Browzing A Single Man
I picked up A Single Man today in the “Gays” section of Browzers Bookshop in Madison. For realz. Between “Gender and Women’s Studies” and “African-American Studies,” and opposite of “Poetry” and “Essays,” that’s where you’ll find books apparently on or by “Gays.” I’ll have to take a picture of the little green tag next time I stop by this unfortunately named bookstore–the “z” makes me wince every time I see it–with the off-putting book categorization.
Anyways, this rather appropriately inappropriate event took place after my first day of teaching. Walking home after class, I was thinking about “A Single Man,” which I saw the night before. I liked the cool languid way the film’s stylized scenes and images washed and dissolved over the camera eye and how much of the dramatic action happened on Colin Firth’s expressive face, or what his grief-stricken character, George Falconer, refers to in the opening scene as not “so much a face as the expression of a predicament.” I decided to stop by the bookstore in the off chance I might find a used copy of Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel of the same name, which I was curious to read and compare with the new film by Tom Ford. Checked Literary Fiction. Nope. Then remembered the bookstore’s absurd categorization. And there he was, part of the feared minority, A Single Man!