The Neverending Story: The Grumpy Old Book Dealer Adventures

If you're like me, your childhood was haunted by that most frightening sequence of cinematic images, unscrupulously packed away into an otherwise delightful family entertainment:  Bastian's showdown, in the film The Neverending Story, with a completely disorganized bookstore.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

In the books and movie sequels, I understand the book dealer was fleshed out as a repeat visitor to Fantasia, where he maintained a separate identity as a wizard.  However, given only the evidence in the first movie, I don't buy it:  Too much of the world of Fantasia seems brought in by Bastian himself...  The "Plains People" and their "Purple Buffalo" are ripped from Bastian's lunchbox art, for example...  and then there's the connection between Atreyu and Bastian, each representing the other's "true self."

Ah!  So my true self is a middle-class bookworm kid.
That'll be really useful to know when I go back to
the day-to-day struggle to survive in
my hunter-gatherer society.

To me, this adds up to the book being entirely different for whomever reads it.  A portal into many worlds, not just one.

This begs the question:  What stories does the old man project himself into when HE reads it?

Ah, Alternate History Fiction...
Where I can kill all the Americans I want!

As soon as he sticks his head out the window
and names the Empress...  I'LL HAVE HIM!

The next big thing in publishing:
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Two last asides:

1.)  The book dealer's full name is Carl Conrad Coreander and Bastian's is Bastian Balthazar Bux.  I like this a lot...  It marks them as spiritual brothers, but more than that, it seems to indicate that Bastian has already progressed a little on their mutual path.  He does read books, after all, and so has moved from "A" to "B".  (Probably the main bully is named Aaron Anderson Akbar and is completely illiterate.)  Carl, despite his decades of life, has only progressed one more step than the kid.  This could imply both Bastian and Carl have a lot of untapped potential (and don't we all?) or it could imply Carl is a hateful, stunted soul whom Bastian will very soon overtake (I pick that one). Of course, in the original German version, his name is Karl Konrad Koreander.  So, never mind, I guess.

2.)  Coreander scoffs at Bastian's claims of literacy by accusing him of reading only comic books.  This always made me want to climb through the screen and set fire to the old jerk.  But notice!  He only makes his derisive "Comic books!" remark immediately after Bastian claims to own 185 books.  Obviously, he's scoffing at such a low number of comics.  Excelsior!