V

The shop is mid-size, roughly square with bookshelves on all walls except the little space where the proprietor’s desk stands. Cozily lit, intimately spaced, it is easy to get lost in the books staring at you from all sides. And instantly the vaguely known yet mysterious emotion overcomes you, a rush of blood flows to your face and a little dizziness enhances your senses. Try to hold back the desire of reading the spines, for a while just run your hand carelessly along them, seek to touch the letters and images with your fingertips. There are a million worlds, and you have to be patient. Once the dust of un-held books has rubbed into fingers with the odorless shine of cover laminations, you focus your gaze on the titles. You scan them in order, left to right, then down, take a quick glance at the upper shelf, and again concentrate on the shelf you left behind. Are you searching for some patterns, key to a yet unknown puzzle, or perhaps an aberration, a title you did not expect there?

You take out a book out randomly; flip the pages, read the back cover or flyleaf. It can be a book you have never seen or heard of, or a known and even favorite title, a different edition perhaps than the one you are used to. But the most interesting are the ones that you were not actually looking for, but came upon suddenly and now want, like Thomas Pynchon’s V. Before you recollect what you know about this book, the scant yet suggestive title of the novel arrests you. On the pale pista colored cover with a white grid, a multicolored giant V is printed. THOMAS PYNCHON written in bold black font is superimposed on the V. Bellow that is written again in multicolor “few books haunt the waking or sleeping mind, but this is one” with TIME written bellow. And on the bottom left corner is another sky blue V but not a reprint of the title, just the symbol of the publisher-vintage. The decision is already made in your mind; you are going to buy it.