I was watching the Spike Jonze movie, Stranger Than Fiction, and noticed that the literature professor played by Dustin Hoffman had written on the chalkboard a list of name’s and ailments. It wasn’t until the final name that a lightbulb turned on in my head – Pombal (who had gout) from Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet.

My Aunt Anna and Uncle Buddy had the Alexandria Quartet high up on a bookshelf in their living room. When I would visit, Aunt Anna and I would stay up talking late into the night. For some reason, those four books kept catching my eye and I would ask her about them, but she was usually noncommittal. Finally, I took down the first book, Justine (not to be confused with the novel by Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade, which I once purchased at Bridgestreet Books in 2001).

I loved it. I am a little afraid to go back, though. I suspect that it is a book best appreciated by a slightly younger man.

Nonetheless, at the time. Such lush writing. The highest literary eroticism, without ever being explicit. The way that the narrative, rather than following chronology, revolved in a circle around a central event and a central theme.

I never finished the quarter, finally stalling while reading the fourth and  final volume, Mountolive. Each succeeding book after the first was less and less satisfying. The second book, Balthazar, while not nearly as good (in my eyes) as Justine, was at least enjoyable.  But the third, Clea, was more a slog. By the final volume, I simply had no more interest in trying to finish the quartet.

I didn’t take Aunt Anna’s copies with me and bought my own copy. I lost that first copy and sometime in my late twenties, I felt the urge to read it again. The only copy I found while prowling used bookstores had an embarrassing cover, with some sort of blonde on it (who I suppose was intended to represent Justine, though I can’t imagine her as a blonde – she was a Jew of Mediterranean descent, after all). Even worse, it made it look like some cheap romance and no guy wants to be seen reading that kind of stuff in public. I don’t know where that copy is now. I may miss those first, heady days reading Justine in high school, but I don’t miss that stupid cover.