Why I Shouldn't Be Considered

"If you would like to be considered as a candidate for a position on the PNBA Board, please submit a short essay describing why you would like to serve on the Board and what qualifications you believe you would bring to the job, to the Selection Committee Chair, Libby Manthey, PNBA's Immediate Past President and owner of Riverwalk Books in Chelan, WA. All such submissions will be held in confidence by the Selection Committee."

So reads the solicitation published in last month's Footnotes, the handsome newsletter of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. What to make of it?

At the bookstore, we sell books -- still -- that instruct the reader in writing just such an essay for college admissions and the like. I must have written one or two such myself, back in the day, when applying to universities for which I lacked the qualifications and to which I could not afford to go anyway. If I did write any such thing, I've long since allowed myself to strike the experience from memory. Likewise, the writing of cover-letters to be appended to resumes I now barely remember doing, though I must have done, and more than once. I have kept no copies for my records. I've solicited and written my share of letters of recommendation down the years. I flatter myself that when I was a manager, I even developed some facility in this. Not always easy, even when one likes the person to be recommended, and believe me, one doesn't always. At least once, when I asked for such a letter, my employer told me to write it myself and promised to sign whatever I wrote. I did and he did. Wasn't easy though.

One of the more annoying contrivances in recent management innovations has been the introduction of the "self evaluation" as a prerequisite of the employee's annual review. Pointless, hateful practice. What on earth is one meant to say without sounding like a complete ass? I've been lucky in recent years in having had the excuse of writing instead about the year's development in the used books department, and my hopes and aspirations for that, rather than being forced to evaluate anything so abstract as my personal and professional "development" and the like. From my humble perspective, as just a very small contributor to what I still see as a rather grand enterprise, I think this sort of thing is best left to the bosses. It's what they're being paid to do. I'm paid to buy and sell books. Hadn't we better just talk about that?

I've been chided by more than one reader of my efforts here for what might flippantly be characterized as my "style," which has been described as being heavy with an affected, which is to say, false personal modesty, even as I opine, snap and rant away on subjects as serious and divergent as education, literature and libraries. Who am I, after all, to judge? Well, who indeed?

From whatever murky personal psychology or point of origin in my character and upbringing, I find any suggestion that I ought to be able tell anyone, let alone a complete stranger, why I would really be the best man for anything, deeply embarrassing, and yes, wrong. Ascribe this eccentricity to an early exposure to Methodism, or my humble beginnings, to my insecurities being legion, or to what you will, I can not but blush, and not just for myself, when anyone asks me to enumerate my virtues, suggest my potential superiority to other candidates or elucidate my particular vision for the future. Ask my opinion of the poetry I've been reading this year for consideration by the awards committee on which I serve. (Not so great.) Happy to oblige. Ask me what I make of the recent election results. (...) Not a problem. Ask me -- and I really wish someone would, just the once without me being forced to introduce the subject -- why I think William Cowper might be better remembered as a supreme epistolary stylist rather than as a collaborator in the Olney Hymns, and I might just kiss you. (Be warned.) But ask me why I think I ought to be considered when the invitations are issued to join the PNBA Board, and the best I can manage is the following explanation of why I think the question ridiculous and... well, if not rude, then badly put.

To begin with, I've been a participant in a variety of political and volunteer organizations over the years, and I've sat on more than one jury, to say nothing of having watched every season of "Survivor," and my experience and observation have taught me that the first person to volunteer themselves for any unpaid leadership position is invariable a jackass. From jury forepersons to Scout Troupe leaders, from ward organizers to AIDS activists, the man or woman most eager to step forward from any mob is always looking, perversely, for a pal, and having none of the interpersonal skills required for friendship: patience, personal loyalty, kindness, humor, modesty, has long since decided to settle for being boss. Justifiably lonely, there is a class of individual long since cottoned to the idea that at least one may best be lonely, as they say, at the top. Doesn't matter how small the pile, mind. Now, to be asked to assume some added responsibility can be flattering, just as to not be asked can be rather hurtful, even when one might want nothing much to do with the job. Always nice to be asked. But anyone in my experience who is willing, when prompted, to offer reasons not necessarily in evidence for election to anything more taxing than the setting out of folding chairs or the collection of donations at the door, and there one will see such a parade of defective reasoning and naked longing as to shame Nero's mother. Such persons generally are fit for nothing better than politics.

As Burke famously said, "ambition can creep as well as soar," and while I am as inclined as anyone else to reverence talent when it is carried to greater heights by ambition, in the less exalted realms of committee work, and board meetings, and bake-sales, I am disposed to assume less healthy, if not baser motives whenever someone's hand goes up too quickly. Perhaps I'm wrong, but isn't one's first question always, "Have they nothing better to do?"

I like the ideal, that we all may have something better, if less important to do, but will serve if asked nicely.

The chair of the committee on which I presently serve is offered every year, by a process blessedly shrouded in some mystery, at least to me, behind closed doors and then announced at the conclusion of each year's business. This, to my mind, is entirely right and proper. In my time, we have been quite lucky in our chairpersons. I think it just the rest of us should be informed of the selection rather than asked either to volunteer or to offer nominations from within the ranks. What awful extra minutes of shuffling embarrassment and mutual back-slapping that would add, unnecessarily, to our deliberations! Would nearly spoil the whole thing.

Being asked to serve on the committee was likewise something of a bolt from the blue. Someone, somewhere, presumably in the organization's office in Eugene or wherever it is, put out a request for nominations, not just to the then serving members, but to the member bookstores, and in my case at least, this was sifted down, and down, and down again, until my boss hit on the idea of me. (I've always imagined, though being a very sweet fellow, he would probably deny this, that my boss happened to wander past my desk on the sales floor one fine day, with a list of those in the company who had either already served or declined, and coming upon the opinionated party in the grubby apron, thought something like, "why the Hell not?" and enquired if I might be interested in serving? He may have mentioned the free lunch. I am very like Dickens' Fat Boy, always happy to find a free meal. I'm sure the boss mentioned the free review copies. And so it came to pass.) This is just how these things are best done. No mention need be made of any that might have passed before this honor came my way, and I might flatter myself by imagining, however unlikely, that somewhere, someone thought I was just the bright fellow this thing needed. Happy to do it. Glad to have been cajoled.

An organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of independent bookselling is something I can really get behind. (See me there, way in the back?) The work that is done by the PNBA, and all such regional and national organizations, is admirable, and doubtless more difficult with every passing day. As a bookseller, I can testify to both the thankless nature of the task and its importance, not only to the industry that pays my bills, but, I genuinely believe, to the culture and communities we, in our way, continue to serve despite the growing perception of our economic irrelevance and the supposed superiority of other, newer, sillier means of reading. Beyond the professional and moral support that such an organization provides its members, there is the defiance of the long forecasted doom of books, bookstores and all who appreciate and depend on them, that is to be applauded. Its all very well for a clerk in a bookstore to insist that what I do still matters to more than myself, it is entirely a greater thing to know that when organized, the voices of like-minded individuals can still have an impact on publishers, authors, reviewers, politics and the public. Whatever small contribution I can make to the struggle, I am proud to offer.

But that doesn't mean I'm prepared to recommend myself to sit on the organization's governing board. Who does such a thing?

I suppose I should be grateful that there are good people prepared to overlook the awkwardness of putting themselves forward for such a position when asked to do so. Can't imagine. Good for you, honestly. And thanks for finding the courage to not scruple so ridiculously about the nature of the invitation. Without you, people like me would have no excuse for going to Portland in August every year, among other things. I guess I must sound very much like some fussy old hen at the ball, disapproving mightily at the audacity of these young people just coming right up to one another, without proper introductions, and just sailing out onto the dance floor. Stuffy, timid old thing; no one's given you so much as glance anyway. And really, I'd no intention of getting up off the sofa again at this point anyway. Frankly, I rather prefer just snapping my fan and clucking happily away to my neighbors, and letting the music play.

Still, one needs to remind others now and then, as to matters of etiquette.

Now doesn't that make me sound just the sort of person one wants at the party?

Huff. Puff. Excellent buffet, by the way.