Lit Randomness: ATL, burglars and the striated spaces of Deleuze and Guattari

Here's some lit randomness.

Parked on a side street in Atlanta's Little Five Points neighborhood, it's early evening. In the ATL for the holidays and my car has an out-of-state license plate. Threw most of our stuff in the trunk, including a laptop computer and newly purchased chip clips from IKEA. Also in the trunk: clothes, more clothes and some tennis shoes.

Fast forward through a trip to Acapella Books, a trip to Criminal Records, my wife getting her nose pierced, another trip to Criminal Records, a beer with Josh, then Thai food and sushi with other friends and then yet another trip to Criminal. This time we picked up My Maudlin Career by Camera Obscura on vinyl, some out of date magazines and a new Slingshot 2010 organizer. Then a return trip to the car to find the passenger rear window shattered.

Didn't think anything was missing until the next day when I realized several books for my thesis project were stolen, including A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari, The Rustle of Language by Roland Barthes, a postmodern narrative theory book, all university library books. Also taken was Ethan Brown's remarkable new book, Shake the Devil Off (also a library book) and a beat-up copy of Woody Guthrie's Bound For Glory.

Some unsuspecting burglar just got a lesson in rhizomatic theory and the biography of a hardscrabble folk artist during The Great Depression. Can't wait to see what emerges from that.

The next day, I checked the local Borders and found a new copy of Bound For Glory, but no copies of Deleuze and Guattari or Barthes of course.

I also wonder the shock of the burglar on realizing that he had stolen some of literature's great theorists. Next night, I went back to Little Five Points and went into Acappella Books. Indeed, the burglar had tried to pawn off all the books, but was told they did not take library books. But in fact, they did take my beat up copy of Woody Guthrie's autobiography, which was promptly returned to me. For more clues, they sent me down across Freedom Parkway to the Atlanta Book Exchange, but hadn't seen anything like Deleuze and Guattari all day.

So the trail ends, and I have a $200 bill for a new window along with some anxieties about revealing the truth to the librarians, as they tack on several fees above the cost of the actual books lost.

I have a few anxieties about whatever garbage can those books are dumped into, maybe they recycled them. I also hope they didn't spend the 75 cents they received from a beat-up copy of Bound For Glory all in one place. Maybe these books created as much of a headache for the burglar in having the books, as they have for me in not having them.