No Such Book?
Last night, I dreamed that I was taking a sociology class.
To break the ice on the first day, the professor decided that the international students in the class would introduce themselves. No Americans. I thought I might play the "I lived abroad for 10 years, doesn't that make me kind of international?" card, then decided I wasn't a hog for attention.
Just as I made up my mind to sit tight, an older male student from South Africa came up to the podium. Instead of introducing himself, he held up a doorstop of a book. "I must recommend this book to everyone," he said. He began describing it, but his accent was thick and the plot seemed really convoluted. Everyone's eyes were glazed over by the time the bell rang.
I wanted to know more about the book, so I felt lucky when I saw that the South African student had left it behind. I picked it up and toted it to the student union, and opened it as I drank a coffee.
The book seemed to be a novel. It had a tooled leather cover and gilt-edged pages, and the first half of the book was in an alphabet I didn't recognize. Greek or Russian, perhaps. The second half of the book was in English, and I saw that it was a novel with Rocky and Bullwinkle, except they were detectives and it was very noir, suspenseful and full of foreboding.
My interest was piqued. I had to read the book immediately, but knew that giving it back to the South African guy was the right thing to do. I would write down the title and get my own copy. I squinted at the cover and the title page. Shit! The title was in that strange alphabet! Oh well, I would Google it. After all, how many noir detective novels could there be about Rocky and Bullwinkle?
To break the ice on the first day, the professor decided that the international students in the class would introduce themselves. No Americans. I thought I might play the "I lived abroad for 10 years, doesn't that make me kind of international?" card, then decided I wasn't a hog for attention.
Just as I made up my mind to sit tight, an older male student from South Africa came up to the podium. Instead of introducing himself, he held up a doorstop of a book. "I must recommend this book to everyone," he said. He began describing it, but his accent was thick and the plot seemed really convoluted. Everyone's eyes were glazed over by the time the bell rang.
I wanted to know more about the book, so I felt lucky when I saw that the South African student had left it behind. I picked it up and toted it to the student union, and opened it as I drank a coffee.
The book seemed to be a novel. It had a tooled leather cover and gilt-edged pages, and the first half of the book was in an alphabet I didn't recognize. Greek or Russian, perhaps. The second half of the book was in English, and I saw that it was a novel with Rocky and Bullwinkle, except they were detectives and it was very noir, suspenseful and full of foreboding.
My interest was piqued. I had to read the book immediately, but knew that giving it back to the South African guy was the right thing to do. I would write down the title and get my own copy. I squinted at the cover and the title page. Shit! The title was in that strange alphabet! Oh well, I would Google it. After all, how many noir detective novels could there be about Rocky and Bullwinkle?
1 comment:
You must WRITE this book! And the story of finding the book. Book in a book. It's your destiny.
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