A tiny bookstore in the centre of Prague, off the Charles Bridge. I got there by chance. In fact, I think I got sucked into it on my way back from the museum of Franz Kafka (I will not die a happy man if I never visit that museum again), feeling as confused and enchanted as one can only feel after spending weeks looking for Klamm. In all honesty, going past that door would have been the easiest thing in the world. Instead, I was pulled in by the sheer force of gravity whose origin remained a mystery.
First thing I noticed
was the frankly impenetrable The Book Of
Dave by Will Self. Needless to say, I felt right at home. Three or four
visitors were shuffling about, scattered evenly, looking like various forms of
bugs (I needed a few more hours to adjust to a world outside Kafka). The place
was bright and tidy in that neat Eastern European way. Calm and phlegmatic. I
felt at peace.
God knows I love huge
bookstores. I can spend days crouched on the floor in Foyles on Charing Cross
Road and once I almost did. But huge bookstores will never give you that kind
of intimacy. You won't feel the bookshelves moving in on you, and for all the
light crammed inside the Prague bookstore – the place was suffocating with
books. It left no breathing space other than the smell of a million printed
pages.
Flicking through
their selection of Saul Bellow (opening The
Adventures Of Augie March on any random page is one of life's simple
pleasures), I was thinking how much visiting a great bookstore is similar to
going to a great restaurant. And if this was the famous Czech strudel, I was
happy to stick my teeth into it.
In fact, I kept them
stuck right until the closing time, feeling like a kid seduced by shiny covers,
and in the end settling on Martin Amis's excellent The Pregnant Widow that had just been published. This turned out to
be his best novel in many years, possibly since The Information, but crossing the Charles Bridge later that day,
doing it for the umpteenth time, I kept thinking about the origin of the force
that had pulled me into that bookstore.
That charm. I think I got it half an hour
later, in a loud restaurant where the famous Czech strudel (with cherries) was
quite real. That bookstore was great not because of helpful staff, Kafka or
even The Pregnant Widow. Its charm was
its location. Because there is nothing more special in a major city than an
intimate place at its very heart. Especially if it's a bookstore whose name you cannot recall.
