A Brief Encounter

American Booksellers’ Association, 1978, Atlanta. The Eye of the Needle, #1 … A good phrase to put on a T-shirt. I’m tempted to buy the book just thinking about those words: the eye of the needle, the needle in the eye … As I blink I realize how sore my own eyes are from scanning titles and faces, sore from the violet of neon lamps designed to attack the retina surreptitiously, insidiously, with needles indifferent to the organic needs of delicate tissue. We are all here in a kind of intellectual orgy, a spring festival of spiritual initiation, to celebrate the new crop of words. As I open my eyes I realize the noise and lights are but the residue of distilled hope: so many books all competing for an audience, appealing to the best in us all, that sense of divine—if usually prurient—curiosity, so easily seduced by cheap hype. A Playboy tote bag, free cookies, a jump rope, a T-shirt: the stuff of which the fair is made, catering to the vulnerable in each of us purported aristocrats, that elite 5 per cent of Americans who consume literary merchandise.

I return to my booth. I am representing—actually, co-representing with David Franke and Anne Lawrason—Liberty Press, which is reprinting some fine old classics of libertarian conservatism —an uneasy hybrid. David is talking to a tall young gentleman. Before I am even introduced, I have the distinct feeling that I have known him for a long time, and I haven’t the slightest doubt as to who he is: Henry F. Regnery, the son of the distinguished publisher. As I approach, he smiles at me—a smile that will somehow stay with him even when his countenance turns serious; a kind of sunshine. David introduces us, then leaves us by ourselves.

JG

About the Author

Juliana Geran Pilon

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Israel

American Booksellers’ Association, 1978, Atlanta. The Eye of the Needle, #1 … A good phrase to put on a T-shirt. I’m tempted to buy the book just thinking about those words: the eye of the needle, the needle in the eye … As I blink I realize how sore my own eyes are from scanning titles and faces, sore from the violet of neon lamps designed to attack the retina surreptitiously, insidiously, with needles indifferent to the organic needs of delicate tissue. We are all here in a kind of intellectual orgy, a spring festival of spiritual initiation, to celebrate the new crop of words. As I open my eyes I realize the noise and lights are but the residue of distilled hope: so many books all competing for an audience, appealing to the best in us all, that sense of divine—if usually prurient—curiosity, so easily seduced by cheap hype. A Playboy tote bag, free cookies, a jump rope, a T-shirt: the stuff of which the fair is made, catering to the vulnerable in each of us purported aristocrats, that elite 5 per cent of Americans who consume literary merchandise.

I return to my booth. I am representing—actually, co-representing with David Franke and Anne Lawrason—Liberty Press, which is reprinting some fine old classics of libertarian conservatism —an uneasy hybrid. David is talking to a tall young gentleman. Before I am even introduced, I have the distinct feeling that I have known him for a long time, and I haven’t the slightest doubt as to who he is: Henry F. Regnery, the son of the distinguished publisher. As I approach, he smiles at me—a smile that will somehow stay with him even when his countenance turns serious; a kind of sunshine. David introduces us, then leaves us by ourselves.