The article The Burden of History & the Promise of Divine Life in this month’s New Oxford Review begins:
Thirty-some years ago, I was in a dark, musty used-book store in downtown Milwaukee when a man appeared around the end of the aisle, handed me a book, and said, “Here, you really ought to read this.” I suppose if I were to add that he then mysteriously disappeared — which he did — you would think I’m making it up. But no, that is how I discovered A Canticle for Leibowitz.
C’mon, man, you’ll have to be more specific than that! Was it Renaissance Books on Plankinton Avenue which backed up to the river? I once spent a long time pawing through its magazines until I actually came up with the Saturday Review from 1957 with an article about Atlas Shrugged in it?
Was it Downtown Books on Wisconsin Avenue where I spent over an hour in the adult magazines room to score a copy of Gallery magazine with Robert B. Parker’s short story “The Surrogate”?
You have to be a bit more specific. And, wow, are my memories sharp and clear on bookstores in Milwaukee in the 1990s.
I’m guessing Renaissance Books.
