usedbuyer2.0

Daily Dose

2012-01-08T00:17:00.000-08:00

From God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem, by Darrell Hammond

THEY

"Joel Osteen, who is a very gifted speaker who draws his advise from the Bible, said 'Respect your parents.' And I thought, Until they stab you."

From Chapter Seven, Blood on the Floor, New York City, 1998

Tell

2012-01-07T22:43:00.000-08:00

Have you ever hated a phrase? I mean with a real -- hence irrational -- hatred: the way one may hate the atonal scale, the smell of sulfur, televised political debates, or basil in sweet drinks? Everyone hates something. Makes no more sense than most of what we love. No explanation necessary. Hate the smell? Avoid bad eggs. Love Trucker porn? I know a tumblr. Get on as best you can. But then there are the things that can not be entirely avoided: mosquitoes, road construction, relatives, etc. There's bad grammar, bad French, the French, Republicans -- the world's full of the most infuriating nonsense, yes? What I find most remarkable is how much one may and probably ought to just let slide. I work eight hours a day on a retail sales-floor, sugar, I know whereof I speak. I wouldn't be there, I honestly don't think, if I didn't want to be, if I didn't enjoy it, mostly, if I didn't think I could take it. Part of my job. One of the things that as an independent bookseller I do best, have opinions of my own, but what I do mostly is listen to other people's. In fact, I do my job better when I can solicit yours, but in the absence of that, or when I'm asked directly, then yes, I can tell you what I really think.

I don't, with customers, much. We want our opinions confirmed. If I can't quite bring myself to agree with you that Young Adult is a category of grown up thing, or that the best minds of our time write Science Fiction, or personally recommend something for a sixteen year old girl who hates to read, well... let's see how I can sell you a book anyway. I know how to smile, by God.

It's different with coworkers, even bosses sometimes, some bosses. Don't ask me, you don't want to know. You don't even have to ask me. I will tell you what I think. Let's be honest, I'll probably just talk and you might walk right into it.

I don't mean to be disagreeable or a boor, I really don't. I can only apologize.

So, then. Okay, you know what I hate? Let's see... I hate incompetence, my own and or other people's. Oh, yeah, and I hate indifference, mediocrity, laziness, cruelty. All very noble, I'm sure, right? You know what else I fucking hate? I fucking hate the following phrase:

"Tell us what you really think, Brad!"

Oh, fuck off.

That, while said with varying degrees of affection or offense, is what that phrase means. That's what I hear, anyway. Be quiet. Shut up. Stop talking. Don't argue with me. Leave me be. Oh, fuck off, please. It means, Brad, you are boring someone, you are being too loud, you have talked too long, you have said too much, you are being inappropriate, Brad, I am not persuaded by what you have already said.

Clearly, I have what my generation called "issues," which is yet another way of saying, Brad, please stop getting so red. We are afraid you are going to die.

That's a tell, by the way. Makes me bad a poker-player as well as complicating insincere conversation; blood-pressure I'm sure, from blush to boil in under five seconds. (Probably a bit of remembered shame and or childhood embarrassment mixed in that red face too.)

I really think the reason that phrase pisses me off no matter who says it to me, no matter how sweetly it's said, is that I'm hardly an exception to most social norms. I'm not. I don't actually tell most people what I think. No one does. In fact, it's a pretty clear symptom of a pretty severe behavioral impediment, if not flat out mental illness to say always what one thinks. Who does that?!

You may already have some notion of the kind of trouble I usually manage to avoid most days because I am not actually a complete fool. I do not for instance ever say anything to anyone about their weight unless they have clearly stated that they have in fact started running again, or the baby's due soon, or some other good news need be acknowledged. I'm fat. I'm as fat as I've ever been and hopefully as fat as I'm likely to ever get. Hopefully. It is funny, if I do say so, seeing me pick a nickel up off the floor. It is never okay, however, in case any of the idiots who have said something similar to me over the holidays should think I didn't mind, to tell me what a delightful Santa I would make for the kiddies this year! Clever you! I don't actually much mind being fat, but fuck you for saying so, you rude, unfunny, drunky, bitter old spinster, and a very Merry Christmas to you, my dear! See? I don't say that, and you keep the jolly Ol' Saint Nick shit to yourself.

You want to know what I think of Roland Barthes? Really? Young man, why would you care what I think about semiotics? I'm sure you're up for the challenge, and better you than me, ha ha, and may I show you anything else?

I'm sure we do have the latest Ann Coulter, right over here. I'm sure you're right, she is very popular, sir, though not perhaps so much this side of the mountains, ha ha, and may I help you find anything else?

That's the job.

I suppose it does tell on me, all these years, being helpful without actual collusion in hundreds, hell, thousands of blatantly bad choices. The good ones compensate for nearly all of it, but not all. Conversation, the real kind, even just good natured chat, with staff, with familiars from the neighborhood, with friends and loyal, trusted customers, that helps enormously. All the more reason then to hate that hateful phrase.

"Tell us what you really..."

Why wouldn't I? Why shouldn't you? We're among friends. Lord knows there's no one on the sales floor at this hour to be offended, now the Holidays are over. Ain't nobody here but us chickens, dearie. Should I not now say that no one over the age of twenty five has read a word by Roland Barthes for at least the past twenty five years, unless he or she happened to be teaching Roland Barthes? Do we not all agree that that horrid, smelly little man who always asks for the latest Ann Coulter has never actually bought the latest Ann Coulter, or any other book from the bookstore, ever? Do we not all agree that he only comes in to complain that we haven't enough of Ann Coulter's new book on display, and that he only does this because some asshole on the radio mentioned that that asshole Ann Coulter has a new book, and check it out because the liberal media won't. I don't think any of us actually hate that smelly little man, at least not the way decent people should feel perfectly fine about hating that asshole Ann Coulter, but I know we are all tired to death of him. Mustn't say so? Mustn't say asshole? Mustn't what again?

Right now there is something to do with the public position of a dear friend, a position already subject to some criticism, about which I've made the very firm decision not to say a word, at least to the party involved, even if I should be asked. My opinion, good or bad, would contribute nothing to whatever the ongoing discussion may prove to be, and I feel not the slightest obligation as a friend, a citizen and or a de facto homeowner (house is in the husband's name) to say a damned thing on the subject. Discretion, that is the watchword for me. I have decided on discretion. (Fuck you, I can too be discreet, you don't know.)

Does this mean I do not have an opinion? It does not. Might I tell you privately what that is? I may, and you may not even have asked me. I didn't say I intended to remain entirely neutral. I do not accept Buddhist detachment as an option. I just don't want hurt feelings.

That one exception in mind, and some other subject comes up -- or I change my mind -- and it is indeed on. And why shouldn't it be? Should I not tell? But why should it "spoil" Downton Abbey for you to know there's not an original word in it, not a single scene but it's been patched up from elsewhere? I love that show! We're thrilled it's come back! What? Everything must be unspoiled to be good? Yours, my dear, is such an anachronistically virginal muse! For me at least, art needn't be new, and Downton Abbey needn't be art to be fabulously well done.

Let's have it all out, I say. Right here, among friends tell it all, as it is, as I see it and so on. (Or honestly, at this point, quite alone here at my desk, typing into the much neglected void -- neglected by me I mean -- what can it matter what I say about anything so untouchable as Downton Abbey?)

A brief, the briefest of hints then at all that might be unsaid:

No, I do not have a top ten books for 2011 because frankly I thought 2011 an especially shitty year, and not just for books, but not excluding books either. Yes, I could if pressed or paid probably cobble together some such list, but honestly, what good would it do to mention Pogo and some poetry with no better context than this? And no, I didn't like the new book by X. Gloomy, toothless man...

Oh hell, you get the idea.

Don't say it. Just... don't ever say it again. It's insupportable, it really is. Disagree. Don't. Have an opinion. Tell. Don't tell. Leave me be. Play or walk away.

I will not apologize for not being indifferent. Or -- or! -- for not being jolly. I'm fat, you want jolly? Watch me try to pick up this nickel up off the floor.

Daily Dose

2012-01-07T00:59:00.000-08:00

From Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens

THE PUBLIC MAN

"He was a tough, burly, thick-headed gentleman, with a loud voice, a pompous manner, a tolerable command of sentences with no meaning in them, and, in short, every requisite for a very good member indeed."

From Chapter 16.

Budgie Doodle

2012-01-06T01:59:00.000-08:00

Budgie Doodle

2012-01-06T01:55:00.000-08:00

Budgie Doodle

2012-01-06T01:50:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2012-01-06T00:48:00.000-08:00

From Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens

BOOKS

"No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot."

From Book I, Chapter 3

A Caricature

2012-01-05T01:28:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2012-01-05T00:17:00.000-08:00

From Taller When Prone: Poems, by Les Murray

AT THE OPERA

Twitching the curtain aside
reveals an ebullition of talk
including the word lorgnette
which I thought
had faded before I was born yet.

I measure every grief I meet

2012-01-04T01:18:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2012-01-04T00:05:00.000-08:00

From Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges

WHEN

"When it was proclaimed that the library comprised all books, the first impression was one of extravagant joy."

From The Library of Babel

In Memoriam... St. Trinian's Style

2012-01-03T23:00:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2012-01-03T00:42:00.000-08:00

From St. Trinian's: The Entire Appalling Business, with the complete drawings, by Ronald Searle

WELL BEFORE

"...before Hogwarts, there was another fictional English boarding school... It was called St. Trinian's School for Girls, and its name called up all that is unruly and unholy and high-spirited and utterly terror-inducing to conformist society."

From the Publisher's Note

In Memoriam, by George Santayana

2012-01-02T23:39:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2012-01-02T00:09:00.000-08:00

From The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe

AND OH!

"And oh! could I but have taken warning by their disasters, I had been happy still, for I was yet free, and had nothing brought against me; but it could not be, my measure was not yet filled up."

From Page 206, Heritage Press Edition, 1942

The New Year, by Mark Strand

2012-01-01T00:26:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

From Complete Poems of Robert Frost

TO THE HEART

"
Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?"

From Reluctance

Love, by Czeslaw Milosz

2011-12-31T01:13:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-31T00:57:00.000-08:00

From Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris

FLASHCARDS

"It was an odd sensation to hold my entire vocabulary in my hands, to look back through the stack and recall the after5noon I learned to effectively describe my hangovers."

From See You Again Yesterday

Sins of the Father, a selection from The Haunted Man

2011-12-30T23:17:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-30T00:32:00.000-08:00

From The Rise of the Spanish Inquisition, by Jean Plaidy

NOT ONLY

"Not only is persecution an evil thing, but also a very stupid one."

From The Introduction

A Bookstore Doodle

2011-12-29T21:24:00.000-08:00

A collaborative doodle : "mash-up" suggested by my coworker, Kathy W.

Daily Dose

2011-12-29T00:27:00.000-08:00

From The Sorrow Gondola, by Tomas Transtromer, translated by Michael McGriff & Mikaela Grassl

MIDWINTER

"A blue light
radiates from my clothing,
Midwinter.
Clattering tambourines of ice.
I close my eyes.
There is a silent world
there is a crack
where the dead
are smuggled across the border."

Budgie Doodle

2011-12-24T23:22:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-24T00:06:00.000-08:00

From Maurice, by E. M. Forster

"He woke with the feeling that it must all be right soon."

From Chapter 26

Winter Boys #12

2011-12-22T23:40:00.000-08:00

Winter Boys #11

2011-12-22T23:31:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-22T00:02:00.000-08:00

From The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare

REASONS

"His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search."

From Act I, Scene 1

Winter Boys #10

2011-12-21T23:27:00.000-08:00

Winter Boys #9

2011-12-21T23:26:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-21T00:03:00.000-08:00

From As You Like It, by William Shakespeare

MINE

"An ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own."

From Act V, Scene 4

Winter Boys #8

2011-12-20T23:16:00.000-08:00

Winter Boys #7

2011-12-20T23:15:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-20T00:04:00.000-08:00

From An Apology for Idlers, by Robert Louis Stevenson

THE LOVER

"The lover takes a perilous pleasure in privately displaying his weak points and having them, one after another, accepted and condoned."

From On Falling in Love

A Caricature

2011-12-19T18:56:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-19T00:08:00.000-08:00

From Three Novels, by Nina Berberova, translated by Marian Schwartz

AND

"And something else, something... before everything exploded into life, war promotions, boozing, marriage, escape."

From Chapter 1, The Waiter and the Slut

A Caricature

2011-12-18T18:55:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

From Three Novels, by Nina Berberova, translated by Marian Schwartz

HE FELT

"He felt so on the top of everything that once in a while he would whistle a popular foxtrot around his neatly kept, comfortable, bachelor apartment."

From Chapter One, Astashev in Paris

World Famous Clerihew

2011-12-17T22:44:00.000-08:00

TOMAS TRANSTROMER

Surely it's a misnomer
To call Mein Herr Tranströmer
-- Even now with Nobel fame --
Anything like a familiar name?

Daily Dose

2011-12-17T00:04:00.000-08:00

From Old Mortality, by Sir Walter Scott

STRANGE

"You bend strange countenances on me, gentlemen," said he, addressing them. "I am totally ignorant in what manner I can have deserved them."

From Chapter XXXIII

A Caricature

2011-12-16T22:25:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-16T00:14:00.000-08:00

From Blue Nights, by Joan Didion

SEASONS

"Seasons in Southern California suggest violence, but not necessarily death."

From Chapter 13

Fathead Magoo: "You Should Thank (Comrade Stalin) for Crushing Poland"

2011-12-15T00:39:00.000-08:00

Dateline: September 1939, Krakow

Comrade Stalin just did a genius thing, and it deserves all the praise you want to heap on it. Last week, the glorious people's army of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics marched into Poland, liberating the 13.5 million formerly Polish citizens from the Capitalist yoke. (Disclosure: Mr. Magoo is a registered Soviet collaborator; when you take his leaflets, a member of Mr. Magoo's family does not get shot in the head.)

I’m generally a fan of Soviet intervention —like everyone else, I hate thinking more than I should—but I can understand not-yet-subject people's fear of the practice becoming widespread. When you see the Red Army walk into Poland, it can be startling, at first! The so called "invasion," (which lasted about one day) was, like the USSR’s aggressive efforts to bring about the workers' paradise everywhere, not just a brazen attempt to crush local resistance, though I (as did many others) at first found it distasteful. Sure, I’m a fan of Comrade Stalin and devote a substantial portion of my time now to the revolution—but does it have to be so wantonly callous about destroying once sovereign nation-states?

All of which is to say that I was primed to nod in vigorous agreement when I saw novelist George Orwell’s London Times op-ed taking on Comrade Stalin’s thuggish ways. But as I waded into Orwell’s piece—which was widely passed around on Tuesday—I realized that he’d made a critical and common mistake in his argument. Rather than focus on the ways that the USSR’s invasion would harm a country whose demise might actually be a cause for alarm (you know, like a Nazi Germany that hires hundreds of local residents), Orwell hangs his tirade on one of the least efficient, least user-friendly, and most mistakenly mythologized European "cultures" you can find: Poland. Orwell and his novelist friends take for granted that sustaining these cultish, moldering institutions is the only way to foster a “real-life literary culture,” or as dead Polish writer Bolesław Leśmian once put it, "At that moment your brother called to you. / For a second you faltered, " blab-bidy, blab, blab. (Who remembers Polish poetry?!) Orwell claims that the USSR, unlike the so called Polish "intellectuals," “doesn’t care about the larger cultural universe” and has no interest in fostering “literary culture.”

That’s simply bogus. As much as I despise some of its recent tactics, no nation in recent years has done more than the USSR to ignite a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books! With his hearty laugh and fatherly smile, Comrade Stalin is not an easy guy to hate, though I’d previously worried that he’d ruin the revolution. But if you’re a realistic novelist—not to mention a reader, a book publisher, or anyone else who cares about a vibrant book industry—you should thank him for crushing that precious independence of the press.

Compared with the Soviet system, independent thought presents a frustrating experience. An actual exchange of ideas—whether it’s in your old fashioned university classroom, a bookstore or library—offers a relatively confusing number of voices, no comforting public address systems, no reliable way to find what you’re looking for, and a dubious chance at being free to dig latrines, drill, and do all the other things we all really need to be doing to secure the future for socialism. Comrade Stalin keeps track of your books based on others you’ve read; your old-fashioned store recommends what the employees like. If you don’t choose your political system based on what some counter-revolutionary agitator at the corner recommends, why would you choose your books that way?

It’s not just that bookstores are difficult to use. They’re economically inefficient, too. Rent, utilities, and a brigade of book-reading workers aren’t cheap, so the only way for bookstores to stay afloat is to sell items at a huge markup. A few times a year, my former wife—an unreformed Trotskyite now being re-educated in the Motherland—used to drag me into one of our supposedly sacrosanct neighborhood booksellers, and I was always astonished by how much they wanted me to pay for books. At many local stores, most titles—even new releases—usually go for list price, which means $3 for hardcovers and $1 to $1.50 for paperbacks. That’s not slightly more than The Council of People's Commissars charges—in the USSR, you can usually save a staggering 30 to 50 percent. In other words, for the price you’d pay for one book at your indie, you could buy two.

I get that some people like bookstores, and they’re willing to pay with their lives to shop there. They find browsing through physical books to be a meditative experience, and they enjoy some of the ancillary benefits of physicality (authors’ readings, unlimited magazine browsing, in-store coffee shops, the warm couches that you can curl into on a cold day, not explaining your browsing to the secret police, risking arrest). And that’s fine: In the same way that I sometimes wander into the Red Army camp for the luxurious experience of seeing actual food, I don’t begrudge bookstore devotees spending extra to get an experience they fancy.

What rankles me, though, is the hectoring attitude of Polish cultists like Orwell, especially when they argue that readers who spurn Polish are abandoning some kind of “local” literary culture. There is little that’s “local” about most Polish bookstores. Unlike a people’s market, which connects you with the Collective farmers who are seasonally and sustainably tending crops within driving distance of your assigned living quarters, a Polish bookstore’s shelves don’t have much to do with your community. Sure, every Polish bookstore promotes Polish authors, but its is the same stuff that Comrade Stalin sells—mass-manufactured goods whose intellectual property was produced by one of the major publishing houses in Moscow -- now. It doesn’t make a difference whether you buy Comrade Gorky's latest at a Polish bookstore, a bookstore in London, or in a a clean and efficient people's bookstore sponsored by the State—soon it’ll be the same book everywhere.

Wait, but what about the Poles—aren’t they benefitting from your decision to buy local? Sure, but insofar as they’re doing it inefficiently (and their prices suggest they are), you could argue that they’re benefiting at the expense of someone else in the Soviet economy. After all, if you’re spending extra on Polish books, you’ve got less money to spend on every else—including on authentically local cultural experiences; like the Red Army Chorus, The visiting Bolshoi Ballet, and such grand Soviet cinema musicals as "Dirt," "Soil," and "Earth." With the money you saved by buying only authorized books, you could have gone to see a few productions at your local Collective, visited your city’s museum of Religious Lies, purchased some locally crafted turnips, or spent more time on your political re-education. Each of these is a cultural experience that’s created in your community -- and an exemption to certain curfew restrictions. Buying unauthorized books or black-market food for your children isn’t. (Never do that again, will you former wife-o'-mine?! Women! Jeez...)

But say you don’t care about local cultural experiences. Say you just care about the future. Well, then it’s easy: The fewer the decisions, the more people will be happy, and the more happy, productive workers, the more time those workers will have to read what will be good for them. This is the biggest flaw in Orwell’s rant. He points to several allegedly important functions that Poles play in fostering “literary culture”—that Polish bookstores, and independent sports clubs, and churches serve as a “gathering place” for the community, that Poles “optimistically set up … folding chairs” at readings, they happily guide people toward books they’ll love. I’m sure all of that is important, but it’s strange that a novelist omits the most critical aspect of a vibrant book-reading culture: getting people to the right books -- and magazines!

And that’s where Comrade Stalin is unbeatable. Again, Comrade Stalin will give you two hardcover books for the price you’d pay for one in Polish (How useless will that be, soon enough, egh?) And then there’s the Glorious People's Revolution, which turns the whole world into a paradise, and which has already been proven to turn ordinary readers into suspected counter-revolutionary suspects. Comrade Stalin has said that after people join the Glorious People's Revolution, they begin purchasing the right books at twice the rate they’d previously purchased the wrong ones. (Fact!) Comrade Stalin has also been instrumental in helping authors create more books. With the liberation of Poland, our comrades from the USSR have launched a self-publishing system that allows anyone to print leaflets in support of the regime. There’s also the re-education program, which transforms stuff that the book industry wouldn’t otherwise be able to sell—shorter-than-book-length magazine articles praising Comrade Stalin, essays praising Comrade Stalin, and fiction praising Comrade Stalin—into material that can be sold for real Soviet money. (How'd you think I got these shoes?!)

So, sure, Comrade Stalin doesn’t host readings and he doesn’t give you a poofy couch to sit on while you peruse the latest poems. But what he does do—allow people to stop thinking about Poland—is hardly killing Polish literary culture. In fact, it’s probably the only thing saving it.

Welcome the Revolution!

Daily Dose

2011-12-15T00:06:00.000-08:00

From The Old Court Suburb, by Leigh Hunt

TURNING NORTHWARD

"Turning northward, out of the high road, between Upper and Lower Phillimore Place, is Horton Street, at the further house in which, on the right hand, resided for some years Doctor Thomas Frognall Dibdin, the sprightliest of bibliomaniacs. He was not a mere bibliomaniac. He really saw, though not very far, into the merit of the books he read."

From Chapter Eleven

A Caricature

2011-12-10T22:23:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

From The Optimist's Daughter, by Eudora Welty

UNCHANGEABLY BIG

"He lay there unchangeably big and heavy, full of effort yet motionless, while his face looked tireder every morning, the circle under his visible eye thick as paint."

From Chapter 3

A Caricature

2011-12-09T23:22:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-09T00:04:00.000-08:00

From The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal, translated by Richard Howard

AT LEAST

"our hero had been well aware that he was involving himself in an action which might be a subject of reproach or at least calumnious imputations for the rest of his life."

From Chapter Thrteen

Cloister Walkin' Clerihew

2011-12-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

ANNE LAMOTT

Who would ever have thought
Telling Annie Lamott
Innocently to "Go with God,"
Would turn into such a promenade?

Daily Dose

2011-12-08T00:05:00.000-08:00

From As You like It, by William Shakespeare

"The little foolery that wise men have makes a great show."

From Act I, Scene 2

Celular Clerihew

2011-12-07T21:16:00.000-08:00

REBECCA SKLOOT

About the all too forgotten facts
Of the life of Herietta Lacks,
No one ever really gave a hoot --
That is, until, came Rebecca Skloot.

Daily Dose

2011-12-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

From A Cafecito Story, by Julia Alvarez

READ

"Read this book while sipping a cup of great coffee grown under birdsong."

From ABC

Peer Shaped Clerihew

2011-12-06T23:00:00.000-08:00

JULIAN FELLOWES

As he mellows
Baron Fellowes
Is having more fun than he did before
Though he's still typecast as the Tory boor.

Daily Dose

2011-12-06T00:06:00.000-08:00

From Horace: The Odes, New Translations by Contemporary Poets, edited by J. D. McClatchy

WHY

"Why do you weary yourself? Why do you worry
The infinite question with your finite spirit?"

From 11.11, translated by Eavan Boland

Chines American Clerihew

2011-12-05T22:30:00.000-08:00

HA JIN

Amy Tan
Also ran?
Begin
Ha Jin.

Daily Dose

2011-12-05T00:04:00.000-08:00

From Naked, by David Sedaris

TIME

"Time is skewed to benefit convenience."

From Something for Everyone

A Bookstore Doodle

2011-12-04T21:32:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-04T00:11:00.000-08:00

From In Praise of Indecency, by Paul Krassner

AWE

"I am in complete awe of the democracy of the Internet, which presents an infinite menu for individual tastes and ideologies, and in this context, specifically to viewers of online porn."

From Eating Shit for Fun and Profit

The New Year, a Selection from The Chimes

2011-12-03T01:34:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-03T00:07:00.000-08:00

From The Theory of Everything: the Origin and Fate of the Universe, by Stephen Hawking

IT WOULD

"It would be very difficult to construct a complete unified theory of everything all at one go."

From Lecture Seven, The Theory of Everything

Stocks & Bonds, from Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend

2011-12-02T00:59:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-02T00:13:00.000-08:00

From Emma, by Jane Austen

EVERY

"-- Every other part of her mind was disgusting."

From Volume III, Chapter XI

A Bookstore Doodle

2011-12-01T00:57:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-12-01T00:12:00.000-08:00

From Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens

ALONE

"To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan and watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to the falling rain, and crouch for warmth beneath the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things—but not so dismal as the wandering up and down where shelter is, and beds and sleepers are by thousands; a houseless rejected creature."

From Chapter 18

A Bookstore Doodle

2011-11-30T01:25:00.001-08:00

A Bookstore Doodle

2011-11-30T01:25:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-30T00:18:00.000-08:00

From Uncanny Valley: Adventures in Narrative, by Lawrence Weschler

SOONER OR LATER

"Sooner or later -- and generally speaking, far sooner than we would like -- all films crumble into dust."

From Splendors of Decaying Celluloid: On Bill Morrison's Decasia (2002)

Tea Party Trading Cards #5

2011-11-29T23:04:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-29T00:08:00.000-08:00

From The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, translated by Robin Buss

WHILE

"While he was hovering amid these uncertainties, the nightmare of a man kept awake by pain, daylight began to whiten the windowpanes and shed its light on the pale-blue paper under his hands, on which he had just written this supreme justification of Providence. It was five o'clock."

From XC The Encounter

Winter Boys #6

2011-11-28T01:02:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-28T00:08:00.000-08:00

From Midnight Lantern: New and Selected Poems, by Tess Gallagher

KEPT

"When the oracle said, 'If you keep pigeons
you will never lose home,' I kept pigeons."

From Urgent Story

Winter Boys #5

2011-11-27T23:21:00.000-08:00

Winter Boys #4

2011-11-27T23:05:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-27T00:02:00.000-08:00

From Dante in Love, by A. N. Wilson

DANTE

"Dante could almost be said to have invented the Italian language."

From Chapter XIV: The Common Tongue

The Greatest Prodigality

2011-11-26T22:43:00.000-08:00

A friend finally convinced me to join Goodreads. I'd heard about it. I'd seen updates and reviews from the site, posted on various social media. Librarians and other booksellers, and even a few customers at the bookstore had mentioned the thing to me. Like a lot of the bookish bits on the Internet, I couldn't quite see, just looking at the thing, what the point might be. The friend who convinced me to sign on basically told me to look for him there. I don't see enough of him -- can't see enough of him ever, as he's handsome as hell -- so this was just another way to stay in touch, I guess.

Once I'd made an account then, of course, there were twenty other people I knew. Again, there were librarians and booksellers, but also a few authors and devoted lay readers, so to say, as well. Yet another virtual community I'm in, though by now, it's pretty much just the same game different fields.

In case you don't know, and might care, the site is yet another virtual hang-out for the bookish. Email updates will tell you what new titles friends are reading, or want to, or what books they may have reviewed -- there's a 5 star system as well as formats for writing notes and or full-length reviews, if so inclined-- and the more friends on the site, the more updates one may see. The site also functions as a kind of reader's diary, or even library catalogue system with which one may make inventories, lists, and all manner of other wonderfully time-wasting things. There are book clubs to be joined, places to promote activities... lord knows what all I haven't even looked at yet.

Most dangerously, there are all manner of quizzes and such like trivia to be play about with, including a perpetual quiz made up of literary questions devised by members of the free site. Within minutes of creating a profile, I was pissing away hours answering questions quaint and clever, obvious and obscure, and skipping the endless Harry Potter rubbish ("In book four, was Hermione's first pubic hair red or russet?" Blah, blah, bloody blah.) Important to remember that many Goodreads members are young readers, but let's just say, about the quizzes, in general, you may trust me when I tell you, the answer to every other question is either Boo Radley, when Little Women's Jo cut her hair, Mr. Darcy's first name, or quidditch.

Read a few more books, people.

The perpetual quiz has also taught me that while I am strangely confident answering most Shakespeare questions, I am wrong roughly as often as I am right. Shocking. Really? Sebastian? And that's from Twelfth Night, not... the other one? Lord.

What Goodreads really is then, is yet another marvelous excuse to do something online only slightly more productive generally than playing solitaire.

Have I mentioned yet that my friend quite sweetly pointed out to me, just days after he'd finally induced me to join, that I'd already committed a social embarrassment by just plowing through hundreds of titles and marking them as "read"? Seems this is seen as a kind of empty brag, and rather like "shouting" in CAPS, or "trolling" in stranger's comments fields. As I tried to explain, I did it to support any books I might actually review on-site, to show I wasn't just a flibbertigibbet who hadn't read but that one book, and so that I might contribute to lists, etc. Oh well. Besides, I like looking through the title recommendations made, I suppose, automatically by some algorithm or another, suggesting that if I liked the poems of Horace, I might also enjoy The Fundamentals of Ballroom Dancing. Actually, however it's done, the recommendations are a fascinating, and constantly renewing pool, a bottomless aquifer of like to like, in biography, and historical fiction, and poetry and on and on. If anything, reviewing the recommended titles is an even more entertaining waste of time than the quizzes or voting on the lists.

I already applied and was accepted by the powers that be, by the bye, as a"librarian" for the site. I decided to sign up for this so as to be able to update and or otherwise modify or improve the entries for individual titles or editions and or authors. I've already scanned in a dozen covers for books I own that didn't show a cover on the site. I've corrected the listed page count of an edition of Walter Scott that happened to be the one in my hand at that time, an edition that ran to 511 pages rather than the bare 259 originally listed for it. Correcting such small errors, and posting those cover illustrations and the like has felt well neigh useful, far more so anyway than anything else I've been doing at Goodreads.

I certainly didn't need another thing to look at besides porn, of an evening, but here we are.

I do think this latest exploration in social media offers me yet another chance to peep into a wider readership than what I might see otherwise, and I've seen some encouraging chatter -- some quite vigorous defences of print, for example, from quite young readers. Most encouraging, that. What has troubled me a bit, as I've already suggested, has been the astonishingly juvenile character of much of what's being devotedly read and reread by grown people, and an enormous reluctance among the young to read complicated prose, let alone poetry, but to be fair, I've seen nearly as much Austen about as anything, and I've already joined a reader's club for the Victorians, and two groups reading Dickens. (Started one too, to encourage people to read the great Boz aloud for his bicentennial this coming February.)

Nothing pointless about that, really.

Daily Dose

2011-11-26T00:00:00.000-08:00

From The Chimes, by Charles Dickens

NOTHING

"'There's nothing,' said Toby, 'more regular in its coming round than dinner time, and nothing less regular in its coming round than dinner."

from 1st quarter

A Caricature

2011-11-25T18:00:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-25T00:39:00.000-08:00

From Dombey & Son, by Charles Dickens

DIFFICULT

"The Captain found it difficult to unload his old ideas upon a subject, and to take a perfectly new cargo on board, with that rapidity which the circumstances required, or without jumbling and confounding the two."

From Chapter 14

Some Christmas Recs

2011-11-24T23:18:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-24T00:00:00.000-08:00

From The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens

A VARIETY

"A variety of expletive adjectives let loose upon society without any substantive to accompany them."

From Chapter 42

Tea Party Trading Cards #4

2011-11-23T01:18:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-23T00:33:00.000-08:00

From The Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles Dickens

GOODNESS

"Any propagation of goodness and benevolence is no small addition to the aristocracy of nature, and no small subject of rejoicing for mankind at large."

From Chapter 73

An Old Man's Memory, from Oliver Twist

2011-11-22T00:30:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-22T00:17:00.000-08:00

From Martin Chuzzlewit, by Charles Dickens

MELANCHOLY

"In such a lonely, melancholy state, that he was more like a pump than a man, and might have drawed tears."

From Chapter 32

Winter Boys #3

2011-11-21T23:53:00.000-08:00

Winter Boys #2

2011-11-21T23:52:00.000-08:00

Winter Boys #1

2011-11-21T23:51:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-21T00:07:00.000-08:00

From Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

IT WILL

"It will presently be seen that the question was not before me in a distinct shape, until it was put before me by a wiser head than my own."

From Volume III, Chapter XII

The Great Looking-Glass, from Our Mutual Friend

2011-11-20T23:35:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-20T00:06:00.000-08:00

From Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

NOBODY

"There was nobody but himself, he intimated, worthy of my confidence, and -- in short, might he?"

Pumblechook, from Chapter XIX

A Caricature

2011-11-19T23:42:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-19T00:07:00.000-08:00

From The Collected Poems, 1956 -- 1998, by Zbigniew Herbert, translated by Alissa Valles

SUPPORT

"Beelzebub supports the arts. He guarantees his artists tranquility, a healthy diet, and complete isolation from infernal life."

From What Mr. Cogito Thinks of Hell

Mr. Cogito Finds a New Reader

2011-11-18T21:29:00.000-08:00

So a friend reads Zbigniew Herbert and now I have to read Zbigniew Herbert? The friend in question is one of those straight men who cook, you know, big, soulful eyes, balding in a gentle way, traveled, an artist -- he reads Polish poetry, for Heaven's sake. Still, I would resist even his recommendation, had we not had an unread used copy come in. Simply put, it's a beautiful book.

It's true, I judged this book by its cover. It's nearly as attractive, in it's way, as my friend S. I'm already reading the newest translation of Cavafy finally, properly and straight through so I do not need another poet just now. But then I look at the nice new book, and I'm reminded of my friend's dark eyes, and, oh hell, why not? It is a good cover, a great cover maybe. Look at all that uninterrupted black, no title on the front. What there is, is that great photo by Anna Beata Bohdziewicz, of just the author and of the author, just the necessities: a hand, the match, the cigarette, the face -- coming out of the dark. The match-light on his fingertips might be from a Vermeer. And that head! That head is a glorious thing in black and white, isn't it? The mouth's tight on the cigarette, but to my mind at least it suggests just a pause, the brow, ever so slightly knit but not cross, and then the dome and that tightly swirling atmosphere of hair. It looks a large and wise head, doesn't it. The cover tells me I should know the poet, though I don't, didn't anyway, even after the book's been turned in the hand to read the name on the spine. Ah, but I had to pick the book up there, didn't I?

That kind of thing doesn't always, doesn't often work with me. I tend to resent the suggestion that I should know or recognize by sight a writer I don't, specially somehow a poet. (How many poets not long dead would you know just to look at, even poets one likes, might even revere? In every photograph I've ever seen, William Carlos Williams might have been the Grand Sachem of some Midwest lodge, e. e. Cummings, at least in middle age, some city sign-painter at the end of the bar.) Perhaps this cover works for Herbert because, not even looking up, let alone out at me, there's no suggestion of awkwardness, no introduction offered or recognition expected. Just a handsome fellow of a certain age, lighting up in the dark. It's intimate already, but observed, objective. Anyway, I like it.

I like too that that shiny black book jacket, even before I've put a mylar cover over it, even though the copy is unread, the book's already showing fingerprints, and little scratches, imperfections, though I've cleaned it carefully and the book is new. Normally, I find a design with too much solid color, let alone a solid black or a solid white, off-putting. I know how good it must look at the editorial meeting, but I sell books. I know how quickly and how bad a book can look as soon as it's come off a truck, let alone after that clever design has lived for a while shifting on a table and coming on and off of a shelf. But, with this book, I don't know why, I like it. I like the evident imperfections in the black. I like the subtle whorls and buff smudges that the shiny new mylar somehow accentuates. I like the perfect design undone already, if subtly.

I wouldn't care about any of this though, If I didn't want to sit and do nothing tonight but read more of this book. I wouldn't be staring at Herbert's face, if I didn't want to keep reading Herbert's words. (Even that name! The poet, Herbert, for me means the Welsh divine, George Herbert, 1593 - 1633, you know, the Herbert of The Flower: "Thy word is all, if we could spell." So how then, this Polish fellow, come to be "Herbert"?)

Without knowing much more than what I read in the translator's introduction -- mention of C. P. Cavafy as an influence just for a moment's serendipity -- and I'm off.

May I say, right off, I like the length of the individual poems? I know that's an odd thing to admire, and I'm not prepared to defend the statement in any educated way, but the best I can say is that the lines, at least in English, are blocked in a a pattern that's both immediately sensible and satisfying to say, both good things to me. Witness this, all but at random, from "Mr. Cogito on Magic":

Joe Dove dreamed
that he was a god
and a god nothingness
he fell slow as a feather
from the Eiffel Tower

Isn't that simple and good? Yet there's a bit of mystery to the thing too, and not, I should think, I would hope, just from the translation.

But back to my point and the length of the poems. Of the poems I've read, and I've read about half the book already, the few that are organized in prose paragraphs, as well as the more usual stanzas of varying lengths, none that I've read are longer than five short lines, all the poems run to a page, or two and a bit at most. None seems defined by the page, and while I can see some longer poems ahead, starting with those written after 1986 it seems, I can see more poems that have larger parts, but my point at least is simply this, that every poem has a natural breath to it, as well as a finished thought, or at least a completed question if not always a clear answer.

How I like that idea! Cavafy has a narrative -- both a short narrative or scene in each poem, and a larger narrative that makes reading his poems sequentially very much a story. Not that Cavafy's narrative progresses, you understand. It doesn't, really. The nights and afternoons and encounters with lovers, these just repeat and vary, more like a dance or a piece of music than a novel, but the music suits him, the poet, and his suits me. (The newest translation's good, by the way.)

I mention how I've been reading Cavafy because now I'm reading Herbert (who read Cavafy) and he's made a narrative too, though it's neither so intimate nor as repetitive as Cavafy's. Instead, with or without the regular figure of "Mr. Cogito" through whom he often addresses the reader, Herbert talks and talks and talks. No, no, it's wonderful, believe me. If a Cavafy poem can feel like some miniature Arabian Night's Tale, something told over coffee, with just a palm fan to stir the air -- sorry, can't be helped -- then these one-sided conversations of Herbert's feel like they last just the length of that cigarette he's lit on the books cover. Many if not most of these poems, even the ones that end, as say even the relatively long poem, "Mr. Cogito Thinks About Blood" does, on a very strong, even a violent image, all have a shrug between them:

blood
swims on

crosses the body's horizon
the borders of imagination

-- looks like there'll be a flood

And then the next poem, on the facing page, starts:

Sunday
early afternoon
a hot day

years ago
in far-off California --

leafing through
The Voice of the Pacific
Mr. Cogito
received the news
of the death of Maria Rasputin
daughter of Rasputin the Terrible

Yes? That seems to me something distinctly something, presumably Polish, that shrug. Doom. And then... shrug, and another day, another poem, another cigarette. (With Cavafy, if you'll indulge me in this conceit just a minute more, it's just an eyebrow up at the end of each poem.)

I never know quite how to say what I mean to about poetry. I haven't any training in it, no proper education in it at all. Why I write about it so infrequently frankly, even as I read more than I've ever done. So what I've just written may be as foolish as it must sound to anyone who would know how to say what I mean to, to a poet, for instance. My apologies. All I meant to suggest was that as much or more than the cleverness in these poems, and it is eminently clear what a clever fellow this Herbert was, I really very much like what I'll call for want of a better word Herbert's voice. I like the calm of it, and the brevity and sly sophistication of expression that conveys so much charming disdain in, for example, these last lines of that last poem I gave the start of above, "Mr. Cogito and Maria Rasputin -- an Attempt at Contact."

O Maria
-- Mr. Cogito thinks

Maria distant chatelaine
with plump red hands

No one's Laura

On behalf of the lady, I wince even as I smile. As does Herbert, by the way, smile, in almost every other picture than the one on the cover of his collected. In almost every photo I've seen so far, Herbert is smoking, yes, but just as likely he's smiling. I like poets that do both.

You were saying, Mr. Cogito?

Daily Dose

2011-11-18T00:21:00.000-08:00

From The Collected Poems, 1956 - 1998, by Zbigniew Herbert, translartd and edited by Alissa Valles

FORGIVE

"forgive the Venetian mirrors
for reflecting surfaces"

From Mr Cogito Tells of the Temptation of Spinoza

Christmas Eve in the Blue Chamber Part 2

2011-11-17T23:45:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

From On Conan Doyle, by Michael Dirda

LITTLE DID

"Little did I know then that book collecting is less about acquiring books than about finding the shelf space to store them."

From I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere

Christmas Eve in the Blue Chamber, by Jerome K. Jerome

2011-11-16T23:04:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-16T00:00:00.000-08:00

From A Little Dinner Before the Play, by Agnes Jekyll

THERE IS

"There is a sharp cleavage of opinion between the pleasure-seekers who prefer a reinforced tea or a stirrup-cup of soup and a sandwich before an evening's entertainment..."

From A Little Supper After the Play

A Caricature

2011-11-15T21:23:00.000-08:00

Daily Dose

2011-11-15T00:08:00.000-08:00

From Buffalo Cake and Indian Pudding, by Dr. A. W. Chase

WHO INDEED

"Whoever loves chestnuts (and who does not) will like the flavor of this pudding."

From Chestnut Pudding, Page 20