The Classroom Conservative

Ode To An Embossing Seal, Or, My Favorite Christmas Present

My favorite Christmas gift this year is an embossing seal from Capital Stamp in Ottawa. Click the link on the business name to see it. You could even order one for yourself. You would be fortunate to have one.

A seal might be most commonly used to frank legal documents. You probably know that notaries use them. But like many other owners of embossing seals, I use them to mark my books. My stamp reads "From The Library Of Dr. Craig Monk" with the initials "CM" in the middle of the round. It is, for me, a tidy alternative to writing in my books, and it is certainly less expensive than buying library plates.

Okay, okay. Embossing my books is, technically, a defacing of them. I have been meticulous about my books for as long as I can remember, and the vast majority of my read books are still in mint condition. So, it is something significant for me to press two pieces of metal together on their pages to leave an impression, an impression that often results in small pin holes light could shine through. But embossing is an interesting, palpable interaction with my books. I have to hold each one carefully open to the title page, position the embosser, and press with just the right amount of pressure. You can feel the paper give as the contraption leaves its mark. It is a pleasurable feeling.

Embossing my books means something different depending on the book, of course. When I marked an old edition of Farley Mowat's Lost In The Barrens, my favorite book as a child, it was a little bit like meeting an old friend. Honestly, how often does that book come off the shelf? I franked each volume in the new boxed set of Patricia Highsmith's Ripleynovels, and it was like welcoming a new member of the family. Surprisingly, when I marked an edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, a kind note from an old student fell out. It had been a replacement copy for one that had been lost.

And that, of course, brings us perhaps to the greatest benefit of franking your books: there is a greater likelihood that borrowed copies will find their way back to you. I do not like to loan my books, but some inevitably make their way to students and friends. When these rascals run their fingers over the franks, they will know their possession was meant to be temporary.

But owning books is temporary, is it not? I was once in a bookstore in Medicine Hat with a friend of mine. He asked the proprietor how she came to have such a nice collection of books. This store was downtown, far removed from the site of the college out there, and yet it looked like the kind of operation that usually sets up just off-campus. "The key," she said, "is not to chase the hearse." Indeed, it is hubris to imagine that other people would someday want all my books, that some people would pay good money for some of them. But it would be silly to pretend that none of them have lasting value. They are embodiments of what we know, and with my little bumped sign of ownership, I can claim long after the paper has yellowed to have thought about what each author had to say to all of us.

Nick Hornby, Slam

"So, it's come to this," I thought. "I'm struggling through a book for young adults." Slam, Nick Hornby's most recent publication, recently published in paperback, had been marketed for the last year or so as a book that would interest readers "12 and up." But Mr. Hornby has been so reliable -- from the brilliance of High Fidelity (1995) to the admirable misfire of How to be Good (2001) -- that I could not resist. The thing that defines all his prose is his ability to keep you turning the pages. There have been memorable characters sprinkled throughout his oeuvre, but their power is not so much in their longevity than it is in how quickly you find yourself interested in them. That was my problem: I was little interested, initially, in Sam Jones, the skateboarding protagonist and narrator here. Sam begins by outlining a little of his life in London, and he is a little hard to imagine. He can sleep with a pretty girl, but he does not seem popular; his life revolves around skating, but he does not engage one way or the other any of the social stereotypes you might imagine attaching themselves to this activity. What skating does bring to this book is Sam's infatuation with Tony Hawk, represented by a poster with which Sam talks. Actually, for the most part, Sam talks, and Tony quotes back to him passages from his autobiography. The point is that Mr. Hornby is best when he shows characters interacting, even if one of them is glossy and two-dimensional. Once Sam moves out into the world and you hear what he says, what he wishes he could have said, what people say to him, and what he thinks of that, Mr. Hornby finds his groove. From that point, I could not put Slam down, and I found much here to interest adult readers.

Sam's home life is unconventional, or I suppose it has become much more conventional in the past twenty years. The books covers Sam's life from age sixteen to, one suspects, his very early twenties, but when we first find him, he is living with his mother, who had him when she was his age. His father is a fleeting presence. Annie, his mother, introduces him to Alicia Burns, and in short order Sam and Alicia begin having sex. Pregnancy results. There is no moral dilemma for Alicia: she wishes to keep the child. Mr. Hornby covers much of the territory you would expect him to explore: how to tell their parents, how to tell their school, how their acquaintances find out. But the droll examination of Sam's coming-to-terms with impending fatherhood is the meat of this book, and Slamrelies, as have many of Mr. Hornby's books, on the good-natured naivete of the young men who populate them. To be honest, Alicia remains a mystery, seeing her as we do only from Sam's perspective. But that is not to say that Slam has no time for other issues: there are explorations of generational overlap, single-parent families, British class conflict, and the state's role in educating and supporting young parents. The book is not preachy because, in part, Sam does not have the capacity to offer much more than a cursory analysis of what happens to him. That is both what makes this book appropriate for teens and what gives adult readers more to think about.

At one point, Sam, in a panic, decides to abandon his life to escape his mounting responsibilities. He moves to Hastings for a day; Hastings is the only seaside town he has ever visited. These pages are the funniest in Slam, and they demonstrate much of what Mr. Hornby can most ably do as a writer. The book really hinges on the Tony Hawk affectation, though, and Mr. Hornby doubles his wager by giving the skater the further ability to "whiz" Sam into the future to live single days of his life to come. These sorts of devices are often troublesome, as you know, but it works here because you have been so ably sold on Tony Hawk's ability to talk to Sam in the first place. Moreover, the passages in the "future" do not alter the action of the book in any fundamental way: it is not as if seeing what life as a father will be like leads Sam off into wildly different directions. The device works, ultimately, as a meditation on aging, time, and fate, and it is one of the things about this book that surely pleases the teen reader and gives the rest of us more on which to reflect.

Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful: So Keep Your Hands Off The Natural Gas

While the double-barreled blast of snow in central Canada rightfully grabs the headlines, it overshadows the fact that the West is suffering through the longest and earliest cold snap I can remember in my dozen years in Alberta. Now, a dozen years in climate terms is a nanosecond, and so I draw no grand conclusions. This is just tough luck for those of us in a relatively mild location, and we can content ourselves by knowing that if we all have to suffer through a Winnipeg winter, at least we get a white Christmas.

Growing up in Newfoundland, we had wood stoves, hot-water radiators, and electric baseboard heaters. Living with a forced-air, natural gas furnace takes a little adjustment. In my present home, some bright spark decided to position the master bedroom above the furnace, and so I wake up each time it cuts in. These nights, it cuts in all the time. On normal nights, I can heat the house to twenty degrees celsius and it holds sufficient heat until morning. These nights, with lows in the minus thirties, even a new house with excellent insulation cannot hold its heat.

The point is that I have developed, over the last fortnight, a new appreciation for our reliable supply of natural gas to heat our homes. I mean, it has always been there: boosting our comfort when temperatures dip below freezing, firing gas barbecues in the summer. But in these last two weeks, any disruption to our home heating supply would surely have sparked an epidemic of property damage and personal injury. We hear enough anyway about bursting water pipes and people dying of carbon monoxide poisoning by jerry-rigging some alternate heating contraption. One of the many memorable details in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is a discussion of how Kansans could heat their houses directly by drilling for natural gas on their own properties. Perhaps there are places in North America where this is still so, but long gone are the days when most of us can be complacent about any non-renewable resource.

So, what are our plans for natural gas in the not-too-distant future, anyway? Some people believe we can maintain our "happy motoring" lifestyle, where everyone drives everywhere, by running more efficient vehicles on electricity. Perhaps this is part of the plan for the resurrected North American car industry. Will we expect natural gas to fuel an expansion in electricity generation? This must be the implication for those who oppose nuclear energy: solar, hydroelectric, and wind will not keep three cars in every driveway. The so-called "Pickens Plan" imagines that wind will help meet our general electricity needs so that natural gas can play a more direct role in fueling automobiles. All imaginings of our energy future see an increased role for natural gas, but I would prefer, as I sit here in a semi-defrosted state, that our first priority remain the heating of our homes. We might be able to huddle together in our vehicles for warmth, but that little heater in the car takes so damn long to spread the cheer.

Jeremy Mercer, Time Was Soft There

If you spend any length of time imagining Paris in the 1920s, the Paris of Kay Boyle, Ernest Hemingway, and Eugene Jolas, you can make yourself forget that there is still a city in France that has grown and changed since Hemingway described it for us in The Sun Also Rises. Upon visiting Paris, today, you look for overlap, and in the shadow of Notre Dame you sense things that you imagine to be akin to what visitors felt eighty or ninety years ago.

Shakespeare and Company on the rue Bucherie is one such spot. I do not imagine that Sylvia Beach's original bookshop had the bohemian feel of the store George Whitman opened at this location in 1951, but it preserves in my mind the rough and tumble camaraderie of twenties cafe culture, something lost as all but the seediest establishments gentrified themselves for tourists who pick up their trinkets along the Seine.

I met Mr. Whitman in 1994. I was in Paris for my twenty-fifth birthday, and my companion on the trip, a young woman who was more enthusiastic about James Joyce than even I am, asked him if we could see a first edition of Ulysses. With his wild gray hair and rumpled look, he grumbled, "Come back on Bloomsday." I had heard the proprietor of the shop to be a legendary curmudgeon, but Jeremy Mercer's memoir of his time at Shakespeare and Company in 2000 provides valuable background to Mr. Whitman's story and serves as an interesting counterpoint for students of an earlier Lost Generation.

An expatriate Canadian, Mr. Mercer spends more time than Harold Stearns and Malcolm Cowley combined in explaining why he, or anyone for that matter, might wash up in Paris. As with any memoir, the individual story of its author may be less interesting than the context, and in the context of this story the reader meets a dozen young vagabonds who use their time with Mr. Whitman to reassess their lives. It is hard to say than any one of these travelers really stands out: the best-drawn of Mr. Mercer's acquaintances is the bookstore itself. It is more vivid in his descriptions of it than of the women Mr. Mercer loves: there is, in fact, cringe-worthy intimacy described herein. In his hands, Mr. Whitman almost emerges from under his crusty exterior, but no fault rests with the narrator; his host is very guarded, after all.

The book often reads like a series of loosely connected vignettes, and there are more than three dozen chapters in a book only two hundred fifty pages in length. When a number of them fit together nicely, Mr. Mercer achieves a genuine narrative momentum. This happens most noteworthily in his discussion of how the shop works, or does not work, and in the story of how Mr. Whitman reconciles with his daughter.

In the final analysis, Mr. Mercer emerges here as a young man who had the great fortune to have a pretty remarkable experience. It is an experience that interests me, and as a former reporter Mr. Mercer has the skill to share some of it with all of us.

Once More Into The Breach, Dear Friends, Once More? The End Of The Globe And Mail's Book Section

If a week is a lifetime in politics, four months is an eternity in publishing. In response to the furor that arose after the The Globe and Mail put its Books section on hiatus last summer, Gerald Owen wrote to me from the paper on August 19: "Mr. [Edward] Greenspon has asked me to reply to you. This is only a two-week pause before the fall season. There is no plan or intention whatsoever to discontinue the Books section." A number of us had been successful in having complaints published on the Letters page, and there was considerable on-line chatter. The resulting Facebook group got 1,000 members. But in the recent announcement that the Globe will be launching an improved on-line book site, there was also the admission that the "stand alone" Saturday supplement will get rolled in with Focus, as of January 10, 2009.

The eminently reasonable Steven Beattie at That Shakespeherian Rag now counsels caution. Book Ninja is not talking about storming Front Street. Facebook is silent. Perhaps this new format will allow the Globe to give exposure to more books, provided online content exceeds significantly what they had been publishing in the paper. For myself, I listen regularly to The New York Times books podcast, and I scan their website occasionally, and so I would welcome similar content from "Canada's National Newspaper." But the Times still has a print supplement, much coveted on Mondays in the Round Street Cafe in downtown Lethbridge, for one. The Globe supplement is the reason I still subscribe, the one part of the paper I keep around the house for months, long after the rest of it has been recycled.

The point is that I do not object to new technology; I am not a nostalgist, as the banner at the top of the blog points out. But the conservative in me looks for the principle behind a books supplement: print supporting print.  I do not think an hour reading about books over breakfast on Saturday morning is anachronistic, and flipping open a laptop to do so is no more appealing than downloading pdf chapters of books.  I find it hard to believe this will prove to be, on balance, a positive development. I worked in print journalism, and I am not so pollyanna as to ignore the reality that the business is driven by advertising. If more advertisers were still interested in supporting a section that, apparently, fewer and fewer people read, the section would not be in trouble. But insofar as no book coverage is immune to the whim of advertisers, I cannot believe that books that will not sell copies atop copies will get any more of a fair shake online than they do in the current supplement. How many "special sections" have we seen this fall, intended primarily to move many copies of trade and mass market books from Chapters and Amazon?

So where to from here? Once Books disappears, I suspect we will see another little surge of outrage, but I also suspect this will get us nowhere. I will certainly seek out and subscribe to other print publications devoted to books. I was a fool not to do so before. But what about my pledge no longer to subscribe to a Globe that has no Books coverage? Honestly, delivery had improved to the point that I had intended to go back to a six-day subscription in the new year. That I will not, now, do. But I am less strident about my previous declaration to cancel even my Saturday subscription. Coverage of a few books in Focus is better than nothing, I suppose. I guess, disappointed though I am, I will wait and see.

Janet Napolitano Disrespected But, Campbell Brown, It Has Nothing To Do With Sexism

At the National Governors Conference on Tuesday, Pennsylvania's Ed Rendell disrespected Janet Napolitano, the Governor of Arizona and Barack Obama's nominee to run Homeland Security. CNN commentator Campbell Brown incorrectly attributed Mr. Rendell's comment to sexism. What did Mr. Rendell say? He suggested that Ms Napolitano would be "perfect for that job" because, with no children, she could "devote, literally, 19-20 hours a day to it."

In Ms Brown's assessment, this reflected the higher standard to which we hold women. The old argument against women in the workplace was, after all, that they would be overburdened with competing domestic responsibilities and could not be effective employees. That shameful assumption forced many employers to be more flexible; after all, excluding mothers from the workplace limits the talent in the workforce. However, this greater flexibility, when available, helps both mothers and fathers. Many of the women and men I know with children benefit from concessions, informal and those required by law. Is it perfect? No. School holidays, for example, cause problems for people who have to arrange daycare they have not relied upon regularly. Sudden illness is both scary and inconvenient. But I know a lot of mothers and fathers who are fortunate enough to have jobs where they can trade off some time and stay home with sick kids.

Mr. Rendell was not suggesting that Ms Napolitano could not be Security Czar if she had children. What he was betraying was the assumption many people have about those of us without children. Because we do not have to be home when our children get out of school, because we do not have to cook for them, because we do not have to take them to activities, many people assume that we have no important demands on our time outside work. I believe people like Mr. Rendell know that the childless have the right to leisure time, but they also believe that, when push comes to shove, we have to be willing to go above and beyond. After all, it is not like lives depend on us.

... Other than our own, of course.