Hot Sex Kittens on Campus

I recently read Lynn Peril's book about girls going to college. It's called College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Co-eds, Then and Now. It's a pretty good book, as these sort of casually chatty histories of things go. Nifty graphics, too. I read most of it yesterday while waiting for editorial assignments to land on my desk at this office where I was helping out; I read the rest of it this morning, sitting on my couch (see photo). Like I said, I enjoyed the book, but I was left with two burning questions that are nagging at me, even after I've returned the book to the library.
1. Why, out of a 350 or so page book, was there no mention of Mary McCarthy's The Group?
and
2. Why the hell isn't there an index?
Please, Ms. Peril, consider these questions if you ever do a revised edition.

Gonzo Judaism: Carping

I don't know if anyone cares but...
It must have been sometime in 1984.
I was already a bad Jew: I hadn’t been bat-mitzvahed, though I did go to Saturday morning services regularly. The new rabbi had no idea who I was. The rabbi he’d replaced knew who I was, but hadn’t liked me much (I was friendly with his daughter, and as a pair we were Trouble). I remember that I liked going to synagogue, but basically, synagogue didn’t seem to like me, and it had been that way my whole life.
And this weekend, the new rabbi, whose name I remember but will not cite, delivered a sermon which sealed the deal. I never went back to that suburban Connecticut synagogue (where that man is still rabbi), simply because – even at the age of 13 or 14 – I could not handle this idiocy.
The sermon was called “Temple Beth Sholom vs. the Temple of Doom.”
The rabbi was trying to simultaneously be hip and draw his congregation away from popular culture. I didn’t think it could be done, and I thought the rabbi was an idiot, a fool, and just… a waste of time.
Let’s just say that ever since then I’ve been particularly skeptical of clergy who try to be cool, who seem to make a point of being down with whatever you’re supposed to be down with. I love old Doonesbury cartoons with the Rev. Scot Sloane, the Fighting Young Priest who can Talk to the Young – but even more, I love it when the Young he’s talking to call his bluff.

I’ve recently become acquainted with a young rabbi who’s a peach of a guy. He’s smart and he’s funny and he’s socially aware and all kinds of good things. He’ll make someone a fine husband someday. I jokingly referred to him, in conversation with my mother, as the Fighting Young Rabbi who can Talk to the Young, but I think now that I was mistaken. The new rabbi in my neighborhood isn’t that guy, and I don’t think he wants to be. The Fighting Young Rabbi seems to be a fellow named Niles Elliot Goldstein, who’s recently published an absolutely slang and hipster-jive-ridden book entitled Gonzo Judaism. I have to be honest: no one sent me this book to review. I stumbled upon it honestly, while browsing the new releases shelves in the public library. With its acid orange cover it looked like a lot of other books being published these days (you see this color on Legs McNeil’s awesome book about the porn industry, for example) but with that title, I had to pick up the book and examine it.
The book looked kind of dumb to me. I debated putting it back and not thinking about it any further. And then I thought, “Well, somebody’s gonna ask me in six weeks if I’ve read this thing. I might as well get prepared.” So I took it home with me. Started reading it on the bus, in fact. Within six pages I was annoyed. I got home by page 15 and said to my husband, “This book is still annoying and I’m only on page 15.” “Cheer up,” my goyische beloved said, “It can only get more annoying, right?”

Yeah, well, there’s the thing. The book does get more annoying. But part of what makes it annoying is, Rabbi Goldstein’s got some good points. The language he uses is often stupid and idiotic and it has the effect of shooting himself in the foot sometimes, but his basic point, that Jewish religious observance in America has managed to turn off thousands of people it shouldn’t have, is well taken.

If it’s going to survive, the Jewish community must figure out a way to appeal to the young, the disenfranchised, and the simply ornery. Goldstein’s view is that many Jews who belong to these groups (the young, the disenfranchised, and the ornery) have flocked toward agnosticism (whatever) or New Age-y groups (for pity’s sake) but for the wrong reasons. Goldstein makes the valid point that many of the ideas, the principles, and the traditions that these “misplaced” Jews feel they find elsewhere, they can find easily in Judaism if they are simply willing to look beyond the congregations in which they grew up. Goldstein explains that the appreciation for the outdoors, love of nature, love of sensation, that many Jews feel is lost in Judaism, really is there – if you go back far enough in Jewish history that you lose the Protestant veneer that American Jewry developed in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. It doesn’t have to be all heavy dark wood, stained glass, and imperious bearded old men muttering, You can hike the AT and be Jewish at the same time. (In a logical sense, I believe this, but any Jew I know who wants to hike the AT is a Jew I’m not inviting to my Shabbat dinners here. I am, as Woody Allen said, at two with nature.) Goldstein has a nice little set piece, for example, about the use of incense in religious observance. He basically says, “It’s really popular with the New Age people, who seem to feel that they came up with this all on their own. Do they not realize that the sense of smell, and its relationship to spiritual and religious life, is discussed in the Talmud?” Fine point. Certainly Christian worship has used incense for centuries; the spice box of the havdalah service should clue folks in that, yes, smelling wonderful things is part of the even older Jewish tradition too… so, yeah, Goldstein, you got a point.

Much of his crusade is, I think, against the sloppy “religion for one” trend that has come to be quite strong in the U.S. Educated Americans often seem to have a thing against organized religion, which is a little weird – almost phobic, some times. I’m sure we’ve all been at parties where one person admits to having plans to go to Yom Kippur services, or Mass, or something, and everyone else standing there gawps, “No shit? You do that?” as if you’d just confessed to being from Outer Zopp. (They thought you were just from Cleveland Heights. Nope: Outer Zopp.) Yes, yes, Christian evangelicals think it’s cool to go to church --- fine; I’m not talking about that demographic. I’m talking about people who go to nice, expensive liberal arts colleges, your more competitive state universities, and so forth. I’m talking middle and upper middle class people. People who took AP classes, people who took Kaplan classes to prep for getting MBAs and law degrees. Or people who are underemployed as the support staff for the people who got the aforementioned degrees. Whatever. You know what I mean. Desirable, smart, attractive people; people with good politics, good hair, good shoes. Right-on types. Why aren’t they going to synagogue? Why do they so often peruse the religion sections in bookstores, wind up selecting some nice book of essays by Anne Lamott or, when they have kids, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, and sort of mean well but leave it at that?

Goldstein says – rightfully – that it doesn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn’t have to be this way, and that you can be a right-on type with good hair and still observe the Sabbath. You just have to spend some time and energy to figure out how to make Jewish rituals part of your own routine. You can figure out a way to carve time and energy out of your schedule and produce a life that is more connected to God than to some vague sense of “spirituality” that you bought in a gift shop. It’s unfortunate that Goldstein’s methods are expressed so vapidly, because his ideas aren’t vapid at all. He’s not a stupid person, he’s just not a great writer. He can come off as sanctimonious (not surprisingly), and I often found myself thinking that he must be an arrogant ass in person; but I’m sure that in conversation he can actually be very charming. I mean, Goldstein’s obviously got intelligence and a sense of humor. The potential is there. And he’s good enough to understand that the version of Judaism that turns him on might not be exactly what does it for you – but that there will be some thing, some aspect of Jewish life, that does strike a chord in you. There will be something that does make you want to rest at the end of the week and have a pleasant, contemplative meal over candle light. There will be a holiday that speaks to you, personally, and send you on your way.

Short, to the point.

I don't know when this started, exactly, but I want it known that I do not believe that the word "journal" is meant to be used as a verb.
"Journaling" is what we used to call "keeping a diary."
And don't tell me "diaries are for teenage girls: They're stupid." Tell it to Samuel Pepys, for one. Tell it to the writers who, over the centuries, have kept diaries; tell it to any historical/cultural figure who kept diaries which were eventually published or displayed in archives or museums. These were smart people who did not say, "Oh, I've been journaling a lot lately, it's really cleansing, it really helps me think."
God. Keeping a diary can be, yes, an act of obsession and self-centeredness -- but I'm not calling that a bad thing. It becomes a very bad thing when you call it journaling. So cut it the fuck out.

Let it Begin...

Well, Nora Ephron's finally got a new book out.
I haven't read it yet, but, yes, I will, and you can be sure I'll sputter a bit and then mouth off about it here.
Now, in the meantime. Let's talk about Rachael Ray a little bit.
I have never seen her show, and I've only skimmed one of her books. But I've read a few articles about her, and I've seen lots of pictures of her, and basically I find her both annoying and stupid -- annoying on a personal impressions level and stupid on a cooking level. (I read one of her fast cooking cookbooks and was appalled. It is so far off the mark, it's a wonder this piece of crap was ever published, and I feel bad that my father in law bought it.)
One thing about her that's annoyed me is this "stoups" thing. "Stoups?" Aw, cut the crap.
But now I feel bad. Last night I'm reading a Peg Bracken book. I love Peg Bracken. This one's the I Hate to Cook Almanack, which I think I last looked at, oh, ten years ago. And there on p. 13, the following:
"Stewp: Any mixture thinner than stew and thicker than soup."
So I'm vexed. Because this annoying woman, Rachael Ray, says pinheaded things that everyone thinks are so cute, and then, this one pinheaded thing, it turns out she didn't even make it up -- she stole it from Peg Bracken, who is really smart and funny and could really write, and who Ray should only wish she had half the appeal of...
So do I write off Bracken now, or what?
I think I'm going to not write her off; I've loved her for too long to stop now. As for Rachael Ray, I don't have the Food Network, so if she gets cancelled I won't really know the difference, but I hope she gets cancelled.
Nyah.

Holy Moly

I don't expect anyone reading this to really care but...
Why the hell is there a LAMBORGHINI parked outside of Nica's Market today?
My neighborhood is definitely more posh than it was when we moved here six years ago, but: seriously, folks. This is not the kind of neighborhood where you expect to see a car like that.
But if anyone wants to see a Lamborghini, I guess there's your chance. Nica's Market, on Orange Street, near Bishop, in New Haven...

One Hates to be a Bigot...

Yesterday afternoon I met my old downstairs neighbor, M., to accompany her to a Neil Gaiman reading at Yale. M. lives in Manhattan now, but came back to New Haven to hear Gaiman; she was super-excited about it.
In general, I think you could say that I don’t give a hoot about Gaiman. I’ve never had anything against him, per se, but his fan base – which, as I’ve experienced it, is way too SCA for my tastes – is enough to make me insane. M. and I had a lovely light meal and walked to Sudler Hall, practically giggling at the ill-coiffed, Jethro-Tull t-shirted crowd. If I didn't see anyone in a Rush t-shirt, it's only because I was busy gawping at the Tull shirt.
One hates to be so bigoted but then again, one enjoys it so much...
(Ok, I’m being catty. I’m sure these are all lovely people. But Jesus Christ, not well-dressed, or, in many cases, particularly attractive. It’s odd, I felt, because Gaiman himself is not a bad-looking guy. Why doesn’t he have a better influence on his audience? But I’m getting ahead of myself here.)
M. and I sat down in the half-filled hall and I mused, “It’s a good thing we got here early, this place is going to be packed.” By 7.30, it was beyond Standing Room Only. It really was packed. The audience was actually invited by John Crowley (organizer of the program) to sit on the stage; there was just nowhere else for people to go. M. and I sat in our seats expectantly, and entertained ourselves with people-watching.
“You know,” I said to M., “I think I might be the only person here who has never read a thing by this guy.”
M. laughed. “I think you’re right. These people are, like, beyond fandom.”
Gaiman slinked onstage and everyone drew in their breaths; their God was before them.
Gaiman introduced first by John Crowley, and then by Isaac Cates, who I had the pleasure of chatting with a few times when I worked at the bookstore downtown (I helped him order some graphic novels for a class he was teaching at Yale last summer). He’s a nice guy, very smart; I just like him, on a visceral level. I thought, “Boy, Cates must be beside himself, introducing Gaiman.” It’s like a comic geek’s wet dream. Cates was, of course, smart, funny, and gracious; and then Gaiman took the podium.
I braced myself to be bored to tears.
Within about five seconds, I knew I was not likely to be bored. Gaiman was intelligent, and a good speaker – in that polished, cute-English-guy-trying-to-seem-approachable-and-real-even-though-he-does-not-live-at-all-a-normal-life way; “I’m a geek like you,” though obviously he’s gone far beyond traditional geekdom, and it’s turned him into (surely) a rich desirable man. He began, if I remember correctly, by reading a poem, which was light and funny. I thought, “Hey. I know this guy’s work.” And I suddenly remembered that when I was a junior in college, my roommate Cassie insisted that I read a book called Good Omens, even though it wasn’t my usual cup of tea. (For that matter, tea isn’t my cup of tea, either. I’m a coffee drinker. Ethical Man remembers that in one of our first conversations, in 1992, he offered to make me a cup of tea, and I snorted, “Tea is for child molesters.” Well. Quite a statement there. I’ve mellowed a tiny bit since then – I now drink tea when I’m ill – but I basically think compulsive tea-drinking is silly, though I’m willing to put up with it in actual English people.)
Well, back in ’92, I thought Good Omens was damn funny. I don’t remember a thing about it now, except that there was this thing about a cassette tape left in the car; any cassette tape left in the car would eventually turn into Queen’s Greatest Hits. This was a great gag. The plot of the book doubtless bored me, but the gags like that kept me going, and in the end, as a bookseller, I recommended Good Omens to those who’d like that kind of thing. Basically, Gaiman was fine with me, if in small doses.
So I was wrong. I wasn’t the only person in Sudler Hall who’d never read Neil Gaiman; I was just one of the 250 people who had read him. (Though I can guarantee still that I’d read the least Gaiman of anyone one there. These were, as we’ve said, rabid fans.)
Having read his poem, Gaiman then read a short story from the forthcoming Fragile Things, about two boys going to a party and hoping to get lucky, in mid-70s England. It was exactly the sort of story I’d’ve hoped for in such a reading. It was funny; it didn’t get overly weird-spacey on me; and Gaiman read very, very well.
So a wonderful time was had by all. Gaiman read one more poem, as I recall, and then took some questions (five or so – not many), in which he showcased his wonderful charming self and everyone ate it up (“My favorite short story is Chivalry, and I was wondering…” “I’m so pleased that that’s your favorite story! It’s been optioned by Harvey at Miramax, and…”), and then it was all over. There was no autograph session, which I know many people found disappointing. On the other hand, given the number of people there, it would have been sort of insane. So folks very politely and understandingly filed out into the summer night.
I walked M. back to the train station, talking about the reading, talking about work (M. has a job, so, really, we were talking about her job), about the rental market in New York – you know, the kinds of things people talk about. I said, “I’ll have to read that short story the girl said she liked so much.” M. said, “It’s in the collection that I have in my bag – I’ll lend it to you!”
So when I got home last night, I read “Chivalry,” sitting on the front porch. It was pretty clever. I was impressed. (Not that it exactly matters to anyone if I’m impressed, but, I’m just saying, I was.) I went into the house and said to Ethical Man, “Hey, I just read this funny story, about this old lady who finds the Holy Grail at an Oxfam shop.” Ethical Man smiled and said, “Sounds like a clever premise for a story.” “Yeah,” I said. “It was. You should read it sometime.”
He won’t. But it’s ok. I’ll have read it for the two of us.

Alchemist? Dairymaid? Housewife.

Well, here's a funny thing. Today, though it's about a million degrees outside (98 deg., actually, outside, and 91 here in the house), I decided to make corn relish and make a noble attempt at canning it, though I know almost nothing about this.
Unemployment apparently makes us do funny things.
See, we had a big party over the weekend, Ethical Man and I, to celebrate my leaving the bookstore. We had a bunch of people over Saturday night; we conceived this as a cocktail party with heavy munchies to prevent total pukalicious disaster, and expected everyone to've gone home by ten o'clock or so. But it ended up with people still showing up at eleven o'clock. And we finally tumbled into bed at 4.30 in the morning, knowing that we'd have to get up early because another social event was scheduled for the house here to start around 1.30. Which, of course, meant even more cooking.
The menu for Saturday night involved a number of snacky things -- chips, things to dip them into; a corn and black bean salad; and E.M. insisted on sandwich makings. (He can't imagine a social event without cold cuts.) I made hummus, pimiento cheese, a red pepper and nut dip (for the vegans who were expected), and avocado dip. There were practically no leftovers. So Sunday at noon found me making more pimiento cheese, and asking guests to shuck some corn. We had lobster salad, corn on the cob, caprese, and ice cream sandwiches for dessert (those, I bought; I'm nuts but not nuts enough to want to make my own ice cream sandwiches in weather like this).
We ended up with ten ears of corn leftover. I ate a couple of them, cold, for breakfast, but still didn't know what to do with the leftover-leftover ears... and then it occurred to me that I could make corn relish.
So I've done it. I cut the kernels off, chopped up some red peppers and onions, tossed everything in a pot with vinegar and sugar and spices, and simmered the stuff for a while, wondering how exactly to prepare the mason jars. It was a little stupid, really, because I knew I was re-using jars, which you're just not supposed to do (well, you can re-use the jars, but not the lids). But I figure, it's only two jars' worth of food, and it'll be ok to eat this week. I just won't save it to give as Christmas presents six months from now.
Fortunately, we've got company coming this weekend, and I know they'll be happy to help us eat this. I can roast a chicken for dinner Saturday morning, and serve it in the evening cold with the relish, and a big salad, and maybe a nice loaf of bread. It'll be great.
I am, apparently, turning into some kind of uber-housewife. I don't have kids, I am not likely to any time soon, but I spend huge amounts of time cleaning and cooking. Last week I made tomato pie, something I haven't done in probably two years. Yesterday I ironed clothes for the first time. I'm not very good at it yet but I was surprised, as I watched a DVD of "The Lady Eve" and stood at the ironing board that our house's previous owners left in the attic, by how satisfying it was to take a clean but wrinkly and mangled-looking pillowcase, and turn it into something that really did look square and smooth.
Ethical Man and I are people who use handkerchiefs, and folding an ironed hanky is, it turns out, a real pleasure.
I really wish that Ethical Man made a little more money. I mean, I always wish that, and I know he does too. But I used to wish it for sort of noble reasons -- if we had more money, we could afford a sofa and get rid of one of these awful futons, things like that -- whereas now I wish he made more money so that I wouldn't have to feel guilty about staying home and cooking.
I do want to work: I am, in fact, working on getting my own book business off the conceptual level and into the virtual world. But I know I'm never going to make real money. So wouldn't it be nice if Ethical Man could support us doing something he genuinely liked, and I could putter around the house?
Oh, wouldn't it be nice.
What would Laurie Colwin think?

Alchemist or Dairymaid?

A couple of weeks ago, I quit my job. I’ve been, depending on how you think about it, unemployed or self-employed ever since.
I’m not very proud of this, but it’s true.
On leaving my job as a book buyer for a small, possibly-dying independent bookstore, I realized I had no idea what to do with my afternoon. It was about 1:30, and I suddenly realized, as I walked down the street, that I didn’t have anything planned for the time between 1:30 and the time when I would be expected to start making dinner (6:30 or so).
A normal person might have decided to walk to the movies, catch a matinee; I could have done that, or gone for a manicure, or decided to go to a salon and get all my hair chopped off. However, all those things cost money. And, since I was newly unemployed, it seemed foolish to spend money.
So I went to my local public library.
I browsed for a while, and found myself staring at the New Releases shelves, where I stumbled on a book that a bookish friend had urged me to read: Reluctant Capitalists, by Laura Miller. She’s a professor of something at Brandeis. The book’s about bookselling, independent bookselling vs. big chain bookselling, and why it, in the form we know it, is dying, and whether or not this is really something we should be worried about.
I borrowed the book (along with a few movies, no memory now of what they were) and decided to take the bus home so I could start reading it right away. On my way to the bus stop, which is about 100 feet from the library door, I passed an old customer of mine, a guy named Ken. “Hey!” he greeted me cheerfully. “Has anyone ever seen you without a book in your hand?”
Poignant.
I sat down at the bench at the bus stop and began to read. I was halfway through the book by the time I stopped to cook dinner, and I’d finished the book by the following afternoon. What a piece of work. It made me really angry, and it made me laugh out loud several times – I recognized myself on page after page, and the light was not often flattering – but mostly it made me feel useless.
Since leaving my job, I have truly felt without value, in a professional sense. I have twenty years of experience and god knows how much cultural knowledge stored in my head, but the fact is, this gets me nothing. No one will hire me because there is, apparently, no need in this modern world for someone like me. The world needs people who can do amazing things with Excel, it needs people who can build a house or fix a toilet, it needs people who can perform surgery and do accounting. I do none of these things. I have a weird set of skills which aren’t even exactly skills: it’s just stuff I know about, and things I can talk about and write about with almost anyone I could ever meet. But I can’t get paid for it anymore, it seems.
Which is, of course, why I’m sitting here at my computer writing about it. I mean, all the time in the world; I might as well write.
Miller’s book presents a really interesting perspective on bookselling today. She points out the obvious – something that I often pointed out to my customers – which is that bookstores are not meant to be non-profit organizations. When customers at the Anonymous Bookstore used to complain to me about the prices they paid for books, I would always say, “We charge the publishers’ list prices. We do not mark them up further.” When asked why we didn’t discount the books, I’d say honestly that if we discounted them, we’d be out of business soon. “This is a for-profit enterprise,” I’d tell them. And either they bought the book or they didn’t. I’d say that 95% of the time, they bought the book.
But it seems hard for customers to remember, or understand, sometimes, that bookstores are businesses same as everything else out there. Did my customers, who professed to admire me tremendously, who asked me for help every day, who sought me out personally when they needed help, did they understand how little I was being paid because the bookstore was dying and the owner wouldn’t make room for a raise? If these people thought I was happy working for so little because I loved my job so much, they were kidding themselves. I loved helping them most of the time, it’s true. But it would have been nice to’ve been paid a respectable hourly wage. A wage that indicated that someone understood the skills I had and what they would be worth to paying customers. A man was thrilled when I knew who Owen Wister was, a woman grabbed my hand in excitement when I knew who Queen Lucia was. Mothers faces melted with joy when I handed them David Greenberg and Victoria Chess’s book Slugs and said, “This is for your little boy. Trust me.” These books, these are special books, and I made these customers know they were special to me – at least for that moment – and I whored myself for this. For $12.00 an hour. Which is probably fine in some parts of the country but on the coast of Connecticut, let me tell you, $12/hr. doesn’t go far at all.
Laura Miller describes booksellers as reluctant capitalists. I’m not reluctant at all about it. I love making money. I love reeling in the customer, I love matching the right book with the right person, and I’m usually good at it. But it’s like Laurie Colwin said in one of her books – Goodbye Without Leaving-, I believe – when a character mourns the fact that she’s had great life experience but is basically unhireable for a normal job. “It’s like being an alchemist, or a dairymaid,” our heroine says. I can’t find where Colwin writes that, but it’s in there somewhere. Or at least it’s in one of her books. I didn’t make it up, that I know for sure.
Being a professional bookseller is like being an alchemist or a dairymaid.
I am grateful to Miller for having written her book; it was nice to feel recognizable, even if I was being recognized as a snot and a jerk and someone whose standards were completely insane and unrealistic. I actually emailed her, to thank her for writing the book and congratulating her on doing such a good job of it, and she wrote back to thank me and wish me luck in my future endeavors.
Which was nice of her.
But it’s strange, now. I’ve been unemployed for two weeks. And what have I done with my time?

Bookselling in a New England College Town

Having written about being in the service industry (see entry below), I find myself needing to explain something about this.
I am now 36 years old; I've been working in retail, one way or another, since I was 16. That's, yes, twenty years. (I'm bad at math, but good at remembering my life.) For most of those years I've been a bookseller in this college town where I live now. I've mostly been very content with this; I like the overwhelming majority of my customers, I love the books; I find some obscure pride in knowing that I'm one of those people who can sometimes connect someone with a book that really makes them happy, or helps them, or does something good for them. A book is often a better friend than a friend is. That's not a nice thing to say, I realize, but I do mean it.
So I'm very sad to report to anyone who cares, which I assume is pretty much nobody, that I've left my position as book buyer at the small independent bookstore here, the local institution where the overly degreed hang out and massage each other's egos.
I didn't leave because I have a better offer. I've left even though I've not even got one job interview lined up. You may ask, "Why? Didn't you really really want that $12/hr job you had that seems so unbelievably cool?" The answer is, If I'd been treated differently by my employers, I might. If I'd felt I was getting an ounce of professional respect from the people I work for, I would probably stay. If I'd had an office; a phone in said office; a proper email address; a filing cabinet, for Christ's sake; if I'd had a professional salary and real health care and more than 10 days vacation per year. I might have stayed.
But I didn't have, and I didn't stay.
I am tired of fighting this good fight. I believe in independent bookstores; I believe that Barnes and Noble really does dumb down the cultural dialogue which happens in bookstores and because of bookstores across this country. I believe that Borders isn't that much better.
But I also believe that I'm burnt out. I used to work in rare books, and it was, compared to this, a cakewalk. With used books, you never have to plan author events. I never had to worry about publicity -- I never got emails saying "Appearing on Live! With Regis --" and then had to think, "Do I want to order this idiotic self-help book?" Back in the days when I worked in used books, I frequently said to customers, If I have my way I'll never sell another self-help book again as long as I live.
For the past two years, I've kept self-help to a minimum in this store -- and, to the store's credit, we really didn't have too many customers looking for this shit -- but you know what? It's too much. I do not enjoy what bookselling is, now. It's not the same business that it was when I was 18. There have always been bad books, sure; but I didn't used to have to pay attention to them. I didn't have to order them. At this job, I did. Now I had to feel responsible for getting this shit into people's hands. People who I regard as friends, god help me, they're in publishing and they thrust ARCs into my hands and say, "You must order this for the store, they'll love it." Well, listen, my friends: my customers didn't love it. No one asked me about any of the books I've ordered because I was cowed and ordered the crap you publish. I've had to return all those books. You probably didn't notice.
I've tried to sell the mediocrity that gets the hype. I tried to sell Jenna Jameson. No one cared. I tried to sell Ann Coulter. No one cared. I tried to sell Michael Savage. No one cared. All these books were or will be returned. Robert Parker; James Patterson (god! all those James Patterson books I will never have to think about again! I practically want to open a bottle of Champagne to celebrate). All of this proved to me, over and over again, that you, my friends in publishing, and your reps never had any idea what the hell was going in in this little bookstore I worked at.
Sex sells, sure. But not just any sex. And mean nasty funniness sells. But not just anyone's mean nasty funniness.

I took this job two years ago as an act of desperation: I wanted a job that would give me minimal pay and offer me and The Most Ethical Man in the World health coverage. Two years have gone by. I have no raise. My Christmas bonuses were jokes. The Most Ethical Man in the World has a job which offers medical care that's a zillion times better (I was never able to find a local gynecologist on my job's plan). He hates the job; it leaves him drained and angry and depressed every day. But it's still a better job, in conventional regards, than any job I've ever had. And in two years, he hasn't come up with a preferable Plan B for himself.
I feel like I've basically wasted two years. It's a sad feeling.
I'm going to work toward going back to the books I love: used and rare. There's not much money for me to make doing this, I realize, but it will be, I think, a purer enterprise for me. It will allow me to be truer to what I want to do with my time; it will allow me to focus on the things I love. I hope to God I'll be able to make a little money doing it.
To my customers, who will I'm sure never read this: stop me on the street and say hello. I really like you guys. I just couldn't take working for the Fearless Leader anymore.

On Being in the Service Industry, Surrounded by the Wildly Over-degreed, Pt. 1

For some weeks I've debated whether or not to post the following. In the end I decided it really didn't matter. So here goes.
I work in a bookstore cafe; I am the book buyer. Because the management is a combination of insane, cheap, and totally unconcerned with the state of the bookstore (it makes no money, whereas the cafe makes a bundle), I am not afforded any of the sorts of things buyers are supposed to have. I'm not asking for much here. A room to call an office would be nice. Filing cabinets for catalogues. A phone that's not in the middle of the store. A fucking desk would be good. A chair.
The store has never even given me an email address, which is ridiculous considering how everything not done by phone is done via email.
As it is, I spend my eight to nine hours a day standing at the cash register, ringing up sales for the bookstore and the cafe while trying to read catalogues, place orders, make phone calls to fix when an order comes in wrong somehow... and getting to listen to innumerable conversations held in the cafe.
This joint is in the middle of a college town. The regular customers at the store and cafe are local business people, academics, and students. Lunch rush is, overwhelmingly, students and young professor types. (In the morning we get a bunch of lazy intellectual types, the sort who have a late breakfast and argue with each other about the Op-Ed pages of the Times; later in the morning we get a lot of mommies with strollers and the occasional really ill-behaved child.) Mid to late afternoon, you get faculty meeting with students, faculty meeting with each other, that kind of thing. It's all supposed to be very collegial and friendly. It is actually entirely cutthroat and nasty and unpleasant. I imagine it's that way if you're one of the people at the tables drinking cappuccino and eating scones, but it's even more so from my perspective.
Recently, the editor of our local "alternative" newspaper wrote an article talking about local cafes, and he talked about how the place where I work is sort of uncomfortable, sometimes, because it gets so noisy with all the conversations you have to listen to (besides your own). I snorted when I read his piece, not because he was wrong, but because he had no idea how right he is. So I sent him an email saying, "You think you have it bad when you go there for coffee once or twice a week? Try being us, the staff who has to put up with you arrogant fucks day in and day out."
I don't think I really called him and his cronies arrogant fucks, but lord I wanted to. The funny truth is that I don't actually know who is more arrogant, me or the overly degree'd people drinking those three dollar lattes. We're running neck and neck as far as I can tell.

Bookseller Commentary

Yesterday morning I was drinking coffee with The Most Ethical Man in the World. We were sitting in our kitchen discussing that Top 25 Novels list that the New York Times printed a few Sundays ago. (We've been batting the subject about off and on since it got printed. It's not like we just found out about it or anything like that.)
I'm annoyed by the list for many reasons and at the same time I really don't care about it all that much; but one strong feeling I have about it is that it's very sad that the Times doesn't have the sense to realize that the list is just fundamentally silly and bound to be laughable not just now but increasingly so as time goes on, fifty or a hundred years from now. If one looks at books, which do exist, which reprint various ratings and awards that were issued to and from the literary world over the years, it's remarkable how many titles that once seemed like huge deals are now... worse than obscure. I mean, they're just non-existent. I firmly believe that the NYT list is just another contribution to that cosmic file.
I don't understand why no one is talking about this. People are pissy about the list for various political reasons -- not enough women on the judging committee, not enough women on the final list (though a woman is at the top of the list); presumably other folks are mad about the ethnicities of those on the list, and I'm sure there are other identity-politics agendas I can't think of off the top of my head which are getting others riled up too. And I've had some customers who've come into the bookstore slobbering to get a copy of each book on the list so that they can feel that they're well-read (which is hysterical, but we won't discuss that now). But none of it ultimately matters. All these books will, one day, be out of print. All of these books will, in time, be viewed as, at best, decent portrayals of a certain period in time. If they are read, they'll be read the way we read Trollope now: to find out about daily life for a certain group of people at a certain time. We don't read Trollope for art's sake (most of us don't anyhow). We read him as social or cultural anthropology. Which I'm not knocking, not at all. I just wish folks would SAY this rather than just going around with their noses in the air saying high-toned things that mean squat.
The Most Ethical Man in the World is for some reason fixated on Updike. Perhaps it's because his father is a fan; perhaps it's just because Updike seems to dominate these kinds of debates about 20th c. literature. But yesterday morning I got fed up talking about Updike, and stormed, "Updike has been worse than ridiculous for the last twenty years!"
Ethical Man looked at me, gawped, and began to laugh.
Ok. Maybe I was overreacting. And it's true I probably haven't read an Updike novel since I was about 25 (which was, yes, exactly eleven years ago). But Jesus. I wish Updike would take a break and just stop writing fiction. I cannot believe that any book with a title like Gertrude and Claudius is actually worth reading; I cannot believe that I will have to sell his new one, Terrorist, with a straight face. It is all I can do to get through the day, sometimes, in my job in books. I try very hard to not be hypocrite but the publishing industry sure doesn't make it easy on me.
For the record, I admire Updike's non fiction tremendously. I just think there are way, way too many novels.
So for anyone who's reading this, all upset about that New York Times list. Take it from me, Tante Gadfly: it does not matter one whit. Read whatever the hell you want.

When I'm Not Right

My other half, The Most Ethical Man in the World, has suggested that my subtitle for this blog be, "Why I Am Always Right."
Now, I think that's unfair.
I'm often wrong.
Ask anyone who ever tried to cheat off my paper in high school math.

Why I'm In This Mess

For some months The Most Ethical Man in the World has been urging me to start a blog. I think it's for one reason, at least primarily, which is that I have the nerve to voice whatever comes into my head. The Most Ethical Man in the World is too polite to say most of what he thinks. I, by contrast, have practically made a career out of mouthing off. It doesn't pay well, let me tell you, but somehow people keep hiring me because of my opinions, and because of my total willingness to voice those opinions.
Ethical Man is at once appalled by and impressed with my mouthiness; it was he who first called me Gadfly. "You need business cards with your name and all it should say underneath is: Gadfly."
I got pissed, but I guess he sort of has a point.