Free The Bookman's Wake by John Dunning Page A

I said, suddenly inspired.
     “It’s funny, she was a book person, a lot like
     you.”
    “No kidding!”
    “The same only different.” I fiddled with
     the check. “She’d love that story you told
     me.”
    “The book world is full of stories like that.
     Books are everywhere, and some of them are valuable for the
     craziest reasons. A man gets put on an Iranian hit list.
     His books go up in value. A guy writes a good book, a guy
     writes a bad book. Both are worth the same money on the
     collector’s market. A third guy writes a great book
     and nobody cares at all. The president of the United States
     mentions in passing that he’s a Tom Clancy fan and
     suddenly this guy’s book shoots into the Hemingway
     class as a collectible. And that president is Ronald
Reagan
, for God’s sake. Does that make any
     sense?”
    “Not to me it doesn’t.”
    “It defies logic, but that’s the way it is
     today. People latch onto some new thing and gorge
     themselves on it, and the first guy out of the gate becomes
     a millionaire. Maybe Clancy
is
a master of techno-babble. Do you care? To me he
     couldn’t create a character if his damn life depended
     on it. You watch what I say, though, people will be paying
     a thousand dollars for that book before you know it. Then
     the techno-babble rage will pass. It’ll fade faster
     than yesterday’s sunset and the focus will move on to
     something else, probably the female private detective. And
     that’ll last a few years, till people begin to gag on
     it. Meanwhile, it takes a real writer like Anne Tyler half
     a career to catch on, and James Lee Burke can’t even
     find a publisher for ten years.”
    “How do you learn so much so young?”
    “I was born in it. I’ve been around books
     all my life. When I was fourteen, I’d ditch class and
     thumb my way into Seattle and just lose myself in the
     bookstores. So I’ve had six or seven years of good
     hard experience. It’s like anything
     else—eventually you meet someone who’s willing
     to show you the ropes. Then one day you realize you know
     more about it than your teacher does—you started out
     a pupil, like Hemingway with Gertrude Stein, and now
     you’ve taken it past anything the teacher can do with
     it. And it comes easier if you’ve had a head
     start.”
    “Starting young, you mean.”
    She nodded. “At sixteen I had read more than a
     thousand books. I knew all the big names in American lit,
     so it was just a matter of putting them together with
     prices and keeping up with the new hotshots. But it’s
     also in my blood. I got it from my father: it was in his
     blood. It took off in a different direction with him, but
     it’s the same stuff when you get to the heart of it.
     Books…the wonder and magic of the printed word. It
     grabbed my dad when he was sixteen, so he knows where
     I’m coming from.”
    “Does your father deal in books?”
    “He wouldn’t be caught dead. No, I told you
     his interest went in another direction. My dad is a
     printer.”
    She finished her coffee and said, “I’d give
     a million dollars if I had it for his experience. My father
     was present at the creation.”
    I looked at her, lost.
    “He was an apprentice at the Grayson Press, in
     this same little town we’re going to. I’m sure
     you’ve never heard of the Grayson Press, not many
     people have. But you can take it from me, Mr. Janeway,
     Grayson was the most incredible book genius of our
     time.”

6
----
    T here wasn’t much to see of North Bend, especially on
     a dark and rainy night. I got off at Exit 31 and Eleanor
     directed me through the town, which had long since rolled
     up its awnings for the night. The so-called business
     district was confined to a single block, the cafe, bar, and
     gas station the only places still open. But it was
     deceptive: beyond the town were narrow roads where the
     people lived, where the Graysons had once lived, where
     Eleanor Rigby had grown from a