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Today on the link-o-matic, Tamara posted the Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick.
When I was 18, I got a job at a Bookstop, and worked there for the next two summers and Christmases. After my first few paychecks, I asked all my coworkers to recommend books for me to buy (before I realized that I could just come in with a bookbag and leave with whatever I wanted). “What do you think I should read?” is of course the best question you can ask a bookseller if you want them to at least briefly forget that they hate their jobs. You also tend to learn a little bit about how they see themselves and how they want to see you.
One of the older, fatherly guys told me to read Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Mishima, and Nabokov. One of the fratboy guys told me to read Hunter S. Thompson. Misha told me to read Jack Kerouac, I think. Anna told me to read Lipstick Traces. Rodney told me to read The Watchmen and Valis. What a strange but also very sad book! I was reading some William Blake at the time, so it almost even made sense to me.
Rodney was sharp and handsome — he was the only one of us that could pull off the slacks-and-tie bookseller uniform with any sort of style and assurance — but thankfully he was something of a weirdo. Rodney wrote sci-fi short stories and worked on comics in his spare time. He listened to AMG in the receiving room. He fantasized about pulling a heist on an armored truck, and had a detailed and completely unworkable plan that he would eagerly share with you with a completely straight face. He told me once that the best way to impress a woman was to invite her over for dinner, and have onions grilling in a pan when she arrived — he assured me that no matter what you were cooking, the smell of grilling onions was so appealing that she’d assume you were a good cook, and whatever else one could infer from that.