Serendipity

So how does this happen?

In December, I walk into the tiny one room Atherton Library, which can't be any larger than 1800 square feet, and I find "Pattern Recognition" by William Gibson waiting for me. Within a paragraph I'm intrigued, a page and I'm hooked, and by the end of chapter one I'm prepared to sit outside the library and read in the shaded redwood grove until dusk if I can get away with it.

Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.

It is that flat and spectral non-hour, awash in limbic tides, brainstem stirring fitfully, flashing inappropriate reptilian demands for sex, food, sedation, all of the above, and none really an option now...

She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.

She wonders if this gets gradually worse with age: the nameless hour deeper, more null, its affect at once stranger and less interesting?

Numb here in the semi-dark, in Damien's bedroom, beneath a silvery thing the color of oven mitts, probably never intended by its makers to actually be slept under. She'd been too tired to find a blanket. The sheets between her skin and the weight of this industrial coverlet are silky, some luxurious thread count, and they smell faintly of, she guesses, Damien. Not badly, though. Actually it's not unpleasant; any physical linkage to a fellow mammal seems a plus at this point.

Damien is a friend.

Their boy-girl Lego doesn't click, he would say.

--"Pattern Recognition," by William Gibson

This leads to a Gibson-fest and by the time I'm finished, I'm ready for more more more. Lucky me, I discover to my amazement that all three previous novels ("Idoru," "Virtual Light," and "All Tomorrow's Parties") are available to me in perfect hardcover volumes on my bookshelves at home.

In April or May, I return to the Atherton Library and this time discover "Sunset and Sawdust" by Joe R. Lansdale. Once again, within a few paragraphs I'm hooked. I read it in two days and conclude that this is Lansdale's crossover novel. But he couldn't have progressed this far in a single novel--from his pulp fiction roots which combine excessive plots, bizarre characters, crude redneck dialog, and fantasy elements in ways that I've always believed assured his permanent residence in Obscurity, Texas--could he?

So of course, I back up and within a few weeks I've located and read "Freezer Burn" and "A Fine Dark Line." I am witness to the metamorphasis of a writer.

My brief Lansdale fix satiated, I return to several children's books I've been meaning to read including "The Tale of Despereaux" which I read aloud to the boys.

Then on a bet I find myself attempting to read and finish "Fourplay" by Jane Moore before Val can make her way through "Sunset and Sawdust." After about fifty pages, I decide I'd rather read the yellow pages...in Latin. But a bet's a bet so I press on, pausing only to return "A Fine Dark Line" to the Atherton Library.

Big mistake.

There, insisting to be read is "The Fortress of Solitude," by Jonathan Lethem. I've read Lethem before, both his first novel, "Gun, With Occasional Music" which also is obscure and bizarre (science fiction noir?), and years later, "Motherless Brooklyn," which is the brilliantly original story of a detective suffering from Tourette's Syndrome:

Context is everything. Dress me up and see. I'm a carnival barker, an auctioneer, a downtown performance artist, a speaker in tongues, a senator drunk on filibuster. I've got Tourette's. My mouth won't quit, though mostly I whisper or subvocalize like I'm reading aloud, my Adam's apple bobbing, jaw muscle beating like a miniature heart under my cheek, the noise suppressed, the words escaping silently, mere ghosts of themselves, husks empty of breath and tone. (If I were a Dick Tracy villain, I'd have to be Mumbles.) In this diminished form the words rush out of the cornucopia of my brain to course over the surface of the world, tickling reality like fingers on piano keys. Caressing, nudging. They're an invisible army on a peacekeeping mission, a peaceable horde. They mean no harm. They placate, interpret, massage. Everywhere they're smoothing down imperfections, putting hairs in place, putting ducks in a row, replacing divots. Counting and polishing the silver. Patting old ladies gently on the behind, eliciting a giggle. Only--here's the rub--when they find too much perfection, when the surface is already buffed smooth, the ducks already orderly, the old ladies complacent, then my little army rebels, breaks into the stores. Reality needs a prick here and there, the carpet needs a flaw. My words begin plucking at threads nervously, seeking purchase, a weak point, a vulnerable ear. That's when it comes, the urge to shout in the church, the nursery, the crowded movie house. It's an itch at first. Inconsequential. But that itch is soon a torrent behind a straining dam. Noah's flood. That itch is my whole life. Here it comes now. Cover your ears. Build an ark.

"Eat me!" I scream.

--"Motherless Brooklyn," by Jonathan Lethem

But this time I find myself previewing "The Fortress of Solitude," thinking, "Hmmm, interesting...very interesting..." when I discover a testimonial from Michael Chabon--whose Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," I first read this past year--and he absolutely raves about it. I flip to the book jacket and read the words that make my temples pulse:

This is the story Jonathan Lethem was born to tell.

Marketing hype, maybe, but can you imagine someone writing those words about a novel you've labored through sweat and tears to bring into existence?

So I race home with a new novel to devour and begin it as soon as the boys are down for the night. I'm as stoked as Justin has been all day as he continuously bounced off the walls asking, "Daddy, are you going to read any more of 'H. Potter' to us tonight?"

I too have a new winner.

Just don't tell Val.