Despite a tense moment when I
went into the tunnel with a Yankee on base and Hideki
Matsui about to come up to bat, I successfully picked up
Nancy at South Station and listened to most of the 12
innings on the car radio. Nancy got to listen to the end
of the 12th with me and we made it to the Furball in
plenty of time to bid on all manner of auction items I
may or may not have wanted. Though I do admit that we
spent some of the Furball sitting off by ourselves
drinking designer soda and talking about books instead of
constantly checking on my silent auction bids.
When the Red Sox hang on to beat
the Yankees 3-2 in a 12 inning grinder of game it's hard
to be too down about the demise of civilization. Books
are still readily available, baseball on the radio is
still the soundtrack of Boston from April to October, and
BiB is coming home from the that nasty war place in
southwest asia. I realize that publishers, chain
bookstores, and librarians have no role in whether or not
baseball gets broadcast on the radio or BiB gets a job in
a war zone or a peace zone (is peace the opposite of war?
think about that), and I realize that at least
Mr.
Usher isn't blaming
feminism for the upcoming twilight of civilization like
some local bishop type guy who shall remain nameless -- I
mean come on, man, the only people nowadays who don't
believe in equal rights for women are the Taliban, what
were you thinking?!
Still wound up from the Furball
bidding frenzy last night, we didn't go right to sleep. I
read aloud to Nancy from Life with the Ladies of
Llangollen, mostly the recipes (or receipts as they
were called back then) and monthly lists of expenditures.
People certainly consumed a lot of lard back in the 18th
century! One of the recipes called for slathering a fowl
in lard and wrapping it in paper before cooking. That
sounded distinctly unappetizing. Not that grossing each
other out by reading 18th century Welsh recipes does much
to save Literature with a capital L.
I'm not sure what it would take to
restore civilization and literature to the golden age of
which Mr. Usher and Sven Birkerts so lament the passing.
Was the golden age of literature also a golden age of
peace and justice? Are we so sure used books are all it
takes to stimulate independent thought? Has nobody ever
been persuaded by propaganda before? It takes more than
books... Although books probably could've helped the
aforementioned bishop type guy as if he had a dictionary
handy he might not have listed feminism in with the drug
culture among the evils of modern society. But presumably
dictionaries will still be available in the twilight of
civilzation.
We listened to the Red Sox vs. the
Yankees again today on the car radio on the drive to
Boston for the promised return trip to AVH. Pedro is
pitching well so any lasting curse from too many family
gatherings in a row at La Madre's seems to have worn off.
BTW, the Easter family gathering seemed to have the
opposite effect on Curt Schilling -- of course it helps
that we all sat around the TV munching asparagus and
watching every pitch instead of sitting down to dinner in
the dining room :-) And so today, though it's raining in
New York and civilzation is ending on Newbury Street, the
Red Sox beat the Yankees 2-zip and all (well most) is
right with the world.
As I paid for my copy of Women
and Thomas Harrow (AVH didn't have HM Pulham
Esq., which is the other John Marquand title I
wanted), the proprietor told me that the AVH web site
will still be selling books and they'll still do book
searches, it's only the brick and mortar incarnation of
AVH that's closing. So, silly me, I answered "So the
brick and mortar store closing is a sad thing but at
least it's not the end of civilization." Silly me. He
replies: "I don't like to argue with a customer but it
is." I don't argue. I begin to suspect that John Usher is
a pseudonym. He puts my purchase in a plastic bag and I
make some inane comment about how I need the bag because
it's about to rain but it hasn't started yet. He mentions
that the Yankees got rained on today. As if the rain
doesn't fall on the Red Sox too? Or is it just that a Red
Sox victory makes the rain seem minor? Blue the cat puts
in an appearance and I walk over to pet him. Civilzation
remains civilized to the very end, I guess.
I left Accordion
Guy out of the list of
blogs bemoaning the closing of AVH and the resulting
twilight of civilization. Actually, there were a lot more
blogs and journals that wrote about this, but yesterday's
list was only of the ones that showed up in my search to
determine the identity of John Usher. Someday in 2525 or
so, academics, if there are still universities, will mine
the ancient bits for clues about the last days of
civilization. They will marvel that books still mattered
in the early 21st century.Then they'll curl up by their
own snug firesides and read the Icelandic sagas or
Shakespeare or Basho in finely bound paper books with
serif fonts by the flickering light of the peat
fire.
Meanwhile, we go across the street
to Trident and order some of those exquisite fried
beets.