LLF Guest Post: Stephen Graham Jones, author of MONGRELS
On sale this week, Stephen Graham Jones' Mongrels, a darkly humorous yet heartfelt story of a boy growing up on the fringes of society whose family happens to be a bunch of werewolf-esque drifters, pulls off a wonderful blend of horror, fantasy, and literary intrigue—the result is a powerful, wholly unique coming-of-age story. Stephen, who spent a few years working in a library, was kind enough to stop by LLF to share his own experiences. Enjoy!
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At twenty-seven, freshly PhD’d in Florida, I came back to West Texas to do what I’d always done, what I’d always figured I’d do: manual labor. School had just been a detour, just been a way I could read and talk about books. But I’d been chopping cotton and working on fences since before I was out of elementary. So throwing dishwashers and refrigerators in the warehouse at Sear’s, man, that was the dream, pretty much. We had scheduled breaks. There was air-conditioning. No snakes were going to bite me in the face. But I got bit all the same, I guess. By an air-conditioner, of all things: it wrenched my back in a permanent way, a way the doctors all said I was way too young for. So, after being laid up a couple weeks, I finally got to where I could read the newspaper, mine the classifieds for what I figured I had to do now: desk work.
There was one job that seemed to be plentiful—evidently there was a great need for this. I’d never known. Had everyone been keeping it secret from me? ’Bookkeeper.’ There were columns and columns of postings for bookkeepers. I’d only thought the warehouse at Sears was the dream. This, though? This was the dream I’d never dared dream: going to someone’s house, organizing their books on the shelves in whatever way they wanted. Getting to handle books all day. And get paid for it.
My first callback learned me a thing or two about dreams, I suppose. Evidently this ‘bookkeeping,’ it wasn’t what I’d imagined. So I went back to the classifieds. There was only one job I thought I had a chance at. It was at the local university library. By then I’d spent a good chunk of my hours in libraries, but I’d never considered working in one. It wasn’t a cottonfield, it wasn’t a transmission shop. But, for qualifications—it was like they’d written this specifically for me. “There will be a spelling test.” I remember that so, so clearly. Coming up through elementary, spelling had always been my one dependable trick. Why spell a word wrong, when you can hear the right way to spell it, right there in how it’s said?
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