south of the loop

This is the first Christmas in six years (!!) that I won’t be in McBookstore on Sundays. And… oh well! (As I side note, I do actually miss being in the kids section, not because I long for misbehaving snot-nosed crumbsnatchers, but because I miss reading all the kids books for free.) However, my friend Kelly has brilliantly recapped what it’s like to work retail at Christmas, and oh, how it’s brought back the memories! In honor of the holiday season, a few of my favorite stories of retail chaos.

As Kelly pointed out, McBookstore sadly does not shelf books by the color of the spine. Nor by the texture of their cover.

Customer: I’m looking for this book, it’s about angels.

Me: Okay. Do you know the title?

Customer: Nooo… I saw it in the airport bookstore last week.

Me, thinking that if it’s in an airport bookstore, maybe it’s one of our bestsellers and therefore out on one of the front tables: Let’s take a look on these tables and see if it might be here. Do you remember an author name, a word in the title…?

Customer: It was small and square. And it had an angel on the front cover.

Me: I really need part of a title or name to be able to search for it on the computer.

Customer, barreling on anyways: It was white. Off-white. And it had small squares on the front cover, like it was quilted. And there was a picture of an angel. But the texture was raised, you know? You could feel it.

[sound of my head hitting the information desk]

* * *

As Kelly has also pointed out, customers don’t always know what they’re looking for.

Stereotypically bored, rich, suburban housewife enters store and walks straight to the information desk. She leans over the counter with a big, disinterested sigh: I’m looking for Forkner.

Me, bracing myself: Forkner? Um, okay. Do you mean… Faulkner?

Bored housewife: NO! FORKner. It’s Forkner.

[pause]

Bored housewife, looking as pensive as one can with freshly Botoxed brows: Wellll… I dunno. Maybe it was Faulkner. He was on Oprah.

Me: Yes. William Faulkner. He was the last author Oprah chose for her book club. Let me show you where his books are.

[we walk to the "F" in Fiction/Literature, where at least three full shelves have been dedicated to stockpiles of Faulkner, including lots of face-outs and a special Oprah-edition boxed set]

Me: Here you go, ma’am. All his books are right here on these shelves.

Bored housewife looks slowly and carefully over the three shelves: So, can you recommend something? Like, what came out recently?

Me, completely fucking floored: Um. Um. He’s… he’s not exactly a living author, ma’am.

* * *

Working in the kids section is a real treat during the holidays. There’s a part of me that liked it, if only because people are so desperate–and therefore susceptible to recommendations–that they’ll buy just about anything I put in their hands (almost anything). I like to think that maybe I’ve introduced some kids to books they wouldn’t have otherwise picked up. My first question to a customer, after determining the age and gender of the recipient, is, “What other kinds of books is s/he reading?” This is the quickest way of determining whether the kid in question likes fantasy or real-life stories, about what level they’re reading at, and if they have any particular obsessions (dinosaurs, horses, Bob the Builder). Guaranteed that during the month of December, at least 80% of the answers are, “Yeah, I don’t really know.” Really? You have no idea if your 12-year-old nephew likes to read? And you think I’m going to be able to tell you whether he’s ready for the abridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo or if I should show you my favorite Roald Dahl books? Have you seen our fine selection of gift cards at the front of the store, sir?

One Christmas Eve, an especially desperate looking guy came into the kids section. He wanted something for his daughter–something really special, something that ALL the kids wanted this year. He was recently divorced, and he wanted something for his daughter that, he said, would make her say “Wow!” when tore open the wrapping paper. It was December 24th, so I had my doubts, but he seemed so desperate and so sincere that I thought I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. I pointed him to a lovely new special edition hardback of a popular book.

“Do you have it in paperback?”

Sigh. Happy Holidays.

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I was running late one sleepy morning last week. Intelligentsia (supplier of my daily latte addiction, running late or not) was playing Calexico’s Garden Ruin, and I had maybe four minutes of sweet, sweet relief from my otherwise grimy morning. Unsurprising; music frequently determines or reflects moods. See: any number of music reviews making references to “rainy day music” or “perfect summer pop songs.” Or try listening to The Smiths’ “Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me” when you’re feeling on top of the world. You’ll either shut it off one bar in or fall a very, very long way down.

I went to McBookstore during lunch today to get some new reading material (Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments by David Foster Wallace). Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 (second movement) was playing: a song both triumphant and devastating, exultant and crushing. Its eight minutes are an epic crescendo, plateauing mid-song in a joyful little dance, then falling prey to a deepening sorrow punctuated by the brass section. But for most of the movement, the cellos carry the emotion–appropriate, since a cello’s range is similar to a person’s–and, although I’m not well-educated in classical music, I believe it is somewhat unusual for a symphony to rely so heavily on cellos (Joel, do you still read my blog? You want to jump in here?). Beethoven’s Seventh moved me to take cello lessons, and hearing it today made me wish my cello wasn’t temporarily hibernating at my parents’ house. Probably my regret was exacerbated by the haunting A-minor key and the gray skies. And yet…

It got me thinking about more things than I can write about now, on the verge of bedtime and another early morning. In John C.’s entry about Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” he described it as something he turned to for a “sugar rush.” It’s definitely a song I’d listen to before, say, a night on the town (along with Madonna and Prince, natch). Funny how we turn to music: for solace, or to wallow ever deeper in self-pity, or to lift our spirits. And funny how music becomes a vortex of nostalgia. Beethoven’s Seventh caught me by surprise and took me back to the moment, and even to the emotion, of first wanting to play the cello.

And with all of these loose ends and half-thoughts, I’m off to Austin in one more day for yet another music festival. It will still be warm enough there to discover the perfect summer pop song. I might have to indulge my inner groupie and try to snag another front-row spot for Calexico.

* * *

current book: finished Michael K on the Metra home; cracked open Blood Meridian.

current music: re-living Sunday night with plenty of Calexico, with a break to listen to Symphony No. 7 three times in a row.

current socks: black with bumblebees. It was pouring rain when I came into work this morning, so I’ve been walking around unshod while my shoes dry out.

Filed under: books, mcbookstore, music by admin2
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I left the vet Monday afternoon carrying nearly 20 pounds of cat. Call me weak, but the kitties were too heavy to walk more than a few dozen yards. Clarabelle is pretty subdued in her carrier, but Monte wriggles around, sticking his paws out at passersby and generally making himself difficult to hang on to. I set them down on the sidewalk and called for a cab (the cabbies don't make regular rounds of Hyde Park like they do downtown or in the northern neighborhoods).

A bunch of teenagers sauntered by. I was wary and inched out of their way, moving the cat carriers so that they were directly in front of me and well away from the group of teens. When I worked at McBookstore (right across the street from the vet), teenagers–unaffectionately referred to by McBookstore employees as "the gangs"–used the store as an after school hangout of sorts, sometimes leering and swearing, sometimes sitting on stacks of books, talking and laughing loudly in their tight clusters. Those teenagers at McBookstore, like the ones on the corner, were all African-American. It wasn't about race, we said at McBookstore, it was that they were loud, they were rude, they made the bookstore uncomfortable for paying customers. Paying customers who were, incidentally, mostly black.

These kids on the street corner were as loud and obnoxious as the ones at McBookstore. They took up the entire sidewalk. Anybody in their path was invisible; they moved in a large but tightly knit circle, sauntering with the easy confidence of the streetwise, egging each other on with loud words I could not understand.

An older white man edged around the group, came up to me and said, "And they wonder why some people look down on them!"

* * * 

In his essay "Black Skins, White Masks," Frantz Fanon asks, "Where am I to be classified? Or, if you prefer, tucked away? … Where shall I hide?" He turned to others. "The Negro is an animal," he heard. "The Negro is bad, the Negro is mean, the Negro is ugly." Here on 53rd Street, that is what white people see. Mean and bad and ugly. And loud and obnoxious. Fanon says that "not only must the black man be black, he must be black in relation to the white man." It doesn't matter whether I'm racist or not, whether I'm pale-white or olive-white. It doesn't even matter if I'm judging them only for being loud and for taking up the whole sidewalk. I'm white, they're black. And on that street corner, like it or not, I'm one of the white people. I'm like that elderly white man.

The white man returned from his errand, and unlocked his off-white Toyota. I was still standing on the corner, waiting for my cab. The teenagers were still loud, still sauntering in their large circle. The man turned to me. "You need a ride somewhere in the neighborhood?" 

* * *

current book: The New York Times recently reviewed The Places in Between by Rory Stewart. For now, at least, you can read it here. I was excited to read the review because the title is so similar to my thesis–until the reviewer refers to it as "a pipsqueak title." Hmph. The rest of the description was alluring enough to immediately purchase it, and I'll be starting it tonight or tomorrow.
current music: I'm back to listening to Entre Rios' Onda.
current socks: black with white and yellow bumblebees  

Filed under: chicago, life in general, mcbookstore by admin2
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I watched Mean Girls last night. One of “The Plastics” looked really familiar, but I couldn’t place her. It was bothering me enough that I got on IMDB after the movie ended. I skimmed over her filmography… she’s mostly had parts in a bunch of TV shows I’ve never watched. Hmmm. I clicked on the link to her bio. Amanda Seyfried has “appeared on the cover of three Francine Pascal books.”

AHA!

Five years of shelving young adult books, and I can now recognize teen actresses. Awesome.

Filed under: mcbookstore by admin2
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