I dream I am in a second-hand
bookshop (I often dream I am in second-hand bookshops), in this instance a beautifully
overcrowded one full of library stacks and reading tables o’ertopped with
ranter’s pamphlets and hardbound Victorian train timetables and antique maps of
the Hebrides. It’s a treasure trove, a
booknerd’s Nirvana, but my eye doesn’t linger long on the majority of the merchandise,
as something truly astonishing catches my eye: a black Penguin Classics edition
the size of a Gutenberg Bible called, with crashingly obvious irony, The Portable Perec. ‘Why have I never heard of this?’ I wonder,
and make my way to the book, which is so enormous, it has a long oak reading
table all to itself. I open the book at
random – though the word ‘book’ feels unequal to the task of describing this
wood-pulp leviathan: ‘tome’ seems so much more felicitous – a task that would
be a deal easier with two sets of arms instead of one, such is the sheer heft
of the volume. The contents are as marvellous as I could possibly
have expected: copious footnotes (in columns, no less!), a thirty page index,
illustrations from 16th century textbooks on natural history (they’re
the best), and more newly discovered Pereciana than you could possibly
imagine. (Though I clearly imagined it.) This is paradise; waking up will be harder
than ever.
