Bookshops

I have dawdled away the best years of my life in bookshops. As a boy there were pinball arcades and bowling alleys and milk bars; but always at some stage I would slip away from the gang and end up at the bookshop. The owner took pity on me let me malinger and browse. He had seen a few other bookworms similarly entranced by the endless worlds on his shelves.

A good bookshop is as large and holy as all the books ever written, to me. And owners of bookshops, though usually dishevelled and unkempt, are keepers of a faith. They are wise, slow and caring. They should be our parliament. Imagine Australia run by this congress of moth-eaten sages who have taken many odysseys and tilted at countless windmills, while seated drinking tea. Utopia.

I write all this because I’ve just been told my mother-in-law went to buy Pepsi Bears in Geelong and found all the bookshops closed down and had to travel as far as Queenscliff to get a copy. To quote James Fenimore Cooper: “My day has been too long. In the morning I saw the sons of Unamis happy and strong; and yet, before the night has come, have I lived to see the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans.”

If the death of the bookshop is certain then, yes, my day has been too long.