Beatrice and Virgil Read Free

being pulped. And with your approach--and I don't just mean the flip book thing--I also mean this idea you have where we're supposed to throw our whole imagination at the Holocaust--Holocaust westerns, Holocaust science fictions, Holocaust Jamaican bobsled team comedies--I mean, where is this going? And then you also want to do it as a   flip book   , which is normally just a gimmick, in the same section as the joke books, and, I don't know, it strikes me that your flip book might just be one big flop book. Flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop," he finished, as the first course arrived, an array of tiny dishes with morsels of over-the-top delicacies on them.
      "I hear you," Henry replied after blinking a few times and swallowing what felt like a large goldfish, "but we can't always be taking the same approach. Shouldn't the very newness of it, both in the content and in the form, in a   serious   book, attract attention? Won't it be a selling point?"
      "Where do you see the book being displayed?" asked the bookseller, as he chewed on his food with an open mouth. "In the fiction section or the nonfiction?"
      "Ideally both," Henry replied.
      "Not going to happen. Too confusing. Do you know how much stock a bookstore handles? And if we have to worry about turning the book every which way so the right cover is facing out, we'll never see the end of it. And where are you going to put the bar code? It always goes on the back cover. Where do you put a bar code on a book with two front covers?"
      "I don't know," said Henry. "On the spine."
      "Too narrow."
      "On the inside flap."
      "Cashiers can't be opening the book up, looking for it everywhere. And what if the book is plastic-wrapped?"
      "On a little wraparound band."
      "They tear and fall off. And then you don't have a bar code at all--a nightmare."
      "I don't know then. I wrote my book on the Holocaust without worrying about where the fucking bar code would go."
      "Just trying to help you sell your book," said the bookseller, rolling his eyes.
      "What I think Jeff is pointing out," interrupted one of Henry's editors, coming to the rescue, "is that there are certain problems, practical and conceptual, with the book that need to be addressed. For your own good," she emphasized.
      Henry tore a piece of bread and furiously swiped at a tapenade made of olives that came from an exclusive grove of six trees in a remote corner of Sicily. He noticed the asparagus. The waiter had expounded at great length on the   sauce, its culinary sophistication, the refinement of its ingredients, on and on. By the sounds of it, one lick of the stuff and you had as good as earned a Ph.D. Henry stabbed an asparagus, wiped it in the pinkish drizzle and stuffed it in his mouth. He was too distracted to taste anything but green mushiness.
      "Let's take a different approach," the historian suggested. He had a friendly face and a soothing voice. He tilted his head and peered at Henry over his glasses. "What's your book about?" he asked.
      Henry was thrown into confusion. An obvious question, perhaps, but not one that he could answer so easily. That's why people write books, after all, to give full answers to short questions. And the bookseller had rankled him. Henry took a deep breath and collected himself. He tried his best with the historian's question. But his answer came out in stammers and meanders. "My book is about representations of the Holocaust. The event is gone; we are left with stories about it. My book is about a new choice of stories. With a historical event, we not only have to bear witness, that is, tell what happened and address the needs of ghosts. We also have to interpret and conclude, so that the needs of people   today   , the children of ghosts, can be addressed. In addition to the knowledge of history, we need the understanding of art. Stories identify, unify, give meaning to. Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes