The Yellowing Pages

I used to escape from the loud house-full of happy Philadelphia-area Italians into my grandmother's basement. Down I would float down over stairs that were wearied over the years into a flexing, barely perceptible bounce by playing shoes and late-to-work shoes and furniture-moving shoes. Down, I'd go, into the deep smell of earth, books, boxes and gently musty air that floated cool between cinder-block borders broken only by thick block glass squares in rectangular rows that let in just enough light to color the basement into more of a secret world than a scary place.

My retreat spot lay over by the little book case filled with aging paperbacks standing at attention under the shoulder-to-shoulder pressure of each other. I'd sit on the carpet under rafters hung with aged and drying red peppers...but first, to re-inspect the weathered half-barrel that hung on the wall.

It look very much like this more famous book. 

I'd open the clasp on the front and it would swing open to reveal gold-rimmed shot glasses and Scotch glasses and tumblers in neat semicircular rows, each half-sunken into its wooden nest. Just a peep, to see the secrets inside and to hear  the echoes of parties that had been centered around it as my impossibly-young grandparents poured ice-tinkling drinks for guests whom I pictured to be composed of black and white movie flickers; the women trim and jaunty in their wide hats, like Lois Lane from the George Reeves Superman show; the men in double-breasted suits with hats cocked sideways. The laughter muffled itself as I pulled the sides of the barrel to; stopped as I fastened the clasp.

Below crouched the book case, itself, swirled in antique yellow, its outer frame planed into symmetrical undulations, little circles carved into the corners by the cabinetmaker's hand. Sitting Indian-style (it was okay to call it that, then) on the old, green, sculptured carpet, I could see the book I had left from our last trip to visit Grandmom here in Northeast Philly. I'd left a toothpick in it to mark my place. On the cover was a painting of four men in a life raft, sprawled and tumbling, mouths shaped into replica fear as they tumbled amid white-capped oil-painted waves.

I opened it and fell back into its story of four American pilots shot down over the Pacific -- this book written decades before I was born by someone nobody remembers -- whose name might not even have been what was written -- but who managed to crank out solid pulp fiction for a living. The characters wielded names like "Nick Andersen" and "Captain Buck Blake" and they talked about cigarettes and "dames" as they snagged sea turtles and drank their blood or after they'd paddled off a school of tiger sharks. You could almost see the aesthetic way their shirts frayed; how they fiction-burned, instead of suffering under the misery of bubbling skin and cracking lips. They endured heroically in that silver-screen way.

But I don't remember the story -- that one or any of the other dozens I read -- much. What I do remember is how I always noticed the way the pages were framed in yellowing age. I would wonder how many year that took to happen; how old you'd needed to be to own a book that had turned yellow... Then, in the low light, I'd sink back into the adventure, still aware of the darkening edges cupping the words like, hands full of water, on the page.

Now, unlike most grown-ups, each year I suffer that same, sad, downward tug at my heart as the school year stands only a tomorrow away from me. And as I wait, inhaling the coquettish scent of fall that teases the time for school, I then exhale and look at the book I am now re-reading; a book that hand-holds its reader barefoot through the grass of summer into the day before the stiff new shoes of September have to cage the toes: Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. And I feel the hearts of Douglas and Tom Spaulding as their summer of 1928 closes like my Grandmother's old barrel. I feel like a boy each year at this time, filled with the leaden resignation that the freedoms of July and August are soon to be no more.

But as I look at the pages, a book that I bought myself, brand new, I see what I once used to think the province of those born in the black-and-white days: alas, the pages are beginning to yellow. My own pages. And so, the words in my own little boy heart are cupped by the gentle but ever progressing yellow edges of time...

The bookshelf is mine, now, and it stands in my living room, filled with books of poetry. Some day, my sons will find Keats there. Or Sandburg or Heaney. But the men in the life raft have long since gone to dust.

Book and Phone

Out of nowhere and all of a sudden, I carry my cell phone with me wherever I go. For years, I had a "flip phone" that I managed to leave at home 90% of the time. (My wife will vouch for this.) Now I have a smart phone that I rarely forget to bring with me.

We can chalk this up to an old dog learning a new trick; to the gradual cementing of a new paradigm inside his fuzzy sub-consciousness. Or, we can see it as a need for entertainment that is always right at hand.

Gottfriefd Schalcken

For me, that entertainment usually amounts to a "Words with Friends" game or an exploration of the Interwebs for new and nifty musical equipment -- so, good, edifying things (right?) -- but it is entertainment, nonetheless. I'll give myself a little credit by saying that when I am waiting in line to pick up the boys after a school activity, my phone often sits by me as I watch parents in car after car hunched over their tiny screens like glowing, new-age penitents. But, I still have the thing with me everywhere I go...

So, knowing, now, that it is possible to carry a thing with me out into the world all of the time without any real effort and inconvenience, I decided I am going to try something new. I'm going to start bringing whatever book I am reading with me wherever I go. 

I never did this on a regular basis because I thought is was inconvenient. But, how much worse is it that carrying a cell phone? So, when the other parents are flipping through Facebook, I will be flipping through Steinbeck. Yeah, the phone will be there, but the book will be "metal more attractive" to a guy who lives in the world by necessity but who is always looking for ways to be not of the world. (And, in the end, I will still get the text about picking up milk...) 

The Weight of a Real Book

A little while ago, I found a really nice quality copy of the complete collection of James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking" novels. (Most only know Last of the Mohicans from that series.) I recently bought it in a small antiques and second-hand book shop in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, a quaint former coal town in none other than Carbon County. The book cost me ten dollars.

Here it is (forgive me for the less-than-mediocre photos): 

I am currently reading The Deerstalker, the first adventure (chronologically, in terms of his fictional experiences, not by publication dates) of Natty Bumppo. It is always good to step back into a literary history into an earlier era of novels (in this case, the 1820s) when men exchanged long monologues at gunpoint or in the middle of frenzied melees; when realism came second to philosophy. It does require some inner reprogramming and patience, though. And one must always keep in mind that the sights that are described at sometimes laborious length by Cooper would have been fresh and astounding to a reader who had never ventured out of his own neighborhood, let alone into the deep American woods. It must have been jaw-dropping for a nineteenth century person to read about these things that you and I have seen in movies (or in person) our whole modern lives, easily traveled...

But what really occurred to me while reading this, is the history of the physical book, itself. It is no secret that I am an e-reader avoider. I don't begrudge anyone the benefit of the e-reader and I judge them not. For me, though, reading a book on an e-reader is completely unattractive. This, of course, comes down to mere preference. Carry on as you will. 

One thing, however, that one will never "feel" with an e-reader is the physical history of the book. This copy of the Leatherstocking novels is sixty-one years old, having been printed in Tennessee in 1954. I have no idea how it ended up on a bookshelf in Jim Thorpe, Pa. in 2015, but I can feel the energy of the book's travels as I turn the pages, in my house in southern New Jersey. Were the chances of this book having made it into my house inevitable or were they improbable? Depends how one feels about fate. (All I know is that if my wife had called me to see a cool antique bottle in the back of the shop at precisely the right time, that book would still be on the shelf and might have remained there for decades.)

Either way, the book is considerably older than I am. It has been in the hands of other people. It has deafly heard the conversations of thousands who didn't know it was listening. It has been ventured into by other minds and other imaginations that have sculpted its characters into their own personal visions. It has been touched, enjoyed, hated, or tossed aside in disinterest by God knows how many people...

And, now, it waits for me, on a table, next to my reading chair, on a rainy day in October. Tonight, I will pick it up, feel its weight and turn the thick pages. For me, that is important. Sure, I am personifying a book. But if you reduce it to the simplest level, a book has weight, texture, scent and presence. An e-book is just a coagulation of light. For me and for many others, a book isn't just its ideas; it's a physical presence in my life; it's a thing with an experience and a journey that doesn't end with me. It will live on after I am gone, but part of me will remain in its pages. 

A Farewell to the Big Bookstore

I have always loved bookstores, especially the little ones that hold hidden discoveries and the bigger independent ones that contain carefully selected stock of the essentials. In the not-so-old days, I even liked the mega stores, for a different reason: You could usually find the book you needed.

I love to find the out-of-the way stores, still, but it has also been a practice of my family to sometimes go to dinner and then to the big bookstore to pick up a new treat, especially as summer kicks in. But it's just not fun, for me, anymore. That makes me pretty sad.

I hear the remaining big bookstores are still doing well and I am glad. I'm also glad the book is faring well against the e-book. I realize, however, that they are doing well because they are stocking what sells: "Teen Paranormal" and various other popular series. As for the rest? Forget it.

If you are a real reader with a literary background, don't consider looking for an out of the way Theodore Dreiser; you'll find only Sister Carrie. Jack London? Forget The Sea Wolf; you'll find only White Fang. I suppose they need to save room for Fifty Shades of Grey and the latest installment of Young, Handsome Vampires on Prom Night. (Okay -- I made that one up.)

My kinda bookstore. 

I'm not trying to be curmudgeonly. I have no problem with light reading or with popular fiction. I just hate to see it push out the wonderland of undiscovered stuff I could once wander through at a Borders or Barnes and Noble. Last trip, I had a heck of a time finding something I wanted to read. I did wind up finding Vonnegut's Mother Night, which was an exceptional book, but this was only after I had slogged my way up to various other dead-ends in pursuit of authors whose work I wanted to explore more deeply. I had "settled" because Vonnegut was in stock in numbers few other top-notch authors are.

I understand that, from a business perspective, bookstores are doing what they need to do to survive and I would rather see them survive than bend to my stuffy will and fold -- I just wish it didn't have to be so.

So, now, it's either trips into the city (and good luck there, too, finding the little shops) or it's onto the web to get what I need. There used to be two little bookstores five minutes from my house. I just miss them and the trips on my bike, on foot or through the heavy summer evening air that made them feel like a cool conclusion to an occasional little quest.

I miss a lot of stuff, but I guess that's getting older.

Complaints of a Nobody

I am currently reading a masterpiece: Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose. The other night, while reading, I was compelled to post this to Facebook:

"From her temperate veranda she now saw only void where the valley used to be--a gray, smoky void into which she peered, hunting distance and relief from the mirage of mountains that quivered around her with visible heat. The wind that breathed past her and moved the banal bright geraniums in their pots brought a phantasmal sound of bells, and expired again, tired as a sigh." -- Wallace Stegner, from Angle of Repose. (And people read Twilight.)

So, okay. Maybe it is a little stuffy of me to say that. But it is frustrating to see people like, say, Dan Brown (and the Twilight writer, whose name I can't think of and refuse to look up) making a fortune with the writing skills of a sixth grader. 

I know that, in the end, it is not the prose that your average reader is interested in, but, are they even aware of prose like Stegner's? If they were, would they still be able to tolerate Dan Brown, or Twilight?

"You Can't Sniff a Kindle"

Sorry I'm late. I'm recovering from a depressing night at the bookstore.

We went to Barnes and Noble. While I prefer the dusty old shops of New York and Philly to the crispy-clean rows and coffee corners of the mega stores, it was still always nice to know I could get what I needed when I needed it with a short car trip. Now, not so much...

We needed books for my sons' summer reading projects and I needed a new escape.

Time was, my wife and sons and I would accrue a pile of books and spend way too much money every time we went to the bookstore. Now, not so much...

Karen couldn't find a book she was looking for, even though it was listed as "in stock." They had none of the  Lloyd Alexander books (!?) that I really wanted my older son to consider reading (somewhere along the line I lost or gave away my first volume of the Prydain series...)

Two Lazy Passions

Did you ever have a problem (or tendency) and wonder whether it is a significant weirdness on your part or if it is, in the end, quite common?

I never read much as a little kid. In fact, I barely read at all. My parents once requested a conference with my third grade teacher because of this. I mean, I could read -- even scored well on comprehension and interpretation tests -- but I just wouldn't. The teacher said, quite prophetically, "I think this boy is going to be a reader -- don't push him -- you might kill his enthusiasm. He'll read when he is ready." Well, a hundreds of books and a bachelor's and master's in literature later, I'd have to say she got it right.

I do remember two "pre-reader" experiences with books inspire my opening question, here. Once, when I was sick in bed, my mom bought me a book called The Black Stallion. (Kid meets horse; kid becomes a jockey; horse wins all kinds of races; kid and horse solve mystery -- that kind of thing.) I read the whole thing in a few days. I loved it, beginning to end. When I was well, I bought the second book: The Black Stallion and Satan. (Satan was a horse, not the Lord of Eternal Darkness.)

I put off reading that book for months. I wanted to read it. I was well-aware that I loved to read. But -- it just seemed like so much work to read a book... Eventually, I read it and I enjoyed the heck out of it.

Child Wisdom from To Kill a Mockingbird

Jem and Scout, from the film starring
Gregory Peck

Somehow, I never read To Kill a Mockingbird until now. Go ahead. I'll wait until everyone is done lambasting me. [Looks at sky. Whistles. Bounces up and down on toes. Listens. Waits for a guy in Gdansk to get in his last barbed verbal missile.] But I'm glad.

Experiencing the book, now, as an adult, might be better than having read it, as many of our kids do in the U.S., in the eighth grade. I might have just chalked it up as a good read that I remembered fondly, had I read it then. Now, I am nothing short of in love with the book. As far as I'm concerned, it is just about a perfect novel.

That said, the book is sad, in lots of ways. But, most powerfully, it explores, through the eyes of children (eyes which, sadly, must be opened to such things), the general awfulness and superficiality of people. Of late, and as a consistent theme on Hats and Rabbits, the idea that society and groupthink are bad things has weighed heavily upon my disposition. I feel much as Jem must in this excerpt from the novel, after he and his little sister, Scout, witnessed the unfair trial of Tom Robinson, a black man in the white-dominated Southern town of Maycomb, in 1935. Scout starts:

Losing Touch

We're losing something. We're losing reality in its most concrete sense.

Scott Warnock, a friend and colleague of mine at When Falls the Coliseum recently wrote an article about the ways in which technology drives us crazy, "byte by byte." Much of what he referenced came down to things going wonky beyond our control: computers pooping out for no reason or bills that mysteriously gain charges because of automated glitches.That sort of thing. But as I read his article, I got to thinking about the physical side of what he addressed in terms of remote interactions.

I've written before about books versus e-readers. I've made it clear that, although I am a techno-savvy person -- someone who loves what technology can do for us -- I draw the line at books. I will never own a Kindle or anything like it. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most important one is that I like to hold books in my hands. I like to turn pages.

"Room in New York," by Edward Hopper

Touch and texture are fading farther away from daily interaction and the change in the delivery of literature is a good example of this.

Don't Fear the Weirdness

My wife and I bought a book that we both wanted to read. She started it first, which was okay with me, because I was in the middle of another book. As it turns out, I finished mine before she finished the new one. She had been held up by everyday stuff, so it was slow-going for her. She suggested I just start reading the book, too -- she wouldn't be getting back into it for a while.

I couldn't do it.

Yes, I realize this is weird, but I have never been accused of fearing weirdness. Why don't I feel right about reading a book someone else is in the middle of? 

I mean, it is not like eating with someone else's spoon. But it feels that way, a little. (By the way, I have no problem eating off of my wife's spoon. I hope this doesn't spawn an international gag reflex. Then again, perhaps this could become the Internet's version of "the wave".)

I think it may be a manifestation of greed, really. If we rent a cozy little house in Provence for a week, I don't want to share it with another family -- it's our house for the week. Maybe it is the same with the book: I want it to be my intellectual, material and emotional property, alone. For some reason it is okay to share the thing by talking about it afterward -- no problem. But I don't want someone else's filthy little brain-fingers paddling through the book's ideas while I am. (For the record, if my wife had brain-fingers, I am sure they would be clean and sparkly. I'm talking about everyone else. But not you. Just those other people. Keep your brain-fingers clean, I say. But I digress . . .) I want the ideas in the book to be mine alone for a few weeks.

Now, you could argue that there are other people reading the same book at the same time across the planet, but this is different. I'm not talking about multiple copies of the book. I'm talking about that particular book. The tactile object, in and of itself, has meaning to me. See, I have never been a cut-to-the-chase type. Nothing I ever do is about simply doing it. Books are an experience for me, not just a way to gather knowledge or to be entertained. Somehow, they represent more than just a vehicle for ideas -- they're like my tree-fort; my refuge; my Shangri la, if you will (even if you won't). I'm cool with occupying it before and after other people, but I don't want pass them in the hall on my way to the shower.

WHADDYOU THINK: What weird, yet explainable, hang-ups do you have or have you seen?