Clay Nadir is looking for a book for the beach. Not just any book, but one that makes you forget the beach, except that it’s the place where you discovered Jack London or Sherlock Holmes or Norman Mailer. But even on the shelves of the largest library in his city, he found nothing. As if everything new had been crammed into his mind long ago.
Literary Expression
He might have been feeling bored. Perhaps, once you work your way through Agatha Christie, no house can capture your attention again. And was the time machine really good, or was it just the beginning, for both Clay and the world?
Natural Literature
Natural writing, Western novels, climbing, ghost stories, dysfunctional families… literarily, Clay has been there, done that. In the last hour, he wandered through fantasy, mystery, autobiography, and what his friend calls “Qual. Lit.” – a pretentious term if there ever was one. Quality literature, ha! As if any literary genre held a monopoly. Not to mention that after reading Nabokov, Woolf, and Joyce, you can get as bored by those things as anything else. Even Shakespeare you can eventually memorize.
Romantic Attempt
Maybe he should try romance. He hasn’t dealt with it before, so at least it would be different.
Discovery of the Odd Book
Then, in the supernatural section, something caught his attention. It’s a strange book: black, with red accents, facing inward. It made him think of Hitchcock’s film “Vertigo.” Now that was a movie: Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak in a deceptively simple story that you have to watch several times to fully understand. But once you do, so many other films seem trivial.
The book also made him think of something from his youth. Something related to an old TV show. What was it called? Oh yes, “The Time Tunnel.” Each week they would spin this thing like a giant wheel and travel to a distant era. It might be really silly if he watched it today, but it hit him like his first viewing of “Doctor Who,” another show involving a time tunnel, plus a ton of other things he had never seen before.
There was no author listed, and as he picked up the book, it felt like he was falling into a whirlpool. On the back cover was a simple endorsement: “Guaranteed to restore your sense of wonder.” Yes, right. He had heard that before.
He opened it but there was no introduction, no foreword, no writing at all. Just more whirlpools, one on each page, these in black and white.
He almost put it back, but the feeling of attraction was too strong. It was as if the whole room was spinning: exactly what Jimmy Stewart’s character should feel when looking into the depths… it was dizzying enough that Clay no longer wanted to think about Stewart or Hitchcock or old television shows.
There was a white circle in the center of the first whirlpool. Looking into it, he saw flashes of movement: images of barely remembered memories of Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak and perhaps “The Time Tunnel.”
With effort, he turned the page. Another whirlpool, pulling him back in. This time, he saw words.
“Call me Ishmael.”
“It was the best of times …”
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
“Once upon a time, there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.”
“To be or not to be …”
Instead of just reading them, it felt like the words were pulling him in faster. He turned another page and another and another. It wasn’t just words and videos. There were also still images: a couple looking stern with a fork; a woman with a strange smile. Guitar melodies, symphonies, something about Lucy in the sky with a yellow submarine. Names of these things would stir his memory then vanish, often faster than he could grasp what they were. Something about whistling and moaning. Something about bugs singing.
Then,
The matter is settled. Clay had no idea how long he had stared at the book. All he knew was that he had flipped through most of the pages, but not all of them. He looked at the next pages, but they were just whirlpools. They still caused dizziness, but not like before. He flipped the page back, but there were no longer any words or pictures. Just paper.
There was no price tag on the book. Clay briefly wondered why it was attractive to him. Maybe it had lowered his blood sugar. Maybe the whirlpools surprised him.
He set the book back where he found it, on the counter next to a computer through which customers could check the store’s inventory. As if the previous reader, if that was the right term for someone browsing such a book, had placed it there, easy to find.
Clay still needed something for the beach.
He wandered around the store, almost randomly, until he reached the mystery section. Puzzles were fun, he thought, although he didn’t know why. There were so many books, and he couldn’t remember having read any of them, so he chose the first book that caught his attention.
“It was a dark and stormy night,” he read. “Wow,” he breathed, and was immediately drawn in.
About the Author
Richard A. Lovett is a frequent contributor to Scientific American and Science Facts. He has won six Analytical Lab Awards (Reader’s Choice) in that magazine. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and you can find him online at http://www.richardalovett.com.
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar.
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Information about this article:
Lovett, R. A Sense of Wonder. Nature 465, 656 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/465656a
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Published on: June 02, 2010
Date of issue: June 03, 2010
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/465656a
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