Book Store on June 26th at 7:30 p.m.

Judging Books by Their Covers

Every week I place 40 to 50 advance reader's copies in the staff lounge here at the Boulder Book Store. Advance reader's copies are basically paperback versions of hardback books that will be published in the next few months. The distribution of these reader's copies are a critical component to the publishers' strategy for selling their new titles to booksellers.

The idea is that while our booksellers are noshing on the freshly baked bagels that are delivered to the store, they will pick up a reader's copy and become hooked. Once the booksellers are sold on a title, they will recommend it to customers. That's especially how the publishers are hoping it will work for unknown authors and titles they have paid a lot of money for, like Brunonia Barry's The Lace Reader.

Rarely, however, does it really goes as planned. Our 45 staff members pick up an average of 10 to 15 reader's copies a week, leaving 25-40 untouched. The rest end up being used to reward customers, as perks for local school teachers, or in boxes that get hauled off to the Goodwill. Over the years, I have tried to bribe or cajole the staff into taking more copies. I write up a sheet highlighting what I consider (based on conversations with the publisher reps, my own reading experience, and Publisher Weekly Reviews) to be the best titles of the week.

I've learned to put the books out about a month or two before their release date. If I put out the October copies now, there is a distinct possibility that the staff member who grabs a reader's copy won't be working by the time the fall rolls around. In months like May and June, when tons of new titles get released, I often start falling behind and sometimes I'm putting the reader's copies out on the eve of their hardback release dates.

Currently, I am frantically trying to clear out the June titles, but I am being foiled by the publishers at every turn. In today's mail there were May reader's copies still coming in, including our 5th copy of A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif, a great new comic novel that is already out in hardback.

We have one main rule at the Boulder Book Store regarding reader's copies: once a staff member takes one, it can never, ever come back. A few old books found their way onto the reader's copy shelf yesterday, much to my chagrin. After an intense investigation, the culprit--a wonderful young bookseller--was discovered. She explained to me that she was about to move and had way too many books and so she thought her January reader's copies would just blend back in.

I told her and a few other employees in the lounge that as soon as their hands touched a reader's copy, they couldn't put it back on the shelf. It was theirs. I knew I was in trouble when one of our most creative staff members began searching for barbecue tongs in order to look through the reader's copies while avoiding actually touching them.

This week, I tried a new tactic in an effort to get more people to take reader's copies. Instead of describing what the books were about and the merits of the various authors, I featured the beauty of the covers. I know, I know--that sounds shallow. But if you were faced with as many rejected titles as we are (1500 or more per year), you'd get a bit desperate as well.

The publishers spend a fortune in an attempt to make these books visual appealing. Some come in boxes, others have ribbons wrapped around them. It costs more to produce a reader's copy than a hardback. Maybe the staff will appreciate the production value over the content. After all, it works for the movies. Below is the note that accompanied the 45 reader's copies that I put in the staff lounge this morning:

Reader's Copy Highlights 5/21/08

When I first started working at the bookstore in 1992, we got about 10 reader's copies a week from the publishers. They came in plain yellow or blue covers with the title and author's name in unadorned black script. Nowadays we get 50 or more every week and many of them are truly beautiful. Liesl (one of our long-time buyers) noted that the reader's copy covers are often nicer than the finished book's. The advance cover of Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant was far superior to the jacket on the hardback. In this week's highlights, I'm featuring books as art objects. These are the most beautifully designed reader's copies of the week (without regard to content).

• The Size of the World by Joan Silber. The cover features three photos, the middle one tinted in a sumptuous orange, evoking the feel of a Vietnamese film. It's a novel set in wartime Vietnam.


• The Montefeltro Conspiracy by Marcello Simonetta. A reproduction of a Renaissance Italian painting graces the jacket of this historical look at the attempted assassination of the Medici brothers.


• The Other by David Guterson. The author of Snow Falling on Cedars is given the stark black and white treatment featuring a photo of a mysterious snow field with one set of footprints running through it.


• The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman. A gorgeous wraparound cover of an 1892 harem painting by Frank Disksee lets the reader know of the delights that will surely be found in this novel set in the 16th century Ottoman Empire.
  


• Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan. A luscious dark blue cover features a swirling jacquard (a fabric of intricate variegated weave or pattern named after Joseph Marie Jacquard, a French silk weaver in the late 1700s.)


• Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen. I admit that the cover isn't great, but the line drawings are interesting at least. The author photo on the back cover is what really makes this reader's copy. Rivka is quite alluring.


• The Island of Eternal Love by Daina Chaviano. A spiral staircase with an intricate wrought-iron railing is the centerpiece of this cover, which also features a ghostly image of a woman in period costume (I'm not sure which period). The author's photo on the back cover is absurdly posed, but Daina is beautiful enough to get away with it.


• The World Before Her by Deborah Weisgall. The cover photo of Venice's St. Mark's Square and the Doge Palace as seen from across the water with two gondolas in the foreground just makes you want to leave work immediately and head for that enchanted city.


• Promise of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst. An orange-hued jacket featuring the silhouettes of a couple of crows along with a wolf. What makes this cover stand out is the embossed title. The series name--The Wolf Chronicles--and the author's name are also embossed in gold lettering that is prettier than a shiny wedding ring.

Dying to Climb Mount Everest

Everest is a rugged, cold, oxygen-deprived, inhospitable mountain that isn't suitable for human life. A few nearly super human souls like Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler, who climbed the mountain solo and without oxygen in 1978, defy the odds and stretch the limits of human endurance. Many more people, like the dozens of amateur climbers who ascend the peak every year with the help of fixed rope lines, oxygen canisters, and teams of sherpas, conquer the mountain's 29,029 feet with all the resources that modern life can bear.

But modern conveniences and large tours only mask the true danger of the mountain. In 2006, eleven people died trying to reach the summit of Everest. Unlike 1996, the focus of John Krakauer's thrilling account Into Thin Air which documented a brutal storm that lead Everest's deadliest year, there was no swift-moving storm in 2006. In fact, there was a great deal of controversy about how and why so many people died in relatively calm weather. Nick Heil's new book Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season delves into the personalities and the histories of both the climbers who died and those that survived as well as the checkered past of Everest, in an attempt to untangle the mysteries of 2006.

Two men at the center of the controversy -- David Sharp, a British climber who lay dying as scores of climbers passed him in their attempt to summit and Russell Brice, the preeminent tour operator on the north side of the mountain -- get a lot of attention in Heil's account. Sharp's fate made headlines around the world when it became known that he perished on the mountain despite being seen by so many climbers. Brice, because he runs the most lavish and well-outfitted tours, was subject to a great deal of outrage in the climbing community. Why didn't Brice's people do more to save Sharp, even though he wasn't on Brice's tour?

"Brice, arguably more than any other individual, has been responsible for developing commercial climbing on Everest's north side, and where his responsibility and accountability ends when it comes to the welfare and activity of other teams and climbers on the mountain has become a subject of spirited debate," Heil wrote in an email interview. "Brice has been criticized for developing a heavily supported system that pampers clientele and removes most of the challenges (finding and putting in the route, dealing with weather, managing gear and food, etc) from high-altitude mountaineering, and thus enabling amateurs to make it up a peak they otherwise might not."

Sharp wasn't one of those amateurs. In 2002 he climbed Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world and less than 2,200 feet shorter than Everest. The next year Sharp attempted to climb Everest and fell just hours short of the summit because he was struggling with his oxygen system. In 2004, Sharp attempted a solo climb of the mountain and was turned back just a mile from the summit (about six hours) when he began to suffer frostbite. When he returned in 2006, he was a determined man. Once again he was climbing without a sherpa or a support team.

Sharp's forays were in direct contrast to the type of trips Brice ran. He was also a much different climber than the ones that Brice brought to the mountain. Among Brice's 2006 clients were several people overcoming physical difficulties. Mark Inglis, who lost his legs in a 1982 climbing incident on New Zealand's Mount Cook was attempting to become the first person to climb Everest on twin prosthetics. Gerard Bourrat, a 62-year old man who was barely recovered from kidney surgery, had the doctor cut into his abdomen rather than his back so he could carry a backpack without irratating the wound. Perhaps strangest of all, Tim Medvetz, a motorcycle crash survivor who was 6-foot-5, 220 pounds, had signed onto the trip at the last possible moment in questionable shape. Brice seemed to be running a wayward camp for guys trying to prove that they were physically up to snuff.

"I'm sure most able-bodied mountaineers who have climbed big peaks can appreciate what Mark Inglis, the double-amputee, accomplished by climbing to 29,000 feet," Heil wrote in his email. "That said, mountaineering does seem to attract a percentage of people seeking to reaffirm their own self-worth or bolster their self-esteem, and there may be no better case study than Everest--largely because it continues to carry such cache, no matter how cynical you might be about commercial climbing."

The tension between the amateurs and the accomplished climbers, between the well prepared mountaineers and people who might not even be in peak shape animates much of Heil's book. In one particularly memorable scene, Medvetz -- a rank amateur by most people's reckoning -- gets stuck behind 16 people waiting to climb the rock ledges at the bottom of the second step. "C'mon, let's go! It's fucking freezing down here," he screamed. "I'm going to die of frostbite! It's not funny."

Heil describes the climbers, a group of Turkish women, flopping around as the sherpas try to yank them up by their backpacks. It almost reads like a slapstick comedy, if the effects of standing around at 27,000 feet weren't so perilous. Once Medvetz scrambles up the ledge he gets stuck behind the women again, except now there is no reason to scream. The sherpas are performing CPR on one of the climbers that has collapsed and is blocking Medvetz's path. All he can do is wonder if he's going to watch someone die.

If there are any true heroes in Heil's tale it is the sherpas. They are the ones that fix the ropes at the beginning of the season, they are the ones that share their oxygen when western climbers collapse and they are even the ones that drag the dead bodies off the mountain. In the end, the only person who really tried to save David Sharp was Brice's lead sherpa Phurba Tashi, who spent hours trying to revive the Brit.

"Phurba Tashi is really just fantastically strong, and he knows what's happening on the mountain," Heil answered when I asked him about Everest heroes. "He helped turn Tim (Medvetz) and Gerard (Bourrat) around (when it was obvious they couldn't reach the summit), then did more than anyone else to try to help David Sharp, and THEN he carried Mark Inglis halfway down the North Ridge on his back when Inglis could no longer walk. He's an extraordinary individual who gets far less recognition than he deserves."

Dark Summit is a riveting book not just because the human drama that played out on Everest in May of 2006, but because of Heil's fine descriptive writing and keen insights into the motivations of the climbers, the guides and the tour operators. These portraits of the people and the landscape paint a much more complex view of what is happening on Everest then is generally understood. The difference between right and wrong is much easier to judge at sea level than it is at 28,000 feet. Heil shows completely exhausted climbers who aren't making the decision to ignore people in need, but are rather just trying to survive in the deadly climate.

"In fact, when I was on Everest in 07, I was struck not by what a circus it was (and there was some of that) but by the sense that these people did care, by and large, and that they WERE looking out for each other," Heil emailed. "What tends to get reported is all the nasty stuff of course; you never hear about the Sherpa who gave up his oxygen, or the guide who stopped to check on someone along the route, or really all of the small gestures of kindness and thoughtfulness that take place all the time."

Heil also gives a brief overview of Everest history including the exploits of George Mallory, Maurice Wilson (a crazed climber who planned to crash a plane into Everest to begin his ascent) and Edmund Hillary which helps to ground the tales of today's climbs. He also discusses the medical effects of cerebral edema, frostbite and freezing to death which come in handy when the climbers start collapsing all over the mountain.

Heil's book ends on a surprisingly high note with one climber who collapsed and somehow got up again. Lincoln Hall, who has written his own account of his climb Dead Lucky: Life After Death on Mount Everest, survived even though he was basically left for dead overnight on the mountain. Heil tells the improbable story of his rescue, including tales of desperate sherpas who violently threatened Hall in an effort to get him down the mountain. Of course, the sherpas couldn't possible inflict more violence on a human being then the brutal world of Everest's North ridge.

Nick Heil will be discussing and signing Dark Summit at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 14th at the Boulder Book Store.

Additional Questions for Nick Heil:

Kash's Book Corner: After your extensive research and multiple interviews and your own experience on the mountain, what would you suggest for dealing with the problems of a crowded mountain. Should permits be tighter? Should there be a fitness test? What is even feasible?

Nick Heil: There are some basic steps that could certainly help: for starters, previous 8,000-meter experience on another peak (Cho Oyu or Shish, for example), minimum five years climbing experience, and probably a cap on the total number of climbers. I think the rope-fixing needs to be figured out and managed through a consistent system. And I think some sort of infrastructure that could deal with emergencies, like a rotating team of Sherpas that stays at one of the high camps during the busiest summit days. This all pertains to the commercial outfits of course. Independent and private outfits would need to demonstrate some kind of previous experience and expertise. I think the mountain's guides, outfitters, and permitting agencies could reach a fair consensus on all this. It's going to take Nepal and China to step up and require it, however.

Kash's Book Corner: The Olympic torch going up Everest has been in the news this week. What was the attitude towards last year's practice run? Is this just another step towards turning the mountain into a circus?

Nick Heil: I think the attitude about the torch test run in 07 was mostly mild bemusement. This year, with the mountain closures and general ruckus related to the torch relay and pending Games, it's turned to annoyance, if not genuine anger. The torch fiasco probably points less to the circus like nature of Everest than to the iron fist with which China controls that part of Himalayas. They care far less about the tourism industry (including the Everest climbing community) than they do about creating their own propaganda and news spin. The torch's trip up Everest is obviously of great symbolic importance. But all those who were put out of work this year on the mountain might have a significantly different interpretation of that symbolism than the Chinese.

Kash's Book Corner: If the sherpas can fix the rope lines early in the season, would it be possible for them to store emergency air cannisters and other supplies at key places in the route?

Nick Heil: Yes, they could. Problem is, it's expensive (oxygen canisters run upwards of $400/pc), and it's also quite a project for someone to try to manage independent rescue resources on the mountain. As I mentioned before, there could in theory, even be a small rescue team positioned up high, but again, there's the cost, and such a thing would also seem a bit excessive to mountaineers who pride themselves on the notion of their own self-sufficiency. One of the reason the Brice/Himex model works so well is that Brice has built in failsafes to troubleshoot problems during the climb. I think that's probably the way to go, before trying to establish elaborate rescue systems.

Deconstructing the Library

I first read T.C. Boyle's classic novel Budding Prospects in 1991 when I was a sportswriter in Maryland. I picked up my hardback copy for about five bucks at a used bookstore a few blocks away from the newspaper office one sunny spring afternoon. I flew through Boyle's comic masterpiece of ill-fated, paranoid pot growers in between covering high school baseball and softball games.

The novel resonated with me in ways that are hard to describe. I didn't grow pot, I'm not particularly paranoid and I certainly wouldn't be as inept at anything that I put my mind to as Boyle's characters are in their endeavours. There was a spark and a lightness in Boyle's language and his characters that struck me. The voice of the first person narrator, Felix, was direct, honest and humorous all at the same time. The spectre of failure haunted Felix from the opening sentences. I was at a difficult point in my life where I was getting by (sharing a broken-down house with two other reporters), but success in the adult world of work certainly did not seem assured. Maybe I was feeling a bit hopeless as I read Felix's opening words:

"I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team," Boyle writes. He continues, "I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston."

A year later, I did quit my job at the newspaper and headed west to Colorado. My personal list of quitting had risen to include the cities of New Orleans and Houston along with a relationship and now my career as a sportswriter. Budding Prospects, along with about 75 other precious books, was packed away in the trunk of my car as I sped across the country with my friend's windsurfer tied to the roof.

When I left Maryland, I didn't even consider ditching my books. They were part of my identity. The battered copies of Bernard Malamud's novels helped me understand my Jewish ancestry. Joyce Carol Oates' Because it is Bitter, Because it is my Heart gave me some insight into racial relations in America. Richard Hugo's book of poems 31 Letters and 13 Dreams described the satisfactions and heartaches that lay ahead for me if I followed my most secret desire of becoming a poet. As I drove across America, I thought of Alex Kotlowitz's recently published instant sociological classic There are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America that told me what was really happening in the inner cities that I sped past on the highway.

I treasured these books for how they had touched me as a reader and person, and I couldn't imagine being without them. I believed that I would refer back to them over and over again as the years went on. They were irreplaceable to me. You couldn't just go into any library or bookstore and find Hugo's poetry or Malamud's more obscure novels. I needed to carry them with me to create my own personal library.

I hung onto these books and added hundreds more over the subsequent 15 years. Budding Prospects was packed up and moved five separate times over the years. Each time it was placed on my bookshelf as if it was a valuable family heirloom saved in the Armenian exodus from Turkey by my great-grandmother. The bookcases in my condos grew from bricks and boards to beautiful painted wooden cases acquired at a Mexican furniture store in downtown Boulder. No expense was too great when it came to caring for my books. When those cases were bursting with titles, I installed metal brackets and wall-to-wall shelves on every available wall. Finally, when there were still books that couldn't find a home on any of the shelves, stacks started accumulating on the floor.

Then, a funny thing happened about two years ago -- I tried to reread Budding Prospects. As part of a store contest, every staff member was supposed to pick a backlist book to recommend for the summer. What could be a better fit for pot-smoking Boulder than my old beloved friend. I managed to get to about page 75 before I set aside Boyle's work in boredom. It seemed more meandering than I recalled, and all of the wonderful passages that I remembered held none of the surprise for me that they did on the first reading. Here was this book that I'd carried for over 2,000 miles and packed and repacked for the last 15 years and I had no desire to read it again.

I didn't immediately get rid of my copy of Boyle's debut novel. But I started thinking about all of my books. Why was I holding onto them? At the age of 40 I was much more confident of my identity than I had been at 25. I didn't need them to define me anymore. I never seemed to reread them, except for an occasional poem or short story. I didn't really refer to them very much. Some I even forgot I owned and would snag a remainder copy of a title that it turned out was sitting in our spare room collecting dust in its alphabetically correct place on the shelf.

Furthermore, even if I let go of Budding Prospects I could turn around and get it right back if I really wanted it. Over the last couple of months, I've gradually been dismantling my personal library. As I part with each precious tome, I'm addicted to looking up what it's really worth out in the world. It turns out that most of my books are worth between one penny and three dollars according to Amazon and Abebooks. That's not much when you consider how valuable every inch of an 800-square-foot apartment is in downtown Boulder.

Sometimes, I fear that as I get rid of them I will miss their physical presence. It will be like the fresh paint on a wall where an old picture used to hang. You might not even know what the picture was, but you miss the frame, and it's almost painful to see that clean spot on the wall. This worry was assuaged a bit last night over drinks with an old friend, a writer, who said goodbye to many of his books when he moved from a house into a 640 square foot condo with his wife.

"We packed up and got rid of so many boxes of books when we moved, and I don't miss them at all. There isn't a single thing that I miss," he said. I peered at him closely trying to figure out if I really believed him. "It's great," he blurted out in conclusion and grinned. He sure looked like a happy man to me.


It was reassuring to see him smiling; it is kind of depressing to think that these objects that have had a hold over me like holy relics or talismans for the past 15 years could be worth-less. On the other hand, it is freeing to think that I no longer need to construct a personal library. Every obscure Malamud novel can be had in several different editions.

I spent a couple of days during the last week receiving used books at the bookstore. I was amazed at the plethora of titles that comes in every single week. Classic works of literature, religion and history, along with books that are still on the bestseller list. If you want to get a cheap copy of Eckhart Tolle's Oprah sensation A New Earth or Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize winner The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, just put in a request at our used book office and one will probably show up within a few days.

In the used book office, I felt like I was standing beneath a waterfall of books as I looked at the floor to ceiling shelves of books we'd recently purchased waiting to be received. As I stood there, I began to realize that there is a never-ending flow of books. There's no reason to dam up a tiny area for my own personal pool. For a modest amount of money, I can reach into this flow at any time and read exactly what I want.

The dismantling of my library hasn't gone that smoothly. There are still books that I've owned for 12 years that I insist that I will eventually read. My wife doesn't quite understand why I have to hang on to two copies of Don DeLillo's Underworld. I explain that one is the reader's copy and the other is a signed first edition. These are the hazards of my profession. I got rid of Budding Prospects, but I can't let go of T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain and Road to Wellville. They are both signed, personalized and dated. Then there are books like Kevin Canty's collection of short stories, Honeymoon. It's one of 250 signed first editions. I've never read Canty, but perhaps this will become a holy relic if Canty goes on to win a major award.

These books with personal touches seem to be all that I want to keep anymore. They seem to me to be irreplaceable in a way that most books simply aren't. I'd sooner sell my couch (my wife might disagree since she's currently napping on it) than my autographed Philip Roth books. But is this really a library? No. It's just a fairly random collection of signed or rare books that I've stumbled across in my years as a bookseller. The world, for better or worse, is now my library.