Marfa Books - Marfa, Texas

This bookstore was a surprise. Marfa was the first town we came to after driving through hundreds of miles of Texas desert and we NEEDED lunch. I get hangry, and as we rolled into this town, deserted in the way that only a Sunday morning can bring, I was reaching the Danger Zone. The only restaurant open was Bar St. George, in the lobby of the St. George Hotel. It was serendipitous find, not only because of the food, but also for the bookshop housed at the opposite end of the lobby, Marfa Books.

Marfa Books is more of a book gallery, with long tables of art books, collections of curated fiction and nonfiction with titles like A Monthly Account of the Year Leading Up to the End of the World by Agonistes, Prophet and Fulfiller; or The Exhausted Dream, all fitting a specific viewpoint and aesthetic, which one might call intensely artistic, or densely weird and academic. The dark concrete floors, white walls, clean-lined furniture, and books arranged in grids on tables helped to visualize the aesthetic. 

In all honesty, this aesthetic is one I find somewhat uninviting. It may be that I'm still recovering from arts college, but I feel like literature of this flavor requires an understanding that doesn't come easily to me, and is therefore rather alienating. Is this more a commentary on myself than the stock at Marfa Books? Probably. Did I find anything I really wanted to read? Not really.

This was a visually beautiful space, however, and for the right audience—which, going out a limb after only two hours there, is the Marfa artistic community—this would be a haven. I was happy to find it, but just as happy to go eat lunch.