A Neutral Intersection of Factions
From “The Bookstore at the End of America,” by Charlie Jane Anders:
… Not to mention, the same book might read completely differently in California than in America. You could only rely on ink and paper (or, for newer books, Peip0r) for consistency, not to mention the whole sensory experience of smelling and touching volumes, turning their pages, bowing their spines.
Everybody needs books, Molly figured. No matter where they live, how they love, what they believe, whom they want to kill. We all want books. The moment you start thinking of books as some exclusive club, or the loving of books as a high distinction, then you’re a bad bookseller.
Books are the best way to discover what people thought before you were born. And an author is just someone who tried their utmost to make sense of their own mess, and maybe their failure contains a few seeds to help you with yours.
How is foreshadowing done well?
One method, as Charlie Jane Anders shows here, is to slowly build tension before tilting your hand and then slowly backing to a place of cover.
Build
Anders opens her story at the intersection of California and America. She describes the facets of Molly’s bookstore that straddle these two new worlds and the politics that surrounds its existence.
Despite the differences held in this division, however, she keeps it light and focuses on commonalities: “Everybody needs books.”
She speaks about the conditions of human existence in the modes of travel people use to reach her bookstore, like cars and tour buses and mecha-horses. She mentions that people still care about thrill and fantasy and history and romance. Sometimes they need books about divorce or a topic they can’t live without.
It’s all so normal. A store of books. A common place for all.
Show
For all. As in all the viewpoints, attitudes, beliefs, fears.
No matter where they live, how they love, what they believe, whom they want to kill.
A bookstore can be a peaceful place that brings people together for common needs. It can also be a place where people find new ways to hurt others, and in that sort of purpose, the undertones of all the books on its shelves hold a harrowing gravity that wasn’t apparent a minute ago.
It’s there, the struggle between people, ready to come forward.
Anders hints at its existence like the festering pile that it is. She mixes it with living and love, like it always has been, but keeps it quieted, before retreat, like a page still unturned.
Retreat
You might be a bad bookseller if you take sides or focus on the negatives for too long.
So Anders does retreat for the moment: “…maybe their failure contains a few seeds to help you with yours.”
It’s a light touch on the lurking evil, like saying that we can always wait to fight another day.
In fact they do wait. Another day on another page. Meanwhile, I get to bask in possible consequence of what’s to come.
At this moment in “The Bookstore at the End of America,” I don’t know what approaches — only that I can trust Anders to reveal the tension in a manner befitting someone wise enough to keep peace in a neutral sanctuary at the joining of two factions.