Baxter once said that a man in the woods was about the purest thing there was in the world, and the closest he could come to knowing God. A man can never buy with money this thing that the Lord gave him for free, he said. That sense of awe and respect one derives from the trees and the earth and all things that dwell in between them. He told Jacob that poetry was all around him, in the grass and on the surface of the leaves, and that the Bible was full of good words designed to mimic what could never be written, but could sometimes be heard and always seen—the rising water, the falling rain, the rush of river and wind, the passage of cloud banks and great ruminant herds, buffalo and elk and the trailing packs of carnivores, both man and wild dog, wanderers all, in endless migration to the grasslands that feed them. He told him that magic is neither myth nor mystery but that which cannot be explained or understood—which is how the world was and should always be. There’s magic in a caterpillar, he told him, and in an acorn and behind the stars. His ancestors had understood this. They worshipped the forest as some white men worship God. He had only come to know and love God through time spent in the woods and through his proximity to death, which he gained in the trenches of the first great war.
I have noticed that over the past decade readers have been subjected to a trend in non-fiction book cover design. I am referring to the use of a white background to frame a single, striking element. For example:
I understand the appeal from a marketing perspective. As online book buying grows in popularity, the book spine is becoming less important to shoppers. Instead, the idea with white-framed covers is to create as much visual distance and isolation with a book so as to set it apart from its surrounding mosaic. An added benefit for non-fiction books in particular is the sense of authority that comes with a single image. This says, “I am an expert on this topic. I am not going to stray into superfluous details. Prepare to learn.”
I like the look, but I dislike the trend. I am a grump, though, and dislike most trends. I refuse to tell my wife that I don’t mind listening to her Ingrid Michaelson music simply because it’s on the radio sometimes. I even hate hipsters because they are too popular. How’s that for irony?
I collected many, many such covers (and it didn’t take me long to do). Flip through the gallery below to see. Now, as an exercise in the inevitable futility of following trends, try to see if any of the white-framed books stands out when packed together with so many similarly designed books. Answer: none stand out. This book, if it were thrown into the mix, would certainly stand out. Here’s hoping busy book covers don’t become a trend.
Below is the list of the top ten most frequently challenged books of 2009 as gathered from the American Library Association website. I completely understand the low priority some place upon books compared to other forms of media. However, I don’t understand why books would need to be burned. Think of it this way, if I had two children, I would probably like one more than the other. That doesn’t mean I should burn one (I’ll let the sun do that, when I allow my least favorite child to play outside all day without sunblock. Blame averted).
Being invested in the publishing industry, I feel I should fight back. Note: I have not read all of these books, nor do I know what many of them are even about. But if I’ve learned anything from the mere existence of a banned books list, it is that arguments don’t have to respect the source material or the material’s context. It’s fun to hate!
10. “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
Un-Reasons: I had to Google this book to determine its content, and honestly I feared what searching “the chocolate war” would return. I can count the number racially explicit scenarios that would use this phrase on two hands. I can count the number of pornographically explicit possibilities on one hand…the other is busy. Granted, the SERP (that’s Search Engine Results Page for you people with a life) yielded nothing questionable, but the simple fact that it could have is enough to keep this book off of the banned books list. If my mind is filthier than the book title, then the book isn’t worth battling over.
9. “The Color Purple,” Alice Walker
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
Un-Reasons: Can we get over this book already? The people who question this book are likely racist. It’s just that “Blackieness” wasn’t an available check box on the official challenged book request form, or as it is known among dissenters: “Show Off Your WASPy Prudishness” ballot.
8. “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things,” by Carolyn Mackler
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
Un-Reasons: Kids grow up faster these days than in days past. “My Butt” being a “Round Thing” is probably offensive only to those people who also take offense to the implication of the Earth being round.
7. “My Sister’s Keeper,” by Jodi Picoult
Reasons: Sexism, Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide, Violence
Un-Reasons: My wife read this. She’s still cool. And believe me, my wife has plenty of opportunities for commonalities among lame-ohs who challenge books. She loves guinea pigs. She dances with her thumbs in the air. She can’t pronounce “Parmesan.” I could go on, but I won’t, because I love her too much to disrespect her with a fourth item in this list.
6. “Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
Un-Reasons:
5. Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group
Un-Reasons: No, the real reason these books should be banned is because they are everywhere. I’m sick of telling people about William Gay’s “Twilight,” only to be raped by Stephenie Meyer “Twilight” fans. Also, to call this book sexually explicit is to insult all the creative whores out there who work hard to freak out horny dudes (or women, or animals, or kitchen appliances, or plumbing supplies, or…). Making out with a vampire and/or werewolf is like 2nd base stuff to today’s kids.
4. “To Kill A Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee
Reasons: Racism, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
Un-Reasons:See “The Color Purple” above.
3. “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Anti-Family, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide
Un-Reasons: So many teenagers are depressed antisocial-ites. Let them have a book whose title implies pride and self-respect, and stop shoving morally definite books, that polarize homosexuality, language, and religion, at your kids. The world is ambiguous; embrace it.
2. “And Tango Makes Three” by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
Reasons: Homosexuality
Un-Reasons: “Two male authors,” you say. “Gross.” What if Tango is Jesus and he’s there to cure the authors of their homosexuality. Are you okay, now?
1. “TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs
Un-Reasons: We managed through 9 items before hitting a book that is offensive not just to people, but to the English language as well. This is very impressive considering IM acronyms are as a common as…typing “IM” instead of “Instant Message.” Does this mean that the English language has not yet devolved far enough from the Queen’s English to have become unrecognizable, and that novels are still culturally relevant, meaning that they should be examined closely for moral alignment? WTF is wrong with you? Language evolves. The good words live (Boner: [boh-ner]-n, slang an erection of the penis ) while the bad ones die (Andrew Koenig: -n, the guy who played Boner in the 1980s sitcom Family Ties)
I have purchased many a cigar in this place over the last year or so, each time bypassing the giant leather couches for the equally giant walk-in humidor stationed along this small shop’s north wall. I envied the old men each time, wishing I had a few moments to crash, take in a cigar, a book, and a few overheard conversations regarding golf or lawn care or something else just as fitting to the cigar stereotype. This evening, my birthday, I finally allowed myself a few moments to live this dream.
For the most part, my envy was justified. But what comes with romanticizing a book and a cigar in a place like this, are the same associations that make it hard for me fall entirely into the dream. Golf on the TV, men talking about boats, and lots of Republicans. I need to bring a black guy with me next time to air out the place.
Rankings out of 10:
Smoking accommodations
10
The place is called Cigar & Tabac.
Furniture comfort
10
These couches are so soft cartoon spokes-bears wipe their asses with them.
Quiet level
5
Talking and TV don’t go well with books, but the lack of music pumping overhead events things out.
Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are a malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth. We say to the confused, Know thyself, as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations, we say to the apathetic, Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head, we say to the indecisive, Begin at the beginning, as if beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and all we had to do was to keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and the latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarls to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skein, or indeed, if we may be permitted one more stock phrase, in the skein of life.
The journey was uneventful, that’s what novelists in a hurry always say when they think that, in the ten minutes or ten hours they are about to eliminate, nothing has taken place that would warrant any special mention. Strictly speaking, it would be much more correct and honest to put it like this, As in all journeys whatever their duration and length, there have been a thousand incidents, words and thoughts, and for a thousand you could read ten thousand, but the narrative is dragging, so I’m allowing myself to abbreviate, using three lines to cover two hundred kilometers, bearing in mind that the four people inside the car have traveled in silence, with neither thought nor gesture, pretending that by the end of the journey they will have nothing to relate.
The encyclopedia that father and daughter have just opened on the kitchen table was considered the best of its kind at the time of publication, whereas today its only use would be to find out about areas of knowledge no longer considered useful or which, at the time, were still only articulating their first, hesitant syllables. Placed in a line, one after another, the encyclopedias of today, yesterday, and the-day-before-the-day-before-yesterday represent successive images of frozen worlds, interrupted gestures, words in search of their immutable cycloramas, prodigious projectors whose reels have gotten stuck and which show, with a kind of maniacal fixity, a landscape which, because it is condemned to be only and for all eternity what is was, will at the same time grow older, more decrepit and more unnecessary.
