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.