View source | |
# 2025-03-26 - The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley | |
The Haunted Bookshop is a sequel to Parnassus On Wheels. Both books | |
express much enthusiasm for literature. | |
The Haunted Bookshop mentions various genres, then lists authors and | |
books that fall under each. I found this a valuable introduction to | |
authors of the early 20th century. I prefer it very much compared to | |
the soulless AI-generated synopses on the Project Gutenberg web site. | |
Below is a table contrasting the two books. | |
Parnassus On Wheels The Haunted Bookshop | |
------------------------------ ------------------------------ | |
Narrated by Helen Multiple narrators by chapter | |
Set before World War I Set after World War 1 | |
Vagabond adventure Mystery & romance | |
Selling books to farmers Selling to Brooklyn city folk | |
What follows are spoilers and interesting excepts from the book. | |
* * * | |
Do you know why people are reading more books now than ever before? | |
Because the terrific catastrophe of the war has made them realize | |
that their minds are ill. | |
Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' | |
book. A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or | |
refutes some human error. A book that is good for me would very | |
likely be punk for you. | |
The world has been printing books for 450 years, and yet gunpowder | |
still has a wider circulation. Never mind! Printer's ink is the | |
greater explosive: it will win. | |
Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. | |
Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the | |
world—the brains of men. I can spend a rainy afternoon reading, and | |
my mind works itself up to such a passion and anxiety over mortal | |
problems as almost unmans me. It is terribly nerve-racking. | |
Librarians invented that soothing device for the febrifuge of their | |
souls, just as I fall back upon the rites of the kitchen. Librarians | |
would all go mad, those capable of concentrated thought, if they did | |
not have the cool and healing card index as medicament! | |
* * * | |
QUINCY-- | |
You remind me of something that happened in our book department the | |
other day. A flapper came in and said she had forgotten the name of | |
the book she wanted, but it was something about a young man who had | |
been brought up by the monks. I was stumped. I tried her with The | |
Cloister and the Hearth and Monastery Bells and Legends of the | |
Monastic Orders and so on, but her face was blank. Then one of the | |
salesgirls overheard us talking, and she guessed it right off the | |
bat. Of course it was Tarzan. | |
MIFFLIN-- | |
You poor simp, there was your chance to introduce her to Mowgli and | |
the bandar-log. | |
* * * | |
I tell you, books are the depositories of the human spirit, which is | |
the only thing in this world that endures. What was it Shakespeare | |
said-- | |
> Not marble nor the gilded monuments | |
> Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme-- | |
* * * | |
To say that he [Aubrey] was thinking of Miss Chapman would imply too | |
much power of ratiocination and abstract scrutiny on his part. He was | |
not thinking: he was being thought. Down the accustomed channels of | |
his intellect he felt his mind ebbing with the irresistible movement | |
of tides drawn by the blandishing moon. And across these shimmering | |
estuaries of impulse his will, a lost and naked athlete, was | |
painfully attempting to swim, but making much leeway and already | |
almost resigned to being carried out to sea. | |
* * * | |
"... I'm afraid I haven't read Dere Mable. If it's really amusing, | |
I'm glad they read it. I suspect it isn't a very great book, because | |
a Philadelphia schoolgirl has written a reply to it called Dere Bill, | |
which is said to be as good as the original. Now you can hardly | |
imagine a Philadelphia flapper writing an effective companion to | |
Bacon's Essays. But never mind, if the stuff's amusing, it has its | |
place. The human yearning for innocent pastime is a pathetic thing, | |
come to think about it. It shows what a desperately grim thing life | |
has become. One of the most significant things I know is that | |
breathless, expectant, adoring hush that falls over a theatre at a | |
Saturday matinee, when the house goes dark and the footlights set the | |
bottom of the curtain in a glow, and the latecomers tank over your | |
feet climbing into their seats--" | |
"Isn't it an adorable moment!" cried Titania. | |
"Yes, it is," said Roger; "but it makes me sad to see what tosh is | |
handed out to that eager, expectant audience, most of the time. There | |
they all are, ready to be thrilled, eager to be worked upon, | |
deliberately putting themselves into that glorious, rare, receptive | |
mood when they are clay in the artist's hand—and Lord! what miserable | |
substitutes for joy and sorrow are put over on them! ..." | |
"Humanity is yearning now as it never did before for truth, for | |
beauty, for the things that comfort and console and make life seem | |
worth while. I feel this all round me, every day. We've been through | |
a frightful ordeal, and every decent spirit is asking itself what we | |
can do to pick up the fragments and remould the world nearer to our | |
heart's desire." | |
"You see, books contain the thoughts and dreams of men, their hopes | |
and strivings and all their immortal parts. It's in books that most | |
of us learn how splendidly worth-while life is." | |
* * * | |
[After watching The Return of Tarzan in the movie theater: ] | |
walk off the screen and tread on us." | |
"I never can understand," said Helen, "why they don't film some of | |
the really good books--think of Frank Stockton's stuff, how | |
delightful that would be." | |
[Hear hear!] | |
* * * | |
Whom can I curse, whom can I judge, when we are all alike | |
unfortunate? Suffering is universal; hands are outstretched to each | |
other, and when they touch ... the great solution will come. My heart | |
is aglow, and I stretch out my hand and cry, "Come, let us join | |
hands! I love you, I love you!" | |
And of course, as soon as one puts one's self in that frame of mind | |
someone comes along and picks your pocket... I suppose we must teach | |
ourselves to be too proud to mind having our pockets picked! | |
* * * | |
Henry Adams puts it tersely. He says the human mind appears suddenly | |
and inexplicably out of some unknown and unimaginable void. It passes | |
half its known life in the mental chaos of sleep. Even when awake it | |
is a victim of its own ill-adjustment, of disease, of age, of | |
external suggestion, of nature's compulsions; it doubts its own | |
sensations and trusts only in instruments and averages. After sixty | |
years or so of growing astonishment the mind wakes to find itself | |
looking blankly into the void of death. And, as Adams says, that it | |
should profess itself pleased by this performance is all that the | |
highest rules of good breeding can ask. That the mind should actually | |
be satisfied would prove that it exists only as idiocy! | |
* * * | |
There are two theories as to this subject of ice-box plundering, one | |
of the husband and the other of the wife. Husbands are prone to think | |
(in their simplicity) that if they take a little of everything | |
palatable they find in the refrigerator, but thus distributing their | |
forage over the viands the general effect of the depradation will be | |
almost unnoticeable. Whereas wives say (and Mrs. Mifflin had often | |
explained to Roger) that it is far better to take all of any one dish | |
than a little of each; for the latter course is likely to diminish | |
each item below the bulk at which it is still useful as a left-over. | |
Roger, however, had the obstinate viciousness of all good husbands, | |
and he knew the delights of cold provender by heart. ... This is a | |
custom which causes the housewife to be confronted the next morning | |
with a tragical vista of pathetic scraps. Two slices of beet in a | |
little earthenware cup, a sliver of apple pie one inch wide, three | |
prunes lowly nestling in a mere trickle of their own syrup, and a | |
tablespoonful of stewed rhubarb where had been one of those yellow | |
basins nearly full--what can the most resourceful kitcheneer do with | |
these oddments? This atrocious practice cannot be too bitterly | |
condemned. | |
[Hear, hear!] | |
* * * | |
Thus, in hours of stress, do all men turn for comfort to their chosen | |
art. The poet, battered by fate, heals himself in the niceties of | |
rhyme. The prohibitionist can weather the blackest melancholia by | |
meditating the contortions of other people's abstinence. The most | |
embittered citizen of Detroit will never perish by his own hand while | |
he has an automobile to tinker. | |
* * * | |
Along these historic shelves many troubled spirits have come as near | |
happiness as they are like to get... for after all, happiness (as the | |
mathematicians might say) lies on a curve, and we approach it only by | |
asymptote... | |
* * * | |
The explosion has blown out a whole lot of books I had forgotten | |
about and didn't even know I had. Look, here's an old copy of How to | |
Be Happy Though Married, which I see the publisher lists as | |
'Fiction.' Here's Urn Burial, and The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, | |
and Mistletoe's Book of Deplorable Facts. I'm going to have a | |
thorough house-cleaning. | |
author: Morley, Christopher, 1890-1957 | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/The_Haunted_Bookshop | |
LOC: PZ3.M8265 H9 PS3525.O71 | |
source: gopher://gopher.pglaf.org/1/1/7/172/ | |
tags: ebook,fiction | |
title: The Haunted Bookshop | |
# Tags | |
ebook | |
fiction |