Footnote

Your Bibliothecary, having little experience in blogging, wondered recently why we pose numerous questions and receive no comments. Today we stumbled quite by accident upon a whole cache of comments awaiting our approval. All have been activated, and the situation has been rectified. To all of you who have left comments, I apologize and thank you sincerely. Perhaps now we can begin to better develop the blogger/commentor relationship.

Chapter Seventy-Seven, in which We turn yet another Page

BookGirl offered a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke as her holiday wish. Rilke's poetry can be very moving, and your Bibliothecary truly loved this one, though it is even stronger in a more fuller translation: And now let us believe in the new year that is given us-- new, untouched, full of things that have never been.

We had planned to use that ourself, albeit a little reluctantly that someone else had put it to use first. Then after some thought, we decided, wonderful as it is, we required something more fitting to the world and life of books. And so without further ado, we offer this holiday wish to you (both our readers!): Let us turn the page,

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice. -- T.S. Eliot

Chapter Seventy-Six, in which Everyone wants to own a Bookstore

The Bookologist recently pondered what it takes to run a bookstore. She says, "Having a shop requires patience and organization and a genuine liking for being with people." Then what in the world is Bernard Black doing with a shop?

Black Books is a second-hand bookshop in London owned and operated by a grumpy Irishman. The essence of the Black Books experience is the sign hanging in the door: one side says "Closed" and the other side says "Closed". Though it might seem to the rest of us that selling lots of books and getting on well with customers is vital to a bookseller's business, Mr. Black claims his is "not that kind of shop."

For those who don't know, Bernard Black is the protagonist of a British comedy titled "Black Books," what the BBC calls "a hugely affable slice of lunacy." Though he hates people, Mr. Black loves his books. The only thing he prefers to books is alcohol. And when the two come together, Mr. Black rolls himself in his chair over to the bathroom, unzips, and relieves himself from a distance, never once allowing any of it to interfere with his intense reading.




Edith notes that "almost every other person coming into our shop tells me that owning a bookshop is his or her dream. When I ask them why, they tell me they love books." But what Mr. Black demonstrates, and every bookstore owner knows, is that owning a bookstore is about people, and retailing, much more than about books. There are moments when one is alone with one's books, to read, to caress, to make friends with, but squeezing out those moments are all the other times when people are asking who wrote The C&O Canal Companion, or bills are irritating to be paid, or discussions are to be had with the landlord over the appropriate temperature in the shop, or employees need training, or the little old lady who just spent two dollars on a Cassie Edwards paperback wants to spend forty minutes telling you her family history, or the hours of operation conflict with the hours of the biggest book sale of the year. If one has a passion for all these things, then a bookshop is wonderful; if not, then your Bibliothecary highly recommends a personal library.

Chapter Seventy-Five, in which Terror is Escapism

Time magazine recently published its Top 100 Photos of the year. One, by Matthew Rosenberg, was of a double decker bus damaged by the 7 July terrorist bombings in London. Ironically, on the side of the bus is a poster, probably for a movie, with a tag line proclaiming "Outright Terror... Bold and Brilliant."

This made me think about Stefanie's post concerning the value of genre fiction. She wonders why genre fiction--such as mystery, horror, and science fiction--is so often disparaged as mere escapism. "Good writing is good writing," she writes, "no matter if there is a murder to be solved or an alien race to come to terms with." Or a terrorist bombing to be suffered. She believes such stories ought to be paraged (a doubleplusgood word according to neologeneticists) as much as literary fiction.

Why is it, then, that the same people who suffer the terror of a suicide bombing, or refuse to use an airplane because they are terrified it may be hijacked, also eagerly slap down ten dollars to be terrified by a film, or the latest novel by Stephen King or Jack Higgins? Are such plots so disturbing that they can be accepted only as escapist? And why do the media review films and praise them for their heart-pounding terror, and then wail at the outright terror on a London bus, or in a Tel Aviv discotheque? Sensationalism? Exploitation?

Your Bibliothecary once attended a reading course at a college near Mad About Books International Headquarters. The instructor assigned several books, and then solicited nominations for a final selection. We suggested The World According to Garp by John Irving. The instructor informed us a few days later that the book we suggested was too vulgar--without putting words in her mouth, it was not acceptable to her literary sensibilities. What must she think of This Side of Paradise and Lolita and Ulysses and la morte d'Arthur--escapism or literature?

Shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, our friend Tiresias wondered in public about the terrorists: "Can you imagine the absolute thrill they must have felt watching the building come at them at 400 miles an hour? The god-like power they must have felt carrying so many people to their death? The bravery they must have possessed to prepare for and commit such an act? The incomprehensible faith they must have possessed, to believe they were doing good and they would be forever praised?" What they did was quite literally bold and brilliant. Yet those remarks of Tiresias were disparaged more than a Luke Short western. But he was considering events as a novelist, not paraging the terrorists--he was trying to understand the emotions and the motives involved in such acts. After all, isn't that what people want: four-star bold and brilliant--fear, explosions, terror, unmitigated and unparalleled evil? Shouldn't good writing be good writing, whether the story is a dazzling chronicle of a romantic egotist or a disturbing psychodrama about a suicide bomber?

Might any of this indicate where American civilization is headed? Perhaps we should be more careful of what we wish for. The Roman plebians must certainly have feared an attack by lions on themselves, and yet they relished the spectacle of Christians as lion chow. We refer you, Dear Reader, to Gibbon to learn the end result.

Chapter Seventy-Four, in which Your Bibliothecary gives up reading

Your Bibliothecary reads as much as possible. Of late, we have had a difficult time finding books that are truly readworthy. Though we grew up on fiction, we have been regularly disappointed by almost everything new, and we continue to wait eagerly for the next novel by Thomas Hardy. Our tastes have shifted mildly toward non-fiction, and it is there we have found some good reading in the last year. Unfortunately, it seems as if the bad books have outpaced the good books in 2005.

One can tell something about a reader by the list of books they have read and enjoyed. One can also tell something about a reader by the list of books they tried to read but gave up on. Though we always believed it was important to read a book complete to the end, hoping the author would pull off a miracle on the last page, we now have discovered so many more books that are appealing, that call to us like the Sirens, demanding we leave behind those boring books and pick them up instead. So, inspired by Semicolon, we offer the titles that come to mind (because we didn't maintain a list, and perhaps we ought to) that we did not finish reading.

An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. Somehow we had the idea it would be in the vein of Umberto Eco, and we were deceived.

Science: The Glorious Entertainment by Jacques Barzun. We so thoroughly enjoyed From Dawn to Decadence and a collection of his essays, but, alas, his science was dry.

A Fool and His Money by Ann Wroe. A story set in a medieval city that we hoped would provide great flavor, and now have all but given up on.

A Lover's Almanac by Maureen Howard. Just not engaging.

The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett. This one I really wanted to read, and I may have to give it another chance sometime in the future.

The Floating Book by Michelle Lovric. She put together such a great book on love letters. Apparently the quality of writing she found in those letters did not fully rub off on her.

No doubt there were other books consigned to the forget-it pile. What makes you give up on a book? How long do you continue before ejecting from the doomed flight of literary trash? What, I wonder, was the most gived-up-on book of 2005?

Chapter Seventy-Three, in which We mark an old fashioned Christmas

It is a beautiful arrangement, also derived from days of yore, that
this festival, which commemorates the announcement of the religion of peace and love, has been made the season for gathering together of family connections, and drawing closer again those bands of kindred hearts which the cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world are continually operating to cast loose; of calling back the children of a family who have launched forth in life, and wandered widely asunder, once more to assemble about the paternal hearth, that rallying-place of the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementoes of childhood.

--excerpt from "Old Christmas" by Washington Irving

Chapter Seventy-Two, in which Your Bibliothecary settles down to a long winter's Nap

Lo, now is come the joyful'st feast!
   Let every man be jolly,
Eache roome with yvie leaves is drest,
   And every post with holly.

Now all our neighbours' chimneys smoke,
   And Christmas blocks are burning;
Their ovens they with bak't meats choke,
   And all their spits are turning.
      Without the door let sorrow lie,
         And if, for cold, it hap to die,
      We'll bury't in a Christmas pye,
         And evermore be merry.

--excerpt from a carol by George Wither