Here, I confess one of my unvanquished literary white whales: not Moby-Dick, ironically, but another classic of maritime modernism, Virginia Woolf’s 1931 novel The Waves. To prepare myself for yet another doomed sally, I make my confession in my best Woolfian prose.
***
The book had not yet been read. The cover was indistinguishable from the others, except that it bent slightly, when set on a table, toward the sky, as if it had been stretched over a rolling pin. Gradually as the light fell on the shelf it rested on the book’s spine, blue with bluer pinstripes, a painstaking rhythm of them, broken only by the title, its serifs, a logo, a name.
“I’ve tried this book before,” said I, “with the success of a sore-legged predator. It stings and slogs in a circus of circumlocutions.”
“I see it anew,” said another I, “with newer eyes ready for a fresher hunt. It holds diamond-dotted caves not yet spelunked.”
“I hear a sound”—still another—“of pages turning: swish, flip, swish.”
“It’s no good,” said I. “A shadow-filled future of picking up and putting back down.”
“Favorites often come late,” said Another. “The sunbeam falls every day and shall again tomorrow.”
“Older pages crinkle, brittle and loud,” said Still.
“Now we’ve all spoken,” said I, “the decision remains. Oh Lord, to not feel the weight of the world in the preoccupations of my conscious imagination. I am left standing by the shelf. Perhaps, if I steel myself to the deadening sensation of sentences misunderstood, or half-understood, they will rise again with a young luster. I need not give up.”
“You stand not alone.” Another’s voice rose from within. “Not alone but accompanied, watched by the spiny eyes of other tomes, themselves unread and yellowing. The yellow is that of a daisy, then of mustard, then of an old schoolyard. The school was well off but has since closed—weeds grow through the merry-go-round.”
“The silent sounds of still books, sagging slowly under the weight of fading expectation,” said Still.
“I will pick up the book,” I say now. “I will hold its gentle heft in my hands and dedicate myself to its words and their unfurling.”
“An hour passes,” says Another, “and I watch as I return the book to its table. The cover’s curve has grown imperceptibly. Also imperceptible, though only just, is the grey-blue of defeat, or the blue-grey of apathetic withdrawal, like the curling homeward walk of an exposed hermit crab.”
“There is no thud,” says Still. “Only a soft setting-down, snowflakes on thistle.”
The light fell again, bell-like. Oily fingerprints shimmered on the glossy paper. Within, the ink persisted in its superhuman life-course, surviving this spurning as it had earlier weathered vats and warehouses. The book’s shadow had changed, coming now to a sharper point, perhaps due to the late hour. The shadow pointed shelfward, pricking another volume with its immaterial blade. But like a dagger of ice, as night fell the shadow liquefied and then vanished.
The book lay in the dark. It had not yet been read.
Cover image by Flickr user Christiaan Tonnis (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Josh Parks graduated from Calvin in 2018 with majors in English and music, and he is currently a PhD student in religious studies at the University of Virginia. When not writing, he can be found learning the alto recorder, watching obscure Disney movies, and making excruciating puns.
