Few things surpass a thrill I had recently when I opened up a courier package from McClelland & Stewart to discover the first advance copy of my book. To convey my reaction I should go back a couple of years. I have been a geek about books since I was old enough to read. For long stretches of my youth and adolescence my mind resided in some fictional universe—Steinbeck's Monterey, Enid Blyton's English countryside, Susan Cooper's Wales and the frontier Utah of the Great Brain series. To maximize the amount of time I'm reading I've developed a ninja-like expertise in a set of obscure skills. I can read while walking. I can read while cruising over the rough waters of Lake St. Clair in a bowrider inboard/outboard. I can read in the stop-and-go herky-jerky progress of a TTC streetcar. This is not bragging. These are simple statements of fact.
When I was in primary school I used to spend my lunch hours helping the librarian shelve books. My first job amounted to doing the same thing after school at the Emeryville Public Library. And to this day I get a feeling of contentment when I'm in the stacks of a library or bookstore. No, that's not quite right. It's a feeling of belonging. It's an awareness of this ancient community of readers and writers that stretches back past the days of Shakespeare, past Plutarch and Homer. And it's a sense of my membership in that community.
Throughout my long career as One Who Devours Reading Material, I've considered what it would be like to have published a book. The appeal for me has never been ego tripping. I haven't wanted to become an author to, say, impress people at parties. It's more a desire to join that odd fraternity of loners and freaks who have spent a significant fraction of a lifespan placing enough letters on enough pieces of paper that the result fills an inch or two of shelf space—one or two inches of shelf space in libraries where the titles go on for yards, for furlongs, for miles.
I knew that my book was at home several hours before I arrived. I prevented myself from hurrying as I went from workdesk to front door. I even drew out the trip home by stopping at a bakery to pick up a cherry pie for some celebratory dessert. The package was a matte brown envelope, the kind that you pull open with a plastic cord. The only thing it contained was my book.
Between the signing of a book contract and the actual publishing of a book there are a lot of contingencies. Research problems could have scuttled the project. I could have been hit by a bus, or killed by lightning. My arms could have been severed in a lawn-cutting incident. My publisher could have gone out of business. None of this happened, of course. But I worried about them all the same.
No more contingencies existed once I had the book in my hands. My book is now bound to be up there among the work of all those other writers. I didn't get a sense of achievement when I held my book in my hands. There wasn't exultation or triumph. There was only relief, and that feeling of membership. Finally, 35 years into this life of mine, I had joined them.
Congrats on finally seeing your book in print! Now you can come play soccer again, and isn't that what it's all about?
Posted by: Colin | May 08, 2008 at 12:03 PM