An Unexpected Post: More on Ian Frazier, Buying Hardcover Books, and the Wall Street Journal

Last evening found Miss Edith present at yet another social gathering, this one much less hectic than other recent moments of note on her social calendar, but just as enjoyable. When the evening was finished -- the last glass of wine drunk, the final brownie snarfed down -- I curled up in bed to polish off the Ian Frazier collection I've been reading, Lamentations of the Father. You may remember I'd mentioned it a few days ago. Spoke rather highly of it.

Last night's readings included an essay entitled "Downpaging," which begins with a quotation from an old Daily News article, a tip on saving money: "Check books out of the library instead of buying them... New releases of hardcover books cost $25 and more these days. If you buy just two a month, that's $600 a year."

Frazier's essay then leaps into the comments of people talking about how they just have the hardest time managing their money because of their addiction to hardcover novels. "Right now it's costing me forty-five dollars to fill up my 4Runner, which is about two novels," says one interviewee. A mother mourns her inability to purchase for her teenage sons all the novels they crave: "How do you tell a youngster that he can't have that just-released Modern Library edition of the complete Sinclair Lewis he's been dreaming of? But I guess that's what I'm going to have to do; I don't see any option."

Frazier's piece was funny to me in a sort of dark way, naturally, what with Miss Edith's history of bookselling and all. The truth is that Miss Edith herself has never had the budget to allow her to buy all the hardcover books she's wanted over the years. I have always been a frequent patron of the public library. These days this is even more true than ever before, and I very, very seldom buy new books, particularly hardcovers, because they really are just so gosh-darn expensive. (I hate to sound like a Pollyanna but it's not even worth it to me to use a proper expletive there.)

But part of what's so funny about the piece to me is that, you know, it would be like a wet dream if I could remember the names of even five customers who bought two hardcover novels in a month. I had many customers who would purchase one paperback novel a month -- even one noteworthy woman, a smart lady of some means, a widow, who would come in once a month and purchase five novels. But if I had a customer, in about twenty years of bookselling, who came in often enough that he or she would purchase two hardcover novels a month, I think I would remember that person, and I can't. I can not. So it's sort of a "don't I wish!" situation from the bookseller's perspective and then, of course, from the publisher's perspective. (Not to mention the writers of all these hardcover novels.)

Miss Edith considered reading passages from this essay aloud to Notarius (who happened, I shit you not, to be lying in bed reading a hardcover edition of a Faulkner novel; this speaks, so to speak, volumes about our reading habits) but I did not annoy him. I figured, "Let him have his Faulkner. He wouldn't give a crap about this anyhow." I finished the book, began to re-read the title essay, and went to sleep.

This morning's Wall Street Journal, which I perused over a second cup of coffee, has a column which is precisely about this matter of saving money by not buying hardcover books.

If I wasn't sitting there, completely wide awake, holding that fucking newspaper in my hands, I'd've sworn it was a practical joke.

The article, by Neal Templin, begins, "When did Barnes & Noble replace the public library?" An excellent question, but not, I'll posit, for the reasons he thinks.

If Neal Templin would like to get in touch with me, I'm sure I can put him in touch with quite a few booksellers who'd like to smash his head in right now. It is certainly true that there are many, many, many books out there on the market in new book bookstores that are not worth buying. But there are quite a few that are definitely worth buying. Even in hardcover. EVEN IN HARDCOVER, buddy. Sometimes it is worth it to splurge on a hardcover. "The Wild Party," a poem that was illustrated by Art Spiegelman and reissued maybe ten, fifteen years ago? If you buy the paperback, it's a fun book, don't get me wrong... but if you bought the hardcover, you got to experience these red velvet endpapers that just make reading the book a totally different experience.

Reading the Wall Street Journal is often a depressing experience, but I hope that if Ian Frazier saw it this morning, he laughed just as dryly as I did.

Acidophilus

Many years ago Notarius and I observed that once you leave elementary school there are certain words you just don't hear anymore. They seem so important -- essential, even -- when you're ten years old, and then... they just cease to be part of your daily life. The word that got us thinking about this was "irrigation". Seemed to us that when we were kids, we were always hearing about, reading about, writing reports about irrigation. And now we're adults, and we hardly ever think about it. Huh.

So the last few weeks, I've been pondering a similar situation regarding the word (and concept) of acidophilus.
When I was a child, I had a little friend who, for reasons I never understood, had to drink a special kind of milk that said "ACIDOPHILUS" in big letters (in a funky 1970s graphic style) on the side of the carton. She couldn't drink normal milk. I never knew why. I thought it all seemed kind of silly. And yet the word "acidophilus" was everywhere; I was ten years old and it seemed like everyone around me was talking about this complicated, scary sounding kind of milk. And then... it went away. I don't remember thinking about acidophilus milk at all as a teenager, or at all during my twenties. Soon I will be forty, and I can't recall the last time I saw the word "acidophilus" on the side of a carton of milk.
(OK, Miss Edith won't be 40 years old for another few years, but, you know, she's definitely getting on.)

I've decided that acidophilus milk, whatever it is, must have been the "lactose intolerance" of the 1970s. That is to say, it was a trendy medical issue that marketers jumped on. And that as millions of people today go around coyly saying that can't eat this or that because they're lactose intolerant, people in the '70s were probably just as annoying about acidophilus, but I was too young at the time to appreciate how annoying they were, because I was probably just too annoying myself to dwell on anyone else's awfulness.

(Those who are likely to get het up about my making fun of health problems, by the way, should just please go away and read another blog, or maybe just another entry by Miss Edith; you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time, here.)

I want to know: is anyone still thinking about acidophilus milk, whatever it is? Or has it just become a really good Scrabble/Scrabulous word?

A Conversation Overheard: There's No Money In Gamba

Three people are seated in a comfortable living room, drinking wine, discussing the musical training of a child. The child in question is all of maybe one month old.

"I think she should take Suzuki bass," says the father, a double bass player.

"Sure, that's good," says the father's friend, a trombone player. "But you should probably start with piano. Start with the basics."

"Bassoon, maybe?" ponders the father. The mother rolls her eyes and has a sip of her drink. The baby is asleep.

There follows a diverting discussion regarding the social clout of different musical instruments -- flute players: are they as hot as violinists? This passes a few minutes, and then the father of the newborn veers back toward his daughter's future musical instruction. "The thing is," he says, "She may not have any musical talent."

The trombonist scoffs, "Sure she will; her parents are musical. She may not become a professional musician --" [which the trombonist is: Julliard trained, he has always made a living from performing or teaching music] "but she's very likely to be somewhat talented. She doesn't have to make a living at it, she should just, you know, learn it to enjoy it at first."

The mother speaks. "We could sign her up for lessons on the viola da gamba."

The trombonist has a sip of his drink, shakes his head. "No," he says, "There's no money in gamba."

Reflecting on Ian Frazier: A Vague Appreciation

In 1986, Miss Edith was 15 or 16 years old, and in those days Miss Edith bought, on pure whim, an awful lot of books that would prove to be rather important to her decades later.
Ian Frazier's Dating Your Mom was one such book.
I remember buying it at the Yale Co-op; there was no particular reason why. It was cheap, and I suppose I thought it looked funny. I read it and to be honest very little of it appealed to me. But I never tossed the book away or lent it to anyone. I think I had this suspicion that one day, one day, I'd find the book on my shelf again and somehow it would suddenly make sense.
This is, in fact, what came to pass, though I cannot recall exactly when that was. I just know that years later -- probably a decade after I'd first purchased the book -- I was scanning my shelves for something light to read, came across it, and thought, "Oh, what the hell." And suddenly it just... worked.
No, wait. I know that this happened less than a decade after I bought the book, because I remember that it was the first essay in the collection ("The Bloomsbury Group Live at the Apollo") that suddenly struck me as being hysterically funny, and that I was re-reading the piece during the height of my record collecting years. That would make it between 1988 and 1994. Any humor connected to the liner notes of records would have appealed to me tremendously then... and that particular essay of Frazier's is a doozy.

I am thinking about Dating Your Mom and Ian Frazier again because last week at the public library I picked up a new collection of Frazier's essays, Lamentations of the Father, thinking, "Man, I haven't looked at a book by Ian Frazier in I don't know how long." I took the book home and have laughed out loud while reading it at least six times. Additionally, I've been driving Notarius crazy by insisting on reading passages aloud to him at least ten times.

Most of the books I take out from the library are titles that I'm curious to read but don't wish to actually own... but I have a distinct feeling that one of these days I will break down and buy my own copy of Lamentations of the Father. I don't want to bore anyone or risk ruining the book (for those of you who might actually scout out a copy) by quoting from Frazier or going into it much further than this... but please, people. Find the title essay, at least. Read it. And enjoy...

And if you're in a used bookstore and stumble on Dating Your Mom, buy it. Just buy it, all right?
Thank you.