You might have heard of a bookstore in Porto, the Livraria Lello, beloved by Harry Potter fans. One the most beautiful bookstores in the world if you’re inclined to favor wooden two story shelves with a deep golden varnish bisected by a crimson spiraling staircase spreading its Victorian wings along the upper landing. Narrow and tall with colored light coming through a stained glass window to give the books lining the walls a burnished look, it feels more like the private collection of classical tomes you might find in the reserved section at Oxford.
Neither the Harry Potter books, nor their film adaptations have ever interested me. I’ve always found revenge magic tedious (a reason why Stephen King fails to light my fire, although De Palma’s “Carrie” and Kubrick’s “The Shining,” kick ass). Perhaps it’s a generational thing, but I find entering C.S. Lewis’s wardrobe more enthralling than zapping around in midair on some flying rugby ball.
So we’re in this bookstore mobbed by Harry Potterites elbowing their not so magical ways up stairs (that could have been color coded by Disney) to get a better cell shot of the cell phone wielding crowd below. It was like being at the Oscars only with books attending instead of stars. Indeed, the books for sale in this store were cultural stars, all by Nobel Prize winning authors. If you wanted Bellow, they had the collected works. The same went for Faulkner, Sartre, Marquez, and of course, Dylan. All in paperback, albeit expensive paperback. And in the far upper nook, there was a shrine dedicated to José Saramago, Portugal’s only Nobel Prizewinner.
Wait—Fernando, what’s your face doing there among the other prize winners? Traveling around Portugal sometimes I feel like I’m watching a series of Hitchcock movies where I’m on the alert for the sudden cameo appearance of the Master of Suspense, only in this case it’s the Master of Many Identities.
After the Bookstore of the Stars, we ducked into a church that was beyond Baroque. (I was all for skipping it, but then I thought, “What would Henry and Moira do?”). The silver altar decorations were, in a word, excessive. Standing at the rear of the church taking in the gaudy overindulgence, I could almost hear Luther pounding his nails in the heavy door.
The rest of the afternoon Ella reluctantly accompanied me on a ramble through the cobblestone commercial districts of Porto. Luckily we stumbled on a gelato shop with a wide array of choices, or else I wouldn’t be alive post this note.
