The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This was adopted in 1865, seventy-four years after the first ten amendments—a full lifetime–and at the cost of far more than the 620,00 lives recently lost in the Civil War.

Slavery, the forcible enslavement of one human being for the purpose of another, is variously defined as bondage, servitude, and thralldom–all aspects of ownership, subjection, control, and captivity.

Now the question arises: what part of this idea, if any, do you not understand today?

Let’s make this personal. Speaking at the safe remove of the third person is a waste of breath and ink or ether. I am personally interested in the answer. What is your difficulty with this Constitutional prohibition on slavery or the definition given here? Do you disagree with it? A part of it? What part is that?

The questions are not rhetorical, nor is the issue. For instance, in my youth I first encountered the vague idea that slavery was having to do anything one does not wish to do. The irrational link between the necessity of supporting oneself by whatever means was legally and morally available, and the forcible enslavement of another human being to do your work for you, was just one of many incoherent ideas being bandied about by self-appointed intellectuals at the time. The simple fact that it was the work of others that supported them while they toyed with such foolishness seemed to escape their awareness.

The fellow who once said, “Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that as a government grows, liberty decreases,” knew a great deal about this. He was the author of a Declaration of Independence from the forced authority of British rule. And he was a slaveholder. He looked into the eyes of slaves. He spoke to them and heard their complaints.

Unreasonable and emotional prejudices shape most political beliefs. Few people take the time to examine the consequences of their wishes. There are literally thousands of bad concepts for the government of society and only a few that seem remotely promising. And each and every one of the dozens that I have studied have essential flaws. The problems almost always arise in the application of philosophy to the realities of life. Human beings can be irrational and thus undependable. The sum total of human knowledge is vastly overwhelmed by the magnitude of human ignorance, but we must act on what we know or die.

The Greeks (together a veritable cornucopia of bright ideas) had the interesting concept of assigning their governance to a body of wise elders. The idea came apart in less than a generation because the sympathies of one elder conflicted with another and the oligarchy quickly gave up benevolence for self-aggrandizement. People tend to look out for their own welfare first. It’s a fact. It’s essentially a good fact. Otherwise more people would get run over in the street.

Once, just about the time the Thirteenth Amendment became law in the United States, a couple of Germans tried to codify another political philosophy. The idea of the Germans was that everyone would be equal by force. One person could not work harder and thus gain an advantage. Another person could not speculate on the intelligence or ignorance of their fellows and thus attain riches. When attempted afterward, as would predictably happen in such a structured concept of society, some people were quickly more equal than others and these showed no more wisdom than the wise oligarchs of ancient Greece.

Despite the repeated failure in practice of the political ideals designed by those German geniuses, there are many who suppose that the idea of forced equality still has merit–that we should all be slaves to each other. It is just a matter of correct application. A few million more lives (more or less) and they will get it right after all. The use of force and the absolute corruption of such power does not disturb their thinking.

A couple hundred years ago a small gathering of Americans, including Mr. Jefferson, had the bright idea of maximizing human nature. Let people be people. Use the law not to restrict human beings but to restrict government. It seemed to them that whatever human beings did, the one thing that always went really awry was their government. One nasty fellow might kill another for his crop, but this infraction could be dealt with by the community. However, no one community could set itself against the power of a nation-state that wanted everyone’s crop. Dealing with individual wrong was easier than dealing with the evil of entire armies. Let government be the restriction of authority, not the governed. This was a stroke of true genius. It hadn’t been done before.

After thousands of years and tens of thousands of political experiments, it had never occurred to anyone that the best thing laws could do effectively was to limit government. Many practical applications had been tried–in England for instance–to restrict those tendencies which might result in the dictatorship of the many by the few, but now the better of those laws could be used within a larger framework which offered a wholly new concept of liberty and of human freedom.

Sadly, change does not happen overnight. The vested interests of Thomas Jefferson and others in the existing slavery persisted. It took almost four generations and horrors unimagined by Jefferson on his little mountain to rid us of this most fundamental evil of all. But it was done. When persuasion failed, civil war was necessary. The great Greeks had failed this test, but, at last, this battle was won here and the Thirteenth Amendment was written.

Still it must be asked, ‘How could a man as smart as Jefferson have been a slaveholder.’ The answer is too simple for some to contemplate. His slaves were a large portion of the value of his property. His property represented his inheritance and the security of his family. It was against his short-term self-interest to give them up. Ideals were set aside for expediency. Being smart was not a guarantee of being right or good.

Another slaveholder, Andrew Jackson said, “eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty.” Vested interests grow. Human beings are really no smarter now than they were two hundred years ago or two thousand years ago. The toys may be better now because of an accumulation of technical knowledge (and an established acceptance of the freedom to use that knowledge), but human beings still look out for their own interest first. And the vastness of their own ignorance inevitably means they will often see their interests unwisely.

This truth was noted by our forefathers many times in their writings. Their idea was that the best government would not be the self-interested rule of a single king, or even a small coterie of oligarchs, but of the broadest gathering of the nation as a whole, and thus prejudice would balance itself for all.

For their part, the politicians charged with overseeing the process of this relatively free society look out for their own interests first as well. Power is the soul of politics. Money may be the mother’s milk, but power is the means to the end. Re-election is the first priority. Those who designed this government two hundred years ago discussed these concerns in depth in the Federalist Papers. They knew it would happen. Their answer was to write restrictions on the politicians. The thirteenth amendment was finally one of those restrictions. Yet even then they correctly feared that human nature would find a way to spoil their purpose.

When I was a youth the government had the power to draft me into military service, a leftover authority from a world war that was supposedly won before I was born. They had the legal right to my body and my labor. I objected then, but not conscientiously. At the time a conscripted army was considered the only way for a great nation to secure a military force sufficient to carry out its aims. But it was costly, inefficient, and produced second-rate soldiers who felt like the slaves they were and did their duty grudgingly. For their own part, the military felt emboldened in the power this holding provided and proceeded accordingly. Only after a great failure in Vietnam and national disillusionment was the idea given up before a rising tide of discontent and the all-volunteer army was re-born. Today that army is by far the best and most efficient on Earth. Sadly, the very quality of the force has emboldened politicians again to use it unwisely.

Slavery as an institution was common over most of the earth’s surface, land and sea, when the Thirteenth Amendment was written into the Constitution. Today chattel slavery is still a practice common in many places. Thankfully, in the nation where I had the good fortune to grow up, such slavery was long gone but for the echo of prejudice that made it possible in the first place. However, the belief that some people were inferior to others was still around and about. And out of such remnant ideas, there will always be vested interests busily trying to establish dominion for government which will further institutionalize the enslavement of some for the good of others.

The concept that because some people will not thrive in an unstructured society, or have physical or mental handicaps, others must be forced to support them, is an old one. Plato discussed this in the Republic two thousand years ago. Jefferson even used the idea as an excuse for not giving his own slaves their freedom. Government is necessary to take care of those who are unable to help themselves, as determined by that same government. That the exercise of such power will lead inevitably to that same government securing its own rule with ever greater restrictions, and the assumption of the reins of authority in the hands of a few, is well established. Simply, the dictatorship grows out of fear for the loss of its own power.

We are still an ignorant lot. What we don’t know is far more than what we can imagine. But we have learned some things, and we cannot ignore this knowledge now just to achieve another vaguely supposed ideal. Better that we expend that energy on solving those matters of ignorance that clearly plague us. As ever, people will act in what they believe to be their own self-interest. If the case is made that they should give up some measure of freedom to buy an equal amount of security (say, health insurance) they may accept this bargain as fair, without understanding the larger context and failing to see that such power has a cost far beyond monetary value.

A commonly heard refrain in my lifetime is some version of ‘They have it, therefore I should have it too.’ This is not a result of some logic or understanding. It is another example of simple self-interest. The reasons for the restrictive clauses of the Constitution are to inhibit government from buying power by dispensing favors to satisfy such urges. Self-interest cannot be done away with, nor even well managed, but it certainly should not be catered to. It is only the amalgam of a nation of self-interested individuals which will amount to the balance of a free and open society first imagined in the Constitution. If we are each free to pursue our own happiness unrestricted by the wishes of others, we may achieve the greatest result.

The most fervent religious beliefs make use of self-interest to establish their power over the natural interests of the individual. Heaven awaits. Others be damned. Yet, what most becomes a free and open society is a Christian ethic of ‘do to others what you would have them do to you.’ And this is self-interest at it utmost.

Over the last few generations, in the name of good (always the ‘common’ good) government has assumed ever greater power to dispense favors to some at the expense of others. What has been achieved in that time is a sort of virtual slavery of the few for the many. If you don’t pay your taxes you will be punished or go to jail. There are immediate benefits to paying your taxes in the form of ‘gifts’ from the government, and fewer benefits for those who delay their gratification for long term goals and work to achieve their own dreams.

As always, some being more equal than others, there are those who pay little or no tax but enjoy the benefits. This is the case with the very poor and the very rich. And the very rich, who commonly exercise the control of government, use the spectre of the suffering poor to moralize for their ever greater reach. It is not accidental that there are as many poor today (percentage wise—there are far more in actual numbers of course) as there were in 1965 at the start of the current regime of our welfare state. Presidents and Congresses come and go but the welfare state always grows, and so grows the number of administrators to carry out the self-interest of that government.

Now, the latest reach of government is not unexpected. It is fifteen years in the making. The government wants further rights to your body. They will tell you how to care for your health and the means you may use to do it. But those in the middle, not employed by that government (but who will be forced to pay for this new authority), have objected. And for this they are reviled by those in power, and by those who think they benefit by that authority. How could anyone object to such a good idea? Don’t they understand? It’s for their own good. No! They are too stupid. They must be made to be good!

And they will be. By any means.

It is a contradiction flavored by irony that those in power who fear the objections are the first to accuse the objectors of violent intent and call for even more restrictions to put them in their place. The power is, as always, in the hands of the masters. This tableau has played out many times over history. Perhaps it is in our short-term interest to lay back and endure it. But the slave does not forget that they are in bondage. And the time will come.

The trend of history, punctuated by revolt and renewal, has been undeniably toward greater human freedom because it inevitably benefits the greatest number. Being naturally short-sighted in our ignorance the majority may succumb again and again to the promises of political sirens, but it is ever more difficult now to pretend our demands for gifts are anything less than the graft and patronage of a democracy gone awry. As Tocqueville warned, voting ourselves gifts has a predictable end. Bankruptcy. National failure. And revolution. It has happened before.

To the consternation of homogenous European nations long used to social engineering and the management of authority, Americans are by nature more independent and diverse. The immigrants who have made us were those who had the courage to come. This is no small matter. We are not smarter, but we are by nature more difficult and more willing to see our self-interest in unusual ways. Though significantly diminished, there is still a continuing ethic of delayed gratification to achieve long-term desires.

Those who now sneer at the ‘tea party’ movement should note that these are the people who are paying the taxes on which the government, its minions, and its gift giving depends. They are the true workers for whom those Germans feigned concern. They are capable. They are resourceful. And each insult delivered by those who govern only weakens the bonds which tie them to their masters.

In my short lifetime I have witnessed the repeated failure of the welfare state and the ‘Detroitization’ of great cities, as well as the demonstrated rejuvenation of others through common free enterprise. The fear of failure keeps many people from trying themselves. The messiness and unpredictable nature of an open society bothers many who crave safety and security above all else. The phoenix-like transformation of New York City between 1975 and 1995 may seem like magic to anyone who did not do the back-breaking work to achieve it. Now, with the accession of managers to the offices of innovators, New York has begun a decline once again. But it must be remembered that it required the bankruptcy of 1975 to open the minds of the politicians to the alternatives that made 1995 possible.

I do not wish such a bankruptcy on my nation now, in these troubled times. There are those who will take full advantage of the moment. But we have been here before–back when garbage tumbled unrestrained through the mean and graffiti stained streets of New York. Politicians wallowed then in their power as they condemned the citizens for our ‘national malaise,’ and preached ever-greater sacrifice. It is astonishing to me that my own prosperous and overfed generation does not want to remember even so recent a past. It is incomprehensible that they should condemn their own children back to the future that is upon us.

So I ask again, what is it about the concept of slavery that you do not understand? Do you not realize the power over your body that you have just given to others who do not have your best interest at heart? You do in fact have the government you deserve. You voted for it, because you were looking out for your own interests–for yourself. You chose these masters.

But I did not. And there are others who did not.

For my part, I object to my fellow citizens who so easily give up their freedoms for promises and false premises. But perhaps that slaveholder Mr. Jefferson, like the slaveholding Greeks of so long ago, had insight for this as well: “A little rebellion is a good thing,” and “every generation needs a new revolution.”

Slavery is the most common system of organized labor in human history. That it persists today in all its forms is a testament to its usefulness and success. That it exists at all in the United States today would be a surprise to most readers of this essay.

It may come as a further surprise to some that we are all going to die. Some sooner than others. And a few other matters might be pertinent. Most of what people think they know is wrong. Life is not fair, nor will it ever be. Right and wrong are not arbitrary, nor are they absolute. The first thing they should be worried about is their own ignorance. The second thing to worry about is the ignorance of the person who will determine what happens to them next.

The subject here is slavery, the forcible enslavement of one human being for the purpose of another. The problem for me in discussing it only begins with suggesting that most of my readers are at least indentured and probably worse. I can only guess how they will accept the categorization of their own bondage.

There are issues in our time which can no longer be civilly discussed. Abortion, for instance. Opening such topics produces a visceral response. Any chance for rational parley is immediately lost. There are words which have been removed from our grammar. They cannot be spoken. There are names which have been demonized beyond any possibility of true appreciation. This is the way it once was with the peculiar institution of slavery.

But the history of slavery is elsewhere being re-written even as I address my topic. And more importantly, the language is being altered to suit vested interests.

The art of relabeling and calling the forced labor of one human being to benefit another by a different name, of finding excuses which make it more palatable, and of inventing political necessities which are schooled into the popular culture to make the act acceptable by the slaves themselves is just a part of the many unexamined atrocities of modern life. But most people don’t want to hear anything about it, much less deal with it.

This last bit is essentially an example of how much of established authority is endangered by any closer examination. If it is not spoken of, it does not exist. Thus, my purpose here is only to draw attention to it, not fulfill the scholarly or scientific functions of mapping or perform a bloody dissection.

A key mistake would be to assume the silence is part of a conspiracy. But conspiracy is not necessary when the act itself has been redefined. The dialectic of modern slavery is a part of the fabric of our society. It is a profoundly revealing phenomena that many people who would be harshly critical of Thomas Jefferson for being a slaveholder can accept the idea that half of the adult population in the United States today must work to support the other half. And not by choice, but by force. Any direct and explicit poll of the citizenry concerning taxation proves this. The excuses fly. The fact remains. Most people, even many of those who must work twice as hard to support the others, believe in their own de-facto slavery.

‘Chattel’ slavery is outright ownership of another human being as property. This is less common today, though it still exists in parts of Asia and Africa. A primary difference between chattel slavery and modern slavery is that with ownership comes value and thus some care for the property, as well as responsibility, however meager. State controlled slavery is no more kind, and usually less. Human beings are used for whatever purposes the political authority sees fit. ‘For the good of the Fatherland’ has moved many armies. Even the Generals sent their sons into the machine guns at Somme in 1916.

For more than half of the Nineteenth Century the issue of slavery was argued until the very topic became anathema in polite company, just as certain topics are today. But with the passing of a hundred and sixty years, and the assumption of the final defeat of slavery in our Civil War so long ago, the issue has cooled. That our society is still dependent on many of the mechanisms of slavery is generally ignored.

There are many approaches to the matter as a whole. Let me address just a few that come easily to mind—my mind of course. You may have your own examples.

The ‘mechanizing’ of modern life is the great failed theme of the Twentieth Century. The State needs the workers to produce the goods and pay the taxes which allows the state to function. Charlie Chaplin comically lampooned the dilemma in Modern Times. His imagery was precisely hewn to the sense of many that their value as individuals had been sacrificed on an alter of machine-age efficiency. The great boon of modern science had been turned not to a better life but a more productive life. To what purpose? A longer and healthier employment, so that more might be produced? To what end? So that more wars can be waged? Is there any surprise then that so many people in the most advanced nations have simply stopped making more people rather than continue the cycle?

The ‘dehumanization’ of factory work was part of the cause of Ned Ludd in 1810. His issue was the transformation of human beings into slaves for the machine, and the loss of better values. That farm work was even more dangerous and easily as grinding and repetitive could be ignored against the more dramatic imagery of steel and fire. As wrong-headed as the Luddite tactics were, their analysis was not so bad. Anyone who has worked around a cotton loom would understand this, even while wearing the better and cheaper clothing it produced.

We accept this education to interact well with the machine from an early age. We may question someone’s judgment about politics but we will automatically fit our lives into the routine necessary to make the machine function correctly—questioning the time allowance or pay perhaps, but seldom the work itself.

What is more important to me here is that the process of adjusting human behavior to work well with machines taught us many things. Mostly about controlling mass human behavior. And politics is the craft of such manipulation

The key to political hegemony is language. Armies may win battles but ruling requires a mastery of words. Controlling the language can make the need for chains unnecessary. George Orwell, wrote most clearly of this phenomena in his prescient novel, 1984. He introduced a whole lexicon of useful terms to describe it: ‘Blackwhite,’ the loyal willingness to say back is white when the party discipline demands it; ‘Doublethink,’ believing in two contradictory ideas at the same time; ‘Memory hole,’ where documents go to be destroyed (this a pet fear of my own in this age when books are being replaced with the fungible digital record); ‘Ministry of Love,’ law and order; ‘Ministry of Peace,’ war; ‘Ministry of Plenty,’ rationing; ‘Ministry of Truth,’ propaganda.

But my favorite of Orwell’s terms are: ‘Newspeak,’ language where all ’politically incorrect’ words have been removed; ‘Sexcrime,’ sex for personal pleasure; ‘Thoughtcrime,’ to think something not authorized by the state; ‘Unperson,’ an individual banished from society and their very existence expunged (Someone who has been vaporized); and finally, ‘Ownlife,’ individualism and eccentricity (Being solitary, acting by yourself); ‘Resistance,’ those who defy authority (always the cause of government failure rather than the government itself); and ‘Freedom,’ being able to say two plus two equals four without fear of retribution.

Now the ‘Ministry of Truth’ has brought us a ‘Troubled Asset Relief Program’ for insolvent (bankrupt) banks; a ‘War on terror’ for war, Hatespeach for saying anything politically incorrect; Hatecrime: for committing a crime, and many more verbal inventions.

The politics of modern slavery are rather obvious but typically ignored. (Wiggle your toes in your Chinese made shoes and forget about the twelve year old slave who made them.) The most successful political subterfuge of the past two centuries are the various forms of ‘socialism’ under which, supposedly, everyone will be made equal—thus we are all slaves to one another. This appeals to the aesthetic sensibility of the few who believe they are naturally better than the rest of humanity and thus, as in Orwell’s other authoritarian classic Animal Farm, are more equal than others. They believe they will inevitably rise to the surface, like cream, to be the ones in charge.

Because of the supposed ‘leveling’ effect of socialism, this also appeals to the mind that sees all human beings as nasty and soiled creatures unworthy of nature’s bounty. There is a whole school of belief in the purity and righteousness of nature (not including humans, of course), as if this was at some level of godly perfection before it was spoilt by mankind.

Having been raised around the weakened influence of one sect of slavery or another, but in a generally free condition, and in a country established as a harbor of human liberty (however faulty), I have had the opportunity to observe the machinations of more than one disguise for the various forms of human bondage in my time. I do affirm that humanity in general has drifted toward some significant improvements over the ages. The slavery of the factory town in China today is by degree better than the chattel slavery of the Virginia plantation of 1776.

The wealth of nations has provided for a higher standard of living for most people, especially in those countries influenced by a Western sense of human value based on the worth of the individual. Still, given the brief history of such improvement and the generally weak foundation for it, I cannot help but worry that this too shall pass. Perhaps the Luddite had one thing right: with a dependence on technology comes a debasement of human value and thus with the rise of the machine (computer) we have made ourselves dispensable.

Whatever the disguise for slavery in the particular ruling political system, most people object to the idea of thinking of themselves as slaves to anything. This is human nature. (The other guy may be a slave, but I am doing this because I want to). Yet this, not unexpectedly, is a source of hope for any libertarian–that human beings will, on their own and as they have through recorded history, work their way toward some state of greater individual freedom.

The most successful technique for outright human bondage over the past century in the United States is the income tax. It has all the best features of a working system of slavery. It is forced. It is enforceable. It is applied to wages thus the few who act as masters and receive their compensation in other forms do not have to pay or may pay taxes at reduced rates depending on their privileged positions in the hierarchy of authority. And it can be made ‘progressive.’

This last quality is a form of genius unknown to Egyptians or Romans or even Virginians in past slave dependent societies. Those who might elicit the mercy of their fellow citizens to some infirmity or handicap are excused, thus giving the appearance of ‘progressive’ kindness to the system. Unfortunately, as with all such systems, the mechanics falter on the simpler forms of human imperfection, especially self-interest. Systems are abused, taken advantage of and become heavy with inequities.

But, income tax has a more important flaw. It is obvious. Every slave can readily see what is being taken from his labor.

An alternative, the sales tax, is useful for the fact that it can be collected on the goods that human beings need to live. And it’s cheap because the person who collects the tax is a slave to this duty, under penalty of law. But this too is very obvious. As the tax increases, people become restive at the open theft.

Thus, a new system, designed by some European geniuses, has been proffered. The ‘Value Added Tax.’ VAT. With VAT, all manufactured goods are taxed at each stage of production. This has the added quality of being both discrete and discreet. The buyer at each stage of manufacture has no idea of the amount of the tax that is already built into the item when it reaches them. In addition, a sales tax can still be placed on the item at the retail end. Oh joy!

One form of vicarious entertainment for some libertarians, myself included, is the political passion-play over taxes. With each increase, there is a predictable outcry. The abuse of tax revenues by government is too obvious. The amounts are so enormous it is difficult to imagine—especially now that we speak of ‘trillions’, a number so great that a thousand human beings living a thousand consecutive lifetimes could not count to one.

The enormous success of income tax collection has outstripped the imagination of the best authorities. Simply by applying this one disguise they have successfully enslaved all the productive members of an entire society.

By offering ‘tax breaks’ and ‘loop holes’ to the chosen managers (re: bosses), they can fund almost any architecture for their plantations. All the while, public schools properly educate the workers to their roles of submission and the politically licensed news media offer ‘newspeak’ to quell the anxiety or fuel it as needed. When some slaves manage to escape the cycle, new workers can be imported from countries which haven’t achieved our success.

The cost of maintaining even an average standard of living in America, with taxes removing more than half of family income, requires both parents to work. The crucial guidance and passing of values that is at the heart of the family and a culture is replaced by the television, the computer, and the iPod, and the state run school.

And I have hardly touched on the technocratic evolution of slavery in the form of bread and circuses gone electronic and now digital. The technology itself is only as harmless as a gun without a hand. There is little time for contemplation, or appreciation when the mind is under the constant assault of sound and visual stimulation produced to effect precut sensibilities and educate a passive intellect. The sound of a bird in the pine at dusk is unheard. The colors of dawn go unseen.

The passions of youth are now inflamed by the digital effect. Guns are fired using software imagery and sound effects by teenagers who have no clue about how to handle a real weapon much less the true damage it can produce. Computer graphics now suspends the disbelief of young minds which have barely had the chance to appreciate the simplest laws of gravity and biology.

Television raised many in my own generation more than their parents. Fortunately for us, this new media was in unpracticed hands and produced uneven results. But methods have improved. Minds can now be swayed by the crafted electronic impulses of masters.

I think, in the minds of many, the very definition of freedom has been reduced to some sort of prolonged vacation from work. As if those summer days of bliss just went on and on. But this is more than just a fantasy engaged in by corporate cogs as they turn on their wheel. It is also a small extrapolation of the same enslaved mindset, because it ignores the necessity for someone else’s labor to feed you while you lie on the beach, and it is a prophesy of continued servitude.

Freedom is not free and liberty is always dangerous. New political faiths will not save the day. A thousand million individuals, without a sound sense of their own purpose, will not save the day. A persistence of vision and a patient effort may.

An open society, one where labor is not regulated and legalized by taxation, where political dogma does not dictate the role of each individual, is a better place, but it is not a perfect world. It is simply closer to home. It is not a utopia. It is far far from any heaven. It is a human place where what you do is your responsibility, and mistakes are made and some people fail, but dreams can be made real.

The point here is that in a freer, messier, more open society, as each of us might reach that moment of inspiration which could add to the sum total of human wisdom, we might be able to act upon it, as a slave could not. Now we are on the threshold of new ways to enslave, both body and mind, and we have not yet resolved the problems of the past.

None of this ignores other realities. There are competing systems of slavery out there. The success of Western nations, even with their faults, spawns jealousy in the eyes of those who have failed to up-date their priorities. The most capable citizens of those countries will happily escape, when they can, to better their circumstances. Friction ensues.

When I think of the uncounted generations of Irish serfs (my fore-fathers) who labored on the plantations of English lords I think of all that might have been possible to them had they had the opportunity that liberty would have provided—a chance that finally came at last when they fled to the West.

Importantly, it was that very quest for some greater measure of liberty that would in the end make their new homeland that much different. And it was a quest repeated millions of times again by Germans and Chinese, by Italians and Scots, and countless others.

It seems to me that we are now losing that sense of purpose. Wanting security and safety, we are giving up our humanity as truly as any factory worker or field hand or simple slave.

The abiding hope of a slave is an end to their bondage. If we have accepted the terms of our slavery, however gentle, we will not be better off in the end. After work, there is little time or strength left for a slave to reach beyond the clasp.

Freedom may be an old idea in the mind of mankind, but the exercise of freedom is still new. After thousands of generations, we have achieved at least a small measure of liberty for all in the United States. But it is as thin as it is precious. Slavery is an older idea and well entrenched. And the forces of bondage are still with us, like the barbarian hordes that overwhelmed those small city-states which once experimented with odd ideas in Greece so long ago.

photo credit: Ani Od Chai

We can assay the weight and substance of a given work and argue its merits, but essentially the value of the thing is in its power to move us and hold us and remain in our minds long after the event of our first reading. For example, Tarzan of the Apes is a silly work in almost any critical regard except in the way that matters.

When art and craft are brought to a work that has that power to endure, we have the transcendent experience of stepping beyond our petty concerns into other places, in other times, and living larger lives than what we have managed by ourselves.

Not every great work is a Moby Dick, or should be. Not every reader has the stamina, or the need for the quest of a Frodo, or a picaresque journey by raft on the Mississippi. And often enough, the best of our literature is not fiction but memoir–that assembly of fact from memory that bears truth more than history.

Everyone knows that Melville’s great work was forgotten for several generations. Essentially lost but for a few libraries. That is the latent power of a great library. I imagine the moment when an unsuspecting browser happened upon that work on a shadowed shelf and wondered what the fat volume with the odd name contained—unaware at that moment that their life was about be profoundly changed.

I’ve had the experience myself more than once. As a bookseller, I’ve had that advantage. That blessing. Booksellers live small lives for the most part. We are not soldiers. We are not explorers in the physical sense. We are not often brave, despite the better example of a Henry Knox. Our pleasures are most often restrained by the limits of the octavo, the quarto, and the folio. (Melville played with us on that point, didn’t he?)

And I’ve had that great giddy moment of experience again just this past week!

There is a library in Boston which is unique to the world. It is a private library, supported wholly by its members. One of the oldest libraries in America. It’s internal architecture alone is enough to pay for a visit. But what makes it unique are its books. Every library is different in that way, of course, some more than others. Some by sheer size. Some by the quality of the collection. The Athenaeum is unique on both counts, and then some. They don’t dispose of a good book simply because no fool has stumbled upon it in a misspent lifetime or two, nor throw it away because it has been edge worn by love.

My children gave me a membership to the Boston Athenaeum for Christmas. Snow and troubles followed. The twenty-five miles or so to Boston can be a barrier in more ways than are worth recounting. The petty matters of consequence work against our best wishes. But we finally made our way there into the teeth of a nor’easter last Monday to attend a gathering of new members. Good wine and cheese were not the draw so much as guilt over not managing the visit before.

I spent most of my hours that day climbing the stairwell from floor to floor and revelling in the nooks and crannies and joy of mere proximity. So many books, so little time. You know the joke. It’s played on us.

I checked out a Ross Macdonald mystery I did not remember reading before and another title I did not know at all, just for that fact. I have been a heavy reader and a bookseller all my life and titles I don’t know practically leap from the shelves at me. This was happening repeatedly that evening to the point of making me feel even more stupid than I know I am. Macdonald was a favorite of mine in my youth and most of his titles are long out of print. But this Macdonald was not one of his best, littered with many of his sharp observations, but reduced by over-convenience in plotting and sloppy writing. The other book was worse, and quickly forgotten.

I returned to the Athenaeum on the following Friday for another assault. The quiet aisles permit unlimited skulking. I devoted myself to the third floor this time—Biography. I tried the main concourse there with its alcoves of high shelves and ladders and discovered a wonderful biography of Ambrose Bierce by his friend, Walter Neale. I read three chapters while sitting in a stuffed chair by a window over looking the ancient Granary Burying Ground. As good as it looked, I wasn’t ready for the oddities of Mr. Bierce that day. The ghosts of Sam Adams and Paul Revere lying there in the graveyard below made me think I should go after bigger fish perhaps.

I made my way up a small winding cast-iron stair to the balcony with a vague notion about Mr. Revere’s midnight ride. I have been writing about that very moment in time just recently and it would be an appropriate subject for study. But I was ambushed on my way.

Walking on the thick translucent glass floor that gives all the balconies a vague feeling of transcendence above the vaulted rooms (it’s all in the mind you see) I was struck in the eye by an oddity I could not pass without investigation: the name Norman Maclean. Didn’t he write A River Runs Through it? A nice little book. Not a favorite, for no reason I can remember. But this particular book appeared to me older than anything that Mr. Maclean from Iowa might have written. What was it?

The Former Days was published in England by Hodder and Stoughton in 1945–written by a man who had been bearing that same familiar name, but born on the Isle of Skye in 1868. He had written several novels, histories, biographies, political and religious tracts. And I had never heard of him. The third volume of this memoir, there on the shelf as well, had been published in 1952, shortly after his death. A frontispiece portrait showed a rather severe Reverend Norman Maclean in his doctoral robes. This certainly wasn’t what I was looking for. Was it?

Out of habit I turned to the first page of the first volume.

“It was called the Otter’s cave, and my first recollection of it was being taken there by my father when he set a trap to catch an otter.” Simple enough. I was caught. I stood on the glass floor and read further. By the end of the page I was in a country I have dreamed of visiting since I was a child reading Robert Louis Stevenson, and to an island I have wanted to know since—since when? I took the book down to the stuffed chair and read further. The powerful ghosts of the Granary burying ground were forgotten beside this better world of peat fires and thatched roofs and porridge.

How is a great writer forgotten? I have no clue to this mystery. Many are not given their due, but are at least kept alive by those readers who can love the finely wrought sentence and the artful word. One of my favorites, Patrick Leigh Fermor, gets a new edition every few years as the fire he has kindled with A Time of Gifts is passed from reader to reader. But perhaps this world of peat fires and open hearths is just too remote. Like Maurice O’Sullivan’s Great Blasket Island off the rocky shore of Ireland. But even O’Sullivan’s Twenty Years a’Growing has more often been kept in print.

If you Google the name Norman Maclean you get a lot about the American writer from Iowa, but you have to dig through more than a few pages to find the Scottish reverend who came home from his last posting in India during the Second World War to write down what he knew of The Former Days, a world already vanished in the cold light of new holocausts. Like Fermor, he conjures his memories with an intimacy that brings a close understanding to the reader’s mind. These were people who lived and died with your own dreams on their lips.

“It does not need a high hill to realize the joys of ascending. As you rise, how amazingly does the world grow large. The horizon recedes, and as it recedes, islands hitherto invisible rise out of the sea; new bays and lochs leap into view…In the enlarging world, the scheming of men, their toils and their quarrels, are dwarfed into insignificance. That is why the soul finds its healing in the mountains.”

And there at the top of Ben Lee, the hungry minded boy who has left his sheep to graze, has his world enlarged more than he could have imagined. “There is a cairn of rough stones, just high enough to shelter from the wind that always blows at that height. As a north breeze was blowing, I purposed sitting on the south side of the cairn, but when I got round it, there I found a woman with the wind in her hair and her tam-o’shanter in her lap, gazing at the ramparts of the Coolins. No wonder she gazed with her eyes alit, for, search the world over, you could not find a more entrancing scene. If I were astonished, the stranger was equally astonished. She wasn’t startled, for the appearance of a red-haired, freckled boy of twelve does not startle, even on a hill top.

‘Hullo! Where did you come from?’

‘The Braes.’

‘Which of the Braes?’

‘Ollach.’

‘What is your name?’

‘Norman.’

‘What else? What is your surname?’

‘Maclean.’

‘You ought to be a MacLeod with the Christian name Norman.’

‘My grandmother is a MacLeod.’

‘That explains it. This is an Island of Macdonalds, Macleods, and Mackinnons. How come you to be here and not in Mull?’

‘My father came from Coigach in Lochbroom.’

‘That is a strange place for a Maclean to be from.’

‘His grandfather escaped from Culloden and fled to the west with a companion. He settled in Coigach, and there are many Macleans there now. So my father says.’

‘Why did your father come to Skye?’

‘He is a schoolmaster.’

‘Do sit down and let us have a comfortable talk.’

I did not however sit down, but lay on a clump of heather and cupping my chin in my hands, looked up at the stranger and thought to myself that never had I seen so beautiful a woman.”

They determined that they were cousins. But he discovered more than the beauty of a woman. She found out his need for books and sent him the forbidden fruit of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Boswell’s Tour of the Hebrides.

Yes! That’s how I first discovered Skye myself. With Boswell and Johnson.

The Isle of Skye is a place on tourist maps now. The social upheavals of the highland clearances and the rote ignorance of most modernization has cleared away the crofts. But you can still visit that place, without a passport if you wish. The Reverend Norman Maclean will take you.

The book is your ship. The library is your port of departure. You may thus become the master of your fate.

There was the St. Louis Post Dispatch, “Turmoil over the book price war took a new turn today when the Justice Department was asked to investigate what a booksellers group called ‘illegal predatory pricing’.”

The New York Times, “(Reuters) The American Booksellers Association has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate a recent price war on books sold online between such retail giants as Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Amazon.Com Inc and Target Corp ahead of the holidays.”

The Washington Post noted, “The plot really began to thicken Monday when Target got into the game. It also began selling eight of the books offered by Wal-Mart for $8.99. Not to be outdone by its chief competitor, Wal-Mart on Tuesday beat Target’s price—by a penny.”

And the Wall Street Journal said, “Wal-Mart triggered the online skirmish Thursday when it began selling the 10 most anticipated hardcovers for $10 apiece when pre-ordered on its web site. Amazon matched the offer hours later and Wal-Mart then chopped its price to $9. Friday morning Amazon had matched the price.”

Ha. The good old days. WAR! Civilian casualties to be counted later.

While too many of my fellow booksellers and authors are asking for the government to step in and stop the madness before every one of the last small independent bookshops in the country are bankrupt and only the dinosaurs roam the earth, I would like to point out a couple of things to the contrary.

This is happening just because the government has already stepped into the business arena and made it possible. Any correction the government makes will only serve the interests of the giant retailers—they can afford the lawyers who write the laws. The only thing which can correct and solve this problem, as well as a thousand others in at least as many businesses who suffer under the same onus, is for the government to get out of the protection racket, otherwise known as corporate law, which makes all of this possible.

My own small shop had to endure this sort of thing back in the late 1970’s when the chain stores first moved into Boston in a big way. We lost a major part of our new book business and had to scramble to survive by filling our shelves with lower priced used stock. This is not an option for most inner-city booksellers who must pay exorbitant rents driven by tax codes which squeeze commercial property. Only the stock turnover in sales possible with new hot titles makes paying such rent rational. Take away the hot titles, and you have an unfillable maw.

It is corporate law created by lawyers and politicians to serve their own needs which makes it possible for a company that pays taxes in Delaware to open a store in Boston and run it at a loss for five years in order to drive all local competition into the ground, while covering the losses with the profits from stores in California. This is neither Constitutional nor moral, but it has been done since the lawyers for John D. Rockefeller designed the anti-trust laws that permitted him to control Standard Oil even as it was being broken up among various states in the interests of so-called ‘anti-monopoly’ politics.

This is not ‘free enterprise’. It is state capitalism. It is the bete noire of fascists. It is the way Hitler controlled the industry of Germany. And now I hear my well-meaning friends in the booktrade howling. “Something must be done. The government must help us.”

Haven’t the war machines of the Twentieth Century taught us anything? The answer is not blowin’ in the wind with the smell of burning books.

All of my rants about the death of the book are made moot by the larger context of the political powers which are at play here. Amazon does not care about books–Mr. Bezos’ best intentions aside. It cares about price points and self-preservation. I need not say a thing about the Wal-Mart—Target–Costco mentality that is not already known by anyone who might read this.

I do not expect the best outcome here. Most of the independent new book stores and local chains in Boston died in the eighties. My shop struggled through that by living on the edge for too long and thus we were finally unable to survive the doubling rent increases of the 1990’s.

I do not expect to hear any major voice saying that it is time to tackle the lawyers. They run the show. Corporate law is what it is. And we will be paying the consequences until the war consumes us all.

I was recently asked to contribute to the Powells Books (Powells.com) website as a guest blogger for the week of Monday, October 19 through Friday the 23rd. I was quite pleased to do it. The idea of a new audience of potential readers at this moment when my first novel is just out was a great opportunity.

But then there were choices to make. Should I pick a different subject each day or carry a theme. Should I be light or jump headfirst into those darker thoughts that plague me.

In the end I chose to write on a single theme, the death of the book, but avoid my worst nightmares for the sake of some degree of polite conversation. After it was done, I thought it came out fairly well. No loud ranting. No dead bodies.

Powell’s has kindly given me permission to repost my entries here and I have decided to put them all up at once in consecutive order.

1. The Death of the Book Is Not Exaggerated

Because I write this from Indianapolis, where I have been attending this year’s Bouchercon (the world crime and mystery fiction convention) I will begin with a bit of argument I usually save for later in my general thesis concerning the death of the book…

Sadly, most of the people attending looked like me–old and white…Okay, older, but still white. And though I know many younger readers of the mystery genre, they are the minority, and they are still white. Sitting in the audience and looking over the gray hair toward the podium where many fine authors were expounding on wonderful aspects of a genre which has been special to me since I was a teenager aspiring to be a writer myself, I could not help but be aware of the mortality of so many of these folks so devoted to their field they are willing to spend hundreds of dollars during a recession just to attend a gathering of fellow mystery lovers in this fine city with at least one great eating establishment (the Rock Bottom Brew Pub. I recommend the hickory burger and the house brown ale).

Understand, it is not their fault that they are either old, or older (I’m 62) or white. They were born that way. The problem is this: when they are gone, what then? When a new generation is raised on libraries without books, and instant news gratification, and text which is so fungible it leaks before your eyes, what then? And all this, when many cultures, not only elsewhere on this small earth, but right here in Indianapolis, have not yet even established the traditions of respect for the printed word which propelled Western culture for five centuries.

And this feeds into my greater worry–the cause which made me choose to write this series of mysteries in the first place. The book may not yet be dead, but it is mortally wounded. I have been preaching this line to deaf ears for years. The new technologies, others say, will not replace the book, but will only share the space, and enlarge it for all. Sure. Like the automobile did for the horse-drawn carriage. No. Not like that. More like the Cro-Magnon replaced the Neanderthal.

My thesis is that any such comparison does not apply. Before Gutenberg’s book, only a small elite could read–was permitted to read–and text was so expensive only the wealthy could afford the pleasure. A scare-house Halloween mirror version of this is what I fear most. After the book is gone, everyone will be able to read, but what they read and how they read will be determined by a few. A faceless few. An anonymous bureaucratic few.

I chose to write a mystery not to write a polemic about the death of the book (all part of the death of the bookshop, and the newspaper, etc), but to make a point of the mortality of this love I have for something mankind has done right amidst all the things we have gotten wrong. The book is a holy thing to me, and reading a pleasure and a gift I wish on everyone.

I have been a publisher and an editor of books and magazines. I once participated in the actual printing of a small school journal from movable type on a letterpress. I have designed pages and pasted them up. I have developed the advertising and marketing of publications. I have been a book rep traveling from city to city. And I have been a bookseller–this is the way I have earned my living for over thirty years. Now, I am a writer of a book, with others written and waiting their turn.

Not coincidentally, I chose as protagonist a ‘book hound’ whose devotion to books has afforded him a refuge and a living, whose comfort is shattered by the murder of woman–a friend and a former lover, but someone he is not sure he loved. This doubt, and the fact that he himself is both a suspect and a witness, compels him to find the cause of her death. Once shaken, he is awakened and can no longer sleep. Not to make too much of the metaphor, this is in kind with the death of the book itself. We take it for granted and assume that its blessings can be moved to a digital being. It won’t be. This wonderful device on which I write now and the magic software that makes it possible, is more fragile than any but a few are willing to recognize.

I don’t fear the Kindle or the Sony Reader, or the iPod, or any new device. They are wonderful in their own right. But we cannot let them replace the book.

There are many other worries attached to this, of course. I have been talking about this for long enough to make a few books out of it, at the very least. I will touch on a few over the next few days as I recover from my first ever convention.

2. A Practical Matter

Exaggeration is not necessary.

It was in a letter of 1897 about his cousin James Ross Clemens, that Mark Twain famously noted “the report of my death was an exaggeration.” He managed to hang on, despite his critics, for another thirteen years. Times were slower then. I suspect that the death of the book will occur more rapidly, though the small corpses will be with us for a bit longer.

What is poorly understood here is actually a very practical matter. We have lost the steel industry in America, once the largest such in the world by far, in less than forty years. That took place for very practical reasons. But if you had said such a thing was possible in 1960, you would have been looked at as a fool. And General Motors is too big to fail…right? It may not be as visible from 30,000 feet but a car trip through Detroit, or Buffalo, or any of a hundred great American industrial cities will tell you how quickly things can change.

The printing industry is just that, an industry, though miniscule by comparison to the making of steel. And this goes for publishing as well. Is there any reason for the center of publishing to remain in New York—one of the most expensive places a poor author must visit? Not now. Not in the age of the internet.

Even with a still small and captured market, the downloading of books onto Kindles and the like is already a half-priced convenience. But what will it be like in a few years. Even the machine that is a ‘reader’ will be made somewhere far far away from New York.

In an age of digital ease and the reduced ‘cost’ of those ephemeral 0’s and 1’s, can you think of a compelling reason why ‘publishers’ will promote the work of ‘authors’ who ask for too much? The need will be for product. The publicity and marketing departments have long ago assumed control of the editorial reasoning for what will be acceptable at the larger publishing houses.

Those same publishers who dominate what you can find at Walmart and Costco, (or any of the other ‘convenience’ stores that make the existence of independent book stores a daily struggle) are not in business to lose money. And like the pulp authors of the 1920’s and thirties, working in a medium which had then used technology to reduce the cost of publishing to a bare minimum, the price per word will fall even for the most popular authors. Can you tell me why those same publishers will want to keep alive a ‘format’ which they consider too expensive and too difficult to distribute relative to a nearly instant electronic impulse?

I cannot.

But I know this. That what happens to the reader engaged by the artful nuance of typography on a paper page while exploring the imagination of a single writer is not the same as the collision of visual information offered by the illusions on a digital screen.

I know this, that reading a book is an experience of human scale, not only proportioned to the hand but to the mind. It was made that way by the genius of Aldus Manutius and Wynkyn de Worde and tens of thousands of artisans and artists, writers and even editors (yes, even editors) who came after them.

And I know this. That if I find the original edition of a book, that it is at least what the author meant it to be, or nearly so in that contest between an author’s accepting payment and the need to pay for a meal or a bed. What you find on the screen is only what is convenient.

And this: those 3 ½ inch floppies you kept all that poetry on which you wrote in college won’t work on that lap top you bought last week. And what you have on that flash drive you carry on a string around your neck will be an artifact as useful as the tooth your ancestor once wore the same way.

You must understand this: everything we know as a civilization, good and bad, will soon be an ‘Aleph’ that even Borges could not imagine. And it can and will be lost in an instant.

It will be a practical matter.

3. Omnium Gatherum

In the October 17th issue of the Wall Street Journal there was a provocative piece concerning the new Kindle 2, by Stephen Marche who often writes for Esquire. In essence he accepts the revolutionary potential of the Kindle and proposes a new word, the ‘transbook,’ to describe the device and its cousins. I find the more humorous intonations of an ‘Omnium Gatherum’ to be appropriate. I suspect his optimism and suggest he has his historical facts out of order and incomplete.

Mr. Marche happily describes the moment in history when the ‘Kindle’ of another age was introduced: the codex. This wonderful device replaced the scroll–a single roll of paper–with what was essentially a bound volume of scrolls and was in fact the first true book, bringing to an end the tattered isolation of specific and shorter hand-written texts. This was revolutionary, indeed. What he fails to mention is that this was the very device which was used by authority to do away with the anarchy of the individual scroll, which might be produced by just any apostate who could write, and created the opportunity for organized sanction and approval (as well as improvement) of texts. The books of the Bible were thus codified by imprimatur. Heresy could thus be stamped out. It made the Pelagians among us very unhappy.

This was, in fact, the great and profound change that brought about the ‘dark ages.’ The authority of the Catholic Church was supreme and all dissent had to take place within the confines of its rule.

Mr. Marche recalls the monk Johannes Trithemius as a Benedictine scholar of the sixteenth century who opposed the printing press. He even compares him to our contemporary Nicholson Baker and that author’s recent rants against the Kindle and its kin. But Mr. Baker’s argument is more than just ‘the feel of the paper.’ Mr. Baker is a free man in a relatively open society who is worried over the further diminishment of his world, not its enlargement. And Trithemius was an occultist who recognized in the printing press the end of a more secretive society. His proto-Hogwarts School was an effort not only to garner knowledge but also to control it.

Mr. Marche then bemoans the heavy personal burden of accumulating individual volumes and the convenience of having 1500 titles in one relatively small device. He suggests a future where the ‘transbook’ will provide access to “all text that is non-copyright, and to the purchase of every book in and out of ‘print’” He says, “its about what the book wants to be.” It seems to me that this is the language of the true occultist, giving anthropomorphic power to a machine.

The reality is that the ‘transbook’ will be the tool of particular interests, and with particular interests. The industry that currently produces the book will fade away, at first slowly, but then at a quickening pace, as its economic underpinning are kicked away. The cost of a single printed book will rise. The convenience of downloading text will overcome reservations. Copyrights will be re-written to serve the new paradigm. And texts which do not meet the approved standards of language, or political purpose, will be neglected and unavailable.

This condition already exists to a lesser degree. First amendment protections are already being restricted for literature not in ‘book’ form. ‘Hate speech’ is proscribed and defined by standards which suit the political interest of the moment. Criticism of certain religious faiths is outlawed as ‘bigotry’. Specific words are forbidden and removed from texts. For those who agree with a given prejudice being exorcised, all is well. But the open society suffers. The great Nat Hentoff has been warning us about this for decades.

How is it that we are to avoid this bowdlerizing castration of our literature when all text is under the immediate electronic thumb of ‘authority.’

In How the Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman the marvelous reach of the law of unintended consequences was described. The poorest country in Europe in the Seventeenth Century was torn by the Presbyterian reformation of John Knox. In the fervor of their beliefs, the Kirk fathers wanted every man, woman, and child to learn to read and thus have direct access to the word of God. Overlooked was a related consequence, having learned to read, every man, woman, and child would be able to read anything they chose. Within a hundred years Scotland was the richest country in Europe, and the home of thinkers who had spawned a revolution in America and were creating the industrial revolution in Britain. Could this great awakening work now in reverse as all books are contained in a single dispenser?

Never mind the impermanence of costly devices which will be outmoded within a few years, or the restrictions of software intended to meet restrictive purposes. I would have far more confidence in the future of the e-book if it were guaranteed the same freedom of the press as the printed book. Sadly, political forces are already active on the behalf of special interests. The new money is on the Kindle, and this too leaves me in doubt.

4. Apple picking

And then we have the op-ed by Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, in the October 9th New York Times, which praised and defended the concept of Google Books—essentially the planned digital access to all the world’s literature. I recommend anyone interested in the subject of books, copyrights, and the integrity of text to read it.

I read his comments with horror and began immediately to write an essay on the subject for my own website. Sadly, I would wager that at the very least, nine out of ten people who read Mr. Brin’s editorial will think that his efforts are for the good and offer a whole new future for the written word.

A few weeks ago I stood in a grassy field where I had been picking apples while a major book illustrator paged through his portfolio of dozens of successfully published covers and hundreds of projects. His portfolio was in his hand on a device made by Apple. He also had the text of the books he had illustrated there as well, and numerous reference works he had made use of.

How could I not be impressed by this wizardry held in the palm of a hand? Well, let’s see…Perhaps I should highlight a few things Mr. Brin said in his article.

After mentioning Cornelius Walford’s account of the destruction of great libraries through the centuries, he said, “I hope such destruction never happens again.” Ironically, and I believe unintentionally, Mr. Brin’s previous and current efforts are part of the actual destruction of millions of books right now. Today. This minute. Libraries from coast to coast are ridding themselves of their troublesome books and replacing them with machines and software. The good intentions aside, all of that machinery and software will be obsolete within ten years. I know that as an historical fact. I cannot now access things I wrote on my Mac ten years ago.

Additionally, one might ask, what is the software platform which will be mandated to access Google’s efforts? But that would be picky and perhaps offensive to the software engineers at Microsoft.

And, given the rights to the world’s literature, will Google be writing off the enormous cost of their effort and giving equal access to all other search engines? Not likely. Mr. Brin even says as much while suggesting that by leading the way, Google will be making it easier for others to follow. I suppose,.. if you have a spare billion to spend.

Mr. Brin refers to “a vanishing number of libraries and used book stores” as a ‘black hole.’

Funny, I never noticed I was in a black hole all those years of my life spent at Avenue Victor Hugo Books, my small shop.

Mr. Brin does not even attempt to touch on the greater issues. Who will choose the works to be available? China, for instance, has already made it clear they will not permit access to what they do not like. Access is limited in all Arabic speaking countries. Who will oversee the texts? How will you know what you see is what the author wrote? Where will you go to check the text?

And something more, as alluded to here in a previous posting: is reading a Kindle the same as reading a book? Does the mind approach the electronic page with the same sensibilities? I can answer that by way of a personal note. I have arthritis in two fingers (having been a two-finger typist from childhood). I can no longer use a mechanical typewriter, despite my fondness for the machines themselves. More importantly though, I can say without doubt the way I write has been dramatically altered. I even think differently about the way I construct a sentence. Simply put, the ease of choice made in the instant as one writes has altered the way a writer crafts his work.

I don’t wish to be totally negative at this moment of small triumph for myself. I have beside me my own first book! But these larger matters have already affected my life, and they will be with us for all the years of my children, and their children.

Every age encompasses the end of another and the seeds of the next. That is exactly what my novel HOUND is about. It is most importantly about a final moment in human history, but it is also asking what is to come after. The old world, in all its aspects, has been my life. But Henry Sullivan, my protagonist, is younger than I am and thus is straddling that cusp. This story and those which follow are about a book hound, a man who finds good books–as I see him in my mind, a sort of knight errant and this series of mysteries as his sallying forth to do battle on behalf of the things he loves.

I am not Henry Sullivan. He is far smarter and braver than I have ever been. His worse limitation is that he only knows what I know. Thus he has quite a task ahead. He must first come to understand the threat his world faces. Then he must find out why. And then he must do something about it.

Understanding the threat that Mr. Brin poses to the life of the book is obvious. What can be done about it is not. Certainly technology will move in the direction of demand. The usefulness of the Apple iPod is just as obvious, and the demand is terrific. Finding a viable place for the book in a world of instant amusement will be difficult. But that is my purpose.

Now I have a book of my own. And if I can entertain a few more readers for a little while longer and thereby keep my world alive, I will be very pleased with what I’ve done. But I will not be satisfied with that.

5. Truth and Consequences

The challenge of making my case in these five short blogs is magnified for me because I am both a slow talker and thinker. I tend to work toward my thoughts in an ‘organic’ manner. That’s probably why I chose the form of the novel for expression. I am not easily seduced by sound bites.

The first line of my novel, HOUND was hidden until my editor pointed out the old newspaper adage that I was burying my lead. Yet it was that first line that had spawned the whole book and had always been the nucleus of the way I was going to approach my larger subject.

Books are, after all, the way I make my living.

It is a matter of our age that most of us refuse to deal with unpleasantness until we are forced to. There are so many alternatives. Buy a new one. Eat out. Watch TV. Download it…A significant number of my fellow citizen live their lives between a pair of headphones. It’s damn hard to hear the screaming that way.

We have thrown off the clothes of tradition and taken up the amusements of our age. Neal Postman warned about the consequences of this in Amusing Ourselves to Death, many years ago.

I was not surprised in the 1990’s to discover that my worries over the death of the book were dismissed out of hand by most people. What occurred to me then was that the whole process of recognition would be either organic or catastrophic. Nothing in-between. Now that the dying has begun, what I hear is denial. It won’t be so bad. You won’t feel a thing.

Telling people over and again that the levees are inadequate, that money to fix them is being misspent on other things, and that history has predicted a direct hit by another hurricane in the foreseeable future, is not enough, though homes and lives and the life’s work of hundreds of thousands are at risk. Afterward there will be many to blame. But there will be very few who admit, “I knew, but I did nothing.”

It is your right to go in a candy shop and spend all your pay on sweets. It is your right to put the work of your life on a flash drive. I am not asking for or wanting any government to tell you or me how to live our lives. What I am wanting is for as many people as possible to take responsibility for themselves and what they do. I don’t want my children to bear the consequences of a society which has lost its head. Go ahead, buy the candy if that’s important to you. But please don’t turn then to your government to correct your health problems because that cost will then fall on me and mine and I do not deserve the burden. I am certain I have made enough mistakes all my own to bear.

Dependency on the convenience of the internet is not a good thing. Yes, it will be a wondrous good to have all of the world’s fine literature (and the trash too) at your fingertips as Google wishes. But if you stop making choices—if you stop buying the actual book which represents your own judgment about what is fine, there will be no true arbiter of taste. There will be no true arbiter of value to separate the fine from the trash.

The book must share space in the rooms of our lives. We must make that judgment in numbers sufficient to keep the book alive and viable as an art form, and a business, with all the craft and industry behind it. What I fear at first is neglect. No one wants to do harm. But later, when the cost of the book has risen too far above the expense of the simple download, all that will be left is the kind of ‘print-on-demand’ that will homogenize and pasteurize every nuance of the arts and crafts of publishing. And with them will inevitably go content.

Already typography and binding have suffered.

I haven’t the scientific background to instruct others on the fragile nature of the internet, but I fully comprehend the consequences of what I have read and been told by those who do. For instance, the effect of a single electromagnetic pulse weapon above New York would end most modern communication in America.

I could ask, “How are your letter writing skills? Penmanship anyone? And is the Post Office up to the challenge of physically carrying all that love texting today.”

But that is not the point. Doomsday is not the real matter at hand. Such warnings will be ignored, just as we have ignored them so many times in the past. The truth is that whether or not any catastrophe ever befalls us, we will have lost a great tool of civilization.

The book is the record of what we are. And this medium does not occur in nature. It is just as artificial as the iPod. It is a product of the human imagination. And just as the iPod is the end product of a thousand smaller technologies without which it could not exist, the book too will go away if the infrastructure that makes it possible is neglected.

The record of what we are should not be left in the hands of a few. Just as the codex took the place of the ancient scroll and thus permitted authority to assume control over what we should know, the internet and its offspring are liable to central management. They will have their own purposes in mind, whether their hearts are good or bad.

We must take care.

In olden times they had simpler methods. They tied one end of a rope to each of your limbs and then attached the other end to four individual horses pointed in different directions and made the horses giddyup all at once. Today they make you stand in front of a gathering of potential readers and explain why the hell you asked them to show up at their local independent bookshop instead of staying home to watch Jeopardy.

I’ve noticed I am not the only reader who watches Jeopardy.

I have done three readings now (not counting the short spiel I gave during a ‘speed dating’ event to eleven tables filled with mystery lovers during the Bouchercon in Indianapolis). To my great regret and perhaps that of most of those who attended, I don’t think I am improving enough with each ordeal. I have difficulty modulating my voice. My tongue and teeth have arguments over using the same space at the same time. My eyes suddenly lose focus on a line of words. I am self-conscious to a degree that is debilitating.

But this must be done. Many hundreds of new fiction titles have been published this season, and many dozens of those are mysteries. As a first novelist, it is my responsibility to get out there and let people know what I have done. If a writer doesn’t believe it’s worth the trouble, then they are probably right—at least about what they have written.

Of course I would like what I have written to speak for itself. But that voice will be difficult to hear beneath a pile of remainders.

I must remind myself of all the readings I went to through the years and why I went. There is some ineluctable fascination to finally meeting someone with whom you have already spent many hours in bed.

But then, I am a first novelist and very few of those who attend my reading have taken my work to bed with them yet. Perhaps it’s just the prospect then?

Nah.

In fact it is the brave little bookshops that have put my book on their shelves.

River Run Bookshop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the scene of my latest effort at reading, is a fine example. They choose what they buy title by title and not by the season load. They take care. You know right off that you have entered a great bookshop by what they have featured face-out for your eyes to feast upon. The shelves are designed for books, and not just merchandise. The lighting encourages browsing and dipping into the random page. And River Run is in the very middle of a uniquely beautiful city which has made a successful effort to be both livable and cosmopolitan.

My first reading was at the wonderful and justly praised Brookline Booksmith. This shop has survived the onslaught of the biggest of chain stores, the bloodletting of on-line discounting, the burden of high rents and has thrived by pure effort making the best intentions a reality. I lived in Brookline for twenty-five years and went into the Booksmith at least once a week, even though I had my own bookshop, just to see what they were up to and often came away with a book we did not have on our own shelves that I had to read.

Jamaicaway books, in Jamaica Plain, Boston, where my second reading took place, is a neighborhood store fashioned by the owner with the kind of care and attention few businesses ever bother with. Somehow, it still finds the resources to appeal to its community, and the love for books is obvious.

This Sunday I will be reading in New York at the Mysterious Bookshop. This is an honor. The Mysterious Bookshop is iconic not only in its specialty among mystery readers but among fellow booksellers as well. I have not been there since they moved some years ago and look forward to seeing what Mr. Penzler has done—the old shop was a great jewel.

And of course there is that wonderful bunch of booklovers who attend the readings those shops conduct so that writers can find their audience. These are people who are entertained by words and imagination, appreciate the need to keep the book alive, and perhaps even enjoy the old fashioned gnashing of a good horsepull. As I have delivered my short preambles before reading from HOUND each time, I have seen the smile of recognition on the faces of strangers.

I must work harder at my presentation. I want those folks to give HOUND a chance amidst all the glitter, noise and promotion for the next big thing. Besides, I’ve had all the pleasure of writing it. I should have to pay my dues.

Back in March of 2009, Terry Teachout wrote an excellent appraisal of one of my favorite authors, Flannery O’Connor, for the journal Commentary. This article was in turn written upon the publication of Brad Gooch’s biography Flannery: a Life of Flannery O’Connor. As it happens, I only read Mr. Teachout’s critique this morning when I stumbled across it in the course of another attempt to come to terms with my disdain for so much of twentieth century literature within the confines of essaying here.

No. Disdain is too mild a term.

When a body of literature so wholly beggars an art form of such importance, disdain does not quite sum up my feeling. The reputations of such luminaries as Styron, Bellow, Ellison, Mailer, Salinger, and Capote fade quickly before our eyes as the new century roars. A command of style alone does not reach beyond the page. In the end, they are dated not so much by their subjects as by their lack of courage in addressing the heart of the matters they chose. Their fearful crouch into the ambiguities of that time of troubles makes their voices weak to the ears of a new century faced with the stark-naked circumstance of proliferating nuclear devices. The few who did stand up against the cultural nihilism and physical slaughter of the Marxists and Fascists were obviously insufficient to carry the weight of an entire culture on their shoulders. Western Civilization lost the greater war. The materialism and greed of petty socialism abounds, and the natural bigotry of political faith triumphs.

This is not to suggest Mr. Teachout would necessarily agree with my own more radical attitude, but that I agree with him in his assessment of O’Connor and see it as a string to a larger question. Will the authors of the Twenty-first century fair better?

We are less than a century away from most of what are academically chosen as the ‘major’ works of the twentieth century, and more than a century removed from those of the nineteenth. The average public school student has been exposed to some of each, but by far more of the most recent work. Yet the best of the nineteenth remains with us culturally in ways that twentieth century literature does not. And though late twentieth century writers permeate the reading lists of schools nationally, there is little sense that what is being read is ‘great’ literature in the same way that Dickens, Trollop, Twain, Eliot, Kipling, Scott, and so many others were considered in 1909. Only that they are ‘relevant.’ Relevant to what, is a matter of passing conjecture.

One author who faced her moment was Flannery O’Connor. For years I have been in awe of her willing combat with issues of faith and morality. Unlike her excellent and prolific contemporary Frederick Beuchner, she did not hide in the safe allegory of historical circumstance, but addressed the human comedy as she found it. Far from the safe precincts of academic noblesse oblige, she wandered into the mud-chinked shacks and beneath the shade of the Chinaberry trees of her native Georgia and asked aloud ‘what’ and ‘why’ mankind believed.

Mr. Teachout quotes O’Connor as saying, “I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”

It is much the same case with any writer of the twentieth century who attempted to loudly address issues of the soul. They are usually approached by the academic as qrotesques. Only when they make their subject matter truly absurd are they praised for their faithful rendering off reality. Yet in this century, no longer haunted by Christ, the secular religions of science and politics must confront the fervor of those who believe equally in the omnipotence of a God with no good use for either.

I cannot stand outside of this confrontation with the excuse of my own atheism or a spiritual draft deferment based on my dislike for either side. My own faith is in a humanism which will only survive by active engagement.

O’Connor approached her subject not subtly, but with a keen eye for its truths and appearance. She did not impose her personal faith on her characters but attempted to understand them on their own terms. Thus she was called a purveyor of the ‘Southern Gothic.’ You see, no one would put out their own eyes in order to better see. Truly. Just as no one would strap explosives to their daughters and send them to meet the enemy. O’Connor’s hard look into the faces of her fellow human beings is too often dismissed as comic picaresque. What then would an equally stringent appraisal of an urban gangsta be called?

The beauty of O’Connor’s use of language stands easily on its own. Simply read a random paragraph. But her approach to the great combat between faith and the loss of faith (not between faiths) which was at the center of the horrors in her own time is what makes her work great and indispensible to our survival now.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/believing-in-flannery-o-connor-15085

Speechify. It might surprise some of you that this is an actual word, well defined in the Webster’s Third International, Random House, and American Heritage dictionaries. It goes back to at least the early 1700’s and has been commonly used in America ever since. My North Carolina mountains grandfather used it more than once in my presence. And looking up this word to confirm its legitimacy is just the kind of thing I will do a hundred times between now and that fateful evening when I have to give a speech of sorts to a small gathering (hopefully not too small, but then again, not too large either) of friends and the merely curious who appear at my first ‘reading’ for the novel HOUND. Looking up words and doing ‘research’ has always been a good ploy to avoid harder work–like practicing aloud before a mirror.

The first and last time I ever gave a speech was as best-man at a friends wedding about 20 years ago. I seldom heard from my friend afterward. This worries me greatly now. The approach of this occasion freezes my innards. (‘Innards’ is also a legitimate and underused word which was frequented by my grandfather).

It must be done. People expect something for their money I suppose. Or is it just a matter of manners. If I am so willing to foist my efforts onto the public stage, I should be willing to hoist it into the light—fluorescent or otherwise. It is my own petard after all. In any case, it is the path I have chosen. I suppose J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon gave readings when they first began. Sorry I wasn’t there.

I expect that the audience will be kind. People are generally kind. I have been known to say rude things myself, but never at someone else’s reading. During the first ten years at Avenue Victor Hugo we used to have readings regularly—mostly poetry—but occasionally a novel or memoir, and once a travel log. I vaguely remember the travelog. That person had gone to India I believe. About fifteen people came to the store that night. We sold one book. I was mortified for the author more than myself. But then, I suppose the fact that I don’t remember clearly where they went might be telling.

My knees rattle. I suppose it could be a loss of cartilage. I have been a big walker all my life. But this worries me. I have a weak voice. My father, who trained his voice for the stage, used to try to get me to speak with the full baritone he could muster at will—especially when I had done something wrong. But I have a shallow tenor. And when I attempt dramatic phrasing, my voice comes off its track and words collide in the air.

I have spent much time searching the text of my novel for the right thing to read. After due consideration I have chosen the first chapter. This could have been predicted by an average child. It’s best to start things at the beginning, don’t you know. But I have decided to add a small preface to that. A bit of speechifying. Mostly because I have been asked more than a few times whether Henry Sullivan, the hero of the HOUND, is me in some small disguise. He is not…much.

In addition, I am surprised to find that even people who have known me for twenty or thirty years are unaware of some basic facts about me. Like how mortifying it is for me to stand in front of an audience, however small. I suppose my too frequent expression of opinion in public has led them to assume otherwise. It is true, I am easily lifted by the flow of emotion to say what is better left unsaid. And then, of course, there is that front counter at the old Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop. It was raised up about a foot above floor level so that the clerk behind the counter—most often myself—could sit and look incoming customers in the eye. This dais left a subconscious impression I am told.

Writing has always been my preferred means of expression. I like the choosing of words and the freedom to edit my own thoughts. My tongue is a poor editor. It stumbles. It mumbles. And it frequently uses words poorly attached to my intended meaning. So I have written my speech to give my tongue guidance and chosen the portion of my novel which might spark some interest in an audience willing to read the rest of the book, and now I must stand in front of the mirror and deliver. Why do I always look back at myself so skeptically?

I can’t go on writing about speechifying. Perhaps there is something else I’ve been meaning to address here as well. Or I can look up ‘necrosis.’ I saw that word listed there beneath ‘mortify’ and I am not yet sure exactly what unpleasant thing it means.

HOUND is at the printer and soon to be shipped! Anyone interested may ask their local bookshop to order copies for them, or you may order it directly from Avenue Victor Hugo Books: $24 (Massachusetts residents must pay 6.25% tax–$1.50) plus $3.25 media mail shipping–no extra shipping charge on additional copies. I will happily sign each copy ordered directly unless forbidden to.  Order from: books@avenuevictorhugobooks.com. Checks or Paypal accepted.

The million-folded tyrannies
Of forever damaged families–
Youth soiled and casually twisted
In the flicker of this mordial dark,
Drinking tear fed memories
Of stolen dreams and borrowed themes,
Quick cut from a television life–
A punch line, no joke, a lie, a kiss,
Lost trust, now murder, and revenge—again.
All re-torn fabric that will not be re-sewn,
Nor helped by the documented kindness
Of our paper-built bureaucracies.

They mean well, we all do, want the best
We can, and spend as little as we might
To get by, to get–what is it we want again?
While generous with our time and money—
Just not now, later. I’ll call. Why me?
We buy heaven on a stick and lick,
Voting for promises and believing lies—
Not what you said it was I wanted—
Why do they always lie? Don’t they know?
I never really knew them. Who are they?
I was only trying to help. It’s not my fault.
I tried. But they suddenly stopped!

She was still breathing when I left.
He looks so peaceful now–
No more cursing in the dark.
She said she would not do it over.
She was tired and done.
He wished he could have it all back—
To try once more. To step again
Upon the rail and jump. He would fly.
She saw no point. The pews were empty.
All of the words and no meaning.
The sun-bit water once welcomed

his shattering splash.
He would swim this time, away.

Like a paving stone on a walk at night–no, more like a book left down on the floor where you were reading it while trying to stretch the pain from your back so you could sleep–I stumbled upon a book shop in Derbyshire the other day. I have never much been to Derbyshire, having missed those roads as I drove through England back in 1978. This particular bookshop was there at that time but in no better shape than my own little effort in Boston, right down to trying to survive by selling textbooks on the side. No, I stumbled upon Scarthin books in Cromford because I spend too much time on the internet these days. I was researching what others considered to be the best bookshops.

It’s all very disappointing to a glass-half-empty sort like myself. So many people who love books and want to work for themselves try to start book shops and fail most often by losing sight of what it is they love. I did, and I know the impulses. I failed repeatedly. But I am a stubborn guy. And then I had more success than most and I loved 90% of every minute of it and wish I were still in that war, but I am not and that is that. But, as I recall the many hundreds of bookshops I have physically explored over the years, and now consider the pale presence on the internet of those who remain as I dawdle through the ether, I am struck more severely by my own failure to accomplish in the end what was in my mind at the time.

This is all for a creative purpose. I do succumb to self-pity now and again, but I keep busy enough to avoid it generally and I have just been re-writing the third book in the HOUND series and there is a development in the plot which I don’t want to go into just now which makes me reconsider my own deeds and re-judge the values I placed or misplaced on things. And thus I found Sean Dodson’s article on the ten best bookshops in the world (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/11/bestukbookshops). And there I found Scarthin Books.

Now, you understand that I am judging this place from afar. But that is part of the point.

What I found amidst a list of profligate booksellers who seem to be rapt by there own appearances or terribly over-financed, or perhaps just extremely lucky in the lottery of life, is a bookseller who appears to have had and still has much the same motivation as myself. This is something of a shock. I like to think I am so unique. After all, it is one of the identification points of my generation. I disparage others who think they are special, but secretly (or not so secretly) think that way of myself.

Of all the book joints in all the towns in all the world, I think I would like to walk into the Scarthin. How do I know? Well, I’ve spent a couple of hours on their web site. I see the kind of books they sell. I have read what they have to say. There’s a swell piece on ‘the ecology of books.’ Another on the British weather. Another on ‘Cistercian Cricket.’ These are all under the heading ‘Whimseys’ along with a ballad I love. There’s more under ‘Conceits.’ By the time I got to ‘Dave’s Diatribes’ I was thinking I might have lost a brother in some parallel universe. I don’t have to agree with every nick or nonce (there is a bit on ‘health and healing’ and another on ‘shamanism’ that gave me pause…but then I have many lovely relatives who are Catholics and worse) and I can say that I feel like I could have comfortably spent my thirty years there instead of the old Avenue Victor Hugo. And this makes me re-think what I have rethought time and again, but with a keener edge.

Bookselling is a profession, like doctoring and lawyering. You don’t have to agree with the law to understand the necessity of it and the need of good counsel. A doctor needn’t make a living off of botox and sugar pills. A bookseller can be catholic without being Catholic. What is important to making a profession worthwhile is the investment of your own being in the effort. If you do it for the money you’re both a fool and an idiot. You live such a brief time, how could you waste it shuffling paper on a desk to fill the maw of some bureaucracy instead of kicking at the leaves on a walk in the woods?

If you’d been in as many of the homes of the wealthy as I have you’d appreciate the judgment. Most of them are as stupid as the rest of us and they live in constant fear of being discovered. They are very defensive about their money because they haven’t a clue how it came to be in their pockets. Trust funds and tax breaks do not give them confidence in their worth. (Thinking of Britain now—that is the great trick of the class system there. They have fashioned a duty out of their position which saves them the angst.)

When you buy a library from someone who has had the means and the time to enjoy the best literature our culture has to offer, and you find leather bound tomes which have never been read and Danielle Steel paperbacks with their spines curled you know where you are, just as you know when a bookseller is a biz-niz person or a professional by what they purvey. (I re-spell business to keep it apart from what can be an honorable craft).

As I have said elsewhere, booksellers are as responsible for the demise of bookselling as anyone. You cannot treat books as accounting tricks and keep your principles anymore than you can handle crap without getting the stink on your fingers. You cannot lose a little integrity on every sale but make it up in volume. It’s fine to sell a bestseller, but if that’s what you are in business for, you’ve made a mistake. The margins are terrible and the third rung of hell is just ahead.

I want to believe that this place is what I have taken it to be, sight unseen. Like an internet love affair. There is something invigorating about wishful thinking. It’s so easy not to do. Why be disappointed? Accept your lot. It’s more convenient to accept what you have or are told you must have instead of what you want. It’s one of the few graces of my self-centered generation that we want so much. It moves us. Often to extremes or poor choices, but it moves us. What won me to the Scarthin from the first was the sub-head to the home page: “Britain’s most enjoyable Bookshop.” My god, these folk are nearly American! Who else places joy (re happiness) in the casus belli of their founding document.

I imagine the good people of the Scarthin might be unhappy with this last assessment. They must forgive me my own prejudices.

I am now saving my pennies and have set my sights across my compass to the east. I will find a bed at the Town Head Farmhouse or some such in Cromford some day sooner than later and visit a bookshop in that neighborhood.

I have been reading mystery and crime fiction since I was twelve and first discovered Mr. Holmes. The contest of good and evil was a fine caution for a teenage mind bent on breaking the rules. I did study the genre briefly in the 1970’s for the purpose of developing a mystery magazine to complement the science fiction monster that was swallowing me then, but that came to naught and in general I do not like to spend my time watching the sausage get made. I just happily eat it. When I made the decision to write a fiction about the death of the book some years ago, I quickly adopted the mystery genre as the right vehicle for the getaway. It was then that I decided to catch up with what had been going on since Travis McGee took permanent retirement.

In short, very few detectives drive Oldsmobiles these days (or an old Rolls-Royce converted to a pick-up truck for that matter). The psychology of the criminal act has taken the place of any moral judgment for a large percentage of mysteries. Social concerns often outweigh catching much less punishing the criminal. Criminality in and of itself is frequently in question, no matter the ultimate nature of the crime. The ‘mystery’ is more often an exposition of a crime and its aftermath.

Something that I have commonly found missing from the mystery genre today is cause, as in ’cause and effect.’ It seems that cause requires judgment and being judgmental has also fallen from favor along with the idea that there is such a thing as ‘crime’ as opposed to (I suppose) bad acts and good acts. And thus, punishment is now relative as well.

There are deep rifts in the mystery genre which have given rise to very specific geologic features. There is the ‘cozy’ and the ‘hard-boiled,’ of course, as well as the ‘noir,’ and the ‘police procedural’–all well established high ground for the writing practitioner and the faithful reader. There is even a sub-sub-genre for the ‘biblio-mystery’ which a few critics have already used to label HOUND. What is unfortunate to my mind is that there is relatively little cross reference. Outside of a few excellent and omnivorous blogs on the subject, few mystery readers play across the rifts.

More interestingly, as male readership has precipitously declined in recent years and female readership in general has declined less, there is a sort of ‘feminization’ of the mystery genre, very much kin to the dominance of fantasy over science fiction in that literary province. Women were always the majority of readers in the mystery field–as they have always been the majority of readers of fiction in general. But there was, from the time of Conan Doyle, a strong male presence. When I was growing up, John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, Mickey Spillane, and Ian Fleming, were offering excellent fare in the wake of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. These and a dozen more gave any male reader the kind of reference he could believe in as he sank beneath the ether of a good story.

This is less the case today for several reasons. One is politics. Another is Freud. But an even more practical reason lies in the mechanics of a reading culture. Boys and girls are no longer taught to read, much less to read fiction. And boys in particular have adopted the easy outlet of a newly digitalized artifice to replace books. Video games are popular with girls, but they are the rage with boys. I have raised a few of these creatures myself and have watched the battle in progress. I won’t truly know who won the war of course until it’s too late, but I have at least maintained the high ground and avoided the rifts as the father figure (I think).

Like a single parent home where the mother is stuck with the kids, the lack of male presence in the mystery novel has evolved into a restructuring of the genre which is stark. Emotional awareness dominates over detection. Female ‘issues’ often outweigh evidence. Strangely, the act of murder has taken on a ‘Peckinpah’ type surrealism. Victims are often female and suffer the most horrible deaths at the hands of men. (The simple fact that most murders are committed by men upon men seems irrelevant). The thriller is now the last dry land for male readers. Men do read some procedurals, but unhappily skipping to avoid the soft fleshy parts.

I have spent hours standing in bookshops close to the mystery section in the past few years–never mind the nearly 30 years previous to that when I sold them daily to the public myself. I cannot remember seeing a man read something as old fashioned as Agatha Christie, but nor do I see men picking up the Julia Spencer Fleming books which are so well written and contain a very believable male protagonist. An excellent mystery writer like Martha Grimes is sadly ignored by male readers in favor of Dennis Lehane, but this is not a good trade. Lehane is an excellent writer with a strong male voice, but he seems caught in a world of twisted psychological excuse rather than moral imperative. I’m afraid he will wear out his welcome sooner than later.

A woman once came into my shop and told me she had just seen a revival of Agatha Christie’s The Mouse Trap and thought it was great fun–but did I know of any other staged mysteries as good as that. I said I knew one that was better–Ayn Rand’s Night of January 16th. The woman’s face fell and then contorted in a way I cannot take time to describe. She finally said, “You’re not a Republican, are you?” I did not inform her that Rand was not a Republican either. It was pointless. There was a world of literature she would not read no matter how well written, because of political as opposed to aesthetic prejudice.

By far the great majority of crime writers and readers are lefties. This is fine. As a libertarian I am no less offended by that political persuasion than I am by righties like Spillane or Buckley. I read for story. I read to be amused. I read to learn. I read to escape. I don’t read to pass judgment on an author’s religion or political persuasion (so often now the same matter). If the story holds the water, I don’t assume I’ll be poisoned. Most authors have better manners than that.

There is a whole twin planet of literary work which is invisible from the earth because it revolves around the sun at the exact opposite moment in space–at least that is the way it is for most readers. Do not try to get them to read a C.S. Lewis or a Dorothy Sayers if they read Hammett and Chandler. Forget Elizabeth Peters if they read Mankell.

P.D. James is accused of being conservative. I did not know this until I was in a Border’s one day and asked a clerk who pretended to be knowledgeable in the field about new mystery titles. She pointed at several books which were face out, skipping the latest James offering. I asked about it. She waved her hand at the cover. “She’s a conservative. You don’t want to read her.” I almost wanted to buy it just to make a statement–but such foolishness is beyond my budget. I generally don’t read James because she can be a bit mean to her characters. Meanness counts for more with me than politics when I’m under the ether.

But I do wonder why mysteries are so popular with readers of a left-leaning persuasion. Aside from the vicarious experience of danger (as with a roller coaster), is the interest a subconscious desire for order in a disorderly world? Is it a relieving of primal fears? A desire for justice? Might it be a humanist search for the terms and limits of right and wrong? I would like to think this last is at least part of the case. It is certainly a key motivation behind my own effort.

Dad no longer teaches us to drive the Olds. One person in ten can handle a stick shift. They do offer driver’s ed at most schools now, but no concept of what is happening as the gears change. Read the signs. Parallel park. You’re through. You are the operator of thousands of pounds of metal hurtling through space, but you have no idea how it works. I wonder if this does not leave its mark on the human brain. To be cognizant of the fact that you have no idea what you are doing, but you are doing it very fast must have an effect on the conscience. We all know someone who lost control. We might even know someone who was killed. In a social milieu where responsibility for our actions is so readily lifted from our shoulders, perhaps the cause and effect of the mystery story offers some grounding.

And then, maybe it is just that the mystery genre–like the western genre of old–is the last refuge of scoundrels. Women always seem to love a scoundrel.

Modern fiction is, by authority, a literature of anti-heroic impulse, anti-heroes, and the failure of mankind. Most primarily the dramatic action of the modern novel is dependent on a Freudian fallacy which pretends that human behavior is guided by sexuality, and as a subset, by greed as a form of sexual domination. After the misguided suppression of sexual matters in the Victorian age, this sort of ad hominem theorizing once appeared liberating to an intellectual community already estranged from the daily toil of the larger community. Don’t we all have these sexual feelings? Are we all not guilty of the original sin? The ‘hero’ does not save the damsel in distress for reasons of good will and humanity, but to rape her.

We have several generations of this sort of tripe polluting the academic mind at this point. I am 62. I was first introduced to a supposed sexual subtext of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ when I was 16–in a high school class no less. The joke is that such pseudo-intellectual claptrap is still being foisted on new generations of sixteen year olds as if it is recent revelation. The Victorians are still being challenged as if they are ‘the Man,’ in the same way as Nazi’s are still the villains in so many movies after sixty years of Pol Pots and Stalins, Idi Amins and Che Guevaras, Mao Zedongs and a dozen other mass murderers more relevant to the current world scene. And Holden Caulfield is still rebelling against the hypocrisy of his parent’s generation, appealing to every petty impulse of the average teenager instead of to the best that is clearly in him and them. Meanwhile, the social contract which makes it possible for us to diddle with such foolish self-indulgence is being vandalized, graffitied, and sacrificed on political alters of phony fear and trumped-up emergencies.

Whooh! Take a breath.

That said, there are a great many wrongs in ‘modern’ literature and far too few rights: style superseding substance, shock replacing awe, politics trumping philosophy, and characters who seem unaware of consequences, just for starters.

Any study of epidemiology will tell you that the suffering and death of millions, year upon year, was common until the Twentieth Century. The way humankind compensated was constant procreation. Culture was based on the making of babies and the training of children to assume the tasks necessary to provide for the welfare of the next generation of babies. As Mr. Hobbes famously observed, life was indeed nasty, brutish and short. By the end of the Eighteenth Century, after almost six thousand years of poorly recorded human history, and despite the Renaissance, The Reformation, the Golden Age of Islam, the Roman Empire, the Glory of Greece and four thousand years of Egyptian and Chinese dynasties, there was one lone democracy on the face of the earth and fifteen percent of its population were slaves and half of its citizens were unqualified to fully own property much less vote. The 99 percent of the rest of the earth’s humanity lived in poverty and squalor punctuated by war. Chattel slavery was such a common condition it was unremarkable except in a few European countries and in the newly minted United States.

Along comes the Nineteenth Century, the prosperity of the industrial age, and the blossoming of democracy. Oh, those terrible Victorians. So repressed. So hypocritical! Kings were deposed. Slavery abolished or relegated to the darkest outposts. A middle class comprising more than half of the population assumed power over this country and a few others where the arts flourished in an open market beyond the thumb of patronage. Life spans doubled. Disease became a matter of infrequent epidemic instead of annual attrition. The sciences established a foundation for the proof and furthering of knowledge. Women gained legal standing. And in the midst of this, the first utopians imagined a lost Eden when men freely frolicked with the beasts and cries of woe were heard for the ‘better times’ when the water was sweet.

It can be argued that the anti-hero was first born in the Victorian Age. Our markers for the centuries are not calibrated exactly to human progress. For that matter it could be argued that Tom Jones or Hamlet were proto-anti-heroes. But the anti-hero does not become a literary ‘type’ until the Twentieth Century. And what is he rebelling against? What is his bête noire? Why…hypocrisy! After six thousand years of throat-slitting and abject misery, our anti-hero is offended by hypocrisy! Oh. Woe. And what is the bane of his unhappy existence? Sexual codes of conduct. And note–please note–that he is a ‘he,’ not a ’she.’ His much sought and exercised pleasure is in the free sowing of his seed like any good barbarian, without care of consequence–let the wench take care of the bastard.

The phallacy of modern literature is just that–the replacement of the sword with the male member. Good and evil? Bah humbug. Evil is relative, but my sword–oh my.

This is no feminist ranting. I have as little interest in the prejudices and bigotry of feminism as I do for most politics and religion. My first impulse is to look at the purpose of such things. My interest is in literature. People who exercise their lungs with slogans have little time to read. My worry is that the hero–that singular literary creation of pre-historic mankind, who led us through myth and saga from the cowering in caves to the footprint on the moon has been killed, not by an arrow in the heel, but by ignorance and willful neglect. My own fear is that the hero, that imperfect glory, has been made petty by the comic book. My observation is that the ambiguous and the enigmatic have become the drugs of choice to a culture which has no clear idea of the risks we face.

Achilles was not a heel. He was imperfect, but he faced his enemies without fear and met his duty. Tragedy was the result of flaw, and the lesson to us all about hubris and fallibility. This is now to be scoffed at. The hero is a joke. Human weakness can no longer be the cause of tragedy, because our flaws are all that is important in an age of anxiety and self-approval. We all know we are weak. Narcissism is rampant. Duty is relative–is there time for a latte? Sex is what runs the city, not genius. Comedy is the natural province of mankind.

A man saves the lives of a plane-load of people, drawing upon the learned skill and determination of a life-time of dedication to being as good as he can be–and the reporter says “well, he was just trying to save himself,” and another wonders if he is a good husband–intimating that, because he is a pilot, and all pilots are jockeys, that he might have something going with one of the flight attendants.

Freud is the god of our times. His misanthropic, misbegotten mistakes have become the assumed wisdom of a sniggering class of pseudo-intellectuals. Word-choice and onomatopoeia aside, we are dealing with life and death here. Our Literature is an expression of the soul of our age. Are you pleased to have nuclear and biological weapons in the hands of leaders who trade in ambiguous ideas and enigmatic gesture?

Another way to view this: is it more important to you that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, or that he authored the Declaration of Independence? You may answer the former if you like, but you would be wrong. Another slave owner in an age of slavery is no matter to you now. But the fact that you can worry over the question today is a result of Mr. Jefferson’s better nature.

Who our heroes are is important. Understanding heroes and that they may have weaknesses, and that they are human beings different from ourselves only by their own sense of purpose, is a key element in the chemistry of culture. Do you want a Thomas Jefferson to consider the consequences of war, or a George Bush? This is not political but practical. I am sure you can be a Republican and still understand the mediocrity of George Bush. Just as I think you might be a Democrat and question the experience and wisdom of a community organizer from the wards of Chicago. But we have chosen these men as our leaders in times of worry. We will pay the consequences.

After all, I am asking if our literature has contributed to this state of affairs. Can we afford the rule of the anti-hero?

Words have meanings. This is a tautology to some. A word, by definition, has meaning–truly, but not a meaning. Words are used, worn, tattered, mended, soiled, and discarded. Some are harder than others and keep their shape but shatter when abused, others are soft, if not quite clay, at least putty-like.

For instance, as a writer I am very careful of what I see as my inner spirit. I can handle a great deal of worry and stress so long as my eye is on my purpose. And there have been moments in my life when the dimming of this sense of myself has caused despair and made me ill.

I used a word, ‘entelechy’ in Habits of the Heart (the novel posted here) which was misunderstood by someone else and I felt chastened. Much of what I write can be misunderstood if taken out of context, I suppose. The very use of a story is often a sort of definition by exposition. Entelechy (from the Greek entelecheia) is the elan vital, the ardor, the spirit of a thing, as it is realized–as it is used as opposed to a mere talent that we are born with which might be buried beneath a rock or harbored like a sailboat at anchor. At least, that is how I meant it to be taken.

Others might think of this word as a teleological concept–as the vital force which drives one to a particular destiny. I have no use for such concepts of destiny, but I do, in fact, see the actions of one’s life as bearing us toward particular ends. I believe in purpose. But most people never realize their potential. The teleology of their lives appears to be as round pegs for round holes and square ones for the square ones. I see entelechy more in the way Aristotle meant it, simply and wonderfully, as an individual’s realization of potential–as our ‘De anima,’ our soul. Each of us is indeed different, if not ‘unique’ (in the modern psycho-babble)—too irregular by nature to fit in holes without being cut and shaped (again my favorite word ‘procrustean’ comes to mind).

This is all sketchy territory, granted. It is the subject for long hours at the bar and many pints. There are fibers in this word, entelechy, which make it as difficult for me to use as to say. ‘In-tele-key.’ I have thought of it thousands of times but used it in conversation perhaps ten or twelve. Some words are like that. They bear a certain weight which forbids frequent lifting.

Entelechy is quite opposite from the word ’slavery,’ for instance. Slavery is commonly used and just as commonly misused. I have spoken to hundreds of people through the years who seem to have no idea what they are saying when they use the word ’slavery.’ Having been raised in a relatively free society they have no practical idea of what slavery was. They think of whips and chains. That was seldom the case, however. A friend whose great grandparents were the chattel slaves of a North Carolina tobacco farmer made this clear to me many years ago. If by chance Byron should read this, he is welcomed to make further argument now.

Most chattel slaves were too valuable to chain or whip. It would damage the goods. The chattel slave was raised to serve, trained to the role as absolutely as the beggar child who is physically blinded by the parent so that their begging would be the more pitiful. It was the spirit of the chattel which was broken to the wheel. And to me, the most important definition of slavery is the loss of entelechy. A slave can seldom fulfill any personal sense of their own spirit.

For hundreds of years the entelechy of the Irish people was suppressed by a slavery to English masters. In short form, they were not allowed to own property, speak their minds (or even speak their own language), govern themselves, marry whom they wished, or work where they wanted. This condition produced a people with a spiritual need for independence but also and often an acceptance of dependence. Their religion taught them to accept the will of their God. That is one product of prolonged slavery. But the Irish culture was never so greatly destroyed as was that of the black slave in America–twisted like the burl on an oak perhaps, but not destroyed.

One strain of Irish dependency which I think might be related to their enslavement is a teleological acceptance of destiny–of a naturally imposed purpose–of design, intelligent or otherwise. My argument to my friend Byron was that it is in just such an acceptance of destiny that slavery is nurtured. If all black people are slaves, it must be the will of God. If Ireland is ruled by England, it is God’s choice. And this is no different than saying (please hold on for the jump here), if American is great, it is our destiny.

Assuming you don’t have a Sam Adams ale in hand, and have only a limited time for discourse, I will head straight to my larger point. Teleology (the belief that there is an ultimate purpose to things or a final cause), entelechy (the idea of an essential spirit to our being) and slavery (the subjugation of one human being to another) are closely linked–chained as a matter of fact.

Most people–by which I mean a very great majority–believe in a sort of thralldom of life. They accept a role as citizen, wife, husband, father, boss, soldier–whatever–which predicts and directs their lives. For instance–they are born American, and thus have certain inalienable rights–but they can’t tell you what those rights are exactly. They do believe that people have a right to one thing or another–health care, three meals a day, education, a roof over their heads. But none of these things automatically exist in nature which is the philosophical source of American political thought. None are in the United States Constitution. These are values created by citizens today for their own well-being. And they are just as artificial as the prosperity necessary to create them.

I do not argue with the idea of responsibility. If we accept the safety and benefit of human society, we must accept the cost. I understand the need to impose sanctions and limits for a society to exist and prosper. For my own part, I suspect that I would not survive a single night in the total freedom of a jungle. But we set our limits and accept them based upon preconceived notions. For instance, ‘that all men are created equal.’ Thus, in a given society, what is required of one should be required of all.

‘That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.’ None of the rights previously mentioned are in the Constitution of the United States, but they are in the constitution of many other countries–including, I am told, the European Union (this is an unreadable document many thousand of pages long so I will take this for granted). And, of course, we have already been trained and educated to our roles as citizens here in the United States. Our income is automatically taxed. Provision for our old age is already taken from our paycheck. The politicians are not arguing here over some strange new social concept. We already eat, drink, and smoke as were are told. We are arguing over the price, are we not?

It may be that such values as universal health care are socially inevitable (teleologically speaking). It is possible that human society cannot prosper without first administering to the essential needs of each citizen (per the entelecheia). But, the problem which I do not see addressed in this is the bondage necessary to produce the desired result. If all health care is paid for–who pays? Everyone. Then, logically as well as tautologically, there cannot be a choice in the matter. I cannot choose not to pay. If I did, I might have the advantage of using that money which would otherwise go to paying for health care to buy a ticket to the Bahamas and lay on the beach. This is the way it works. And if we take this next step, what it left to us really? Health, education and welfare are already departments of our government.

When I was a young man we had the draft. Every male was made to register and was subject to selective service. This universal male conscription instigated a fair degree of outrage at a time when national priorities were not agreed upon. It was understood by many that if the government could take control of your physical body by force in this manner that they could just as easily control your mind.

What is necessary then is an acceptance of words, and I suggest two words might actually be better than one here: universal slavery. If we truly want to be taken care of from the cradle to the grave, we must define such an existence in a simple and effective way that is not too difficult to understand. (Clearly an average evening in front of the television would seem to indicate that difficult words should be avoided). We wish our lives to be prescribed and proscribed. Well, it would seem most people would. However, I for one, would prefer to be transported.

Some words are difficult to handle for the same majority that accepts the manifest destiny inherent in their secular or religious teleologies. Slavery is a politically charged concept in this country. (Not an odd fact given that we shed a fair amount of blood over the issue). The English yoke over Ireland was more successful because the human beings involved were not chattel, per se. They had no value in and of themselves. They were, in fact, in the way, (in much the way the Scots were) and those who would not simply die of sickness and starvation were shipped off–transported–to a terrible fate in the wilds of America and Australia. It is only one more irony of history that those who were shipped fared better than those who stayed. (Another irony is that those Irish and Scots replaced an indigenous people in both America and Australia who were, in their turn, in the way).

I would suggest that there might be other alternatives to universal health care than the imposition of an even larger national tax and a more powerful national bureaucracy which will dictate the physical care of every individual (excepting those who are more equal than others, of course). There is a word to describe such power over the body of an individual: slavery. And I can imagine other means which would allow a greater degree of freedom and would be less harmful to the entelechy of each and every citizen.

I am suggesting to those who might restrain knee-jerk reaction that they consider the words they use and their meanings and their consequences. Are they, in wishing for universal healthcare, in fact wishing for universal slavery? Is that the inevitable destiny of mankind, the de facto equality of slavery for all? Is that the end, our purpose, our cause, and in the best interests of the spirit within each and every one of us?

So a friend of mine was telling me about a bit of behaviorist evolutionary theory and I found it very appealing. I have generally found most behaviorism as unscientific as any religion–drawing conclusions from insignificant or incomplete data and thence supposing whole worldviews. Thus the activities of ants might become a modus for human action or the pre-calculated terms of conduct of lab animals in a closed system become rules of human political order.

But all behaviorists are not so insane or inane. Their foundational methods are actually scientific and their discoveries can be enlightening. It is usually when they begin to extrapolate from mice to men that they go terribly wrong. Such pseudo-scientific theory is so 20th Century!

So I listened to my friend and found his proposition very appealing and immediately began to self-consciously wonder why. Why?

The idea was this: people are predisposed to religion. Imagining a god comes naturally. During human evolution, it was the creature who could look at the ripple of the tall grass and imagine it was a tiger who more often survived. The other creature, the one who dismissed the ripple of the grass as simply the play of the wind, more often became lunch for a hungry feline. Thus, the creature who could imagine monsters in the dark more likely lived long enough to procreate while the one who decided to go out and get more firewood because it was getting chilly added himself to some other creature’s menu. Thence, apparently, the proto-human who imagined Thor in the lightening laid low while the fool who tried to finish gathering his mushrooms got zapped.

Why would this be appealing to me? It is because of my prejudices as a writer. I like to imagine things. I wonder about tigers in the grass–if not ticks. I will see ships in the clouds before I will worry about rain. Not being religious, I must consider this tit-bit of behaviorism for what it’s worth.

I do believe in evolution–whether divinely inspired or not. If it was God who gave me this brain and these five senses, I imagine he expected me to make good use of them. I am bored by ideas of predestination, behaviorist or otherwise. They assume a great deal of patience on the part of any god who must wait for the inevitable outcome. Or they might assume a static universe, but such a place would have no use for living matter, human or not. Hard-wired creatures would quickly be reduced to their carbon-based elements.

I am excited and thrilled to observe the minor evolutions which occur before my very eyes. I have witnessed a little egg and flour become a pancake worthy of any god. And I have imagined the wonder of Beethoven’s neighbor as he listened to that mad deaf man trick the Fifth Concerto from his badly tuned piano. Behaviorism is as silly as most politics because it assumes the most banal conclusion from the most proscribed evidence.

I have long engaged the idea that small things can be the most revealing of larger circumstances. That is, after all, the nature and progress of a single human life. Few us have the opportunity to grab the pole beneath the flag as it rises on Mt. Suribachi or sit at the table and place our signature on Mr. Jefferson’s folly.

The importance of small things for a writer is that there are more of them and thus more to choose from. An imagined story needs the fuel of imagined fact. Readers must believe that such facts might be true, or else loose interest. If every matter is historically momentous, the weight of it might be endured if the purpose is large enough, but it will more often be read as shear fantasy. Why? Because our lives are more often tossed by the weather than a nuclear holocaust. Fiction must engage the reader’s mind by establishing the reality of a lie.

Because I imagine a Jefferson might arise from any quarter, I do not ignore such larger purpose in fiction, but I am more engaged by the circumstance from which a Jefferson might come, than by the supposing of a Jefferson himself. I am prone to wonder at the talent of the slave who fashioned Jefferson’s writing box as much as I am the mind of the inventor himself. Why? Because I imagine that slave’s skill as a carpenter might have inspired Mr. Jefferson to conjure the outlandish supposition that all men are created equal. And also because human history is much more about the slave who survived than it is about the master–slavery being the common place until our own time, after all.

How did that human slave muster the spirit to get up in the morning and apply his talent to Mr. Jefferson’s toy? Was it merely because of the prospect of a better meal than the field hand? I suspect not. And I imagine the creature who went out to find the firewood at night did not freeze to death but did find some addition company to join him by his fire. And the fool who finished gathering his mushrooms had something to entice a potential mate with–a dinner for two, by fire light no less.

Obviously I don’t read many comic books. The saving of the earth by super-human powers is no more enjoyable to me than any theatrical deus ex machina. If a god can save us he will, or else what’s a god for? And I imagine that the matters that matter most are those which we might know in our lives rather than what we can only imagine. This is not a circular thought. It is a road through the tall grass. It is a forge on which a sword might be fashioned which makes the tiger shy away.

But I do see the god in the machine. I see the machine made by the same human imagination that feared tigers in the tall grass. The behaviorist might conjure his own circumstance in the lab for that ancient human being who once saw the slag in the fire pit and supposed a use for the metal that became the sword that killed the tiger in the grass. That ancient might have thanked his god for the vision he saw in the fire-pit. Or he might have declared himself the village chief.

I don’t know.

When Andrew Wyeth died I found myself reviewing many past thoughts and realizing a few new ones. He was by far the preeminent painter of my time, one of the first living painters I became aware of as a youth. I cannot remember the exact text, but his work was the cause of the first argument I ever had about art, and subsequently many others. His father, the fabulous N.C. Wyeth, had filled the dreams of my childhood with colors that challenged the nature of the ordinary. And that path lead back and beyond to the great Howard Pyle. Andrew Wyeth’s personal life made the national and world news. Books of his work were bestsellers and helped pay my rent during the 1970’s as I started life as a professional bookseller. But his greater importance to me was, from the first, that he made me think.

I should note that I was not always on his side. There was a vein of tragedy that ran through his work that chilled me deeper than I could find words to describe or easily cope with. When I was younger, this bleak awareness was off-putting and somehow unacceptable. But as I grew older I found an empathy for it, if not sympathy, and finally had the pleasure of re-discovery that comes when you take a fresh look at something you have taken for granted. (I have always accepted the judgment that his father’s death while crossing those railroad tracks at Chadds Ford with Andrew’s nephew Newell in 1945 was the key to that dark core. David Michaelis, who once worked at our bookshop, wrote a fine biography of N.C. Wyeth and touched on some of this.)

Lately, I have been driving south from Boston to carry my son and all his gear to and from college twice a year, and one of my daughters is working in that direction now as well, so I have good cause to stop by the wonderful Brandywine River Museum at Chadds Ford in passing and see the work of the Wyeth clan up close. It would be well worth the effort without the convenient excuse. And it is on those journeys that I have been able to come to terms with many of my previous reservations.

I have favorites: “Roasted Chestnuts,” “Cape Coat,” “Faraway,” “Snow Hill,” “Trodden Weed,” and many more. He made prolific use of his 91 years. Each time I have finally seen the original of a reproduction I liked before, I am enthralled.

My purpose here, certainly an extension of the arguments I have engaged in the past, is to say outright that Wyeth was the greatest artist of my time, and one of the greatest of any time–in easy company now with Rembrandt, Velasquez, and Caravaggio. The great pleasure of intimate exposure to his work at the Brandywine has made me understand this. And this awareness has, in turn, transferred itself to a personal sense of hope at a time of waning expectations. The world will not devolve into a primitive state of universal slavery–at least not without a fight.

Perception is the cutting edge of awareness and thus of life. We are numbed if not deadened by the humdrum of necessity. Our perceptions are dulled by repetition and order. The artist becomes the agent provocateur, the translator, the proxy, nay the Cyrano to our Christian in our appreciation of life.

Wyeth is reported to have said, “I put this pink tone on her shoulder–and it almost blew me across the room.” Our eyes are fixed by a simple color and thus by the twisted figure in the grass and thus a world we would not otherwise know.

The spirit of great art is not just the individual perception of the world but the statement that such unique perception is important and necessary. When this creative act is carried out within an established cultural context which is hostile to an individual artist’s nature, it is often the catalyst to even greater work. This was the case of Rembrandt who was both trapped and financed by the Burghers of Holland. Velasquez was a slave to Royal Hapsburg whim and yet he found space for his art within the lines of the Inquisition. Caravaggio existed at the very fringe of Papal indulgence, and yet found the means to express his own visions.

Andrew Wyeth survived as great a challenge as any of those three. Indeed, the stamp of conformity in our media driven age is enough to steal the breath from any lesser artist. Wyeth was born into a century dominated by arbiters who despised such individual expression. Picasso was their man–intimacy replaced by pornography, color abused in an absence of nature, anarchy of line because discipline might reveal a specific awareness.

Wyeth was accused of realism. Oh my God! How could he! Regionalism! How quaint. Popularity without the sanction of authority. Inexcusable! Accessibility. Ridiculous! His sins against the church of modernism are too many to count, much less countenance.

He worked in egg tempera, a medium which would have been appreciated by any great artist of the 17th Century, but beyond the patience of post-modernism or post anything. He looked at his subject again and again, for years if necessary, until he was satisfied. He understood the subtle play and betrayal of light that is invisible to the digital palette. He listened to his subject as he worked, something lost to art students with their ears clasped by headphones. This was part of his unique ability to awake all the senses through the single faculty of sight. Wyeth’s art was not an accident. His work was a discovery, first for himself, and then, through his genius, for us.

His personal life was nobody’s business but his own. The relationship of an artist to his subject is only important through what is revealed on the canvas. Bathroom habits are irrelevant to anyone but a plumber. It is perhaps interesting that his personal life even mattered to the People magazine crowd–but of course, that is a measure of his impact on a greater audience otherwise unmoved by what they had been instructed to believe was art in our times.

I found it interesting that so many news reports of his passing in January used the words “controversial artist.” There was no true controversy–no debate that could engage the intellect in any case. Wyeth’s art was his own, unarguably, and yet an unintentional affront to the shabby aesthetics of our hollow and inflated age. At the end, he was peerless.

In his curiously bloodless memoir Books, Larry McMurtry says, “A bookman’s love of books is a love of books, not merely the information in them.” This explains as much as the author wanted if taken alone, but seen in the context of a life, it reveals a great deal more.

I say curiously bloodless because I have no doubt of McMurtry’s love, nor his ability to explain it. He is both an accomplished author and a successful bookman. His experience at those vocations is prodigious. Yet, he seems reluctant to bare his soul now in either calling. As if he is speaking to an unfriendly audience.

A few years ago I read McMurtry’s quest, Roads, with even less satisfaction. I love to drive. I was blessed with children who enjoy the journey, and my youthful joy at being on the road to somewhere was carried on through the more problematic years of being a father with the pleasure of my family. McMurtry writes of his own journeys as if he was cataloguing and even doing that in the manner of an old librarian long bored with his task.

Ah! I said to myself. Perhaps an answer to the puzzle!

I once knew a librarian–an ancient woman, perhaps forty or forty-five years old–when I was nine. She was my nemesis at the small Larchmont Public library at the time I was first discovering books. Her interest in books seemed entirely focused on preserving them in order, and my entertainment at the time was easily found in ways to create disorder. Certainly, in retrospect, I have enlarged my role in her life. I suspect she never even knew I existed beyond a dirty face that she banned from the premises on several occasions and frequently told to be quiet. But that’s the meat of it, is it not? The truth does not lie in the mere fact of my petty tricks and her ire, but in the very human chemistry I felt, and in the role I took for myself as a sort of nine-year-old juvenile delinquent cum Robin Hood.

I could never remember to bring the books I took out back again on time and was perpetually in debt to that small institution. It was necessary for me to liberate books in a way that allowed me the freedom to read them in my own good time. I became a thief. Among other things. I was also a liar. Thieves must always turn to lying in order to preserve their deeds. True, I always returned the books–all but one. And this, in itself was a larger challenge at times. Years later I discovered I had a small library-bound copy of a Mentor history series called The Age of Reason which had been overlooked on a darkened lower shelf. It caused me a great deal of angst and then again, a fine amount of remembrance.

And there we are with my critique of Mr. McMurtry again. His memoir lacks remembrance. This is a man who recreated the angst of his youth in The Last Picture Show. He could even famously recapture the west of his grandfathers and the great cattle-drives with Lonesome Dove. What then is his problem with Books?

I have known hundreds of bookmen in my life. Of course, I see them through my own lens. I am uninterested here in the majority who sell books because they haven’t the talent to deal with anything that is not uniformly square and alphabetically identifiable. Most of those are as bored of their work as the typical librarian, and just as sensitive to their weakness. They know in their cold hearts that they do not love books. Becoming a book dealer happened to them on their way to other dreams–as it did to almost all of us–but they never accepted their fate like a good lover does when they realize there is no escape.

I am interested in bookmen who love books, if for no other reason than to gain some footing on the ledges of my own psyche. Mr. McMurtry loves books. Why can’t he transfer that to his own memoir of that love affair?

I can only speculate.

His, at its core, is an unhappy relationship. He tells us it was begun in a gift of nineteen books at a time when his home was otherwise barren of even a Bible. Yet he is unsure of what titles were in that nineteen. I am positive that Mr. McMurtry could correct me on a thousand points of issue when it came to one title or another. How is it that the content of those nineteen had so little impact? I can and do forget my own phone number, but I can tell you within a very high degree of precision–say 75%–all of the books I read on my own from the age of nine to twelve. At twelve I begin to lose accuracy because I was swallowing more than two books a week.

I have always been intrigued with style. I am greatly impressed with the conjuring of an author. When I encounter a good trick I will often stop and reread the passage to see the sleight of hand again. It makes me happy.

I like detail. Patrick O’Brian books can get soggy with it, but that’s fine. Some people like detail more than others. I love the description of the whaling industry in Moby Dick and the building of the cathedral in Hugo’s Notre Dame or the battle of Waterloo in Les Miserables. But I can understand why people might skip those parts.

I am awed by the capturing of character in a few words. I was never as impressed by Fitzgerald as my teachers were because Gatsby is an empty figure despite all the trappings, Daisy is at best ‘objectified’ to use a currently popular term, and Nick is a cypher. The best characters in that too slim volume are secondary. Fitzgerald should have studied Trollope, Jane Austen, or Conrad.

What I am saying is that I enjoy content. I suppose it is alright to enjoy a book for its reputation among other readers. That’s certainly why most people read a given title to begin with. God forbid anyone should criticize F. Scott. Or Salinger. Or Roth. But I do because I’m an atheist, so God does not talk to me. He yells. And I take great joy in that as well. I don’t presume that my opinion is truth, much less fact. I am more likely to be wrong than right, in that my ignorance is profound. But I have my opinion and it is based on an experience with books which has shaped my life. It is as visceral as the love I have for my family. I don’t check it at the door with my hat because someone has told me to.

Mr. McMurtry should sit at his typewriter again, and insert a new ribbon, however difficult that is for him. He should sit down once more and tell us about his love for books. I want to know. I want details. I want slabber and stink. I want to know the kind of thing that will make me understand myself. Otherwise, what’s a book for?

Two of the greatest American authors among us today are Tom Wolfe and John McPhee, both of whom are often pigeonholed as part of the New Journalism school that arose in the 1960’s, but are in fact just plain good writers alive by chance at the same time, and both, by the nature of the academic mind, in need of tags so that their work can be more readily handled or dismissed. I am in awe of both men, and have re-read portions of their work to see if an examination of the bones might reveal the source of their magic–on a par with dissecting the golden goose.

My younger brother re-introduced me to McPhee in the early 1990’s. My brother is a geologist and was taken with several of those works which border on that territory, as well as the one on Alaska if I remember correctly. I had only read one of McPhee’s books at the time, the Deltoid Pumpkin Seed–brought to it by my own interest in lighter than air vehicles–and was not yet enamored with the man’s work. McPhee was a bit too cool on a subject that was hot to me.

We sold many of McPhee’s works at my bookshop over the years and I was well aware of the steady interest he seemed to bring even though his subject matter ranged from basketball and canoes, to oranges. I suppose I had dismissed him for his range of interest and assumed, if he wrote about so many things, he could write about none of them very well. That, of course, would have been true of a lesser writer.

Like all good writers, McPhee focuses on the individual human story and through them reveals the larger context. Thus, he is truly exploring the same territory again and again–human character. The geomorphology of the stone serves only as a stage.

The book that changed my judgment on McPhee was Rising from the Plains. This is just one part of a fine quartet which includes Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, and Assembling California. All of these were gathered together in the Pulitzer Prize omnibus Annals of a Former World in 1998. You won’t have qualified for a degree in geology when you have completed the course, but you will know better of the earth on which you stand. And more importantly, you will grasp a good portion of the geography of the human heart.

What quickly captured my eye with Rising from the Plains, a study of the earth we call Wyoming, was Ethel Waxham, “a slim young woman who is not in any sense a geologist,” as she “steps down from a train in Rawlings, Wyoming, in order to go north by stagecoach into country that was still very much the Old West. She arrived in 1905, when she was twenty-three. Her hair was so blond it looked white. In Massachusetts, a few months before, she had graduated from Wellesley College, and had been awarded a Phi Beta Kappa key, which now hung around her neck. Her field was classical studies. In addition to her skills in Latin and Greek, she could handle a horse expertly…” and shoot a rifle accurately and her aim was to teach school at a one-room outpost of civilization in a land of winds so great they spread the meager soil all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

Another favorite book of mine is The Virginian, by Owen Wister. That phenomenal bestseller is a far better piece of literature than most academics have taken the time to appreciate (or Hollywood has bothered to remake). It is cursed by its phenomenal success–the unwashed public liked it, so how can it be good. And, perhaps worse, it is a progenitor of all the Western novels which have shaped our concept of the American West to this day. That is the connection which found its way in my brain back in the 1990’s. Could Ethel Waxham have been inspired by the heroine of The Virginian, first published in 1902 and so popular about the time that she was studying the classics in Northampton? What inspired this young woman to go west to that same territory and take up her profession? Had literature once again not only reflected the world but in so doing, changed it?

McPhee teaches writing at Princeton University, and I would love to have studied with him, but I must settle for what I can learn from his books. I can tell you a little of what I have found there, and have tried to learn: Patience–if the story is there it will rise to the surface by the force of nature beneath it; Observation–the study of a subject is not in the notions you bring to it but in the revelation of the interior; Choice–all the facts are there by the million, and too many to catalog, so what you report should be true also to the nature of what you must leave behind; and Manner–style is overrated in our time, while manner is overlooked. The manner of telling of a story is the secret that opens the reader’s mind.

The guide John McPhee chose for his expedition through time was David Love, a wise and observant professional geologist born and raised on the land to be studied. But it is in David Love’s own past that we discover our reason to care about this particular place.

I have not yet read the journals of Ethel Waxham. These are published now and I will read them soon. She is a stunningly beautiful writer. Hers is the spring water from which the story in Rising from the Plains grows. Hers is the fragile human element that finds its root in the rock and splits it, inexorably, to be viewed by us in the comfort of our chairs. Just the portions excerpted by McPhee in his own book have left me with a sort of hero worship. I cannot forget her story.

Recently I began a total re-write of the third novel in the Hound series. What I had written in previous drafts did not yet capture the story I wanted to tell. In this task I had my erstwhile hero, Henry Sullivan, a fellow who has managed to find a unique life in his own appreciation of books, extolling the virtues of McPhee’s work. I decided to take a chance and re-read my reference, and was suddenly captured by McPhee and his subject once again.

This is not always a wise move. Re-reading favorite books can be painful. Especially when the work was first encountered when we were young. But it has been less than twenty years sense my first judgment, and I bargained with the fact that I had changed less in that time than in the twenty years before.

As usual, I was wrong. I found myself moved more by the second reading than the first. I don’t want to go too far in explaining why I think this is so at this time in my life. The human comedy is always a laugh at our own expense. And though the reason for this web site is a discussion of my work, the greater and lesser purpose I have for that work, and the values which I believe inform it, I am not sure all the ingredients in the sausage should be revealed. Thank goodness there is no FDA yet for writers.

At some point I will re-write and post an appreciation of a very different author, Tom Wolfe. How great writing can be so different while drawing on the same elements is a magic worthy of many more essays, but here I would simply commend for your attention the work of John McPhee. I think especially Rising From The Plains, as my personal favorite, but take your pick. Take time. Be patient.

BookExpo America (BEA) is the spring fashion show of the printed word. My publisher, Small Beer Press, has cunningly contrived to have my novel Hound available at this annual convention in the bound proofs (‘advance reading copy’ also known as ARCs) to gain some needed attention before the actual publication date in September.

You fall in love. You get married. Your first child is born. Your second child. Your third. These are the common blessings and the greatest thrills of life. I am not saying that this is in that order of magnitude, but still better than your first kiss, first home, or first car. On a par with your first crop perhaps, after a season of struggle and all that comes before that to make the struggle possible.

I have seen the bound ‘advance uncorrected proof’ of the Hound.

On Saturday morning, after a fitful sleep, I was awake at 4:30 and out the door at 5:30 to catch a 6:30 bus from Boston to New York. Buses have changed little in the last forty years, so I needn’t describe the experience. But it was all of that, though made a bit more acceptable by the hundred times I have survived nearly the same journey. Familiar journeys conjure fine ghosts and generally reclaim more good than bad from the past. The difference now is that I am no longer the flexible and resilient youth of my youth. I ache easily.

Around 10:30 I was on 42nd Street and asking for directions to the Javits Center. I’ve never been there before. It’s not part of the New York I grew up with. I was quickly directed down Eighth Avenue.

My shoulder bag is weighted by my worries–I might need this–and that–and my camera too–What if I spill coffee on my pants–and an extra shirt–etc. Much etc. And a 33.8 oz product of Poland Spring. And some fig newtons. You know the deal. By the time I saw the great and inspiring edifice of the old General Post Office building, I knew I was wrongly sent. One shoulder is sore and I switch my bag strap to the other. Perhaps my first informant had mistaken the Javits Center for Madison Square Garden? A man with a bagel and coffee loitering in a shadow directed me over to Eleventh Street. I found a good coffee shop first and got my own bagel. Fortified, I was in the door of the Javits center by 11:30.

Four city blocks of what was once Hell’s Kitchen have been transformed into a Zeppelin hanger built by a committee. I see room for several professional sports to be played here at great savings and convenience to fans who must now go to the Meadowlands. Multiple soccer matches could be kept to the lower floors where they would not be a bother. Exaggeration is not necessary.

A kind person at the ‘correct’ check-in counter several hundred yards from my point of entry (check-in is mysteriously divided into numerous multi-adjectival tribes) directs me up an escalator and to my left. I should have naturally assumed she meant my other left, but I was tired.

After a circuit of the floor beneath an understandable confusion of banners and signs I ask another likely guide. They direct me out the door I entered to a well placed information booth created just for fools. There are two informants there. I am told I am told where to go. I soon find I find the aisle occupied by Consortium and I consort.

My publishers, Small Beer, are there–both halves, lesser and better–that is Gavin and Kelly. I am suddenly excited and re-energized. Elated. Ecstatic. Other e-words. There it is, face out on a shelf! Lettered in black on white in wraps, just as uncorrected galleys often are, it seems so very small. A premature baby of sorts. But then I thankfully think not to say this because it does not truly fall into that league and might lead someone sensitive to the subject to think I had lost all proportion again, as I can do.

Oh, I must be polite. I will be.

By twelve thirty I am sensate again. I worry about what I might have said in the interim, but bury this like a bone among a flowering of dreads. What was the name of that person whose hand I just shook? Shouldn’t I know this woman? They seem to know me.

They all have name tags, but I cannot read them without changing my glasses. At least then I have a chance of recognizing anyone within a few feet. The others will hopefully not mind my staring at their chests.

I am reassured by Jed, my editor and guide, that all is well. I think him fortunate for not knowing the truth. A delusion of importance is called for, but I have not thought to bring any whiskey.

I have time before my moment to wander the floor. This is a great mistake for an author wanting of self-importance. Of the tens of thousands of newly minted books on display among many hundreds of publishers’ booths, at least ten and a quarter million are mysteries. There is a bumper crop of crime and a surfeit of sleuths. Where did I get the idea that writing a mystery was an idea worth pursuing? More precisely, why is my effort better than any of these others? Any others? How did Gavin and Kelly delude themselves into this project?

I restrict my browse to titles offered by other independent publishers. That narrows my competition by half–over five million at least. Oh joy.

I wander. I stop at the sight of beauty. An ornithologist and artist engages me in the peculiar challenges of bird books. I have the brains for that and relax to a tale of avian woe.

My moment is 3:30 to 4:30–that time assigned for me to sit and sign proof copies for anyone interested at a table which appears to stretch from one end of Manhattan to the other. Bibliomaniacs must stand in lines on this broad field of battle like Wallace’s men, with bags and not bagpipes, pens raised mightier than swords, and choose which author to bother with. What perplexes me–no–worries me, for I am wont to worry about almost anything–is that after I sign several–a few–maybe only two, pre-assigned copies to a non-profit donation–that I must work out my hour sitting at my segment of the endless table and look on longingly at the lines before other authors. Onomatopoeia! I’ll just say I have to go to the toilet–and stay there.

I look for familiar faces to occupy the last hour before my trial. Sadly, the great David Godine has gone for the day. I thankfully use up time admiring his beautifully printed efforts. I thread my way around booths clogged with fans wanting the signatures of favorites authors. Several of my own favorite small presses have closed since I was last at one of these functions, when I played the role of ‘book buyer,’ for my now lost bookshop. The struggling independent outfits which survive are all staffed here with fresh young faces.

I manage to find half a dozen more mysteries published by first-time authors and read a few pages each…How foolish I’ve been. I spent three years writing the first drafts of the three Hound novels, more than another year re-writing the first two, and a good part of another re-writing this first one in the series. I could have spent that time adding another few hundred thousand words to my endless science fiction epic. At least that way I would not have made a public spectacle of myself.

My time has come. Jed escorts me to the gibbet. But there is a mistake. People are waiting. Perhaps they are late arrivals for the author who previously occupied that assigned spot.

Through some magic I am still not aware of, I had been sought out a few weeks before by a writer for Publisher’s Weekly and interviewed. A short article has appeared in the PW Show Daily which is distributed widely throughout the BEA. This seems to have drawn some attention.

Assuming that the fire of interest in a new author may be ‘kindled’ (if I may still use that term) by talking about controversial subjects, I proffered the PW reporter my not so secret but well ignored view that the ‘book’ is being murdered right in front of our eyes and this is as great a cultural loss as it was previously a gain to humanity for some five hundred years. It was my motivation in choosing to write mysteries set within the world of books in the first place–making allegory out of human death. I had offered that to the reporter as well as about an hours’ worth of personal chatter of no possible interest to anyone but a few relatives.

The first person in line is smiling. My spirits rise again like larks in Candleford. Something like that. Another person steps forward. And another. Heads bob sideways to get a look at me from the line. I’m happy to be sitting down on my ego. In short order, I manage to sign all the copies brought for the purpose. I am excited, enthused, euphoric, exultant, and must fall back on d-words to measure the delight and delirium of the moment.

An author’s first signing is certainly as uncertain as a first sexual encounter. Pleasure is not a useful descriptive. You don’t really know these people and they don’t know you. You have taken a risk. They are taking a chance. Your motivation is, at least in part, venal. Theirs is hopefully carnal. No matter your love for the subject, the physical transmutation of emotion is sweaty and sometimes painful. Afterwards I wanted a cigarette but this much is now against the law in New York.

The denouement of the day was better than the inception. A beer or two at the Bean Books book party and conversation with some old friends. Afterward a good dinner where shrimps were sacrificed for the good. More conversation. Advice on the best coffee in New York, the best pizza, and such. And then, after dark, another party, this one appropriately for a book called Geektastic!, edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci, and held at a nightclub cum bowling alley. Sweet. I’ve lived in New England for so long I have forgotten how to hold a bowling ball big enough to have holes in it. Still, I did my duty to the pins.

The weather in New York was fine and bright to the end. In that the bus trip back was after midnight, I shan’t chalk this negative up against the previous day. It was a good beginning and far better than I had hoped for.

The game is afoot!

Now, lets see.

I’m trying to write a series of novels to address some concerns I have, and do so in an entertaining fashion while sharing some intimate awareness of why I think the concerns are very real. Now you’d like me to address some of those key issues outside of those novels.

Hemm.

The quick answer is no.

The almost as quick answer is to tell you to read the Crepuscule, posted elsewhere on this site, and ask you to apply some of your own brain sweat to the issues.

But for the sake of a more catholic awareness, let me draw your attention to a few overarching aspects of these issues that I will probably never get around to specifically writing a book about.

The spirit of a free market in an open society is that capital can be gathered and brought to bear for a purpose determined by a citizen with equal rights under the law to those of every other citizen. There is no guarantee of outcome, only of opportunity.

When taxes are levied unequally, or rights of action are apportioned unequally, or values are determined politically to favor some citizens over others, the free market no longer exists–or exists to a lesser degree on balance. This is as it has been for most of history. The freest markets in many areas are black markets because they exist wholly apart from government.

The publishing industry, and all its associated trades from writing to paper making, broke free, for the most part, from government sanction and restriction in this country with our Revolution. The freedoms of this country subsequently influenced liberty in Europe–primarily England. Competition between America and Europe created a dynamic economy for all. The wealth of nations has increased exponentially as a result. There have been many attempts to restrict that market over the last two hundred years. Most failed along with the totalitarian regimes which promulgated the restrictions. But not until recently, has this resulted in a reduction in the overall freedoms of writers and publishers.

A perfect microcosm of this, yet on a far greater scale than the book business, is the auto industry. The Ford Motor Company, making all the mistakes every over-large corporation makes due to wastefulness, inertia and bureaucracy, but blessed with relatively rational management, attempted to correct some of its more glaring faults by mortgaging a great part of its property to gather the funds to retool and reform its product line to met the competition as well as the demands of the foreseeable future. As a result, when the financial markets collapsed due to the sulfuric admixture of government meddling and private speculation, Ford was in a stronger position than most other auto companies and did not have to beg the government for special dispensations…

In an increasingly unfree economy, this was a huge mistake. Ford is now saddled with an enormous debt and must compete in a market which is being guided by politicians to enhance their own power, and against companies who are funded by the very government which is dictating the terms.

Even so, I would bet on Ford. The auto manufacturer who tries to survive by pleasing bureaucrats will only fail again and again because their priorities are artificial.

By any comparison the book industry is very small–5% or less of the gross value of telephones, or farming, or auto manufacturing alone. Yet it is being influenced by the same tax laws which were designed for the benefit of those larger industries. The modern corporation was designed by government to take advantage of international capital markets and the liability laws of key nations–not to give advantage to a little business like Barnes and Nobel. So I do not blame Barnes and Noble for taking advantage of those same laws and regulations to survive in a regulated market. When edicts on text books are issued from Washington, there is no reason why a larger company should not take advantage of its capital position to lobby for its texts over those of another. And so it goes.

The argument I make–that I am taking pains to make in the Hound–is that it’s up to the individual to alter the equation. I am not writing a polemic, but a vessel of entertainment set on a sea of facts that I believe have a much larger influence on our lives and future than is readily seen.

I am not attacking large publishers for using the advantages that government edicts and permissions have given them. That involves their responsibility to shareholders who don’t care how the money is made so long as the dividend is in the mail. That is the most essential flaw of modern corporate law. Lack of responsibility. And that derives from giving the corporation greater rights under the law than the individual.

It’s up to individuals to drive the extra mile to find a local restaurant instead of the chain eatery. It’s up to each reader to chose how they will spend their money and time. And in the mean time, if they vote to give the government more power over what they read, then that’s exactly what they will get.

Lastly, the internet is not a completely free market, but it is probably as free now as it will ever be, especially given current trends. As the government regulates and taxes the internet into submission for the ‘public good,’ the content of the internet will change. It will happen in your lifetime, and dramatically so.

And there is all of that to consider even before one addresses the unintended consequences of making information, and thus knowledge, dependent on electronic sources.

Perhaps as the political powers gain more editorial control over the information you can and cannot receive, the old dusty book will find a new market value. Unfortunately, I suspect that by then the citizenry will have long since sacrificed the First Amendment on the alter of political correctness and books will be used as poor fuel in a cold world.

Talking to myself and trying to get some answers about the Hound.

Why did you write this book?

I had a story in mind about the death of the book after 500 hundred years and what that meant. This medium has changed everything, more than any other since the invention of fire, and the world it created is dependent on the book in ways which have become subtle through the familiarity of everyday use. It seemed most odd to me that the very people who depended on the book the most are least aware of its demise.

What do you mean? More books are published today than ever before.

That’s illusory. Most books today are not the product of individual minds but of machines. They are manuals. Directions. Instruction. Recipes. Tools for education. Lists. Data. This is all material which can be recorded by machines and reported by machines. In the case of novels, we have the predominance of a few authors over the many out of an artificial economic paradigm. This is not a natural supply and demand created by individual choices. It is an artificial demand imposed by a combination of convenience with business and political interests.

Are you suggesting some sort of conspiracy to eliminate the book.

No. I have no belief in conspiracies beyond the back yard or the office. They make fun dark fantasies because they feed into irrational fear, but they make no sense beyond a limited purpose. Besides that, the very people responsible for this tragic turn in history are you and I and everyone who loves books–and I know I’m not a participant in any conspiracy. I’m simply stupid enough to act in my own short-term interest at the expense of my children. I make excuses for what I do, but any close rational examination will reveal a combination of profound ignorance coupled with expediency. It is the way we all live.

In what way are you and I responsible for this phenomena you imagine?

Well, firstly, the phenomenon is not imagined. That is one reason for this book and those that come after it in the series. I wanted to detail the facts beyond refutation or easy dismissal. I did not want to create any bogeymen. These are all real people–or at least as real as I can make them–drawn from characters I have known. Because I have known an awful lot of people in the book business, it was simple to combine various individuals. The real difficulty I encountered was in making the parts fit. So many book people–authors, agents, publishers, booksellers–are idiosyncratic. I think that comes from spending so much time alone with their own thoughts and a book.

OK. So. Lets say it is real. Why am I responsible?

Because you accept the paradigm. You buy what you are told you should buy. It’s that simple.

But I read quite widely.

Not as widely as you think. As a book reviewer, for instance, you must keep up with the latest thing. But why? There are a hundred excellent books published last year that you never got to. Why read the latest tripe just because its new?

I’m paid to do that.

So you hold THEM responsible. You are just following orders. You have to earn a living. I know about that. But, couldn’t you review other books as well? Think of all the wonderful work that goes unnoticed every year.

I’m here talking with you. Isn’t that enough?

No. It’s good. But not good enough. I take it from your questions that you think my premise is fatuous. In fact, I have refrained from attempting any sort of overly dramatic or polemical creation here. I write essays for that kind of stuff to get it out of my system and put them on my web site. What I am attempting to write in this novel is a recreation of what is actually happening to my beloved world of books, framed within a specific setting using characters you might find interesting. The mystery aspect–the murder aspect–offers an opportunity for dramatic effect conventional enough, because of the popularity of the genre, to be acceptable. Very few of us have been around an actual murder. In fact, until this first time, my protagonist Henry Sullivan has not encountered anything like this. But he has seen life and death and he approaches this incident as I imagine I would in his place. The key there is that I have imagined this. I’ve seen death, but my only contact with murder is from books and movies and television. I have in fact seen crime committed and investigated, so I have attempted to approach this as a concerned human being. The back-drop of the death of the book is the context. I hope to make that phenomena very clear over the time span of a few short novels.

But I still feel a little hurt by your accusation that I am somehow involved in the murder of the book.

I hope so. But I hope that you are not so offended that you turn away. I guess I’ll have failed if you do that. But you are responsible just as I am.

What have you done to kill the book?

I sold crap so that I could pay my rent. Any prostitute will tell you they did it just to survive. They never do it for pleasure. But in fact, though selling crap did not give me any pleasure, it afforded me the opportunity to sell the books I love. That was a great pleasure. And this justified the prostitution in my mind for many years. I am guilty of that.

But you probably would not have survived as a bookseller otherwise.

I don’t know. I don’t believe I tried hard enough to find other means. A small store in a less expensive location. More creative ways of advertising. Etc. Very soon after I opened my own bookshop in 1975, I was selling the very stuff I had vehemently attacked only a short time before. For several years I had been selling books from a pushcart in the street and loving it. I didn’t realize just how much until later. I was free then of the demands of high rent and the tax man.

OK. What if the book does die, what is the consequence?

The end of civilization as we know it. A few thousand years into the whole thing, and we will have blown it up as surely as if we had engaged in a nuclear war. Did you ever read On The Beach? As I am often heard to say, Nevil Shute is a great author. He is under appreciated primarily because he was not a literary stylist. He was an engineer and a pilot. And he imagined what would happen in a nuclear war. And what is so creepy about it is how real he made it. No big explosions. No monsters. No blood. Just the passing of human civilization. I have never been able to get it out of my mind.

So. What can we do about this–I mean, assuming you are correct and the book is dying?

Turn off the TV.

I do not remember who taught me the word, ‘fungible.’ I am as sure that I did not discover it in a book as I am of any memory, but I cannot recall the person who opened that window in my mind. I have a vague recollection of repeating the word aloud and being told its meaning. I believe the discovery must have been in high school because it appears in a manuscript of the time.

The importance of the word to me lay in the sudden self-awareness that others had wrestled with the amoebic edges of memory and found a word for a phenomenon I was already encountering. We often exchange actual and original purpose or intent with a better cause when we recall our actions. Price may have been the determining factor and money the motive for accepting the price, but it was, after all, the perfect gift, was it not?

I have in my mind an endless string of word associations. For example, ‘cannot’ immediately brings up a young Laurie Saunders and an intense dissection of the use of that word versus the two words ‘can not.’ Whatever the disagreement, I am sure Laurie was correct. Her sense of language was superb and I depended on her more than she knew to spot usage problems in our magazine, Galileo.

The staff was all-volunteer. We were attempting to publish a nationally distributed and competitive magazine in the genre field of science fiction, without a dime more in pocket than we could gather to pay the printer. Authors were paid out of incoming revenue from sales.

In the end, it was only our inability to pay the printer (due to other underestimated or uncalculated problems) that kept our last issue from appearing. Revenue dropped abruptly like turning off the water in a hose. Most of the fine authors in that last unpublished issue never saw payment to compensate them for all the angst of awaiting to see their words on the page. All of this is a common enough story with countless small publishers.

Another disagreement with the estimable Laurie centered on my happy use of prepositions at the end of sentences. She was much attached to the Latin rule, and I to the more common convenience. And yet another quarrel concerned the uses of ‘that’ and ‘which.’ Anyone reading my work now will quickly see the issue on display to this day.

My memories of those times when we throve (a fabulous word) on pizza and words are complicated by my own addiction to what I wanted versus what was. The drug that made it possible for us to do what we did in the hours after we had already done a days work to pay the rent and pizza bill, was a confluence of individual dreams brought to focus on a specific goal. Again a common enough story–given to baseball teams and revolutionaries. The cocaine of dreams will often shape otherwise mundane incident.

It is impossible for me to argue that what we did in those small offices was of any more importance than the pleasure of doing it. At the time I wanted to change the paradigm (another nice word.) Publishing as a whole was controlled by a very few companies and science fiction per se was in the hands of the same small group of once young visionaries who had re-established the field after World War Two. There seemed to be an opportunity there to inflict my own philosophies on the world.

I am now, as I was then, a devotee of storytelling. Much of what was published in the field of science fiction was more intent on the explication of some new scientific titbit in the context of a western in outer space or a political diatribe. I love political diatribe, you understand, but not before breakfast.

What was passing for ‘new’ in the 1970’s was the psychology based nihilism of the 1930’s brought forward with little attempt to rethink the proposition–mankind was evil and stupid. I personally did not know anyone who was evil and reading about stupid people never seemed like a good use of my time, so I rejected this school of science fiction out of hand.

I wanted to publish stories in Galileo about human beings facing imagined problems of the future that were entertaining as well as enlightening of the present. It’s what I thought storytelling was all about.

I will not speak for the purposes of Charles Ryan, Floyd Kemske, Tom Owen, or any of the others who joined me in the cause. Their dreams were each unique to themselves. As the erstwhile ‘publisher,’ I certainly managed to have my say more than anyone, but Charles Ryan, in his role as editor, easily had as much influence. The final product achieved each time a new issue appeared was a common effort.

I am just as certain, if each member of the staff were asked today what their purpose was, that each answer would be essentially different. Some of the same words might be employed but the heart of the answer would beat its own tune. And I am also positive that what each of us would say would be remarkably different than what we might have said at the time. That’s where fungibility comes in. Without a lie, we can individually interpret our actions faithfully to meet the value of that past in each of us.

The interest to me of this is this: the faithfully remembered past is not wrong simply because it presents an alternate gathering of attributes or characteristics–and most especially if it presents an exchange of color, or size or time of day. These last items are mundane ‘fact.’ Their importance is purely relative to the object. And this is the grammar of memory. It may be important that the tree was big, but likely unimportant that the tree was seventy-six and a half feet tall. A preposition may dangle at the end of a sentence, but it works if it gives the reader what for.

Memory is fungible because it must be. We must have the freedom to re-interpret the past to ourselves because at the moment of the original occurrence, it’s likely our minds were on other things–sex, food, money, or something even more important (?). What we do is often simply achieved by the momentum of our lives. We set our course and then eat lunch. Why we chose to accept one manuscript and not another, each of some arguable value, might have been a matter of indigestion. Whole empires have been lost for as little as that. Must we then judge ourselves for our dyspepsia? I think not.

Our lives are an accumulation. A stew. A gumbo. Hodgepodge. Gallimaufry. (Aren’t words great!) We are the cooks and it is not so presumptuous to say we are the ‘chefs’ of even such humble food as we might in the end serve.

Our efforts to direct our lives becomes with age, a task of editing. There is no time left to relive the details of our intentions, much less the minutia of our actual accomplishments.

It is now my convenient prejudice that the older we get, the better we remember.

A short but excellent article in the Wall Street Journal by Steven Johnson does the service of touching on a few of the key elements in the ongoing murder of the book. They would be called clues were the crime not committed in plain sight and to the indifference of those very witnesses whose lives and fortunes will be most devastated by the loss.

I imagine the death will be mourned much like that of a rich uncle whose testament has yet to be read. The gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts will not occur until later, when it is discovered that Uncle Octavo has squandered his fortune in recent years and there is nothing left for his various relatives or wives, much less his children, legitimate or not.

Let us look at the evidence.

There have been many articles of late on the coming of the electronic book. Mr. Johnson very wisely proffers some more subtle forensics, but most of the others have the gosh-wow of a kid in the 1920’s who has built his first crystal-radio. Oh, how the world will change! And I would hasten to add, the world did not change enough to keep that kid off the beaches at Normandy in 1944.

The first new new internet was the system of canals that enlarged our lives starting around the 1820’s. By that time, mankind had traveled on roads by foot, wagon, and coach for many thousands of years–roughly at the speed of conversation from ear to ear. One terrific change caused by the canal was the rise of New York City publishing at the hub of a new age. Railroads came along shortly after–much like wi-fi has followed cable–and increased the importance of New York as the intellectual center of the universe.

Electricity brought with it the genius of the telegraph, the teletype, then the telephone. The radio was quickly overshadowed by the television. Through all of this, the book maundered the results. Gatsby played his phonograph, the literati danced, while in the alcove by the potted palm, Prufrock, martini in hand, warned of the hollowing of mankind. And, nearby, the butler could be seen with a candlestick entering the library.

The threads which held the bindings through the centuries have been pulled in favor of a cheaper glue. The sturdy cloth covers that replaced the extravagance of leather have now become mere cardboard. The paper of the text itself is re-cycled–acid free and ready to be recycled again. All of it is disposable now. Books warp and buckle on the shelf without being read or even handled.

And what of the contents in the library safe? The jewelry is paste–mostly post-modern costume artifacts. Words are now adjusted to suit the occasion. If a word bothers you, it can be banned. If an author does not stay on topic, he won’t get a slot on the talk show.

It is time for the e-book.

It’s time that the author be dethroned in any case. Who are they, after all? Just products of their time. Their words might well have been spoken by any other. Their ideas are borrowed, are they not? They are just the latest product of an imperfect educational system. Where they differ, it is only a matter of prejudice.

It is time for the e-book.

Truth is only relative. Offending passages can be digitally removed. ‘Facts’ can be enhanced to suit the moment. And who will be the judge of that? Or is it just that–the truth has no relatives.

Who will save the Earth from these troublesome books? Recycle them!

It is time for the e-book. Have you got one yet? It can be read on the subway, or at the park. All the books in the world are in your hand. All the intellectual power of Rome! No need for libraries. No need for bookshops. No need, in fact, for books.

Technology has triumphed. No longer is the screen bleached by the brilliance of the sun…But neither is it graced by the glimmer of quiet revelation as the eye meets the word in ink on a page.

Mr. Steven Johnson refers to the book as “dark matter.” Yes! Precisely. The tens of millions of books that have shaped our culture will now be burned into pixels of light.

Mr. Johnson is clearly smitten with his toy, but importantly he has paused to ask some questions. His wariness is perhaps caused by a glance at the toys of yesteryear filling the back of his closet shelves.

As the great Google digitalizes text and makes each passage of Moby Dick available sentence by sentence, and word by word, what place will be left for Ishmael? Will Isaac be the only survivor instead? Choose your own text, and Melville be damned.

Mr. Johnson notes: “Because they have been largely walled off from the world of hypertext, books have remained a kind of game preserve for the endangered species of linear, deep-focus reading. Online you can click happily from blog post to email thread to online New Yorker article–sampling, commenting and forwarding as you go. But when you sit down with an old-fashioned book in your hand, the medium works naturally against such distractions; it compels you to follow the thread, to stay engaged with a single narrative or argument.”

Willy Loman might have warned, “Attention must be paid.” But with attention spans being reduced to a mere click, is it necessary to read the part about the whaling industry? Can’t I just go right to the good parts? Are you bored yet?

Will writers write so that readers can play tag with the gems and ignore the settings? The heroin of one climax after another will make the marijuana of Proust rather passe, don’t you think? Or is there time to think when there are so many links to follow? The great Google will lead us to an answer.

And when the electricity fails and the lights go out, what? Was the candlestick to hold a candle, or to bludgeon?

When, about ten years ago, I made the decision to begin writing seriously again, the first project I undertook was a juvenile–a story I had imagined many years before and given up on.

I think the decision was tied to an example of foolishness which is worth re-considering: that it would be easier to write a juvenile–to break the ice before getting on to the harder stuff.

The common belief is that childhood is blessed by simplicity. Things were easier then. But this is quite false, of course. We all know that, if we know anything. But we want to believe it for reasons which are themselves complex.

Childhood is the most difficult period of a human life. There is more to learn in less time with fewer skills to use on the way.

A successful childhood is almost a guarantee of a happier adulthood. There is a reason why an adult revisits childhood memories so constantly no matter how many years have intervened. Those first sparks of knowledge become our stars.

And there is a reason why the sociopath has such difficulty with such thoughts. The despoiling of childhood is just as nearly a guarantee of an unhappy adult. Thousands of psychologists make a good living off those results.

Offer a Latin phrase to an average person in a key situation…Say, ‘Post hoc ergo propter hoc.’ Nine out of ten will stare blankly at you. This is what being a child is like. Uncomfortable. Should you know that? Perhaps embarrassing. Are you stupid for not knowing? And your next reaction is likely to be dismissive. Who cares about Latin, anyway? Just another dead language. Right?

Just as the language of childhood is dead to most adults. They are beyond it. They bury the discomforts and embarrassments. They have things in there place now. Don’t they?

Some parents take notice. They listen to their children and remember.

After this, therefore because of this. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. It is one of the most essential fallacies of a human life. Why do we assume such things? Because we were once children. It is the way we learned the order of things.

But if we were lucky and had parents or teachers who listened, we might have been opened to a world that made better sense and our childhood might have in fact been as simple as we wish is was.

This, by the way, is the best role for grandparents. They have suffered though childhood and youth and maturity. They have begun to notice, that just because some thing comes after another, the cause is not obvious. It’s not rocket science. It’s more like using our fingers to do brain surgery.

Were the psychological ‘issues’ of our lives caused by difficulties when we were young? Not exactly. More often they are made by ascribing the wrong cause to an effect, right from the start. Adults do it too. Especially adults with ‘issues.’

Religions, deeply catalogued in human experience, are often ready with explanations to difficulties we face. This is comforting. Importantly it separates the individual from a false assumption of a certain Latin phrase previously mentioned.

Religion may give a unique explanation or, as in the case of simpler things such as not eating swine or fish without scales, it might offer rules of conduct which avoid the need to work through cause and effect. The blessing of religion is the short cut. Do this. Don’t ask questions.

It appears politics has become the modern substitute religion as we have learned that we can indeed eat pork and catfish without dire consequence. But this too will not suit an enlightened mind or a truly modern sensibility, even if the conclusion is correct. We want to know why. At least, some of us want to know.

I don’t begrudge religious people their comforts. The short cuts often give them a much happier life–time free for other things. I am happy for them. I only hope they afford me the same courtesy. I am frankly happier in my misery. I get most of my pleasures from life by asking questions and seeking answers. It gives me something to write about, you know.

This is the nature of the stories I write. Most of the effort is a search for a cause to understand the effect. Sometimes–not commonly–a given problem is easily solved by an orderly arrangement of events–before and after. More commonly, flowers do not sting–bees do. A person is cold because the temperature is low and they failed to put on a coat even though their mother told them to a thousand times, not just because the temperature is low. A parent may have been neglectful, but the happiness of a child is not dependent solely on a parent.

So, I am re-writing my juvenile novel for the umpteenth time. Hopefully I’ll get it right this go. I know what happened. I just want to know why. The challenge of writing a juvenile story is to avoid assumption and look a little deeper. The adult knows more facts but is not necessarily smarter.

Stories for adults are far easier to write, after all. Children are less concerned by money and sex. And we all know that sex and money drive civilization. Don’t we?

I have designed at least a thousand homes in my life. None of them built. Designing a home to suit a specific need has become my way of relaxing. It’s a quick and purposeful refuge from those realities I need to escape. Watching a baseball game is good, but not nearly as good.

Looking back over some of the designs, many of which took weeks to complete, I can trace my own intellectual and emotional history as well as my economic state of mind. The homes are smaller during periods of financial difficulty. They were largest when my bookshop business did best. But, more interestingly to me, they all have a central idea or purpose and looking at older plans now reminds me of dreams I’ve had and perhaps forgotten.

Most of my houses were designed for a rural setting. I have always wanted to live beyond the drone of cars, where the stars of the Milky Way pollute a deep black sky. I have always wanted to try my hand at gardening–carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, green beans. I like large fireplaces and the flutter and hiss of a fire. I am a connoisseur of well water. And I have always wanted one room built of stone where I could keep my books.

For perfection in that last regard, I cannot fully express my jealousy and admiration at first seeing the wonderful stone library built by John Adams at his home in Quincy, Massachusetts. Of course, he earned and deserved that much.

It’s not a surprise then, perhaps, to learn that I have always lived in apartments. I’m told by people who assume greater wisdom that actually owning my own home would cure me of this foolishness. I, in turn, feel sorry for them for not properly appreciating their blessings. Forty-five years of apartment dwelling has given me a sense of certainty about my needs that is unswayed by issues with plumbing, painting, gutters, roofs, and all the rest. And besides, I have dealt with all of that during the years of operating my shop.

A key part of any of my designs has always been a desire to build the house with my own hands. This aspect of my dream has shrunk in recent years along with my economic and muscular wherewithal. And this brings me to a recent re-evaluation of Mr. Thoreau’s small project at Walden.

I cannot in any way be considered an ascetic and thus Thoreau’s cabin in the woods would not actually suit me. It is too small. I have slept in closets as large. I am not comforted by the closeness of the walls. There is a wood stove and not a fireplace. I like wood stoves, but I need a fireplace. The windows are too small. I like to look from my window when I write and when I pace. I pace a lot. The toilet there would mean an unbearable walk on a cold winter’s night.

Nevertheless, he built it. And he lived there. He sat at that small desk by that small window and wrote great words. The words did not mind. He lay at night in a bed that was little more than a bench and dreamed without restraint. And because his house was small, he got out a lot into the world about. I admit if I had my own dream home, I would have difficulty leaving it. Discomfort has its uses. But as I say, I am not an ascetic. I am not even a vegetarian.

But I am an architect of sorts. This is a fundamental profession of humanity. We don’t flourish in caves. Nests are inadequate for more than a season. Ants and beavers are good with mud, but their design lacks room for books.

It is my fault perhaps that I see the writing of a story in the same way I visualize a house. This is not a simple metaphor. The integrity of the finished structure is the object. What I want in writing is a finished product that serves a specific purpose and is a delight to look at. I need a fireplace for heat as well as beauty. I need a porch for the fires of summer and the colors of spring and fall. I need a library for background and study. I need a kitchen for food as well as the preparation of food. I need a bedroom for rest and pleasure. And I need a living room where the interaction of my family of characters is not only possible, but probable.

I understand that most novels are not written in this way now. It is the way Trollope wrote, and Victor Hugo, and Jane Austin. Merry-go-rounds and racetracks are better metaphorical examples for more modern works. And I see this as a fault in the modern world and not in my plans.

I used to plan great novels–epics and multigenerational affairs–great rambling country houses and post-Victorian extravaganzas. I could write for endless hours then. I enjoy reading mythology and enthusiastically mixed up a stew of gods and goblins and mortal dreamers. In fact, there is a science fiction story I have worked on for many years, and am determined yet to finish. It stands now at about a quarter-million words and I’m not half done.

But now, most of my projects are smaller. I write for about three hours each day. I don’t want the project to extend into years because I simply have fewer of those left in the pipeline and I have quite a long list of stories I want to tell. And so Thoreau’s little house takes on a new interest.

I design smaller houses now. Just a few rooms. A reduced kitchen for sustenance and coffee. A library for about three thousand favorite books. An indoor toilet with a shower is in order. I must have my shower in the mornings. Our children are on their own these days so one bedroom is sufficient, and a bedroom of less than Homeric dimensions is adequate. A living room that might assume a portion of several other parts will save space–but with at least one big window and a fireplace for the winters. And I’ll need a porch for the warmer weather and rainy days. There is little better time spent than standing on a dry porch during a summer rain.

As I have noted elsewhere here, my mother’s parents were illiterate. They were the type of mountain people who knew one book only and that by ear, line by line repeated, and knew those stories as they played out in their own lives. Their deep knowledge was hard won and held closely. When advice was given it should be heeded.

My grandfather would have been a good writer if he had been born to the opportunity. He told stories as easily as cutting a plug of tobacco and they usually lasted about as long. The final spit toward the nearest gully was the end of it. He often told stories we had heard before, but we listened and laughed to ourselves at the changes along the way.

My grandmother was a quiet and greathearted woman whose feelings were shared easily in a few words and made clear by the way she moved. Her story was in her very being. When knobby arthritic fingers turned gently over a small guinea hen egg just gathered from a hidden nest you knew quickly that it was warm and freshly laid.

My father’s parents wrote letters–high Catholic letters intended to instruct and bless and ask for blessing. There was a great deal of small personal detail to be found in them if you were patient and smart to the mannerisms and conventions. I was not, and quickly put them aside as a boy. More recently I discovered a few copies of my great grandfather’s letters to his son. There is no complaint for the hardships of life and much thanks for the gifts there. “I am slowly gaining strength. Was out to visit Ma’s grave & cut some grass this forenoon” was enough to say he had been sick. There I found his love-hate for politics, and newspapers, and the country that was his, not by birth, but by the gift of his own father’s escape from famine with a young family of my blood and name.

In high school I was blessed by a man who was a failed writer himself, and a failed artist, but not a failed teacher. I talked my way into his class because I needed the extra credit just to graduate. It was an advanced class and my grades were not good enough for entry so I gave him a piece of my first novel–a bad piece of work, but I suppose he thought anyone willing to write that much needed some kind of help. He taught us how to write like Hemingway, and Wolfe, and Fitzgerald. The mimicry was a lesson. Imitation was easy.

It was my own fault that I did not learn the simple and truer meaning of his lesson then, and had to prove it out the hard way afterward.

I don’t read aloud in public very well. I am too self-conscious. The sound of my voice always bothered me. And I was never a self-contained sort of fellow in any case, and react to other people too easily. Perhaps that is why I enjoy the solitude of writing.

It is common to hear writers speak of ‘voice.’ I didn’t start hearing mine until I overcame my reluctance to read to myself. In fact, reading aloud to myself changed everything. I re-discovered Thoreau that way. And Melville. And Conrad. And Shakespeare.

The spoken voice is not the matter. It may be whispered. The matter is to listen to your voice and find the truth in it. If you can shame yourself, you can shame others.

And your voice is not mine, any more than mine is Melville’s or my great grandfather’s. Finding one’s voice is just finding a way to listen.

Poor Vachel Lindsay tried to find his voice in public song, on an imagined stage transported from place to place by his own two feet–performance poetry of a different age. The drum of cadence overcame the reason in his words, and pitch obscured the emotion. When the novelty of it waned, he was betrayed by his own device, and poisoned on the world that ignored him.

Device is not voice, nor style.

Listen! Say the words again. It is why Shakespeare can be spoken now and understood while Byron is mostly lost. If you need a second education just to hear, then you might expect a smaller audience. At the end, the high culture of Byron meant nothing to his Greek compatriots. His love of freedom meant everything. I would have loved to hear him speak to them directly.

Thoreau spoke to Emerson. It was a high standard. But he spoke in his own voice, oddly thought, with unexpected emphasis. On Cape Cod, he tells us of meeting a young boy along the way, to no other purpose than the mere fact of it, and then later he speaks of the hardened women of that place–perhaps because he knew he was not hard enough for them. And that Cape Cod is gone to us now excepting those words. But you can know it still!

At Walden, Thoreau passes judgment on his poor Irish neighbor before stealing the remains of the man’s house. What once infuriated me now captures the ephemeral existence of two types, both of my own blood. Could I be so honest in print? Could I be so honest aloud to myself?

A voice is not perfectly voweled or always edged by consonants. A voice must betray the writer as much as it portrays the subject. There can be doubt in a meaning just as there is doubt in the mind, but this is not an excuse for badly singing a bad song. And a voice shaped neatly by the numbers of expectation will be quickly forgotten.

It was popular once to write like Hemingway. I understand the charm. But I never trained in a city newsroom or hid in a too shallow ditch to avoid a bullet. Now the urgency of digital film moves action along at a pace that Hemingway, or Melville, or Conrad would have found obnoxious. Reality is redefined by mimicry, conveniently digested by the numbers–digits are so much faster. So move along. Move along. You’ve seen all of this before. Move along. Play it again Sam. We will always have Paris. Or at least Ferris Bueller.

My own voice is from a different place. They don’t wear watches there. I write to the sound of the words. I walk as much there as I can. Until my mind hurts as much as my feet. I speak slowly. I report what I see. And if I cannot write with Hemingway’s simplicity, perhaps it is because I don’t see things as clearly–or perhaps they are not so simple to me.

That stage is in my head. I have not taken the roads that Vachel Lindsay walked and I have not heard the bird song that he knew. The actors come to my stage without practice. They have not rehearsed. They have been tossed there with a script they have not studied, but they were chosen because I knew them from other roles and believe they can handle the material. If the furniture is in the way, I move it. If the lighting is not sufficient, another is tilted in their direction. The script is penciled in my brain.

I give the actors the lines that I know. They take them–sometimes unhappily. If they object, I stop and pencil another. At the end, they stare at empty seats and imagine them filled. If the response is not what was wanted, the actors turn to me for redress. If I have something more for them, they begin again. If not, they abandon me to my own failure.

Did I choose the wrong scene? I read it through again aloud. It sounds right to me. What have I missed? I start again. Like my mother’s father, the story is never the same the next time it’s told. More time is spent here. Less there. It does not occur to me that the story is not worth telling any more than it did to him. It’s the story I know. The problem can only be in the way I tell it. It’s the performance, not the play.

That’s the arrogance of the writer. The hubris. The story is all that we have–so we think the story is worth telling. And it must be told in our own voice to be ours, not by convention or expectation. If it is miss-told, that is our own failure too. Not the reader’s. We cannot damn the empty seats.

The Christian Science Monitor asked me to write a short piece on bookselling back in 2002. The context at the time was the continuing struggle of our small business to survive the tides and vicissitudes of our age. There were and are hundreds of articles easily findable on the internet about the difficulties of bookselling–even a few I have caused to be written–but at that time I had been working on a poem about the ‘Perfect Bookshop’ and though a poem was not what the newspaper wanted, I decided to rework the effort into a prose statement on the subject. The result can be found here: www.csmonitor.com/2002/1108/p11s01-coop.html (The perfect bookshop weathers the storm).

I have put aside my hopes of re-establishing a bricks and mortar bookshop for the present. Not from a lack of interest or desire. More from the chastening of financial realities and the physical strain such an effort would call for. Still, I dream of my bookshop at night–sometimes in the day as well. I am a bookman at heart and soul. Most of what little I have learned that is not commonplace is about books and bookselling.

The thought arises with the question, “would I ever do it again?’–what would be my perfect bookshop now? Not a fantasy shop of all my best wishes and intentions, but an actual shop that might stay afloat on a sea of troubles. It’s more than a single essay could encompass, but I would enjoy the process of defining the possibility out of the vagaries of my still persistent dreams.

When I started the Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in 1975, I had been selling books from a pushcart on the street for several years and doing a lot of dreaming–unrestrained by realities I had yet to encounter. For instance: if you choose a spot because the rents are low, it is likely the foot traffic will be correspondingly small. You must have insurance, and insurance must be paid every month or quarter–period (there is no friendly person at the other end of the phone line who will give you a dispensation just because they like books). Employees have their own worries and troubles and don’t respond well to delayed paychecks.

Almost as overwhelming is the body of literature about bookselling which advises very specific approaches to the business based on hundreds of years of hard won experience and the mundane facts of publisher’s discounts, profit margins, and promotional costs, without ever mentioning the physical needs of food and sleep, much less sex. Sex is, after all, a big part of bookselling. Didn’t you know?

And politics. In our age, politics seems to trump almost all the senses–especially common sense.

My own history is a case in point. I am a libertarian. Libertarians are an ancient political sect with an absolute antipathy to slavery and an equally stringent belief in the golden rule. In other words: don’t tell me what to do, and I’ll treat you with the same respect with which you treat me. Along with my love of fiction, poetry and history, I sought to be a resource for libertarian literature when I started my shop. About twenty percent of my very limited funds for book-buying were guided by this political want. It was disastrous.

There are not enough people who even know what the word ‘libertarian’ means much less the interest necessary to carry such an expense. Given the unusually large student audience in Boston, and the prevailing academic political ideology of our times, had I chosen instead to be a conduit for socialist literature I might have found some success. But politics often trumps clear thinking.

I still believe that any business must be guided by a prevailing philosophy, but I should have restrained my desire to proselytize beyond my love of literature. It was bad enough that I was insisting on carrying a substantial weight of poetry–a section everyone wants to see in a shop but few make use of. Even fewer people read the likes of Karl Popper or Friedrich Hayek, than poetry. When the Random House rep came in he used to shake his head at me, not merely as a fool, but for the terrible waste of effort.

What saved us the first few years was science fiction. We sold more of that than any other. Science fiction and mystery amounted to about half our total income. Another quarter of our expenses were covered by the classics. The paperback revolution of the fifties and sixties was just ending, and almost any great work was still available brand new for just a few dollars.

The other salvation was something done out of necessity and in total ignorance. I was then as I am now a habitual buyer of used books. To fill out the sparse shelves as my budget for new titles ran out I brought in most of my own collection. These were my favorites–Nevil Shute, Raphael Sabatini, Robert Louis Stevenson, C.S. Forester, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Mark Twain, Harlan Ellison, George Orwell, Flannery O’Conner, Raymond Chandler, Elmer Kelton, Frederick Brown, Frederick Manfred, Arthur Conan Doyle, and a few hundred others. And we sold them quickly. My collection of old Blue Book magazines disappeared in a few weeks. My Argosys were gone in days.

I found my way by doing what worked and was comfortable. We sold back issues of Playboy magazines until my older daughter began to wander the aisles. I had a sudden epiphany. We sold comic books until about the same time. Whatever your own perfect bookshop might be, it must meet the measure of your own life. You can’t be doing something you wouldn’t want other’s to do. And you can not be selling something you would not be proud to show your children.

So, given what I have learned, what would I do? Quidnunc?

Firstly, I would have to ignore or control my fear of technology. If the internet has actually made the physical book into a door-stop, all my conjecture is moot. I must befriend the reality far enough to make it useful without being used by it.

Secondly I would have to ignore or control my worry about politics. If the public wants to control my business and tell me what I can sell, all my conjecture is again, moot.

Thirdly, I must set a budget. How much might I have to spend? More importantly, what would I want to spend? Whatever else I conjure, I’ll have to cover the cost of it for at least a year or two. It generally takes a business about three years to establish itself. Income from the first two years might pay for a third. A little debt financing might be helpful. (A kind and equally foolish relative perhaps?)

Let’s figure out what I might need.

Books. Shelves. Space. Time enough.

Being omnivorous, I would like to have books in most categories. My priorities would be fiction, history, biography, poetry, drama, and the arts. I suppose I am rather fond of essays as well. And I must have enough of them at a price to sell and make a profit.

Shelving is best made of solid wood. Forget metal or the composites (more on that later). When you have figured what your budget might be for books, you will be able to calculate how much shelving you’ll need.

The space must be adequate for the shelving itself and the room between the shelves for two average human beings to pass without incident or the necessity of intimate relations. My proposition that sex was a part of the perfect bookshop was not made with consideration for narrow aisles. And the cost of this space is relative to the location, the location, and the location–with an allowance for utilities.

The time you will need is dependent on the time you think you have, multiplied by a factor of at least two. Whatever time you cannot cover yourself will have to be covered by others. They will want to be paid reasonably for their effort.

When you have estimated the last three elements, you will undoubtedly go back and recalculate the first. After all, whether rent is ten dollars a square foot or 100 dollars a square foot, is going to alter your conception of the books you carry. If you want to run the store on weekends only, you can’t cover the cost of prime real estate during the rest of the week.

Remember, the proposition here is for a ‘perfect bookshop.’ Not a money mill (as if any bookshop could be that.) This is an ideal as envisioned by a bibliophile. A book lover. Remember. There is sex involved.

(to be continued)

I was speaking with a kind gentleman the other day. Reluctant though I was to disagree with him because of his generosity to me, I could not help but contradict his thesis. As I understand it, film music should not be interpreted apart from the context that made it possible. In addition, there is a pervasive use of incidental music in our lives that serves a potentially insidious purpose–which shapes us and moves us.

If I am misunderstanding the thesis, it may be because it borders on many similar ideas rampant in the area of literary criticism. I cannot read music, and have only a small knowledge of musical history. What I understand quite well is what I enjoy hearing. And beyond that, there is a clear and primordial relationship of music to everyday human life that is not difficult to comprehend.

Communication between human beings is an essential element of survival. An accurate scream across the tall grass of an ancient savanna was the difference between life and death. Communicating the hard won skills of hunting, gathering, cooking, and preserving required language. Passing the wisdom of experience on to the next generation was crucial. Music is certainly part of all that.

Back in the eighties, Ted Nugent became obsessed with the evil he saw inherent in Muzak. Nugent’s quixotic quest seemed wrong-headed to me even then, though admirable of purpose. Wasn’t this medium being debased and prostituted by the aural abuse of musical devices? Were not humans being manipulated and controlled by beat and rhythm, melody and harmony, dissonance and consonance?
I wrote an essay then pointing out that music was a language and that this was a matter of freedom of speech.

This is still my position.

I detest hip-hop and think that John Cage’s conception of music is a joke. Silence is never so golden as when the pretensions of academics are removed from the equation. But, I would not consider the idea that some greater power should silence stupidity, nor music, lest I myself be caught in the fold.

Certainly noise can be obnoxious. A social understanding of noise is in order. Garbage trucks at 3 am are beyond defending. My neighbors playing hip-hop at 3 am must be controlled, if only by the decibel.

And that is just it. It’s a social matter. The more homogeneous the culture, the less dissonance is created by the exercise of ‘normal’ behavior. The great challenge of modern American culture is that we do not live in Icelandic isolation. My neighbor may be from Mexico, Brazil, India or even Canada. One must be forgiving of cultural difference if society is going to function. I may need the fellow to administer the ether when I am on the operating table, teach my children, fix my car, or cook my meal at the restaurant. I don’t want him as my enemy. He may not care for the books I sell or the words I write, but if he is my friend, he may keep his radio turned down a notch after midnight. And I won’t impose my Sibelius on him.

I don’t use racial epithets or tell racial jokes, not because they are against the law, but because they may offend my neighbor. It’s a good reason. I benefit by his talents. It’s part of contributing to a society that benefits me. But if my neighbor wants to tell me what I can write, or the books I can sell, I have a complaint.

Whether or not my neighbor has intellectually understood the delicate balance between liberty and responsibility, I have to defend my right to say what I think. If I don’t, I’ll lose it. If a politician can tell me what music I can play, I have already lost it.

All of this is related. A particular piece of film music may be created for that medium out of various needs. The immediate association may only be a small part of its creation. Certainly it might have its origins in the classical traditions, or in the street music of Sao Paulo. Certainly film music must use devices invented well before, otherwise it would not speak to the listener. I cannot write in a private language and expect readers. Random sound would be noise (despite Cage’s foolishness). Already, film music must have its roots outside of its immediate use or else the reference is lost.

Then there is the intellectual project of the film itself. This might be fairly simple. Say, an action suspense thriller. Now the music is associated in the mind to the response of the audience to that depiction. And then there is the aftermath. The film may be left behind, because the music holds an urgency that quickly conjures certain moods on its own. I was never a soldier but taps and reveille have a meaning to me. And still, it is not unjustified for a film director to chose a specific score knowing that the audience response to that music will remind them of his film long after.

We do not live in a classical age, but classical music conjures an appreciation of my world that I cannot do without. Mozart wore a powdered wig and I wear an Irish cap, but his music gives me a pleasure he could have predicted. And in fact, his letters show that he did just that.

Musak may in fact be manipulative, but if it is obnoxious to most people rather than comforting–if standing patiently within the small space of a closed elevator is not unnerving enough–then it’s added cost will not be born. Perhaps Ted Nugent would prefer a prayer, or a political diatribe to take the occupant’s mind off of the claustrophobic reality of the moment.

The great hobgoblins of the Twentieth Century–Stalin and Hitler–both used music to control the ‘masses.’ Some of that music is still played. I don’t think the listener is envisioning gulags when they play Shostakovich. But a few notes from the film Jaws brings an immediate response. Is that wrong? Perhaps to some, but I think they miss the point. The few notes from Jaws is now as ominous as “It was a dark and stormy night.” The language in both cases has grown by the addition. And still, “White Christmas” will survive the abuse of elevator speakers because, after all, it’s a damn good song.

I met a man the other day. Not a great man perhaps, but at least a very good one, I can tell you. Cyril P. Foley played first class cricket for Cambridge (right-hand bat, right arm slow), fought in the Boer War (Jameson Raid), was a crack shot, enjoyed auto racing, fly-fishing, tennis and golf, went on a serious search for the Ark of the Covenant (the Parker Expedition), spent twenty months in the trenches of France and Salonica without leave during the Great War, liked to play the tables at Monte Carlo, and wrote a wonderful memoir about a world long vanished which is filled with incident while never telling a story about himself that is not at his own expense.

Great men seldom have time to write their memoirs, and good men usually refrain out of modesty, but thankfully there are some of those who have a talent for words and realize they were present when things happened that are worth remembering.

Lieutenant-Colonel Foley’s book is the kind of thing that makes bookselling worth the trouble. The man died in 1936, but he’s alive today for anyone with the time to read. He called his book Autumn Leaves and you can meet him there yourself if you go to the trouble of tracking a copy down. A sturdy reading copy should run you less than $30. [note: I’m out of copies myself or I wouldn’t post this right now. I don’t want anyone to think I’m speaking well of a book just to sell it.]

My own copy was once the property of Captain Horatio James Powys-Keck, Cyril Foley’s dear friend, and another legendary cricketer, and that’s a story in itself. And that too is one of the best secondary pleasures of buying used books–meeting their previous owners on the way.

The problem is that few people really do read anymore. This is a fact difficult to recognize in an environment buried in words. But the closing of one more bookshop is testimony to this. The absence of lunchtime browsers was a fact. The disappearance of evening crowds was real. The drop in book orders can be easily charted.

The failure of my shop is undoubtedly the result of my own foolishness compounded countless times a year, over the almost thirty years we managed to survive my mistakes. The blame is certainly mine for being unable to adjust to the shift of popular habit. But some fundamental things have changed in those years, and this has resulted in a loss far greater than one small business.

When, in the late Seventeenth Century, the ministers of the Scottish Church decided as a matter of national policy that each man should be able to talk directly to God, with no intermediary, it meant that every man, woman, and child must learn to read, so that they could see the word of God for themselves, and thus have something to discuss. In 1680, rock barren Scotland was one of the poorest and most illiterate nations in Europe. In one generation, literacy became common. The Scotland of Adam Smith lay directly ahead.

Naturally, a person who can read might read anything. The Scottish Enlightenment transformed the world. The American belief in education did not arise from the Puritan stocks and chains. This country was blessed one more time by the law of unintended consequences as the English depopulated Scotland to make room for sheep.

There is a common misunderstanding which has been long promoted by our schools. All cultures are equal, ergo, all cultural values are equal. It’s not true. The very fact that you may read this today is the result of a cultural value not common to world history nor even to most of the people alive today. The freedom to read this essay is unusual, even though the specific skill of reading is not. And this value is now endangered by carelessness, irresponsibility, and ignorance.

A common belief today is that almost everyone in America can read. Anecdotal evidence contradicts this. Stand on any corner and see how many cars actually stop, instead of simply slowing down. The sign does not say, ‘slow down.’ People can, perhaps, read, but they do not. They often choose not to. They cannot take the time to stop.

The good of reading is inherently in taking the time to comprehend the words and discuss them–with yourself if no one else. Taking the time to think about an issue or an event and consider it in the light of another opinion or someone else’s memory results in realization if not revelation. We are not perfect. Did you know that? Our individual memory is flawed. That’s why there are twelve people on a jury.

Reading a book is a discussion between the reader and the author. Taking the time to read is inherently an understanding of the value of discussion and argument as well as seeing the context of events and issues beyond your own narrow field of vision.

When I hear someone say they do not have the time to read, I know I am listening to someone who is dangerous. This person may drive a car. This person is spending money on things with poor judgment. This person may be a voter. Worst of all, they may be raising children to be as ignorant as themselves.

And now, because our schools have taken on the mission of parenting and child care instead of education, new generations have come along who do not read. They don’t believe it’s necessary. They get everything they want from television, cds, dvds. They drive cars. They buy stuff. They might even vote. But you cannot know what they might do under duress, because they cannot discuss their thoughts with you. They can’t explain themselves, but they might feel like expressing their wants and concerns one day. Be aware!

Cyril P. Foley took much for granted in his small work. He assumed there were things he had witnessed in his life that might be of interest to someone else, just as he assumed it was important that he spend twenty months in the trenches to protect his right to play cricket. He did not think of himself as an important man, but he deeply understood the values which made his world possible. He believed there were matters of consequence at the heart of his life which, when revealed to others, might pass on his own understanding, and his sense of value. He did not reckon that one day his words would be lost because people no longer read.

One anecdote he tells is more than comic relief: “Going along Oxford Street in a bus,” Cyril P. Foley once recalled, “I heard the conductor telling a woman the names of the shops that had formerly stood on the site of a large store. Realising that he must have been either the freeholder, the builder or a postman, and judging him unlikely to have been either the first or the second of these I said to him, ‘How long have you been a postman?’ ‘How did you know I was a postman?’ he inquired. ‘Quite simple, my dear Watson,’ said I. The man, who had evidently not read his Sherlock Holmes, nearly fell off the bus, for his name was Watson.”

This is a perceptive mind that listens, questions, and considers.

For many years I knew that the days of my own shop were numbered. When I interviewed new employees I would warn them that the end was near like a sort of literary adventist. Stores like ours had no place in the future. Wasn’t the writing on the walls? The young ones always found my warnings humorous. The older ones usually nodded with some degree of understanding. But I always assumed there was time left. I deluded myself, despite the obvious evidence, into believing that the end was not yet at hand.

Foley’s short account of his 1909 search for the Ark of the Covenant is worth every penny for the book. One moment especially–having jury-rigged a series of short ladders as they explored the key shaft beneath Jerusalem in their quest, candles in hand: “Over my head was a huge dome or vaulted roof, and running up to the right a steep passage, half filled, as far as I could see, with great boulders. Nothing would have induced me to leave that ladder, for the slope appeared to be as slippery as ice. By the dim light of the candle it looked a grim and ghastly spot, and I could not help remembering that I was probably the fourth human being who had looked on it for 1,800 years…I was just about to descend when I heard a movement away up the passage and, in my horror, something came rushing down it with the speed of thought. Before I could move, a dreadful shape hit me full on the shoulder, knocking the candle out of my hand and leaving me in opaque darkness. Being deprived of all volition by sheer terror, I mechanically beat all records down the ladder, struck the ledge at the bottom, and turning a complete somersault, fell, with what the shilling shockers of years gone by would have described as ‘a sickening splash’ into two feet of dirty water.”

Indiana Jones, eat your heart out!

Cyril Foley was made of the sterner stuff.

After duty in the trenches at Faucaucourt, Foley was rushed, on his 47th birthday, to battle the Bulgarians at Salonica. But though he spent his time in battle, he spends his pages telling us about the court martial of a soldier for drunkenness on duty, who is acquitted because he comes to the court drunk again after a lubricated lunch with his attorney and his defense plays on his appearance as only his natural demeanor, and claiming the accusation to be a mistake.

My own foils and foibles have been a bit less dramatic. Around my 47th birthday I was battling with leaking roofs, petty theft and the Internal Revenue Service.

Just as there were thousands of mistakes I made which contributed to the weight of our final difficulties, there are countless reasons for the lack of readers. Much could be made of the sad fact that many of those who do read are reading the same books. Arguments can be waged about the merit of the writing that is being published. Pleas can be heard for better quality in the making of books. Criticism would be directed at the libraries who have forgotten their mission as they replace books with audio-visual materials. One small essay is insufficient space for the task.

This then is just a note in passing. I regret my failure most because I will no longer be able to offer the work of authors like Cyril P. Foley to the hands and minds of the few who still wish to read. I would battle a hundred leaking roofs for that honor. I will miss the bookseller’s singular daily pleasure of introducing a customer to someone they should know.

If I were to suggest that no author should be paid more than, say, $100,000 per book, some readers would actually accept the premise, if not the exact amount. I have spoken to such people. I have listened, not very patiently, to a proposal that great books should be paid a higher advance than lesser books. This was by a literature major who had graduated from Harvard, a renowned local college which has recently lowered its standards. I have even read a proposal that there be a minimum placed on what a publisher can pay per word. This was in a promotional brochure for a proposed “writers union.’

The absurdity of all of these ideas relegated them quickly to oblivion. But nevertheless, they will be proposed again, and again. It is a smallness of mind which is tightly bound to an egocentric view of the universe. It is a verbalization of the thought that if I cannot get such rewards, then no one should have them.

Yet I see that there are proposals in the newspapers to limit the salaries of executives at ‘big’ corporations. I suppose the same proponents of this omnipotence would agree that the multi-billion dollar corporations behind Random House (Bertelsmann–Germany: 6 billions in 2006), or Viking (Pearson—UK: 7 billions in 2006), or Harper Collins (Harper-Collins—US: a mere 1.3 billion in 2006) should not be allowed to pay Jodi Picoult, Clive Cussler, James Patterson, Stephen King or any of those other fat cats the millions they get.

No! It’s different! Yes! I suppose so. The AIG executives who have been pilloried for their greed are responsible for hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue, and the employment of tens of thousands and the welfare of millions of people world-wide.

But, they lost a whole lot of money you say. You mean, of course, that Stephen King should be held responsible for the returns of other Viking authors that are later dumped for $6.95 on the discount tables at Barnes and Noble. Oh, yes, I forgot. Stephen jumped ship from Viking and is now with Scribner (Simon and Schuster/CBS—US: a paltry $800 million in 2006). Did he do that just for the money? I wonder?

The issue here is not only that there are no two authors who are created equal nor any two executives, but that any attempt by a government to reduce such inequities of life will result in a government that very few of us would want to rule our lives.

The true danger here—no, not just a danger, but the damage—is that human beings are being tagged as something other than what they are, and dealt with as mere names (businessman, traitor, heretic).

I have known many thousands of business people in my life. I am one myself, albeit a truly bad one. I have never met a successful business person who was careless or stupid. Wrongheaded at times, yes. As any human being might be. But more often the successful entrepreneurs I have known have been the most concerned about values beyond money. And, not ironically, those people I have known who are the most often concerned about money and who too often value money above principle, have been like myself, poor.

For quick and insightful reference on these matters I recommend two short articles. One by Holman W. Jenkins in the Wall Street Journal of March 24th, 2009 and the other by Jake DeSantis in the New York Times of March 25th, 2009.

I fear that with politicians bent on power driving a popular sentiment of greed and avarice fed by media who do not care about right as much as they do ratings, the damage of these days will live with us for many years to come.

The theft of time has always been a primary fascination and pursuit. Beyond my own conceit, the subject is more commonly known as history. But I have always seen the subject both more broadly and more personally than would be accepted by, say, the typical academic.

Usually, pedagogic prejudice does not openly admit its failings and weakness. Needing fortification against the untaught masses who might otherwise question the tattered cloak, the academic will often throw up a screen of minutia and assumed fact and bellow its affected knowledge loudly. ‘Do not look behind the curtain.’ Information is buried in the labyrinth of libraries and ‘off-site’ storage facilities. Few professors are true scholars and anyone who approaches the citadel without first accepting the self-perpetuating rules of academic engagement will be denied entry to the sanctuary of the academy.

Some of this is understandable. The entry fee to those precincts cannot be had cheaply. But when it becomes commonplace for appointments to be made for purely political purpose, the foundations of the university are threatened. Something akin to a King who admits only the sycophant to his castle. Under siege, there are no tried and true defenders. No men of the long-bow. We have passed that stage today. Yet few disciplines are left which hold to the veracity of acquired knowledge as dearly as the small number of historians of integrity.

Certainly we have whole disciplines in various colleges which have been overwhelmed by political correctness and the conjecture of motivations completely outside of scholarship. The Lysenkos have even reached into the hard inner keep of the science departments. But there is still a corps of historians—a Swiss Guard—which holds its ranks.

In our midst we are blessed to have two fine historians working simultaneously over much of the same historical ground, addressing many like concerns, yet going about their task in very different ways. Such a divergence of method focused on the same subject is exactly what often makes for great science. Here we have great history as a result.

One historian I know from frequent visits to my now lost bookshop. The other has been in the same vicinity, and may have even come by, but was never introduced to me personally. I imagine David Hackett Fischer as a shy man, despite being a professor who has taught thousands in classrooms for forty years. I think of him as quiet and determined. There is something inexorable in his approach to a subject which is comforting to the reader. He will get there and you will know it. Because he works by day within the protective walls of Brandeis University, it was a long time before I gave him my attention. I have that much distrust toward the modern academic. I regret the delay. I have read something of his every year since my discovery of his wonderful Paul Revere’s Ride. What academic would even think of a scholarly study of such a prosaic subject? I had to read it! I was hooked from that moment.

David McCullough is a horse with a difference. His passion is to find the story in things. And for that, he searches for character. His accumulation of fact and detail is no less imposing than Fischer’s, but he weaves his threads with more splendid colors. Being from New York City and having lived close by that wonderful object, I read The Great Bridge when it was new in the early 1970’s. I think I swallowed the whole of it in a couple of days, and I have looked back at it many times since.

Mr. McCullough is a warm and friendly fellow, happy to talk to anyone about his passions, even a lowly bookseller. He works outside the academy, and thus without that protective armour, and is often dismissed by ‘authorities.’ Not that they can easily fault his scholarship, which they seldom do, but that they will not witness it without being dragged into the court of public opinion. Ye gads, he writes bestsellers! McCullough has simply worked ahead and done the unlikely, overwhelming his academic critics.

Lately I have just read David Hackett Fischer’s splendid new account Champlain’s Dream. As usual, it is terrific in every respect, opening pathways in the deep forest of my own ignorance. Did you know that the Indian tribes of the Northeast fought their frequent battles among themselves in much the same way as the ancient Greeks? It was the introduction of the European blunderbuss which forced them out of their fortresses and into the guerilla tactics which we commonly think of as theirs from the start. Did you know anything at all about Champlain other than the very cold waters that separate Vermont from New York? I did not.

Worse, my little assumed knowledge of Champlain was taken from a Catholic parochial school education which stressed the faith, religious mission, and saintly suffering of the Jesuits and Recollets who imposed their zeal on a native culture already under the physical siege of newly transported disease, rats, and Europeans. I had no idea of the deep faith of the man who brought those priests into the mix, nor of his courage, his seamanship, and most importantly, his vision. I could not have imagined that after eighty voyages in fragile ships across a treacherous Northern ocean of frequent fog, ice flows and unknown reefs, he could not even swim. Nor did he ever lose a boat under his command. Such details are the kind of hooks that keeps me on the line when I am reading.

McCullough has previously captured that elusive and difficult quality, courage, in the person of the under appreciated John Stevens, the greatest of several heroes in Path Between the Seas. The epic accomplishment of building the Panama Canal was better seen as an act of imperial hubris by some scholars. Heroes are not an accepted commodity in academic circles. Some men who hide behind ivy covered walls are reluctant to draw comparison with themselves.

In a feat that defied those who so often dwelt on the larger than life (and self created) image of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, McCullough rescued a President, Harry Truman, from the obscurity of innuendo and unexamined fact. Yes, he proved, a common man might become uncommon by his own determination.

Fischer approached more iconic presumptions with Washington’s Crossing. Has anyone bothered to step beyond the painting of the Great Man standing in the small boat amidst the icy river? The wealth of detail uncovered by his research and laid before the reader is breathtaking. More than one future President stood his ground on that cold night in Trenton. Providence must have played its part as the bullets missed the largest rider on the largest horse as he rode a stone’s throw from his enemy so that he might be seen before his tired and weary men, and turn the tide of battle at Princeton. And the ‘forage war’. In all my reading on the American Revolution I had never even heard of this key victory.

Reading about Champlain’s quests, I was much reminded of McCullough’s inspiring biography John Adams. What, you might wonder, did these two men, two hundred years and two very different cultures apart, have in common? One was essentially celibate, and the other deeply in love. One believed in the liberty of the individual, and the other accepted his place in a royal hierarchy. The answer is integrity. And courage. And faith. And something else, more idiosyncratic to my own purposes here.

Both men, despite their incredible accomplishments, have been much neglected by the professional historian and for similar reasons. Neither fits easily into the pre-conceived molds of our own politically correct age, nor the parochial interests of the recent past.

And for me, their resurrections are the masterwork and cunning of artful thieves. Veritable Robin Hoods. Fischer and McCullough are thieves of times which would have otherwise been lost to the flood of intellectual neglect and the pillage of those who want their facts packaged for neat distribution. From the drawers and shelves of moldering paper and unsorted historical debris they rescued the valuable. Thieves are usually cast in a negative light. I would guess that neither of these authors would want to be seen under such a label. But this is my own personal attachment. I have always admired Robin Hood. I have read the great historian J.C. Holt’s recreation of that forest shadow. I am casting Mr. McCullough and Mr. Fischer in the role. They steal facts from the troves hidden in the Royal academies of academic authority and give them to those who are intellectually hungry.

Time is the great valuable here. These are thieves of the best sort. They bring us the most precious of gifts. Time is so easily lost and so difficult to find. Both of these authors capture a past in their pages and bring it forward to the present. I simply like the image of it. In the ‘nick’ of time, so to speak.