The Book in the Mall
I’m doing my Masters in Creative Writing at the very cool University of East Anglia part-time, a delightful day a week.It gets me thinking in different ways.Here is a short story I wrote pretty quickly after overdosing on Kafka and Borges.I performed it as part of the New Writing Live! series which has made a welcome return to Dorothy’s Bar in Norwich, .Have a listen; it’s a lovely way to experience it, or of course the text is below. Enjoy. The Book in the Mall.Have you seen the book everyone’s talking about? The one at Chantry Place? The Mall? If you haven’t you should get down there, honestly. It’s the biggest story in books right now. And it’s happening right here in Norwich. That’s why we’re all here eh? Why we chose to live in Norwich, UNESCO City of Literature. Cos we know books matter. Well, this one matters more than most. For those of you who don’t know, the book is a real doorstopper. It’s sitting high up on a steel ledge on the inside of the main entrance to the mall, that’s the one across from Wagamama. So, it’s sitting high up on a steel ledge. You can only see the front cover by craning your neck on the way out. Almost everyone’s started doing that, after it went viral on BookTok, but before that, no one seems to have noticed it, but security camera footage shows it’s been there for as long as they store security camera footage, and now everyone’s posting images showing that it’s been there for years, perhaps from prior to the construction of the mall, hovering in the air, but there is no way to confirm or deny the authenticity of these. Cos AI. The point is that until recently, no one had noticed it, and now that it has been noticed, no one is quite sure what to do. We know the name of the book. You can see it with binoculars. It’s called Works Additional to the Complete Works of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka. A book that has no ISBN. You cannot buy it on Amazon. You cannot find it at independent bookshops. It only exists on that ledge. So we can see the front of it, but not the back cover material, if there is any. That’s obscured by the nest of a protected form of seagull which has somehow made its home behind a row of pigeon spikes. From the front and sides we can see it’s hardcover, bound in cloth and comprises 743 uncut pages. Like I say, binoculars have been used to verify all this. It’s impossible to gauge the weight because no one has ever picked it up. Which should make us wonder about all those pronouncements about the weights of far away planets. The book is very like an extraterrestrial planet, in fact, in that we can’t get to it. Health and safety regulations. None of the people who are certified to work at height can get qualified to handle rare books and none of the people qualified to handle rare books can get certified to work at height. A maverick window cleaner had a go, but obviously all his equipment is about abseiling down the outside of the glass and this book, as I’ve said, is on the inside. Probably for the best. No one wants to risk damaging the book, which may be extremely valuable. All in all it’s an extremely niggly situation. Those who want to leave the book in place as a tourism draw far outnumber lovers of literature who would like to read it. It’s got to the point where bringing down the book would bring down a pilgrimage economy that’s bringing more people to the mall than Zara. It’s even spawned a literary festival of sorts where parodists gather to speak aloud their best guess as to the contents of the book of which this very story that I’m telling you right now won the inaugural competition in six weeks time. So as far as anyone can tell this story is in the book and it’s not by me Arthur Meek at all. It’s written by Franz Kafka. What an honour for me to be namedropped by Franz Kafka. All in all I reckon it would be a downer to take it down. So up it stays, and it might be there forever, but it might not, so if I was you, I’d get on down to the mall, look up and check it out. If you choose to eat at Wagamama, by the way, tell them Arthur Meek sent you. I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arthurmeek.substack.com
