in love with a used paperback
¶ by Rob Friesel
The way I put it yesterday:
today I bought a 1987 paperback reprint of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” because I liked the way it smelled
Dune, which I’m almost ashamed to admit I’ve never read.
I saw it on the shelf at The Crow for $2.95. If I’m to believe the cover price, this paperback (printed in 1987) sold for $4.50. So I’m not jumping up and down about the price 1. But I’d just come off the high of the NaNoWriMo win, and the copy seemed in good enough condition.
But then I picked it up.
Oh that smell. That pulp-and-ink smell. It is an aromatic time machine. It is a college dorm room in the 1970s. It is childhood with a flashlight after bedtime lights-out. It exists simultaneously in the past and the future. It is escape. It is the real-world vehicle for imagined and impossible destinies. When you dream about interstellar travel, it smells like those pages.
- A 23 year-old paperback? Even 99ยข isn’t a jump-up-and-down deal.[↩]
Leave a Reply