The Vivisector (1970)

With thrift stores supplying me with most of my reading material of late, I find myself lonely for bookshops and make a point of visiting them, often leaving with something I would never find elsewhere (I still don't buy books online). Paperhound is one such shop, Massy Books another, the People's Co-op another. Yet another is the Momma Bear of the under-60-run shops, and that is Pulp Fiction on Main Street. All four shops balance "new" and "used" titles.

Pulp Fiction is a grounding presence in my life. Like the former Granville Book Company, where Chris and Paperhound's Rodney learned their trade, the staff are very near the entrance and stand behind the counter like bartenders. Nothing fills me with excitement like walking into Pulp Fiction and seeing Chris and J.P. on duty, with Chris using lighter fluid to clean a book's cover and J.P. stealing a puff off his e-cig, if that's what he's doing when he brings his fist to his mouth like that.

Sometimes my excitement is out of control and, if no one is at the consumer side of the counter, I launch into commentary related to a book J.P. had recommended during a previous visit or an exhibition I had seen that made me think of Chris. Mine is cringeworthy behaviour for those who treat bookshops like monasteries, but I make no apologies, as cringing is the result of a conversation that exists entirely within the cringer. Plus at my present age I no longer care what people think of me, as I am no longer who I never was in the first place (at least not to me).

Last week I entered the store and there was J.P. alone with no one at the counter. I sipped from my excitement rather than douse him in it, offering a brief but smiled greeting and went to the STAFF PICKS shelf where I saw below J.P.'s name Patrick White's The Vivisector. Interesting, I thought. I'd always wanted to read something by Patrick White. But I'd also used the concept of vivisection in my spoof of Atwood's Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), where I mined the many epigrams that set off her chapters as the basis for my 1997 twelve poem Survivial: A Strobic Guide chapbook I produced on my one-off CanLit Classics in Transition imprint.

"What was White's great book, J.P.?"

"Voss," he said into his fist.

"You enjoyed The Vivisector?"

"Yes, have you read it?"

I hadn't.

"It's about an abstract painter."

Sold.

Last night, just before turning off the light, I turned down the corner of Page 85, a few pages after the sale of the precocious six year old Hurtle to Alfreda and Harry Courtenay, who'd met him earlier (as the laundress's son) and found him charming. Their similarly aged humpback daughter Rhoda is charmed by him too, and at this moment the two are circling each other, filled with that mixture of attraction and disgust that makes desire what it is. But it is Hurtle and Harry's first meeting that produced the line that blew my mind and spoke directly to the book's title. Here it is (in bold), beginning with Mr Courtenay speaking to Hurtle, and Hurtle referring to himself (on occasion) in the second person:

"'Round about your age I remember going on a long drive. In the country. At night. With my father and Archdeacon Rutherford.' He broke up his sentence with short puffs at is cigar, his lips glossy and contented.

"It was strange, though comforting, to hear Mr Courtenay's voice mention his father's friend by name, as though taking it for granted that you too had known Archdeacon Rutherford.

"'I would have given anything to stop that buggy. But didn't know how. In front of the Archdeacon. He was a very thin old man. I used to picture his guts resting flat against his backbone.'" (57)