Into the Archive: Volumes Redux Deluxe

Yesterday my brother John and I went to the Seguin Public Library bookstore, where we hadn’t been for months. I was able to find a couple of great books for $5.

The Great Divorce: A Dream, by C. S. Lewis (1946, this Edition 2009 by HarperOne)

“[William] Blake wrote the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. If I have written of their Divorce, this is not because I think myself a fit antagonist for so great a genius, nor even because I feel at all sure that I know what he meant. But in some sense or other the attempt to make that marriage is perennial. The attempt is based on the belief that reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable "either-or"; that, granted skill and patience and (above all) time enough, some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found; that mere development or adjustment or refinement will somehow turn evil into good without our being called on for a final and total rejection of anything we should like to retain. This belief I take to be a disastrous error.” – from the Preface.

I have long had a paperback of this book, and was glad to get a newer softcover edition, with French cover-flaps, no less, easier on both hand and eye. I always have a twinge of guilt getting something like this, however: what if someone in the same position as I was forty years ago would have liked to find this book and I (who have no real crying need of it) have just snatched it away? On the other hand, I might just be another step on the way to its real destination. A secondhand book, inscribed to “my favorite boss/pastor” by a squiggly name that I can’t quite make out.

Grendel, by John Gardner (First Edition, Alfred A. Knopf 1971)

I have long had both a paperback and a softcover edition of Grendel and have wanted a proper hardback copy. Well now I have one, in an almost pristine condition, for $3.

It is odd to think it was a mere ten years between publication of Grendel and Gardner’s death, and even stranger to me to realize I was only aware of him for maybe four years before he was gone. His work seemed so timeless. It’s also odd that I’ve only just watched Grendel, Grendel, Grendel, the 1981 animated adaptation, and that I’ve just found out that the Jim Henson Company has a live-action adaptation in the works, starring Jeff Bridges as Grendel and Dave Bautista as Beowulf. Even the recently acquired The Truth About Dragons (published 1970, just one year before Grendel) opens with a retelling of Beowulf from the dragon’s point of view. All-in-all, finding this copy seems strangely fated.