Category Archives: writing

The Monday Book: BOBCAT AND OTHER STORIES by Rebecca Lee

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World Book Night books tend to be a mixed bag. For those unfamiliar, WBN is an annual celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday, in April, when people sign up to give away a box of twenty books. About 30 different titles are among the giveaways, a mix of new releases, recent bestsellers, and classics.

Also some older, past-best sellers. Last year, we had one giver bring his box back and say, “Forget it. I can’t pay people to take this book.” Ouch, man….

So this year, I was wary of the selection. But as often happens, a few people didn’t pick up their boxes, so we opened them and set them out on a WBN shelf inside our shop door, with a note, “Please take!”

And when Jack and I fled to our cabin for a little R&R over Memorial Day weekend, we grabbed a copy of each. One of these was BOBCAT AND OTHER STORIES, a slim volume that came out in 2013, by Rebecca Lee.

What a pleasant surprise! Literate, feminist-oriented, mostly academic-setting stories that circle the human condition in amazing ways. Lee’s writing is insightful, packing information into tight little sentences. She never insults her readers with too much symbolism or other written equivalents of “see, here’s what you should think about this character, dear little readers.” In fact, her stories are a lot like looking at a puzzle with one piece missing, and her story is the hole defining that piece. Less is more with this writer.

The title story is about a Manhattan dinner party involving authors, a shared editor, spouses and lawyers. It’s pure dead brilliant in capturing the way life hits you from behind while you’re focusing on something else. I also got a big kick out of the subtle author jokes. Yeah, at the drop of a hat we will expound our themes ad infinitum. We know; go ahead; make fun of us….

“The Banks of the Vistula” was one of the funniest (as in oddest) stories about plagiarism ever. “Slatland” turned the wronged wife theme on its head. But my favorite was probably “Min,” exploring the new way in which men, women, arranged marriage, East and West are not so much colliding as just sliding around each other these days. The American protagonist in “Min” is best friends with the Hong Kong-American title character, and winds up choosing his arranged-marriage bride, a Philippine nanny who thinks he’s a creep. The juxtaposition of power relations, history, and basic human feelings in this story provokes the kind of laughter that you later analyze: uhh, should that be funny, or more sad?

Lee’s stories prove that it’s a mad, crazy, mixed-up world where almost every traditionally-defined relationship between people, ethnicities, and nationalities is now up for grabs. Which makes the stories something between scattershot, slapstick and searing.

 

Caretaking the Eternal Library of Humanity

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My friend Anita out in Kansas is looking to relocate the bookshop she manages, Al’s Old and New Books. She has discovered that some people think used bookshops are…. downmarket, while others prefer the term “passe.”

Bollocks!

Jack and I have often commented that we oversee a library of ever-changing leftovers, some of which have mass appeal, some of which have esoteric appeal. But the reason we like what we do is that we’re not full of the latest bestseller, face outward on the aisle so mega-shoppers walking to the mall can be enticed by “Oh, I heard about that on Twitter!” impulse moments.

We have the long-term, hardcore stuff. The 1970s classics on Marxism, the Leif Ungers and Robert Fords and Lisa Changes. People who write well but disappeared into the well of marketing madness with nary a splash. My agent Pamela and I were talking one day about the “nebulous” position of used book stores in the publishing world. “After all, NYC doesn’t make any money from them,” she said, but then added, “but we all benefit from them. You are the caretakers of humanity’s eternal library, aren’t you? Like a benevolent dragon trying to get the gold horde out there instead of sit on it.”

Used book stores are the place where the sounds of silence outweigh the shrieks of hawkers telling you why THIS BOOK is the Next Great Thing. You can look for yourself–and thus see for yourself–in a used books shop. In a society that equates old with “has been” rather than “wisdom,” used books shops are a place for those who know when not to swallow a line.

We love running one. And this week, we’ve sold an amazing number of  what from a mainstream point of view would be “nobody’s gonna buy these” books. We sold about 20 volumes of philosophy. No, really, PHILOSOPHY! Mostly 1960s textbooks and treatises.

We sold a great wheen of French novels, both translated and in the original language. And we sold a set of plays written in the 1700s. A cheap, simple copy for someone who wanted to look at their structure. $3.20 and out the door she went.

This is part of why used book shops matter. It’s nice to have big well-lit shops with the bestsellers in them at full retail, but it’s also nice to have a dowdy little community center where you can think for yourself. That, and the $1.50 cuppa and the comfy couches and the cat option and the fact that if you come in and say, “Oh crap, I left my wallet at home,” we will say, “Fine, we’ll write it in the ledger and you can pay us next time you come.” And the customer, who only gets down from Ohio four times a year, stares at you like you’ve gone mad, and comes back two months later and pays up.

This is why it’s important for us to be here. Downmarket, my arse. Up the caretakers of the eternal library of humanity!