[Don’t know what this is? See the Story Up My Sleeve background.]
[source]The first shock passed up the desk and through his hands and into his jaw. Books fell from their shelves, a chair slid into a window, there were crashes downstairs. She’s in the car, he thought. She’s in that goddamn convertible. He got up and pulled the door open and moved out into the hall. The stairway was still there. He ran down the stairs and found Francis in the History section holding onto a man in a raincoat. Several customers were huddled around the cash register. Willis and Eileen were on the floor with their arms over their heads. “Get out into the street,” Freddy yelled. “For Christ’s sake, get out of here. There’s too much to fall. Let’s go. Let’s get outside.” He pushed a group of customers through the turnstile. The second shock came. A section of art books fell across Children’s Fantasy.
“Out the door,” he was screaming. “For Christ’s sake get out the door. Francis, get over here. Get out that door before it shatters.” He dragged the customers along with him. They were barely out the door when the third shock came. The front window collapsed around the sign Clara Books, Clara For Light. His baby. The whole front window caved in upon a display of photography books. It moved in great triangular plates right down on top of Irving Penn and Ansel Adams and Disfarmer and David Hockney and Eugene Smith. A five thousand-dollar print of “Country Doctor” fell across the books.
Rachel says
I love Ellen Gilchrist’s short stories – she captures the New Orleans I grew up in better than anyone. (Although I did not grow up wealthy or Uptown.). Her character Rhoda was a favorite of my Mom’s, me too.
John says
Well hey there.
I didn’t first encounter her by reading her stories myself; it came from hearing her read them. At the time (1990 or so), I was taking fairly long drives — 5-6 hours or so — by myself, every couple-three months, and I decided to experiment with audiobooks on cassette tape to listen to in the car. For reasons I don’t remember, I got a tape of Henry Morgan reading Thurber, and one of Gilchrist reading a collection of her stories (In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, maybe). No one I knew back then had recommended her to me; I must’ve read a review of something-or-other recently published.
Whyever* I chose her, I just loved the sound of her voice. I’d moved to the South from NJ, and of course — of course — was starting to appreciate what I thought of as the region’s characteristic soft accents. But her voice, at least on tape, carried another bonus: it had a certain whiskey-and-cigarettes feel to it. (I seem to remember when she was emphasizing a word, vocally italicizing it, her voice went up in pitch a register or two, and threatened to crack.) I think I must’ve finally sold those two sets of tapes at a garage sale a few years ago, and it had been many years since I last listened to them. But I can still hear her spoken voice behind her written one, whenever I read a story of hers.
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* Hmm. I don’t think that’s really a word, is it? Still, we’ve got who-, what-, when-, where-, and how-; why not why-?