The Literary Lunchroom

I fully admit to being addicted to reading the Guardian online. The culture pages are like crack to me, and I’m realizing that with every little titbit I am slowly becoming more pretentious. I’m already a complete nerd so let’s be honest, there’s nowhere to go from there but into a deeply over-educated haughtiness.

Case in point, a few months back I discovered an amazing post on one of the Guardian’s book blogs on methods of arranging books. Sadly, for the life of me I cannot find it again. It went through several ridiculously obsessive and silly styles, from arranging by color to size to publication date. My personal favourite is the method of arranging books according to who the authors would be friends with in real life, regardless of when they lived. This is wildly entertaining, as it requires pretention beyond anything that I can come up with before the age of 50.

As a seasoned Barnes and Noble veteran, I fully adore the fact that the Guardian has devoted so much time to the arranging of books. This used to come to pass at the bookstore ALL the time:

Customer: Hi, I’m looking for a book.

Me: Ok, do you know the title?

Customer: No.

Me: How about the author?

Customer: No, I don’t know that either.

Me: Can you give me anything else to work with here?

Customer: It was blue.

Me: Blue. Ok. Anything else?

Customer: I think the main character was Canadian. Or was that the author? I don’t know. Canada was definitely involved though.

Me: Right. Blue with a Canadian association of some sort. I’ll see what I can do.

One of two things would then happen: someone (me/a co-worker/the amnesiac customer) would somehow remember what the book was called, and then find it OR the search would be long and drawn out and everyone would be really angry and finally run off in different directions and hide (including Mr. Amnesia). Usually the latter.

Anyway, if Barnes and Noble had read this article (yes, the entire chain personified should read this article – I’m convinced B&N actually is one collective consciousness, like that space ship in “Event Horizon” but without all the death), they could arrange books by color or geographical association and then everyone would find everything they needed. Except the people that convince themselves that books exist on subjects that no one would ever write about, like how to make birdhouses out of glass swivel sticks or how to teach your dog to play poker. Actually, I think there are actually books about how to teach your dog to play poker (get out your paint brushes). And people do actually ask for books on non-existent subjects. I once had a woman yell at me for a full half an hour because I could find no record of books existing on how to make medieval hats.

Actually, now that I think of it, there were a few random characters that used to come into the store all the time and became notorious. There was a mountain man with a big beard that the booksellers nicknamed Gandalf who was obsessed with German castles. Someone with a nose fetish used to call the store all the time to try to trick female booksellers into talking about their noses (I voted to nickname him Cyrano de Bergerac but he was just known as “the nose guy”). Bookstores seem to attract some obsessive types. The only things that the booksellers find it ok to be obsessed with are books and coffee. And possibly weed, if you work in the stock room.

Just for the exercise though, let’s think how this arranging books by author friend groups might work (you know, just to be obsessive). Now bear in mind that I do this based solely on the writing, and have done no research whatsoever into the actual lives of the authors (which makes the whole thing much more fun, because let’s face it, being historically accurate is boring). It needs to be put it in some sort of mythical place where we can imagine these authors all co-existing, so I choose the unique flavour of hell that is the high school lunchroom. So let’s begin.

The Literary Lunchroom

The bell rings and first to grace the lunch room are the very punctual but not altogether anti-social smart girls. Jane Austen pulls out peanut butter and jelly on white bread and immediately starts to spray wit in all directions, much to the entertainment of her posse of wannabes. The hierarchy is thick among the wannabes, it is a cutthroat game trying to be one of the smart girls. Jane Austen, Margaret Atwood and Sylvia Plath busy themselves over the lunch hour successfully making everyone else feel inadequate. Queen of the wannabes J.K. Rowling tries extra hard to say something smart but accidently overuses the word “surreptitiously,” which the other girls see as a dead giveaway that she’s secretly a C student and shun her.

At a table nearby, J.R.R. Tolkien sits alone making up languages and wishing that J.K. Rowling didn’t turn him down for the Prom. He thinks she’s mildly annoying, but that she could be kinda hot in that elfish sort of way if she would just get off her high horse for a few seconds. He scowls (surreptitiously) and goes back to making up languages.


Better late than never, Douglas Adams and Roald Dahl bombard his table with a ridiculous concentration of energy in their latest efforts to get him to cheer the fuck up. Doug tries to get him to see the entertaining side of suffering, but J.R.R. interrupts him with a lyrical rant about how human folly only leads to squalor. Doug and Roald whisper amongst themselves about how having too many initials makes people take themselves far too seriously, and they stare down Ms. Rowling at the next table over in a weak attempt to test this theory.

The popular kids show up halfway through lunch with bags of McDonalds, mostly to show off the fact that they’ve all got cars and can go off campus. e.e. cummings is going through a punctuation-shunning phase that annoys his English teacher to no end, but since he’s kind of a Casanova she still gives him straight A’s and constantly babbles on about his creative skills. This pisses off Gertrude Stein to no end, who is at the other end of the cafeteria giving him the stink eye. Doug and Roald decide from their table that the initials rule doesn’t apply to e.e., because he whispers things into girls’ ears that make them go crazy and they really want to know what the hell he’s saying to them so that they can try it too.

Dan Brown sits between Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, and e.e. has to laugh because he knows that the only reason they tolerate him is because Dan has rich parents and always has loads of drugs. Half the high school is addicted to Dan Brown’s drugs, and a few of the teachers too. Dan doesn’t do the drugs himself, he’s just a really good salesman. e.e. spends the remainder of the lunch hour wondering where Salinger has gone. Salinger used to be popular but he suddenly disappeared, and no one knows why. In his place is Ian Flemming, and he’s very cool so no one really worries that much about Salinger. Jack and Hunter decide to ignore Dan for awhile, because after 5 minutes he gets really bland. Lewis Carol has showed up and they’ve been saving him a seat (Dan accidentally sat in it, and apologises profusely when he realises this and goes to sit by whoever the hell it is that wrote The Secret so that they can be bland in tandem).

Elizabeth Gilbert and the Marley and Me guy are running for prom king and queen and stop by the popular table for a few to do some expert PR. They have everyone’s vote there anyway, but they are still really worried they will be usurped by Stephanie Meyer and Dr. Oz, who are a force to be reckoned with. This rivalry has caused a minor upset at the lunch table, but it won’t matter once the votes are cast and everyone is surprised and delighted to see that Kurt Vonnegut and Zadie Smith have won it in a surprise landslide. This single event will cause them all to suddenly realize that there are people outside the popular table who do in fact cast votes.

I’ve just realized I could go on all day like this. I’ve also just realized that the fact that I could go on all day like this is vaguely sad, so I’m going to stop now.