Lost in the bookfair

I've just escaped from the conference bookfair for the second time. I venture bravely into the labyrinth of book-covered tables guarded by rabid booksellers and I wander around trying to impersonate an International Woman of Mystery in hopes that the booksellers will just let me look, but no. Next time I'll wear a necklace of garlic bulbs and lead a hyena on a leash. It's not enough that they try to lure me in with brightly-colored book covers featuring enigmatic titles; no, they offer treats too, T-shirts and chocolates and free sample issues of literary journals with names that sound like engine parts or children's games or self-consciously ironic cultural critique. When I start my literary magazine, I'll call it Drivel.

I keep my eyes and feet moving, hoping to glide smoothly through the aisles without attracting attention, but they pop up in front of me, these booksellers, to baffle my intentions. They all ask the same two questions:

1. Are you a writer?
2. What do you write?

Others seem to have ready answers for these questions, but I struggle: "Um, well, I write incisive comments on student papers and blog entries and annual assessment reports and book reviews and handouts and essays and limericks and things like that." Once when an eager bookseller asked me "Poetry or fiction?" I smiled brightly and said, "Yes!"

Finally I had to retreat, but not before buying a book--just one--despite the fact that a blurb on the back describes it as a "magical postmodern epic." Why did I buy it?

1. I like the cover photo.
2. I like the title.
3. I like the price ($8).
4. The author was standing right there ready to sign it.

It's called Quinnehtukqut, by the way, a novel by a guy I've never heard of called Joshua Harmon. He tells me the title is pronounced just like my home state--Connecticut--although the book is set in New Hampshire. The cover photo shows Harmon's great-grandfather in a flannel shirt and grimy dungarees, standing on a streetcorner and smoking a cigarette. Here is a sentence selected at random from the top of page 41: "A midwinter barn dance and that Hennessy girl as sour as old milk."

Magical? We'll see. Walking out of a room full of high-pressure booksellers with only one book is a remarkable feat in itself, but if that book can magically transport me away from this seething mass of intensely creative people, it will be eight dollars well spent.