Our Trash is Your Novel

The dark truth about used bookstores, at least the one where I used to work, is that they throw away books. Piles of books. Heaping trash cans full of books. They don’t highlight that in the job description. The English major applying for a bookseller position thinks it will be all philosophical discussions with guys who wear dark-framed glasses and pronounce Goethe all German-like and guttural. We think it will be sexy, to a degree. We are mistaken.

I found myself hoisting a trash can out the back door and rolling it across a scorching parking lot one August afternoon. I felt guilty, sympathetic to the authors and their craft, as I began tossing books one at a time into the dumpster. Like a good English major, I learned to treat books not as words but voices and authors. Friends, even. The book I was throwing away was a thing that someone believed in. Someone agonized over those words, researched and poured their lives into them. Maybe that someone had a cocktail party to celebrate their book’s publication in their tiny Manhattan apartment.

Halfway through the first batch, with two more bulging cans to go and sweat already rolling down my back, the throwing became easier. I was able to set aside my misgivings and scoop them up three and four at a time. My sympathy was melting. So was my makeup. At the bottom of the pile, the last book to meet its end was a children’s picture book. It was a Dora the Explorer book, the kind with little buttons that play noises for certain parts of the story. The kind of book that booksellers and parents everywhere hate. I still felt a little remorse tossing Dora into the trash so I decided to give her one last play. I pushed a button, and a cartoonish child’s voice cried out,

“I need your help!”

Sorry Dora.