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	# 2025-03-23 - Parnassus On Wheels by Christopher Morley

	This is the story of a middle-aged woman who impulsively buys a
	mobile book store, similar to a tiny house or a vardo. She leaves
	her domestic responsibilities to go adventuring on the road.

	Vardo

	I downloaded the ebook from Project Gutenberg and i was not
	disappointed. The story begins as a fast paced first-person
	narrative. I could easily like and relate to the protagonist.
	It made for a lazy Sunday afternoon read.

	This book has a sequel titled The Haunted Bookshop.

	The Haunted Bookshop

	What follows are quotes and spoilers from the book that interested me.

	It's all right for college presidents to draw up their five-foot
	shelves of great literature, and for the publishers to advertise
	sets of their Linoleum Classics, but what the people need is the
	good, homely, honest stuff--something that'll stick to their
	ribs--make them laugh and tremble and feel sick to think of the
	littleness of this popcorn ball spinning in space without ever even
	getting a hot-box! And something that'll spur 'em on to keep the
	hearth well swept and the wood pile split into kindling and the
	dishes washed and dried and put away. Any one who can get the
	country people to read something worth while is doing his nation a
	real service. And that's what this caravan of culture aspires to...
	You must be weary of this harangue! Does the Sage of Redfield ever
	run on like that?"

	"Not to me," I said. "He's known me so long that he thinks of me as
	a kind of animated bread-baking and cake-mixing machine. I guess he
	doesn't put much stock in my judgment in literary matters. ...

	* * *

	The road from Shelby to Port Vigor runs across the broad hill
	slopes that trend toward the Sound; and below, on our left, the
	river lay glittering in the valley. It was a perfect landscape: the
	woods were all bronze and gold; the clouds were snowy white and
	seemed like heavenly washing hung out to air; the sun was warm and
	swam gloriously in an arch of superb blue. My heart was uplifted
	indeed. For the first time, I think, I knew how Andrew feels on
	those vagabond trips of his. Why had all this been hidden from me
	before? Why had the transcendent mystery of baking bread blinded me
	so long to the mysteries of sun and sky and wind in the trees? We
	passed a white farmhouse close to the road. By the gate sat the
	farmer on a log, whittling a stick and smoking his pipe. Through
	the kitchen window I could see a woman blacking the stove. I wanted
	to cry out: "Oh, silly woman! Leave your stove, your pots and pans
	and chores, even if only for one day! Come out and see the sun in
	the sky and the river in the distance!"

	* * *

	What absurd victims of contrary desires we are! If a [person] is
	settled in one place [one] yearns to wander; when [a person] wanders
	[one] yearns to have a home. And yet how bestial is content--all the
	great things in life are done by discontented people.

	There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and
	yearning. A [person] should be learning as [one] goes; and [one]
	should be earning bread for [one's self] and others; and [one] should
	be yearning, too: yearning to know the unknowable.

	author: Morley, Christopher, 1890-1957
	detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Parnassus_on_Wheels
	LOC: PZ3.M8265 Pr4 PS3525.O71
	source: gopher://gopher.pglaf.org/1/5/3/1/5311/
	tags: ebook,fiction,vagabond
	title: Parnassus On Wheels

	# Tags

	ebook
	fiction
	vagabond