Eric Falk

balanced journalism 2

2006-08-05T12:31:00.000-07:00

On CNN, the most surreal pronouncements of Israeli spokespersons are allowed to go unchallenged. A mouthpiece from the military explains that the difference between Israel and its opponents is that when Israelis kill civilians they are filled with anguish, but that when Israeli civilians are killed, "there is joy in Gaza."

Later in the afternoon, Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's chief political advisor is interviewed. He uses the exact same formulation, word for word, to defend the Israeli air campaign, as if reading from talking points.

In neither case did any CNN "journalist" pursue the matter.

balanced journalism 1

2006-08-05T12:24:00.000-07:00

NPR's roundtable on what the future holds for Cuba featured three guests. One was a Cuban "dissident," interviewed from Havana; one was an NPR reporter, whose undisguised hostility to Cuba was plain; the third was a member of the professional Miami anti-Castro lynch mob. If this is the way a responsible news organization demonstrates it's objectivity, I wonder what the biased ones are saying.

ten things to love about toronto

2006-08-05T12:22:00.000-07:00

The spaces between neighborhoods where ethnic communities bleed together. For instance, the dozen blocks of Dundas west of Spadina where the Portuguese community casually morphs into a Chinese one.

The glide and twang of the long, stately streetcars.

Lake Ontario, and the Beaches neighborhood which, despite commercialization and gentrification, orients itself to the shore better than any great lakes city I know of.

Jane Jacobs (RIP) to whom I credit all this forward-thinking urbanism.

The great remaining independent bookstores- Pages, Book City, and my favorite, This Ain’t the Rosedale Library. Upon finding out that I’m from Milwaukee, the proprietor said he was there once, ten years ago, and had the strangest experience. He stopped by a downtown bookstore, and behind the manager’s desk there was a photo of his store. “That was me! I was that manager!” I got to exclaim.

The extra special attention music lovers receive at the sublime and perfect Soundscapes cd store on College. If every city had one like this the retail music business would have a future.

The ubiquitous hot dog stands. Nobody with $2.00 need go hungry on the street in Toronto (including vegetarians.)

The skyline, from a particular vantage point on the QEW in the early morning or late afternoon, looks exactly like Oz.

Dim sum at the biggest food hall in Chinatown, for the flavors and the spectacle.

“The Road to Guantanamo,” playing at a mainstream theatre to big crowds.

the mysteries of food service in ohio

2006-07-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

In the Panera Bread store in suburban Dayton, Ohio at 8:15am, chaos reigns. After I score a coffee and a stale muffin, I get a table outside and am immediately joined by an employee on break along with two other off-duty part-timers. I’m used to the “break time as bitchfest” concept, and have participated in a few. But I was taken aback by the intensity of the invective directed at the store and its manager. “The only reason I stay is for the money,” said one. “I’d burn it down if I could get away with it.”

But at the Bob Evans restaurant in suburban Columbus at 7:40pm, the busy place hummed like a machine. Servers seemed overworked but were cheerful to the point of obsequiousness, though it came off as genuine, not forced, as if they made a point of hiring the naturally obsequious. Everyone seemed happy to be working there. They can’t possibly be making much more money than the Paneras. (Though maybe that is the secret- unless you owned the place, what besides the paycheck would get someone to work in such a high-stress job?) Maybe it’s great management? Whatever it was, it’s inconceivable that I’d hear these folks out in the parking lot talking about burning the place down.

Two observations: 1) Being treated with respect in a job counts. Why aren't more managers apparently aware of this truth? 2) In the public square, which is to say in the conversations I eavesdrop on in coffee shops and bars around the Midwest, work and the hassles thereof are by far the most popular topic of conversation, easily beating politics, religion, even sports. Some of us may be pre-occupied with the latest outrages out of Washington, but lots of folks are more focussed on the latest outrages of the boss.

souvenirs

2006-07-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

I stopped for coffee at the Illinois turnpike plaza near O’Hare on the mind-numbing drive down to Dayton, Ohio. As I stepped back into the car, I noticed a huge billboard beside the highway. STOP THE INVASION, passing motorists were implored. Could it be an anti-war message about the US occupation of Iraq? Or possibly a quick response to the Israeli onslaught against Lebanon? Sadly, no. It was, of course, propaganda for the latest diversionary non-issue of choice, the “invasion” by immigrants from Mexico.

Our country has been taken over by lying, thieving mediocrities who have looted the public treasury and transferred the funds to their cronies. They have trashed the constitution, systematically dismantled the public sector, and sent thousands to their deaths in an illegal war. More than a whiff of fascism hovers over Washington, yet these gullible fools single out immigrants as the big threat. I guess it’s always easier to dump on the powerless than to face down the powerful. But talk about misguided energy. Imagine what the political landscape might look like if these sheep weren’t so easily manipulated. A coup d’etat is unfolding before our eyes, and they’re worried about Mexican families coming here to work.

Hyper-alert to signage, I continued down I-65 and noticed a new array of “security” messages posted on electronic signboards: REPORT SUSPICIOUS OVERPASS ACTIVITY, they commanded. What on earth could this mean? What “overpass activity” do they have in mind, and “suspicious” in what sense? And why single out the overpasses? What about “suspicious activity in passing cars?” Report to whom? But meaning is almost beside the point. The point is to advance fear on every front. Don’t think that just because you have a six hour drive on the interstate you can escape the New Normalcy.

I turn to music for solace, specifically the phenomenal Wax Tailer, a 19-track opus by a French avant-garde DJ. It’s an aural pastiche of pop music, forties film dialog and paranoia, beautifully stitched together and the perfect antidote to feelings of powerlessness. And “a lovely souvenir of the 20th century,” as someone on the disk self-referentially remarks.

What’s the bright side? Well, whatever you might think of Al Gore’s ecological infomercial, you have to thank the guy for drop-kicking the phrase “an inconvenient truth” back into the middle of public discourse. I hope that before the infotainment industry tires of using it (i.e. in the next ten days), we can take advantage of its currency by calling attention to a few inconvenient truths besides impending environmental catastrophe. Let’s start with: this country was founded by Spanish-speaking European invaders who practiced slavery and genocide. And how about: the social, political and economic deck is stacked in favor of the ownership class, always has been, and will only be redistributed when those of us who’ve been dealt out start putting up billboards and advising citizen vigilance about that.

what about russ?

2006-07-20T17:59:00.000-07:00

Here in Denver, the Democratic Leadership Council is getting ready for a big meeting this weekend. They are coming here to learn the secrets of Ken Salazar's election to the Senate. As "centrist" democrats, i.e. republican-lite, they are hypnotized by the fact that he got 78,000 more votes than Bush in Colorado in the 2004 election. And this, according to them, is more evidence that the Democrats have to move right to win.

But Russ Feingold, despised by these people and held up as the epitome of a Can't Win Liberal, outpolled John Kerry in Wisconsin by over 100,000 votes. This means that thousands of salt of the earth midwesterners chose Bush for president and also voted for the biggest, most unapologetic lefty in the Senate.

Splain that, DLC.

beirut

2006-07-17T10:41:00.000-07:00

Just heard via a friend from a Lebanese former colleague who now lives in Beirut. A re-assuring message, family and friends all ok, yet a terrifying litany of close calls. Hard to imagine these ordinary citizens in their ordinary neighborhoods as legitimate military targets.

Ironically, today's mail brought a finished copy of the new book by Hashim Sarkis, landscape architect, called Two Squares, about the reconstruction of downtown Beirut and its public spaces after the last war. A creative, hopeful, and- today- oddly poignant book.

"...without explaining why"

2006-07-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

The growing size of the campaign for a recount in the Mexican election continues to inspire. Over a million people marched in Mexico City yesterday, causing all manner of delicious hand-wringing about whether Lopez Obrador can prevent things from "spinning out of control."

My favorite howler from the morning's Times report: Lopez Obrador called, among other things, for "a boycott of some American companies, without explaining why." That last phrase tells you everything you need to know about the world view of the segment of the US ruling class represented by the New York Times. There was no need to explain why American interests should be implicated in the theft of their election to Mexicans, who saw millions of US dollars and consultants and Roveian strategists pour into their country to swing the vote to Calderon. The American hand in anti-democratic shenanigans is self-evident, to Mexicans and to most of the world. If the Times consulted its own archives it would find recent stories about the introduction of "American style negative campaigning" to Mexican television. So this feigned innocence- why ever would they boycott an American product? -is just a variant of the ever popular "why do they hate us" game played in reporting conflicts the world over. It's both transparently fraudulent and perfectly revealing.

A bit of imaginary counterfactual history: suppose that Al Gore and the Democrats had called for millions to descend upon the streets of Tallahasee in November 2000 to reinforce their half-assed legal strategy? Is there any doubt that people would have responded in vast numbers? And that the chances of a recount would have been greatly enhanced?

While it remains to be seen whether the Mexican opposition is successful in securing a fair vote count, the contrast in strategy is instructive for those on this side of the border who still have illusions about what the Democratic Party is. Or, more to the point, what it is not: it is not a movement. It is incapable of truly organizing and leading because it's afraid of people in the streets. The Mexican opposition- which, not coincidentally, is unafraid to call itself socialist- has faith in people. Perhaps, in the spirit of free trade and open borders, we can persuade Lopez Obrador to establish a US branch?

lawrence kansas blues

2006-07-12T03:48:00.000-07:00

The bookstore at the University of Kansas in Lawrence is fantastic, a snapshot of the best in contemporary publishing. Its excellence is largely due to the dogged commitment of a smart, experienced book-buyer with a firm sense of mission. But fewer and fewer students are buying books, a slow, drip-torture erosion that has given this season’s sales calls a depressing “end is near” undercurrent.

Booksellers have always been keenly aware of how precarious their project is, even in the good times, but the outlook has never seemed so gloomy. Sales migrating to the internet, sales evaporating into thin air, people spending hours online that previously might have been devoted to reading. And hovering above it all. the prospect of the digitized book future. Among a generation of book people nearing retirement age, the glimmer of hope is that “it”- the book business as we know it- will survive as long as we do, combined with a fear that it certainly won’t much beyond that. The optimistic among us envision bookstores of the future as collections of charming, antiquated artifacts, with the real business of publishing ideas of consequence taking place in the ether.

The atmosphere reminds me of my favorite book from the fall Harvard list, Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope, in which he asks what happens to a people when their way of life disappears, yet physical life goes on. It’s absurd and presumptuous to compare ourselves, mere book people, to the demise of the Crow Nation and Chief Plenty Coups, the core of Lear’s story. But the book really haunts me and speaks to the sense of resigned loss I keep encountering among my book brethren.

Meanwhile, the funny, charming desk clerk at the downtown Lawrence hotel stuns me by off-handedly remarking that he’s enlisted in the army and is leaving next week. Temporarily incoherent, I manage to mumble “wow, that’s big,” or something to that effect. He says that “the hardest part” will be that he has to stop smoking for boot camp.

Mexican election actually about something

2006-07-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

The commentary and reporting on the Mexican presidential election has been pretty lame, even by current dumbed down standards. What strikes me about the vote is that the Mexican people actually seem to have formed their political allegiances based on real, fudamental economic interests. If you are a farmer or a worker there seems to be no confusion that Lopez Obrador is your man. If you are of the professional or ownership class, Calderon speaks for you. This is actually how politics is practiced in most of the world. Imagine what our political landscape and elections would be like if Americans voted their interests, instead of being distracted from coalescing with others over common interests by irrelevant freakshows like flag burning and border walls, or being seduced by the hallucination that classes don't matter because anybody might get rich. Right.

wisconsin born agains have "awesome job" ahead

2006-07-09T11:50:00.000-07:00

A surprising new poll shows the November anti-gay marriage/civil unions referendum in Wisconsin essentially tied. "There is simply not the support they are claiming for this constitutional ammendment," said Rep Mark Pocan, hopefully. If it goes down to defeat, Wisconsin would be the first state to win against the American Taliban's favorite trojan horse.

"It reminds us that there is an awesome job of education that must be done," said Julaine Appling, of the Family Research Institute about the poll results.

"If straight only marriage is thousands of years old and unchangeable like they keep saying it is, why do they have to do ANY education about it," asked Randy, my boyfriend, over coffee, in the bed we've shared for 27 years.

Frank Zeidler (1912-2006)

2006-07-09T11:40:00.000-07:00

Frank Zeidler has died at 93. Milwaukee’s last socialist mayor (1948-1960), he’s been a local icon and inspiration, though is usually treated as some sort of quaint throwback to the heyday of “big government.” Surprisingly, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel gave his passing front page treatment, with a lengthy two page interior spread that, far from down-playing his socialism, dwelt on his “no regrets” allegiance to it almost as a badge of honor. Zeidler was the Socialist Party candidate for president in 1976, and received 5,427 votes- 4,300 of them from Wisconsin.

Zeidler once explained to a reporter why he joined the Socialist Party in 1933: “I particularly picked socialism because of several things in its philosophy. One was the brotherhood of people all over the world. Another was its struggle for peace. Another was the equal distribution of economic goods. Another was the idea of cooperation. A fifth was the idea of democratic planning in order to achieve your goals. Those were pretty good ideas.”

The front page headline today over his obituary was unintentionally amusing: “Mayor Served ‘the Public Welfare,’ " it read. Which aspect of that phrase is more revealing? The quotes around 'public welfare,' as if it’s some exotic, antique concept? Or the plain message that a mayor who served the public interest is now of sufficient oddness that it warrants headline treatment? I guess the seemingly self-evident idea that a politician would serve the public welfare now falls into man-bites-dog territory, journalistically speaking.

book rep life: ten days in january

2004-08-13T10:29:00.000-07:00

Jan 1

First dream of the year: I’m on a train, returning from the east coast. I realize- too late- that I was to have switched trains in Chicago, which I have just passed through. I rush to the front of the train and beg the engineer to stop so I can get off. She said the best she could do was to slow down so I could jump. I stand between cars, poised to leap into the passing darkness, but the train never slows up enough, and I never get the proper nerve, and I wake up.

I spent New year’s eve compiling my personal bests for the year. Who cares, but it helps me order my thoughts. 2002 was a great movie year- In the Mood for Love number one, then Day I Became a Woman, Under the Sand (for Charlotte Rampling alone), AI (improbable but true), Ghost World. My five favorite albums much easier to sort: the voluptuous Sigur Ros, Pinback, Bjork, Gordon Downie, Bran van 3000. Three Canadian, two Icelandic, what does that mean? By comparison it was a dull book year, but the five standouts were Ian McEwen/Atonement, Sebald/Austerlitz, an old Alan Furst called The World at Night, the preposterously titled but wonderful Alice Munro collection HateshipFriendshipCourtshipLoveship Marriage, and as always this year’s Anita Brookner, Bay of Angels. Followed by a long list of forgettable reading that makes me think I spend too much time on other people’s words.

Today’s Times reports that new year’s resolutions have gotten more grave, so I suppose I should replace my annual moratorium on fingernail biting with, oh, more heartfelt nesting gestures. Sanctimony and false piety overlays everything these days. I will set only trivial and manageable goals unrelated to the New Normalcy. Such as reading the manuscript of my stepbrother’s boyfriend’s gay novel. If it ends up my first failed resolution of the year it won’t be a grave failing.

I watched Wallace Shawn’s The Designated Mourner on video this morning, and then drove to Mayfair with my friend Doug to see Oceans Eleven. Though the mall was hellishly busy the film was better than expected. Doug is obsessed with silence in the cinema and told the woman behind us to shut up during the previews. I cringed. I allow more leeway during trailers and credits.

Doug just moved into a gorgeous, spacious new flat a half block from the university. The wood cabinetry in the pantry reminded me of my grandmother. He pays $1200/month with utilities, an absurdly low rent, but he always gets deals. He gave me a batch of writings by his fourth grade students.

When I got home Randy had hung twelve framed prints I ripped out of The Modern Dutch Poster in the dining room. They are colorful and political and give me great joy every time I pass them. Treating me better than I deserve to be treated, he followed this up with a delicious black bean stew.

Though I’m anxious to read the Lily Tuck short story collection that Daniel gave me, I neurotically consider this an unworthy candidate for first book of the year. I’m hooked beyond salvation on James Lees-Milne’s endless diaries- just finished 1942, seven more volumes to go. Though I suspect he’s a cranky bigot, it’s just the sensibility I aspire to as a writer and human being. But I’m starting the year with Henri Michaux’s strange book of drug-induced Belgian aphorisms, Tent Posts. “Tu laisses quelqu’un nager en toi, amenager en toi, faire du platre en toi, et tu veux encore etre toi-meme!”

Jan 2

Cole Becker has sent me a set of the new Random/Knopf/Pantheon spring catalogs with instructions to ask him for anything that strikes me. I am giddy. For his part, he loves the Harvard and Yale lists but only asks me for the occasional book of medieval philosophy. His insistence that I am the rep with the job to be envied, not him, is all the more morale-boosting for his unself-conscious, plain sincerity. He’s the most uncynical man I’ve ever known.

I spent the morning faxing cheery new Harvard Press discount schedules to 125 accounts. Then I went to the movies.

Monica Marchant is in town from Santa Fe. We went to see A Beautiful Mind. I think it’s a bad, dishonest film but I thoroughly enjoyed it. We went to Conejito’s for tostadas and weak margaritas and talked for two hours. Though I don’t remember what we discussed she makes me feel smarter and more interesting than I actually am. Did I talk too much? Randy asked later about her new house and I realized I’d never inquired about it. Nor did I ask about the new girlfriend. But we continue to catch up every six months and she inexplicably seeks me out.

We went to Tony’s for beers and a few games of pool. I was on my game until she started asking questions about my sex life. The more candidly I answered, the harder it became to sink a ball. A ploy, I teased. Stopped by Walker’s Pint for a final nightcap. Unfortunately we had picked a night with a cover charge and bad live lesbian folk music. I observed to the door person that I guess this meant I couldn’t play the jukebox and she scowled. The place was packed, the bartender was cute (to Monica), and I was the only man. We listened for awhile, then left, drunk, promising to exchange tapes.

Thomas Sebeok, the semiotician, died. I think I may sell some of his sixty books but I’m not sure. His obituary mentions that he was retained by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency in the early 80’s to design “Keep Away” symbology that could be attached to containers of nuclear waste. It has to be intelligible to people in ten thousand years- the length of time it’s expected to remain hazardous. But not a word in the story about what solution he actually came up with, an omission that bothered me for the rest of the day.

Jan 3

My spring appointments are 90% in place, and arrangements (hotel, car rentals, airplanes) are finished. I have never been this ready this early. The weather is improving, which is to say it’s frigid and sunny and there are no whiteouts on the horizon, always a good bet in Minnesota. I loathe sunshine in winter- we’ve had only a couple lovely gray days and almost no snow, just day after blinding arctic day, the sun slicing horizontally across the edge of the sky, making me sneeze and giving me headaches.

Clinton’s dog Buddy was killed by a car today, and my friend Bill’s friend Deb’s black lab- also called Buddy, one of a brother/sister pair- also just died. The thought of Georgia, the other one, named for O’Keeffe of course, alone now, makes me cry.

I crave a book. In this mood I’m susceptible to anything. Bruce Wagner, whose last novel was unreadable, has a wacky new one. Michiko Kakutani raves about it in today’s Times, so here I am at Schwartz inquiring after it. I will buy it and almost certainly not read it. Today’s review of the new Anthony Blunt biography sounds superb, but would I finish it? Then I remember that last year’s motto, No Follow Through, has been replaced this year by Seeing it Through. So I buy it.

Michaux continues to be full of good, if slightly disorienting, advice- in a French 101 level prose where every page comprehended feels like a little victory. “Si affaisse, brime, si fini que tu sois, demande-toi regulierement- et irregulierement: qu-est-ce qu’aujourd’hui encore je peux risquer?” [roughly, “however weighed down, washed up, bullied you may be, ask yourself regularly- and irregularly- what can I risk again today?”]

Jan 4

A $200 error in my checking account comes to light. It is in my favor, and immediately brightens my day. I am also cheered by the arrival of two brilliant MIT books I sold last season, the Carolee Schneeman monograph, and Harrison’s Art & Language anthology. Both look, feel, and smell wonderful. I will gush over them and carry them around for a week and then forget about them.

Daniel and I went to Joe Grossmeyer’s funeral. The nervous, distraught family on one side of the room, the more diverse and boistrous friend and coworker contingent on the other. Thankfully, no corpse on view, which allowed for a more relaxed atmosphere. We spoke to the people we knew and left before the ceremony. A makeshift posterboard on easels exhibited old photographs, military memorabilia, and various professional licenses. A little morbid but a little touching. I immediately wondered what sort of hodgepodge visual display would greet my mourners and decided I want a simple Stevie Smith poem and drawing. Must tell Randy I suppose.

I met my friend Carl for a beer at von Trier’s before going to see Royal Tennenbaums at the Oriental theatre. The bartender had been caught unprepared by an impromptu birthday party and was doing his best rendition of “I’m so harried I can barely cope” which I recognized from my retail days. It never really works, I wanted to tell him, but I never came up with a better strategy either.

The movie was a dream. I was fearing it would fall far short of Rushmore, but it was actually more tender and moving and grimly hilarious than I could have hoped. Carl talked about the generosity, the dogged belief that the irreconcilable can be reconciled, that impossible situations can be set right by good intentions and force of will.

Carl: have I ever seen him happier? Not a word about his sad miserable life and impossible workload. Instead, a lightness of spirit- I know, groan, but that is the word. He has a new boyfriend, though we don’t talk about it.

The Woodland Pattern Book Center’s annual fundraising read-a-thon is next weekend. I have never participated but always act as if I might. I will be in Seattle. Carl asked his friend Stacey for material suggestions and she said “French poetry.” This gave him license to buy a bunch of books but he remained unfocussed. So she recommended taking a specific Verlaine poem (on friendship) and composing (and performing) a line by line response to it. (A line of V, a line of C, a line of V, a line of C, etc.) This struck me as breathtakingly brilliant. Why can’t I think of things like this? I come up with ideas like: take your new digital camera on the road with you and get an image of every buyer you meet with. But I’m bored with this idea even before I start- it’s the too broad equivalent of the original “French poetry” idea. What is the more particular equivalent of the Verlaine line parsing and responding exercise that would make my season of snapshots more compelling? This sort of musing could be helpful but I quickly turn it into an avoidance strategy, not doing one good thing because a better one probably exists in the world.

Jan 6

It’s Sunday and I’m setting off on the first road trip of the season, Minneapolis for the week. The car is packed. The contents:
- plastic crate #1 contains frontlist order forms, backlist order forms, seasonal catalogs, complete catalogs, art catalogs.
- plastic crate #2 contains galleys. This will expand as the season unfolds and more finished galleys show up. The Stephen Jay Gould galley is 1400 pages long and in two volumes.
- finished books. Usually I don’t have many by this point in the season but Yale has six this time, stunning art books that are awkward to carry around but people will buy a book they can hold in their hands more often than one simply described in a catalog.
- laptop
- gym bag (another resolution)
- suitcase (clothes)
- briefcase: folders for each of the three presses, account lists/address book, my personal catalogs loaded with additional notes, work in progress, office supplies.
- jacket kit: binders containing covers and interior art. These take forever to maintain and organize but very few buyers actually give me the time to show them.
- car crap: blankets, shovel, scrapers, bungee cords, gloves, extra hats, maps.
- my personal backpack, which I try to psychologically and physically compartmentalize even though there’s lots of overlap with work stuff. Various non Harvard/MIT/Yale notebooks, magazines, newspapers, aspirin, phone, camera, CDs, books I’m reading or plan to read.

Zak, our dog, watched me pack in seeming disbelief. Why would you leave, his eyes seem to ask. When I'm home and I come in late he explodes in joyful relief after standing vigilant watch. But when I leave the house not to return for a week he seems to know that I’m not expected back, and he relaxes. A mystery.

Jan 7

I bolted awake at 4:15, faded in an out of consciousness until 6:00am. The heating unit in the Radisson makes so much noise I turn it off.

I arrived yesterday in time for a screening of La Buche at the U Film Society. I love everything about this place, not least the venue, a small, depression-era auditorium in the Natural History museum. There’s a surprisingly good turnout for a Sunday night. French is spoken all around me, perhaps a class was assigned to go. I was briefly transported back to my three months in Montreal eight years ago, and the dozens of French $2 matinees around which I structured my days. Would that I had enjoyed the actual film as much- cloying and grating, reminding me of the sublime Tennenbaums which it was not. An attractive grad student two rows ahead of me- also taking himself on a date?- was a distraction. As was the realization that I hadn’t eaten all day. Throughout the last hour I thought about the Beef Chow Fun at Hong Kong Noodles on Washington street. I rushed there after the film. It had gone out of business.

The season commences in earnest today. The idea of asking the businesslike Amy at West Bank Books if I can take her picture for my photo documentation project deflates me and I fear it’s dead in the water before it starts. Two calls on my voice mail, both asking me to fix wrong Yale discounts.

Starbucks has spread like a virus through the midwest. The new one in the Radisson is across the street from the funky Espresso Royale. This was always my coffee shop of choice, for the vibe and for the dreamy Jasper. (Nothing brightens a rep’s morning- well, this one’s- more than a beautiful boy in every coffee shop across the land). I hate what Starbucks symbolizes (wait- what does it symbolize?) but there are several problems: Espresso Royale is freezing. The chairs are uncomfortable. The coffee is bad, the service is slow. And now, there is no Jasper. SB is brisk and predictable, and meets all my minimal needs: open at 6, strong coffee, Times on sale. So I’m starting my Monday feeling like a dirty but happily caffienated hypocrite.

Jan 8

All of Minneapolis is sick and everyone I encounter coughs in my face. I can’t catch anything until the season is over in 13 weeks. I am overdosing on C.

I called on Terry at the University of Minnesota Bookstore. She is 50, a sleek and stylish ash blond with modern eyewear. She has a somewhat clipped, brisk manner that I at first interpreted as hostility but now appreciate as a component of her offbeat sensibility. Her cubicle is immaculate and ultra tidy. The only wall adornment is an autographed photograph of Gary Sinise- I wonder if it’s ironically intended. She has thoroughly read and vetted the catalog by the time I arrive, has looked up the track record on paperback reprints, and has circulated the catalogs to other staff for input. While she has pretty specific numbers in mind, she has smart questions and is willing to take my (mostly superfluous) suggestions seriously.

Our conversation shifts seamlessly on and off task- one minute we’re discusing the sales potential of a book on why smart people behave stupidly, the next, whether she made the right wallpaper selection for her hallway. But the digressions are always brief, and she, more often than I, lassos the meeting back to the books at hand. In short, a model buyer and an appointment to which I look forward.

Could there be a bigger contrast to the working style and persona of Bill, her predecessor? When I started this job four years ago, I was warned about him by various colleagues. Everyone employed strategies to deal with his eccentricities, the most common being “start the appointment as late in the day as possible because you’ll be there until six regardless.” But I found that asking for a 1:30 appointment only meant that we’d still be poring over catalogs at 9:00, though having moved from the chaos of his office to a dive bar on Central. He thought nothing of extending conversations late into the night.

Bill was my very first appointment as a rep. I was directed to the last cubicle down a long hallway that looked more like literary installation art than the office of a head buyer. Towering piles of old and new catalogs, stacks of galleys and finished books, computer printouts, flyers and faxes and paper of every sort. Overlaying it all was the usual extra-literary debris of the bookselling life- coffee mugs, styrofoam cups, candy bar wrappers, Indian carryout containers. Presiding over the mess, a small, olive-skinned, gnomish man of sixty or so. His extraordinarily sleepy eyes may have been literally sleepy, as he never slept. A dozen strands of hair were combed carefully across his bald head. He had been a buyer here for as long as anyone could remember, through the halcyon days when students and professors bought enough non-required academic books to warrant stocking them liberally.

To sell books to this man was an exercise in distraction avoidance. His expansive, roving mind was always reminding him of something loosely related to the book at hand. This season’s book on X would call forth anecdotes about the similar book on Y ten years ago, though “anecdote” is too generous a description of these Bill Moments, because the one thing these digressions usually lacked was a central anecdote. So much energy went into the process of recalling a title that by the time it emerged from his neuronal network, this alone was the reward, and why it was relevant in the first place was forgotten.

Bill displayed an astounding array of nervous tics. Articles could be written on the semiotics of his pencil-tapping alone. For a rep hoping to keep to a schedule, these various twitches were useful as signals of imminent digressions, though I was never able to figure out how to use the signal to head off the event. By the time Bill had looked up from the catalog page, stared off into the middle distance, and began tapping out a pencil solo on his desktop, it was too late. “What was the name of that book…….?” he would ask himself, and I saw the next fifteen minutes evaporate before my eyes. Refocussing him on the catalog before the phantom book had been identified was a skill I never perfected.

Aside from books, Bill’s passion was movies. He’d been written up by the Minneapolis Star Tribune for having seen more films than any living Minnesotan. Though I love movies too, and I was often tempted to bring them up, his encyclopedic collection of film references only added another universe of potential distraction, so I feigned ignorance.

I have never encountered a buyer before or since Bill with a more obsessive interest in section assignments. Every book has to be shelved somewhere, and some books come with a bewildering array of potential homes. He would pause for several minutes over where to shelve a highly eclectic or interdisciplinary title (which could describe my whole list some seasons). But unlike most buyers, who eventually settle on one idea of what a book is mainly about and put it there, Bill would add a copy to his order for every section of the store in which the book could plausibly be found. For a rep selling books with designations like “history/gender studies/performance/cultural studies/philosophy” ( a not atypical MIT press configuration), this could be good news indeed, as the one copy became a five. But as the book often went on to sell the one and four were returned, the store ended up with a cramped and bloated inventory. A situation completely reversed by the efficient Terry. It’s the rare book on her watch that finds itself in more than one category.

There are two other branches of the university store- one, at West Bank, specializes in political science, history and law, and the buyer, Amy, comes from an old Minneapolis bookselling family. She’s cautious and maybe a touch cynical but her predictions on what will sell and what will not are always on the money. The St Paul campus maintains a store that stresses hard sciences, environmental and agriculture. The buyer is an amiable knucklehead. (He skipped this season's Stephen Jay Gould masterpiece because “it isn’t scientific enough.”)

A very long and exhausting day, rewarded by szechuan dumplings and rice at the Rainbow Chinese bar. Followed that up with a bag of items from the most delicious Mexican bakery in the midwest, Marissa’s.

Jan 9

Ruminator Books day. Normally I like to dedicate the whole day to them but had to schedule both Minneapolis Institute of Art and Amazon Feminist Books for late afternoon. Though these are both short, they make my time with Tom seem rushed. He’s a great one for lingering over books in the catalog. He’s been a buyer for years, and his long institutional memory makes for associations and anecdotes that are actually interesting and useful. He loves university press books, and though he tries to be realistic about their market- Macalaster College is liberal but small- he’s always on the lookout for offbeat, quirky discoveries that the chain stores won’t appreciate. We share a tendency to “make” a book into the book we want it to be in pursuit of this quirky grail, and we try to check runaway enthusiasm. The store is great, it’s a relaxing and rewarding sales call, and I always end up buying too many books myself. But I’m worried about them. They are on and off credit hold constantly, the new Minneapolis store has been hemoraging money, and there’s big new deep pocket competition a mile away.

It is freakishly, record-breakingly warm, which is to say, in the forties. This is my sixth January here, and sometimes it never gets above zero.

I saw Gosford Park at the Uptown last night. Picked up sandwiches and chips at Lund’s and brought them back to the hotel. Forty-five new email messages, scanned the subject lines and names, and, finding nothing urgent or personal, left them unread till later. Briefly entered this as evidence against myself, but couldn’t decide between the “nobody really likes me” column or the “I’m not really that interesting.”

Jan 10

I woke at 4:10am. I turned on the television. A motivational speaker with a cloying manner was describing how to make self-fulfilling prophecy “work for you.” I turned on the computer to work on my orders and call reports. It’s Thursday already and if I am to find a way to make Minnesota into a four instead of five day trip I have to find a better way to keep up with paperwork and messages. I plow ahead and am reasonably caught up by 9:30.

The theme of the week is “tentative new shy boy buyers.” (Tom at Ruminator has assigned an assistant in training to MIT Press; and there’s a new guy at the Walker shop, where I saw the Arte Povera show while I waited for him). But this is much better than the week’s other theme, “jaded old absurd buyers.” For instance, the wholesaler The Bookmen, which could find not a single title worth ordering. This is a shame since their building, in the warehouse district, is a fascinating throwback, complete with Barton Fink-like hallways and beehived receptionist.

Tomand I had dinner at a pasta place in South Minneapolis. He is not a boring person but his most interesting stories tend to be about other people. For example, he says that Chris, a veteran Ruminator staff member, is now a Big Brother. After two years of vetting and investigation (he’s a young single male without kids and therefore suspicious), the organization gave him a ten year old. They are having a little trouble bonding. His kid wanted an ordinary hot chocolate, for instance, while Chris, a gourmet chef, insisted on fancy chocolate shavings and steamed milk. Chris is also interested in the free basketball tickets which Big Brothers are apparently able to score. I am in awe. What on earth would I do with a ten year old, even motivated by tickets? Tom thinks the gesture has something to do with a girlfriend who moved away, and may be an experiment in commitment.

Jerry, the excellent buyer at the excellent St Olaf Bookstore in Northfield, has a wife who is an animal cognition researcher. This semester she gave each of her students a pigeon. The assignment- the only one of the semester- is to teach their pigeon a behavior. I think about this all day.

salman rushdie on fear

2004-06-29T16:03:00.000-07:00

I will tell you a secret about fear: it is an absolutist. With fear it's all or nothing. Either, like any bullying tyrant, it rules your life with a stupid, blinding omnipotence, or else you overthrow it and its power vanishes in a puff of smoke.

And another secret. The revolution against fear, the engendering of that tawdry despot's fall, has more or less nothing to do with "courage." It is driven by something much more straightforward- the simple need to get on with your life.

-from The Moor's Last Sigh

anita brookner on love

2004-06-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

There are two kinds of love. There’s the one impossible love that really takes up all your dreams and all your longings and all your imaginings and that rarely resolves itself into anything practical. The love you settle for may be simply a form of friendship in which there’s no fear, no dread, no anxiety, and you’re very wise if you do settle for that, except that the true romantic never can. Romantic love is a terrible thing. It can make you commit follies. It is a form of madness, I think, and the people who are never visited by it are extraordinarily lucky. I don’t think it’s got anything to be said in its favor. Except it does sweep you up to a very exalted level of feeling. That may be valuable in itself. But it’s also very punishing. I think it’s more creative than the other kind. It enables you in an extraordinary way. It gives you powers that you didn’t know you had, because it’s being at an extreme pitch of something or other. You discover yourself.

victor's vs mad planet

2004-06-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

Victor’s vs. Mad Planet

I go to Victor’s- I call it “Victims”- and the Mad Planet, and all the black bars. I love black people.

People don’t seem so hung up on the existence of God anymore. They’re existential but it’s not about “does God exist”, it’s more about experiencing urban life.

I don’t change clothes when I change bars. Yeah, when I walk into Victor’s the red power ties say “oh, east side,” but it’s all a matter of conversation. These Victor’s people seem moronic to me, but maybe it’s just my prejudice.

I dress contemporary- too contemporary for them. They’re living in Saturday Night Fever. They’re just looking for sex. At Mad Planet they’re looking for bondage. There’s a bondage fashion show tonight. First prize is free body piercing. It’s a meeting of the subculture. You could be in an underground bar in Berlin or Copenhagen. But there’s probably a bar like Victor’s in Berlin too.

There’s no mysticism whatsoever at Victor’s. These people make money legitimately but at the Mad Planet it’s strictly illegitimate. That Victor’s is like a dinosaur- we got limos, we got roses, we got champagne, we got cocaine.

I’m both. My priority is acquiring. I want a good house but I don’t give a damn about a car. I want to accumulate wealth. I’m Victor’s and Mad Planet.

I feel more like an insider at Mad Planet. I know the lady who owns it.

I go to Boobie’s on Garfield. For $4.50 you get half a barbecued duck with greens. I feel like the inner city is part of Milwaukee. There’s a cultural life. There’s a bar with a stage where they put on plays. What’s it called? I forgot. Over by A.L. Smith. A. O. Smith? There’s a lot going on.

You don’t see many white people at Tap One or Boobie’s. They’re glad to see me. The Q & F Diner on Martin Luther King right before Keefe has the best dessert anywhere. Sweet potato pie for 95 cents. I buy a whole one. Banana pudding for a dollar. And fish!

I like people. Everywhere I go I talk to everybody. They say Walt Whitman was like that. He was so avant garde.

Webster’s café, overheard
Transcribed 12-7-91