Enter The Paradox
If you can shake your claustrophobia, it’s a chest of rare treasures for book lovers or admirers of the bizarre. It’s quite the adventure to dig through the piles of books to see what you might find. Imagine diving into Scrooge McDucks vault, but replace the gold with books and the vault is the size of the trash compactor on the Death Star (but with not nearly as much water or threat of tentacle beasts).
A few weeks ago, I managed to catch Paradox just as it opened. By lunch, the place had a least five people scuttling and shifting through the piles of books myself included. As I was digging through some boxes of old pulp and trade paperbacks from the 70s and 80s pondering whether or not I’d like to read about the adventures of an intergalactic drug war against space beetles or a historical analysis of the fall of the Soviet Union, I was overhearing discussion of a recent play that was written by the owner of the store and how well it was received and the need to grab some hotdogs for lunch until a friendly gentlemen rounded the corner and began to tell me how all book stores in New Orleans back in his time looked like Paradox. Just piles of books. Everywhere.
Just as quantum scientists theorize that we could exist in a universe of multiple dimensions and multiple universes, it’s only fitting that there could be multiple paradoxes that exist in our dimension that goes double for paradox realms filled with musty old books. Paradox is a rift in time and space that serves as a dusty purgatory for old books to continue to pile up until the end of infinity. And as the universe expands and contracts, it gives birth to more places like Paradox throughout the United States.
Despite the popularity of e-books, and virtual stores selling used books through Amazon and Ebay, actual brick and mortar used bookstores like Paradox seem to be growing in popularity. However, the only commonality shared between Paradox and other used bookstores is that they both sell used books. Paradox is in its own realm. In a distant time, repositories for used books were run by the state or educational institutions and were called libraries. They would take books and put them in categories and organize them according to an authoritarian numerical system developed by the infamous book segregator Melvil Dewey in 1876. That was before the great book liberation of the 60s. Pick sides all you want, debate the merit of the revolution all until you pull a muscle, for better or for worse, we now have collections of used books without a solid system of control. There are still a few libraries, or what I call book prisons, out there in the world and around the United States, but their funding is running out—forcing the population to cram books any place they can.
For better or for worse, more books will be flooding out into the street—mixing with the general population, in need of adoption, which might be bad news for shelf builders, but great news for bibliomaniacs like myself. Just as lonely grandmothers collect cats, I hoard books. I know I’m not alone, but I admire Paradox because few book hoarders have found a way to profit from their bibliomania (a disorder involving the collecting or hoarding of books to the point where social relations or health are damaged).
A person who buys books, more books than they could ever read, and lets them pile up on the floor, on shelves and assorted pieces of furniture is called, and here’s another Japanese term I could never pronounce, tsundoku (I have a book somewhere in my apartment about learning how to speak Japanese, but I just haven’t gotten around to reading it yet—waiting until it comes out on Kindle). So go out and be a tsundoku or embody the spirit of tsundoku (I know it’s a noun, but I’m not really sure how to use it in a sentence) and support your local bookstores. Be brave. Be Bold. Embrace the Paradox.
