Shelf Monkey (15 page)

“Ubf! Ubf! Ubf!”

I plunged on, unsure. “I mean, she wrote
Vampire
. She gave us Louis, and Lestat, and Armand. Simply because her later work lacks the originality and verve of her best, should that be enough to condemn
Ramses
to the flames? Sure, she’s kind of gone off the deep end lately, but there are certainly worse books out there, and —”

“Enough!” Aubrey shouted. “Yes or no, Yossarian. To burn or not to burn?”

Good question. “Oh, well, uh . . . no,” I replied as firmly as I could. Why should I make this easy on them?

“Yossarian has spoken. The verdict is clear.
Ramses
shall be spared.”

“Goddammit!” Valentine shouted. “C’mon, Aubrey, the thing just reeks. Let’s burn it, please?”

Aubrey turned away to him, giving me a reassuring wink. “Yossarian has spoken, Valentine.”

Valentine Michael Smith retreated into the circle, head held low. “But it sucked,” he whispered to Raoul Duke, who nudged him to keep quiet.

“Me next!” Hagar Shipley stepped toward the fire. “I submit Tibor Fischer’s
Voyage to the End of the Room
!” She waved the offender above her head. “Mr. Fischer has committed a grave offence against us, against those who seek to challenge the rest of the world through provocative ideas and a canny grasp of language.”

“Oh, here we go again,” jeered Danae.

Hagar shot her a dark look. “Tibor has single-handedly sought to destroy the reputation of one of our finest living authors,” she continued. “His oblique, vile criticisms of literary icon Martin Amis and his
Yellow Dog
must not go unpunished. He is a sad, sad man, whose sole purpose in life is seeking to raise his profile by destroying the careers of others!”

“Aw,
Yellow Dog
wasn’t that good, Emily,” said Lady Fuchsia.

“Emily?” I whispered to Danae as the rant continued. “What,
the
Emily?”

She nodded, the firelight catching a wetness in her eyes. “She’s just so —
committed
,” she said. “There but for the grace, Thomas.”

“Her name is Hagar, Lady Fuschia,” Aubrey sternly corrected.

“His actions must be corrected!” Emily/Hagar screeched at Lady Fuchsia, who looked ready to launch a tactical nuke in retaliation. “Calling
Yellow Dog
as obscene a thing as seeing your uncle masturbate is abusive and disgusting! He even uses his newfound infamy to his advantage, bragging about how clever he is! Tibor cannot go scot-free, he must be held accountable! Justice for the unjust!”

“Jesus, Hagar, have you even read the fucking thing?” asked Warren.

“NEVER!”

Aubrey held up his hand, shushing Emily’s rant. “Brother Kilgore raises an excellent point, Hagar. We cannot destroy that which we have not suffered through personally. It would be a
repudiation of our principles. If allowed, we would become that which we abhor. We cannot allow this to pass.”

“But, come on!
Amis!”
Emily said, her eyes pleading for support. “We can’t put down Amis! It’s wrong, it’s just wrong, it’s like calling Mozart overrated.” She looked out at us. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s not like Amis is suffering for recognition,” said Raoul Duke. “Now, who’s this Tibor guy, that’s what I want to know.”

“It’s just one guy’s opinion, Em . . . er, Hagar,” said Ford Prefect. “How is that different from us?”

Danae walked up and hugged her. “It’s okay, Hagar. We all get frustrated, it’s okay. Look, we’ll read it together, all right? You and me. And next time, if it’s awful, you can try again. All right?” Emily nodded miserably, breaking the embrace to return to her place in the assembly.

It continued on into the night, members offering example after example of books they deemed unsuitable for general consumption. Lesser novels by Norman Mailer and John Irving were put on the chopping block by Ford and summarily rejected. Cheaply bound romance novels with titles like
The Kilted Lover
and
A Thrill to Remember
were quickly considered and just as quickly ignored, as no one wanted to waste their time reading them anyway. Queequeg polarized the group arguing that while Hemingway’s
The Old Man and the Sea
was unarguably a sacred, untouchable text, should a
Reader’s Digest Condensed Version
also be considered thus? Danae managed to get Bushnell on the pile, while Aubrey lost his
Necroscope
battle when Raoul Duke revealed himself to be a closet Lumley fan. (Well, somebody has to be, I guess.) Feeling obligated as a first-timer, I found myself reluctantly agreeing to read a Jayne Ann Krentz opus of a solitary woman torn between love and employment, or some bullshit like that. Hazing the new guy, that sort of thing. The ambiguous merits of Ann Coulter’s polemic
Slander
were fiercely debated, Lyra quite convincingly arguing that her liberal-bashing screeds were so unbelievably biased that they thereby could qualify as satire, thus crossing the line into fictional diatribes. Gandalf pleaded angrily to get Margaret Laurence’s
The Stone Angel
incinerated, but was shouted down by Emily/Hagar Shipley, for obvious reasons. I gathered it was rather poor form to elect a novel that contained
another Shelf Monkey’s alter ego.

“He’s been trying to burn that book for
weeks
,” Danae mumbled in my ear. “He just doesn’t like it, it’s stuck in his craw for some reason, even since he was forced to read it in high school. He’ll never get it past Emily, but if she ever misses a meeting, she’s screwed. I won’t give him the satisfaction, though. I mean, c’mon, Laurence wrote
The Diviners
, for Pete’s sake.”

“Good for you,” I said, weirdly touched by her determination. I didn’t care for
The Stone Angel
all that much either (the old lady was a real hag of a main character), but that didn’t mean it was flame-worthy.

Eventually, the offerings dried up, a pile of books lying meekly at Aubrey’s feet. Michael Crichton’s
Airframe
.
Crucible
by Mel Odom. Naomi Campbell’s
Swan
. Paulo Coelho’s
Eleven Minutes
, a montag I couldn’t wait to immolate. Something called
Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons
. Danae’s offering, Bushnell’s
4 Blondes
, a ’tag seconded by Hagar, thirded by Lady Fuchsia.

“The Shelf Monkeys have chosen,” Aubrey sang out, “and it is good.” He poked the embers of the fire with a stick. A throng of tiny combustibles leapt into the wind. Gathering the novels in his arms, he turned to us, the wind pulling back his hood, letting his hair lash about, flagellating his face with flaming whips.

“We are in agreement, then?”

“We are.”

“Ubf!”

“The evil must be destroyed?” Aubrey’s voice had risen, becoming a ghostly shriek on the wind. He was in his element, the dreadlocks standing at attention, a mixture of Christ and Pilate, demanding sacrifice in the name of the greater good.

“YES!”
the monkeys shouted back.

“Was Montag right?”

“YES!”

“Ubf!”

“Is it a pleasure to burn?”

“YES!”

He pitched the books into the pyre, sending flames and fireflies rocketing into orbit. Ink swiftly altered its chemical composition, melting down the pages, becoming molecules of gas. Inexpensive
paper curled, changed colours, settled on black. Glue popped and boiled. Ideas evaporated. Characters died in agony. Leaves of sin filled the sky, joining the stars.

What do you know? Montag was right. It
was
a pleasure to burn.

Exhausted, exhilarated, purified, we set out for home. Danae sidled up next to me as I strode homeward, sliding her cool fingers into mine and whispering into my ear. “Do you get it now?” she teased. I nodded. Unquestionably, I got it. When the pages had caught fire, I had a woody the likes of which I hadn’t possessed since going on the meds. The kiss, the flirting, the physical lust, all made sense now; it was foreplay to the main event. We had shared an experience that brought us closer than sex ever could. We began to walk. Danae linked her arm through mine and rested her head on my shoulder. A crisp breeze bit through our clothes, nipped at our souls, reminding us of the glory of the world. We said nothing. We were beyond the power of words; we had proved it that night. Outside Danae’s apartment, we held each other close for a few seconds, an undemanding hug that far surpassed any post-coital clinches I had enjoyed in the past. Animals were never meant to be alone, I know that now. The simple act of embracing someone, feeling your dual heartbeats slowly synchronize, that’s all it takes to achieve true happiness. We muttered some non-committal pleasantries, promised to see each other later, and I walked homeward, not a thought in my head. Once home, I immediately went for my bookshelves, grabbed my battered paperback copy of
Catch-22
, collapsed on the sofa, held the Heller to my heart, and fell blissfully asleep.

I’d never felt better in my life.

It was an opiate, more satisfying than tobacco, more addictive than heroin. At the end of the day, wrung out from inane questions, unruly kids — “Why do you keep the graphic novels behind the Special Orders desk? I’ll buy one, I promise this time! No one’s looking, c’mon, just one Manga, please? Asshole!” — and the malignant chunky cranium of Munroe Purvis wordlessly mocking our efforts from open to close, burning books was the ultimate in stress release. There were rules, of course. You could not steal from
a library, that was the first. Libraries are the holy sanctuaries of Shelf Monkeys, and their purity must not be corrupted by our peccadilloes. Neither could we take advantage of the small independent bookstores, or sellers of used books. No, the books must be purloined from the biggies, which gave me Chapters and
READ
to choose from. At first, I shamefacedly purchased my montags, fearing the wrath of Page should my bibliokleptomania be discovered. Bargain bins were a treasure trove of the accursed, and with my employee discount, practically a steal unto itself. Aubrey shamed and emboldened me with his fortitude, smuggling books out within the tangles of his hair, sometimes wearing a rainbow Rastafarian hat to hide the edges of the covers. Legerdemain, that’s what Aubrey called it. Misdirection and subterfuge. Always carry a bag, that’s the standard ruse. During frequent employee searches (probably forbidden under the Charter, but I was in no position to complain), Page and her associates would always search a suspicious bag to the exclusion of everything else; say, unusually baggy khakis with multiple deep pockets.

As reverent as we were toward the booksellers who were eking out a living against the superstorification of the world, the authors we treated far less kindly. I had asked, rather meekly, whether the independent author should be respected as well, the author who struggles to get the book published, using small presses and likely never seeing a dime. Couldn’t we,
shouldn’t
we show some leniency in this instance? Was the well-meaning hack not worthy of some extra consideration?

“I understand your concern,” Aubrey said when I broached the subject. “It’s too easy. It’s like punching a child.”

“Exactly. Sure, torch the big sellers, or the authors from Knopf and Penguin. They got something out of it. But isn’t there something, well, unseemly about taking pot shots at someone’s labour of love? Authors like that don’t write for profit, they write for the love of it.”

“If you feel like arguing this point in front of the others, be my guest. But don’t be surprised if you’re shouted down. A poor self-published novel wastes as much of your life as a poor
Globe & Mail
top ten selection.” He could see I wasn’t convinced. “Try this, Thomas. Knowing now what you do, if you had the chance, would
you kill Hitler, or Hussein, or Milosevic, before they came to power? Wouldn’t you have the responsibility to do everything you possibly could to stop these monsters?” I agreed it was possible I might. “Now, again with the benefit of hindsight, if you could have stopped Jackie Collins before she had a chance to destroy a whole generation of bored housewives, well, wouldn’t you have at least tried to convince her of the merits of a life devoted to something more appropriate to her talents? Like a travel agent?” I humbly agreed that I would, ashamed of my timidity in the face of such wickedness. If the loss of the royalties on one book could be enough to curb the next Fern Michaels, I didn’t see as I had a choice.

As the weeks went on, my courage bolstered by our hidden rebellion, I smuggled out more and more ’tags from
READ
. The oil drum was an abattoir. We charred our enemies by the armful. Emily eventually granted Mr. Fischer a stay of execution for being too talented to warrant inclusion on the pyre of the damned, settling for a more worthy Wilbur Smith tome that was begging for the purification only the glory of fire could provide. Michael Slade provided enough warmth to heat my apartment for a month. Steve Alten dazzled us with his prose-laden pyrotechnics. Tim LaHaye and his repugnant little
Left Behind
bestsellers? Ahh, that feels good. Richard Marcinko? Toss another on the barbie! Pat Robertson? Man, does that warm my going-to-Hell little heart. Bill O’Reilly? Did you know he actually had the gall to write fiction, and actually admit that it was such? The flames burned extra bright that night. Oh, it was all so sweet and tasty, it just had to be fattening. And if it turned out that our nominations did indeed display a slight political bent to them, c’est la vie, and who the fuck cares? All in good, clean, biased fun.

“Why Offred?” I asked Danae one day. I had cornered her at her desk with yet another blatant attempt at taking our relationship to another level. I said that the burnings were better than sex, and I stand by that statement; however, just because you like Space Mountain doesn’t mean you don’t want to try the Log Ride.

“Why what?” she asked, her head buried in some sales reports.

“Why Offred?”

“Well, why Yossarian?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t have a lot of time to choose, and it popped into my head. Accidental.”