Gray Friday with Gutters ... and Books

For a long time I resisted the temptation to go out and remove the leaves from the gutters. But "temptation" isn't the right word here. That word connotes something pleasurable that we ought to avoid. What would be the right word, then, to describe such a thought? Resist the self-imposed injunction? No. (Help me out here!)

It was true, the gutters were full of leaves. It was true, it had started to drizzle, with the prospect of more seriously wet and dreary weather ahead. It was true, when the gutters get clogged, the rainwater dribbles down the front of the windows in both the bedroom and the den, ending up who knows where?

On the other hand, there were still quite a few leaves on the trees. A week or two from now I'll have to do the same thing all over again. But my life has been based, almost from the beginning, on efficiency and flow. Don't get so worked up. Don't push so hard. Things are never going to be perfect.

What finally got me up out of my chair was the realization that it would be impossible for me to enjoy any part of the luscious gray afternoon that was developing if that stupid thought kept nagging me: I ought to go out and clean the gutters.

So I did the sensible thing. I got the aluminum ladder out of the garage, found the flimsy cotton gloves which I use for no other purpose than cleaning out the gutters—I call them my Red Ryder gloves, with reference to a TV show from the early 1950s—and stepped out onto the back deck. 

My plan was a simple one. I would clean out the leaves from those crucial areas that might lead to backups and overflows above the downspouts on the deck, the bedroom, and the driveway, leaving the bulk of the work for another, drier, time when I could climb up onto the roof and slide along the abrasive shale-gray shingles on my rear end, clearing out all the gutters from above.

There wasn't much of a problem with the gutters above the deck, but when I lifted the first clump of wet leaves from the downspout outside the bedroom window, I heard the pleasant sound of water streaming down the pipe, and it went on for quite a while. Ahhh.

On my way back into the house after stowing the ladder, I noticed our little rosemary plant, standing alone in the plot that had nourished Hilary's tomato plants all summer—still green, still offering its oily, pungent leaves, and perhaps doing better now that the tomato stalks have been cleared away, though I doubt it. Tonight might be a good night for spaghetti sauce?

But now, have completed my self-imposed yard work, I was free to make a fire and luxuriate, which was a good thing, because quite a few new books have made their way into the house recently. I'm not referring to the ones I got at the Fall Forum book convention a few weeks ago, but to those I received from a friend of mine in Madison who has recently moved to a newer and smaller house, leaving quite a few volumes stranded on the shelves in the old house, which has not yet been put on the market.

Timothy allowed me to take two books from his newer, trimmer—but still awfully large—library: The Scottish Enlightenment by Alexander Brodie and a selection of essays carrying the title Kierkegaard After MacIntyre.  Back at the old house, now in considerable disarray, I picked up The Haiku Seasons by Higginson, In Defense of Reason by Yvor Winters, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratics, a paperback edition of Pascal's Pensées that has "northwoods cabin reading" written all over it, and The Discovery of the Individual 1050-1200, a Harper Torchbook by Colin Morris, the very appearance of which reminds me of my undergraduate years at the U.

I'm sure Morris's theory has been discredited many times over by several generations of gender- and race-based scholars, but I'm also sure there are threads of truth in it, and it will make for a relaxing and pleasurable read.

And as for the "ancilla," (a word that I just now looked up: "an aid to achieving or mastering something difficult") I open the book at random and hit upon Melissus of Samos, a disciple of Parmenides, where I almost immediately spot an error. He writes: "If [being] were infinite, it would be One; for if it were two, these could not be spatially infinite, but each would have boundaries in relation to the other."

Not true. For it's easy to imagine two spaces meeting up at an interface—imagine an infinite brick wall—while extending endlessly off in every other direction.

To add to the biblio-influx, I wandered over to the Golden Valley Library book sale this morning. But let me be clear: before doing so I did more than an hour of paid work making proof corrections and emailed another friend (and sometime client) regarding the issue of book cover colors. (But not for this particular book.)

At the book sale I limited myself to five hardcover volumes at a dollar apiece: A Literary Education and other Essays by Joseph Epstein; The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce; The Complete Operas of Verdi by Charles Osborne; You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie; and Red Earth, White Earth by our own Will Weaver.

The day is frittering away. (Otherwise put, I am frittering the day away.)There's a big pot of borscht in the fridge. Also sour cream and fresh dill. The rain is holding off for now.

It's time to make a fire.

La Rondine - the Swallow

It's odd to think that although La Rondine lies on the bottom shelf of the Puccini oeuvre, I've seen it three times in the last ten years. The Met did an HD simulcast production in 2008 with Alagna and Gheorghiu, touting an alternative ending that Puccini tried out in Palermo in 1920 and then dropped; the Skylark Opera Company did it here locally in 2015 on a pleasantly small stage; and the Minnesota Opera is doing it now.

In fact, Puccini modified the opera's ending several times, and modern composers have added a few variations of their own, which can be taken as an indication of how problematic the plot structure was to begin with.

Only one of the opera's arias, the melancholy "Chi il bel sogno di Doretta" ("Who could guess Doretta's beautiful dream?") appears with any frequency on anthology recordings, yet the far more cheerful duet at the end of act 2 between Magda, our heroine, and country boy Ruggero, "Bevo al tuo frescosorriso," (I drink to your lovely smile) is widely considered the emotional high-point of the work.

The plot calls to mind several more robust and popular operas, but it contains subtleties that are worth pointing out. Magda ran away to Paris early and is now a "kept" woman. Her benefactor, Rambaldo, is kindly, perhaps, but a little dull, and that military uniform with bright red pants doesn't suit him at all. 

At a social gathering hosted by the couple, the charming but cynical poet Prunier, evidently a regular visitor, observes that in Paris nowadays everyone is talking about "love," a concept that he finds slightly risible. Magda, instinctively defending the love impulse, pines for an excitement she no longer feels, though Puccini succeeds in conveying the impression that she isn't just a thrill-seeker but is suffering some sort of existential crisis. 

Near the end of the act, Prunier confesses his love to Magda's maid Lisette—though he has difficulty explaining to the audience how he has come to stoop so far beneath his social station. Meanwhile, Magda steals off to town in an effort to revive, if only for one evening, her moribund emotional life.

Earlier in the act, a young man named Ruggero had arrived. The son of one of Rambaldo's old friends, he's visiting Paris for the first time, and the assembled guests giddily discuss which nightclub would provide him with the best introduction to the City of Lights. They settle on Bullier's. Magda is off-stage during this scene—she doesn't meets Ruggero—and as it turns out, she shows up at Bullier's, too. In an attempt to escape the unwanted attentions of several male admirers, she sits down at the table of an innocent-looking stranger. Needless to say, the young man is Ruggero. They chat. He's naive but charming and sincere. Magda begins to feel the warmth of emotion again. She's falling in love.

The plot is thickened by the arrival of Prunier and Lisette at Bulliers—they supply much of the incidental entertainment throughout the opera—but the central point remains the same, and near the end of the act, when Rambaldo arrives at Bulliers to bring Magda home, she gives him the heavy ho. As act three begins, she and Ruggero have run away to a villa on the Riviera to further cultivate their blossoming relationship.

Lacking both the salon setting of the opening act and the boisterous barroom flavor of the second, act three seems a little dull from the moment the curtain rises. Ruggero is head over heels in love—his first and only love—while Magda is stricken with anxiety by the fact that she has told her lover nothing about her checkered past. 

Ruggero is financing the getaway, so Magda is still a "kept" woman; it's just that her protector doesn't know it yet. When Ruggero informs her that he's written to ask his mother's blessing to marry Magda, her world begins to crumble once again. Her doom is seals when Ruggero shows her his mother's response and asks her to read it aloud.

Magda (and the audience) is chilled to hear Ruggero's mother highlight all the virtues that Magda lacks—purity, chasteness, etc.—and underscore the importance of motherhood as the sine qua non without which the attraction couples feel for one another remains empty and without purpose. Magna realizes that she could never enter Ruggero's world, within which she had hoped to find a more meaningful life. But she's not in the mood to shatter his illusions by telling him why. 

Unlike several of Puccini's other heroines, who die of consumption in the arms of their lover (Mimi) or kill themselves nobly (Butterfly) or in desperation (Tosca), Magda, the "swallow," is doomed to return to a lackluster life with Rambaldo, drinking champagne and listening to jaded, cynical talk about "love" while pining about things that might have been.

In one alternate version Rambaldo arrives at the villa, in another Ruggero finds out about Magda's past and creates a "scene." Puccini even toyed with the idea of having Magda commit suicide, but that seemed too dire a way to end an opera so heavily peppered with barroom music and frothy declarations of love.

The tack chosen by the Minnesota Opera seems just right to me. Though it isn't very operatic, it makes Magda a tragic heroine by keeping our attention focused on her self-sacrifice and almost Kierkegaardian anguish in the face of a situation from which she can see no good way out.

Do opera plots matter? I think they do. Last spring Hilary and I saw Massenet's Thais, the plot of which is simply dreadful—too wretched to describe even briefly. There was no avenue upon which to enter that drama emotionally, and it ruined the show.

But it can be a mistake to think about the plot too much. In the case of La Rondine, the fact that Ruggero knows absolutely nothing about Magna calls into question the depth of their love, as does the fact that she would rather call it quits than take a chance on Ruggero's ability to understand and accept her past follies. Rather than pursue this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, perhaps it would be better to settle back and luxuriate in the music, the staging, and the lively and affectionate bantering that goes on between Prunier and Lisette--just as if they were already a long-married couple.  

The Music Season

There has been a movement afoot for quite a while to de-classicize classical music. Orchestras and chamber groups are naturally concerned that their audience is aging; concert-goers find it difficult to attend evening events, have already heard Mozart's Jupiter Symphony and Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" quite a few times, and will soon enough be dead. Meanwhile, younger enthusiasts aren't keen on spending a bundle at such events while also saving up for those $200 tickets to Hamilton and Guns N' Roses.

In response, organizations like the Schubert Club and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra have worked hard to make their programming more diverse, their ticket prices more reasonable, and their venues more casual and widely scattered. In recent weeks Hilary and I have attended concerts at Ted Mann Concert Hall, Saint Paul Academy, and Aria, a warehouse in downtown Minneapolis, at an average ticket price of $10. We're not in the targeted age group, but we're benefitting just the same.    

As far as creative programming, it seems to be bearing fruit. The most memorable piece I heard at the first SPCO concert we attended was a lush, early-twentieth-century piece by Franz Schreker, a composer I'd never heard of. The hit of the next concert was Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano by Max Bruch, about whom I knew nothing except the name. 

In contrast, though the musicians obviously relish getting the dynamics in Haydn's symphonies just right, these works contain little genuine musical interest. Their chief merit is that there are so many of them, it isn't hard to find a new one to add to a program. The SPCO's recent performance of Haydn's 102nd was a snooze. It didn't help that it had been preceded by Mozart's brilliant Linz symphony.

The most rewarding of the concerts we heard recently was given by violinist Nicola Benedetti at Aria, a gutted brick warehouse in the North Loop that served for many years as the home base of Theatre de la Jeune Lune. The last time I visited the place was in 1993 to see the Jeune Lune's performance of Carlo Gozzi's The Green Bird. 

The Schubert Club had brought in Nicola, a dazzling young Scottish/Italian violinist, as part of their casual "Mix" program. There was a trivia context before the performance, free pretzels, and a cash bar in the back. The program was described as an exploration of Johannes Brahms's personal life through his three violin sonatas. Or maybe it was the other way around: a study of Brahms's violin sonatas through the lens of his personal life. The approach sounded interesting to me, and I was curious to hear a concert in that cavernous venue.

Not surprisingly, the musical performance was top-flight. But I was prepared for neither the deep, almost giddy, enthusiasm nor the level of detail which Nicola brought to her analysis of the various details of Brahms's personal life and his complex and conflicted relations with Clara and Robert Schumann. She went on for quite a while from the podium, with the help of an iPad, ingenuously apologizing more than once for the length of her peroration. It brought me back to my college years, when that classic tome, Harold Schonberg's The Lives of the Great Composers, was a frequent reference resource, and the love lives of Wagner and Liszt seemed as relevant to musical study as their compositions.

I was a big fan of Brahms in those days, though in time I began to find him slightly overbearing and even strangely turgid in comparison with his younger French contemporary Gabriel Faure, for example. In recent years I've gotten interested in his work again, but I was entirely unfamiliar with these complex, emotional pieces.

They differ quite a bit in temperament. Nicola and her long-time accompanist Alexei Grynyuk performed all three with intensity and élan. The performance was more than satisfying ...  though I must confess that not once during the musical sections of the evening did my wandering thoughts take me in the direction of the specifics of Brahms's personal life.

That's not to say that Nicola's forays into biography were beside the point. Her talk gave us a chance to get to know her better—not only her unaffected zest for every aspect of the music, but also her character. And the stories Nicola told us about how she came to a love of classical music—her parents preferred ABBA and the Bee Gees—were an added delight. "My parents don't like me to tell that story, but it's true," she told us. "When I heard one of the Brahms sonatas at age 12, it changed my life."

Sure, Nicola is talented, vivacious, and articulate. But she's also personable. During her recital at Aria, the diva in her lost out time and again to Brahms, and the girl next door.

***

Postscript. I'm sure you're wondering, and the answer is no. I didn't win the trivia contest. How could I, when David Grothe was in the audience? The first time I went over to his house (for an editorial klatch with his wife, Margaret, as I recall), I noticed that the wall in the living room alongside the front door was filled, floor to ceiling, with CDs—entirely classical, as far as I could see.

"You have quite a collection," I said.

"Well—um—yes," Dave replied, a little sheepishly. "It's alphabetical. These are the As and Bs...."

Heartland Forum: Memories of Sleep

"Once, on the quays, the title of a book caught my eye: The Time of Encounters."

Thus begins Sleep of Memory, the first novel by French novelist Patrick Modiano to be published since he received the Nobel Prize in 2014.

I picked up that slim volume the other day—a generous gift from Yale University Press—as the Heartland Fall Forum wound to a close.

"The press recently secured the rights to all of Modiano's books," the rep told me.

"What do you think of him?" I asked.

"I read one of them," she said with a shrug.

"I read a couple in the New York Review Books edition," I said. They were largely the same. Some guy wandering aimlessly around the streets of Paris. Lots of cafes. Some vague mystery. Not so focused as Breton's Nadja, even. There isn't really much there."

The same can't be said of the bustling Fall Forum, which brings together bookstore owners from states stretching from Ohio to North Dakota with the exhibitors who produce the things they might want to stock: newly published books. Yet reading a few pages of Modiano seemed a fitting way to wrap up a day spent among such books, a day consisting largely of brief encounters with publishers' reps, marketing directors, editors, authors, strangers, and a few old friends.

Being neither a buyer nor a seller myself, I didn't participate in any of the workshops, dinners, reading events, or social gatherings that lie at the heart of the gathering, but I did have the privilege of attending the trade show at the request of my old friend Norton Stillman of Nodin Press, to give him a hand behind the table and also to tend the booth while he wandered the floor, saying hello to the raft of friends, young and old, that he's made (and continues to cultivate) during more than fifty years in the trade.

Though I will always be an outsider at this event, I've gotten to know quite a few attendees over the years, and I enjoy reconnecting with people I've known casually for a decade or more but only see for half an hour once every two years. The many books that are "up for grabs" on the vendors' tables can be an added bonus.

Perhaps there was a time when I looked forward to accumulating a bit of swag in the course of a show. Not any longer. I already have plenty of unread books, including bits of detritus from previous conventions. And besides, those free-bees are mostly intended for book buyers rather than functionaries like me.

Yet inexplicably, I came away at the end of the two-day event with a hefty stack of books, most of them interesting, to judge by appearances. I really wanted a few of them, a few looked intriguing, and there were a few that I accepted out of courtesy and compassion, simply because the author was standing there or sitting behind a "signing table" and there was no one else around. The publisher's rep would say very cordially as I passed by on my way somewhere else, "Would you like a signed copy?" and I would look over to see a gracious, smiling, forlorn author sitting alone beside a big stack of books. What else could I say but yes?

And who knows? Those "courtesy" books might be the ones I come to know and love best?

During my stints at the Nodin Press table I had the opportunity to chat at length with Joanna, the marketing director of Milkweed, the publisher occupying the adjoining table. We discussed the bookstore they maintain now at Open Book, which she's found to be useful in evaluating prospective covers and maintaining a thumb on the pulse of the book-buying public. "Well, Norton here," I said, gesturing to my right, "owned Micawbers, a bookstore in St. Anthony Park, for many years, and for the same reasons." Judging by her reaction, I'm not sure she'd ever heard of it.

Though I seldom buy books retail, I have stopped into the Milkweed shop on occasion after viewing an exhibit at the Center for Book Arts next door, and I've found it to be pleasantly small and uncommonly well-stocked.

Joanna told me that due to an unfortunate scheduling conflict, she and her cohorts were going to vacate their table earlier than usual. "We're a non-profit." she said. "And we're having our contributor's dinner tonight. We depend on those events and the generous people who attend them for our budget, our operating expenses!" I'm probably misquoting, but the remark got me to wondering what role book sales really plays in the life of a small non-profit literary press.

While we were watching the passing parade, Norton told me about the chutney he made the other day, and asked me if I wanted a jar of it. Of course, I replied. Then he recited a very long list of ingredients. "But I didn't put in any onions," he said.

"I don't know," I said, though I've never made chutney myself. "Onions can mellow out and add some subtlety to the mix."
  

On my first wander around the floor, I heard another interesting piece of "financial" news from an old friend, Kate Thompson, a senior editor who was recently promoted to the directorship of the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. Not long after she took over the helm, the umbrella agency for the historical society, which also runs museums throughout the state, decided that it was illogical for the press to sell books to state-run gift-shops at a profit. That would be "robbing Peter to pay Paul," as they used to say.

However sound or unsound that line of reasoning might be, it has created an accounting challenge for the press and also reduced its revenue stream somewhat. (I suspect this is not the kind of work that drew Kate to editing, publishing, and the literary life as a young journalism major.)

All the same, her press continues to put out high-quality books. Scanning their double-wide booth I was immediately attracted to a book called Taking Flight: A History of Birds and People in the Heart of America by Michael Edmonds. It consists neither of identification tips nor the latest ornithological arcana; rather, it explores how humans have reacted and responded to birds in the Midwest throughout American history. 

The crisp back cover copy informs us that

Taking Flight explores how and why people in the nation’s heartland worshipped, feared, studied, hunted, ate, and protected the birds that surrounded them. From ancient American Indian shamans to Renaissance explorers, and from frontier mar­ket hunters to modern conservationists, our ancestors thought about birds differently than we do, and acted differently toward them.

Sounds interesting.

At the other end of the back row of booths I chatted briefly with Josh Leventhal of the Minnesota Historical Society Press, though I didn't examine his badge closely enough at the time to discern that he was the director. A woman was at the booth signing copies of her new book about long-vanished downtown Minneapolis department stores, and I did my best to come up with a few: Donaldsons, Daytons, the Golden Rule. She hadn't heard of Amlickson's, but that was a fabric store. I failed to come up with Holzerman's Department Store on Cedar Avenue, which wasn't downtown anyway. And what about the Emporium?

I was more interest in a book I spotted out of the corner of my eye: Untamed Mushrooms - from Table to Field. The photography in this book, by Dennis Becker, is simply gorgeous. Again and again he creates a thing of beauty without removing himself too far from the moist dark ambiance of the woods.

"Are you a forager?" Josh asked.

"Let's put it this way," I replied as I thumbed through the thick luscious pages. "I like mushrooms, and I spend a lot of time in the woods ... but I don't want to die."

Then I added, so as not to appear entirely clueless: "Oh, I can spot a chanterelle, or a pheasant back, or a puffball, or a morel." Unfortunately, I mispronounced "morel" as if it were "moral." Maybe that's what convinced Josh I ought  to have a copy of the book.

Before moving on, I asked him, "How do you like having your booth way back here?"

"I think it sucks," he said with a wan smile. "Don't quote me on that ... No, do quote me on that. They should at least have the aisles running east-west so people can see there are exhibits back here."

I had a pleasant conversation about the merits of sheet cake with Anne Hellman of venerable Macmillan Publishing. (At the time I was eating a piece of cake supplied by Brett and Sheila Waldman in honor of Peef, the Christmas bear.) Anne and I agreed that nowadays cakes can get too chocolaty for their own good, and she ended up, incongruously, giving me a hardback comic book version of the early life of the philosopher Hannah Arendt.

Undoubtedly the chattiest rep I met up with in my various wanderings was Bailey Walsh of the University of Chicago Press. I think he was simply bored, but perhaps he noticed early on that I was interested in quite a few of the titles he had on display. I asked him straight away why anyone would put out a book featuring two thinkers as remote from each other as Isaac Newton and Francesco Guicciardini? Soon he was showing me a book about falcons by Helen Macdonald that had been "hurriedly" re-released when Macdonald's subsequent book, H is for Hawk, became a best-seller. (Hurriedly as in two years later!)

I noticed a new Peter Handke novel on the table and we got to talking about the used book trade. I seized an opening and told Bailey a little about my luck at finding remainder copies of Handke's early novels, including A Moment of True Feeling, The Left-Handed Woman, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, and Short Letter, Long Farewell. Bailey was about to erupt into speech again when I added, "You know, Handke's more recent novels are even better. Slowness. Across. And don't forget Repetition."   

"But he's not the draw he used to be."

"Well, he used to be a pin-ball wizard and the future of literary Germany. Now he's just a moody, out-of-date romantic."

We got onto the topic of declining print runs, and I was surprised to learn that some of the books on the table were printed in smaller quantities than the one we were displaying in the next aisle at Nodin Press.

"You know what the trouble is," Bailey said. "The new generation of academics no longer feel the need to build up their personal libraries. That market is gone."

Then he told me about his ex-wife's father, who, years ago, built a new house in Spring Green with a climate-controlled basement for no other purpose than to hold his vast collection of medical books.

Brian Ferry's translation of the Aeneid was sitting there on the table, and it got us onto the subject of poet and translator Anne Carson. Bailey told me he'd bought her recent work Nox, an accordion-box book that contains facsimiles of the old letters, family photos, collages, and sketches Carson used to create a one-of-a-kind scrapbook in honor of her brother's untimely death.

"You would never find that in a used bookstore," he said. "At least, not with all the extraneous material intact."

Our conversation moved on the Enzenberger and Agamben, Bernhard, and even George L. Mosse, the historian after whom the widely disliked brutalist modern humanities building in Madison is named.

At a certain point I asked the inevitable question: "Are you the kind of rep who has to catch a plane back to Chicago tomorrow morning and would be glad to get rid of a few of these items?"

"No," he replied, cordially but firmly."Nothing is available. I'm traveling by car, carrying my books in the trunk, and I'm going to need everything at another trade show in Iowa tomorrow."

Fair enough.

A few seconds later sometime-publisher Ian Leask appeared to get a few books that Barry had evidently promised him. Barry seemed a little embarrassed by the poor timing, but it didn't bother me in the slightest. Ian was getting a new edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (who needs it?) and a few oversized workbooks.

"I have multiple copies of these," Barry said sheepishly to no one in particular.

"Ah. Don't worry about it," I said a few times. "I have plenty of shelves full of unread European masterpieces already."

"Well, here's my card. Just let me know if there's something you're really dying to read."

Perhaps I ought to mention the conversation I had with Monty Stoakes of Indigo Bridge Books about recent enhancements to the warehouse district in Lincoln, or with Steve Semken of Ice Cube Press about the new digital printer in Michigan he's using. Or Frank Domenico, the cheerful Ingram rep from Nashville whom I hadn't seen since 2004? Or Paul Von Drasek, who's excited about the literacy work he's doing with the Midwest Oceanographic Institute. Well, enough is enough. 

When I got back to our table, I noticed that the Milkweed reps had, indeed, left for the day, leaving behind a hand-written note to passersby that read, "We had to run. If you see something you like, take it."

I hope their fund-raising dinner went well; they've been putting out some very interesting books. I selected a single slim volume, a book of poems by someone named Ada Limon. It was the smallest thing on the table.

Thumbing through it later at home, I was surprised to discover the book has been set in 7 point type!

Fall films - The Bookshop

Do you know what the goat said after eating a can of film?

"I liked the book better."

I read Penelope Fitzgerald's short novel The Bookshop quite a few years ago. She's one of my favorite writers, in fact, but I had difficulty imagining how her peculiar form of bemused and worldly-wise omniscience would translate to the screen. Spanish director Isabel Coixet didn't try, and perhaps it's just as well. Fitzgerald's novel was about casual cruelty; Coixet's film is about the oppressive atmosphere of small towns and the power of literature to expand people's lives. There are quite a few silly, stagy, and downright unbelievable moments in it, but also some very nice things. I began to like it better the moment I put aside any thought of what the book had been like and said to myself: "This is a fable."

The plot turns on the decision of Florence Green (Emily Mortimer) to open a bookshop in a historic but dilapidated building in a small East Anglia town. As it happens, a local bigwig, one Violet Gamart, has singled out that specific building to house a regional art gallery—though she never got around to buying it, considering it uninhabitable and hence valueless to the general public. The local banker, lawyer, and media "celebrity" all dance to Violet's tune, and many townspeople simply aren't interested in books. Then again, there are several scenes in which the shop appears to be crawling with prospective customers. Suspension of disbelief takes hold early on, and we must refrain from telling ourselves, "She'll be out of business in no time, with or without Violet Gamart's interference."

That Florence is a trusting soul, and perhaps naive, is clear almost from the first. But her awareness extends far beyond the dumbed-down voice-over remarks that intrude occasionally, for example: "Florence had managed to live life thus far by pretending that human beings were not divided into exterminators and exterminating, with the former at any moment predominating." Florence isn't "pretending," of course—she doesn't live in that stark world. She reads. And in the course of the film she also develops a few friendships with people who share her sensibilities—one with the perspicacious little girl who comes to work in her shop, another with a misanthropic gentleman (Bill Nighy) who reads voraciously but rarely ventures beyond his front door.

Among the simple pleasures of this film are watching Florence open big wooden crates and lift stacks of hardbound books out of them, scenes that call to mind choice passages in Walter Benjamin's famous essay, "Unpacking My Library." (I don't remember any scenes during which she actually sells a book.)

Even more fun is watching the mercurial changes in expression that pass across Florence's face as she struggles to deal politely with people who are far more uncomprehending and complacent than she is, though also more self-assured. 

In one scene early in the film a dressmaker is fitting Florence for a dress which we can all see is red. Florence questions the wisdom of wearing a red dress to the afternoon gathering at Violet Gamart's mansion. The woman assures her repeatedly that the dress isn't red, but deep maroon. Florence could have said, "Call it what you will, it isn't right for me. Show me something else." But in the end she prefers not to make waves and gives in to the purchase.

As the local high society dame, Catherine Clarkson, though she appears less often than Mortimer, is no less engaging, with a chilly twinkle in her eye and a facade of graciousness that delicately masks her ruthlessness and cruelty. Bill Nighy is his old crotchety self in a role that's underdeveloped but perhaps couldn't have been otherwise, considering the character's reclusive habits. And the young Honor Kneafsey also adds a lot to the mix as Florence's young assistant--a breath of fresh air every time she appears on screen.

I would like to have seen a longer conversation develop during the scene between Florence and a woman she meets on the beach, the erstwhile girlfriend of a local BBC producer. It might have added a more mature and realistic element to the proceedings. Too often Florence is dealing with children, old men, and moronic, if not malicious, townspeople, and you begin to wonder where she gets the emotional strength—not to mention the cash flow—to continue on.  

I would not be giving anything much away if I reported that the novel on which this film is based ends with the simple lines: "As the train drew out of the station she sat with her head bowed in shame, because the town in which she had lived for nearly ten years had not wanted a bookshop."

That's because in the film version, the story ends differently, and the point it makes is also entirely different.

Don't Knock the Equinox!

Plato celebrated the Golden Mean, and gained lasting renown for coining the slogan: Everything in moderation ... including moderation.

Saturday was neither the longest nor the shortest day of the year, but the most equanimitous, with daylight and dark bowing and curtsying like humble dancers in a line.  

The equinox isn't something you notice; you  merely read about it in the EarthSky News that appears in your email box every day, complete with incomprehensible diagrams that remind you of the spatial relations test you took in eighth grade.

What I did notice was that after several days of unrelenting rain, the day dawned cool and bright. It was a spectacular morning, in fact, and Hilary and I decided to head out to the pottery "tour" taking place in the St. Croix River Valley.

Our route took us east on I-694, then north on I-35E to the Hugo exit. Hugo has never been much of a town, and the region next to the freeway is now a suburb, but we ought to commend the developers who created that exurban zone for naming one of the prominent streets Victor Hugo Boulevard. The town itself is named after the eminent  Trevanion William Hugo, chief engineer of the Consolidated Elevator Company and mayor of Duluth from 1901 to 1904 (never heard of him).

As we drove past a spanking new Quick-Stop gas station on our way into town, it occurred to me that I ought to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame ... someday.

We continued east on County 4 past marshes, farms, and rolling hills to Marine on the St. Croix. The sunlight was still striking and the air was crystal clear. Some sort of cycling event was taking place--we passed a peloton on the way into town and came upon more bikers milling around on Judd Street.

At the miniscule public library I asked if they happened to have a de-acquisition shop. No. But they did have a cardboard box of CDs in the lobby that were free for the taking. A few Mozart piano concertos. A historic recording (remastered) of Aida with Renata Tebaldi, Teresa Berganza, and Carlo Bergonzi. Why not?

Upstairs from the library we discovered an art gallery I'd never seen before operated by Mary Jo Van Dell, who does very large oil paintings with exquisite lighting and high horizon lines. Alongside the oils she's stocked her gallery with a variety of other artworks—especially hand-thrown local pottery and pine furniture. I was especially taken by the long, untreated pine table and the skiff on the far wall that seemed too narrow to be seaworthy. An immense objet 'd 'art, perhaps?  Mary Jo offered us a cup of coffee and invited us into the back room to see her studio.

A second shop, HWY North, has recently opened up right across the street, owned and operated (I think) by Emily Anderson. The shop has some stunning art by Tom Maakestad (I especially like the oil pastels) But it also has plenty of locally made (and affordable)  jewelry, note cards, candles, kitchen tools, and other such stuff.

Emily had just opened the shop when we arrived. The sun was steaming in the windows. "Let's put on something sunny," she said. "The Beatles!"

"Ah, yes," I replied. "But what about that classic "I'm So Down."

If Emily caught my gaff, she never let on. I was actually conflating two famous Beatles tunes: "I'm So Tired" and "I'm Down."  Rather than embarrass me—the Beatles are "my" generation, after all—she graciously replied, "I actually like depressing music." Somehow, I doubt it.

Her husband, Eric, arrived a few minutes later. Eric is an editor at U of MN Press, and he and I chat for a few minutes once every two years about the North Woods at the Heartland Fall Forum. But Eric, like his wife, is a very friendly spirit, and once we'd renewed that acquaintance the four of us were soon discussing the current pottery tour. Then bona fide customers started to arrive.

I'm especially interested in The Marine Mills Folk School that Emily and some friends are trying to get going at her shop.  They've offered classes in pickling, soap-making, boat-building, and other rustic crafts. I'd offer to teach one myself, but I can't imagine what the subject would be. "How to Make Acorn Bread"? It isn't worth the effort. "InDesign for Fun and Profit"? Too techie.

I might also mention Mary Jo's efforts to open her gallery space to local painters, and her vision to host readings and books club discussions. How many artists, craft specialists, and serious readers ARE there in the vicinity of Marine? I'm guessing quite a few.

Now, Marine is everyone's idea of a cute Minnesota town, and it's the "gateway" to nearby O'Brien State Park. But it needed a few galleries and gift shops to bolster its core and give people something to DO there. Now it's got them. Hitherto its most distinctive riverside café was almost impossible to find (and perhaps not worth seek out?) and its foremost business was the general store, which I have always associated with salty snacks. Hilary and I go cross-country skiing at the state park every winter, and after an arduous ski nothing tastes better than a big bag of Ruffles cheddar cheese potato chips.

We spent the next few hours visiting the studios of Jadoonath Pottery, Guillermo Cuellar, and Nick Earl. I love looking at pots, but feel no need to buy one, and in any case, seldom see one that's as interesting as the ones Hilary is making these days. It's also pleasant to soak in the ambiance of aging hippies chatting with one another about kilns, electrical wiring, how many times you ought to rinse uncooked rice, and other important issues. Most of those attending the sales seemed to be "insiders." Hilary and I are "outsiders," though we did have the perspicacity to notice "living master" Warren MacKenzie chatting on a bench at the Cuellar studio.

One of the potters was wearing go-go boots and a quasi-Dakota dress. The only thing missing was a Buffalo Springfield album blaring from a boom-box.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not poking fun at anyone. I'm the kind of guy who loves an open fire, sleeping in a tent on the ground, listening for the whippoorwills, reading Li Po or Machado by starlight. The Revolution has hardly begun. And I get a little upset when I read, in The New York Review of Books for example, dismissive comments about how the energy of the radical 60s fizzled.

In the longer run, much of the countercultural ferment was absorbed into the therapeutic culture of self-realization or frittered away in the fragmentation bred by identity poli­tics. A countercultural sensibility sur­vives behind the ecologically informed awareness that humans must accom­modate themselves to the natural world rather than simply master it, but that sensibility remains untethered to any capacious critique of technocratic ra­tionality—one that would include, for example, the ever-increasing defense budget or the nuclear arms race. The creators of our public discourse need to recover the countercultural critique of the technocratic ethos, which still legitimates the national security state. Without that critique, debate over foreign policy—though conducted in moralistic rhetoric—remains devoid of moral seriousness. Revisiting the reli­gious dimensions of 1960s protest al­lows for the recovery of a forgotten and necessary part of our past.

Blah, Blah, Blah. We don't need to recover the past. We need to refashion the future. And people have been doing that for a good long time now. And just you wait and see!

I wonder if the fellow who wrote that passage has ever seen a modern wind turbine. I can tell you one thing: it's not made of untreated pine slabs.

Our final stop was to the Arcola Bluffs Day Use Area, an obscure site on the Arcola Trail—a gravel road that cuts east from the highway toward the river and rejoins it a few miles downstream.

One thing about the St. Croix River is that the countryside thereabouts is pretty, but you never see the river itself. This little park gives you the opportunity to walk down to it through the woods. Which we did. And we saw a black-and-white warbler along the way.

You finally reach the river just downstream from the Arcola railroad bridge. It's an engineering masterpiece and also a work of art. It was designed by famous bridge engineer C.A.P. Turner, who also designed the Duluth Lift Bridge and the Mendota Bridge. This is America's Eiffel Tower, tucked away amid the water and woods of flyover land.

In my youth I walked out on the Arcola Bridge, high above the river, once or twice.

Kids still go out there, I think. It's not for the faint of heart.

State Fair Patterns

Our first two attempts to visit the state fair were aborted this year. On Sunday morning the line into the Larpenteur parking lot extended west beyond the University golf course. It was simply too long. On Monday morning we got a late start due to a dentist appointment; the line seemed manageable, but just as it we got to the parking lot entrance someone brought out the LOT FULL sign.

(There are other places to park, I know, but the "bloom" would be off the morning by the time we got inside.)

Wednesday  morning we left the house at 7:30, waited patiently in the long line stretching west down Larpentuer Avenue, and finally bought our tickets and entered the fairgrounds at 8:40. We had no trouble finding something to do for the 20 minutes before the Eco-Building opened, because we almost immediately ran into an old friend of mine, Jim Hoey, and his wife, Ann. Jim and I have done four books together, and I think he's cooking up a fifth. "But I can't write in the summer," he said. "I take care of seven properties for a realtor friend of mine and I have too much grass to mow."

I don't have that problem. I hired a lawn firm to kill the creeping Charlie in our yard, and when they were done eradicating it, it turned out I didn't have any grass.

The displays in the Eco-Building get better every year. Solar Power, wind power, clean water, recycling, agricultural runoff, bicycle transport, peace coffee, kobucha, composting, kayaking on the Mississippi, all presented in a cheery easy-to-read displays, interactive kiosks, and clever do-it-yourself demonstrations.

I talked at length to the woman at the Gitchi Gummi booth about Duluth, and she gave Hilary a rub-on tattoo of Lake Superior. The woman at the PCA booth told us a little about the challenges of dealing with the Trump administration. 

At the "water bar" we sampled tap water from St. Paul (which gets its water from the Mississippi), Duluth (which gets it from Lake Superior), and tiny Buhl (which gets its famous water from a deep aquifer). The differences were subtle—almost undetectable. I suggested to the young man pouring the samples that they serve crackers.

As we wandered the hall I ran into another old author-friend, Stew Thornley, with whom I've worked on several books. Though he's an official scorer for the Minnesota Twins, his day job is with the Department of Health, and  he was scheduled to give a demonstration about water quality that morning.

At one modest booth we spoke with the same tree "expert" who advised us  last year to cut down a big maple in our front yard because it had a few dead branches. "You never know," she said. "One might fall on you."

This year, I asked her what might be a good thing to plant under some malingering blue spruce in the back yard. "Nothing," she said. "Anyway, blue spruce don't live much more than 30 years in Minnesota." I happen to know that the trees in our yard are now 70 years old at least, because my neighbor planted them in 1948.

I told her we had some volunteer ash coming up in the understory. "Ash are not good; they'll get green ash borer."

The woman was pleasant to talk to, and it occurred to me only in retrospect that she had a rather negative view of plant life, generally speaking.

Out in front of the building we did a lot better, chatting with a garden expert who confirmed most of my ideas about our ailing yard.  "Moss? Lucky you! Why not add some clover?" But that's a story for another time. 

 The art building is always a highlight, for both the diversity of mediums and the wide range of styles on display, which you'll find at no other art exhibit that I know of. The  sheer volume of pieces eventually tends to numb the brain, yet it's a healthy challenge to see if you can plot a route through the many side halls that will allow you to see them all.

This year, as usual, there were many beautiful but generic travel photos, angst-ridden but mediocre self-portraits, and clever non-representational "concept" piece that relied on their titles to get the point across. As I shuffled from image to image along with all the other gawkers, I was immediately thrilled by the bright colors and the impressive frames and mounting techniques of the pieces. Presentation isn't everything, but it counts for a lot. In fact, the very first piece in the line-up, a bright yet rich and dense photo of a poor Cuban family sitting on a couch together, a few of them wearing boxing gloves, packed a punch. At the next turn I saw a piece that impressed because of the medium being used. "Wow! How did he do that with colored pencils?"

There are always a few watercolors with an Asian inflection—a few stylized branches, two cranes in the distance. There are plenty of North Woods scenes. And no exhibit would be complete without five or six paintings of cows—a subject which, like old boots, is hard to botch completely, but also hard to imbue with any kind of depth.

This year there were a surprising number of photos of horses, in Wales or Iceland or wherever, and holy men from India or Thailand seemed to pop up at every turn of the labyrinth.     

My favorite piece was a photograph of men harvesting hay. It's a dark image, but it has the fury of desperation in it, as well as several marks of subtle artistry—the red hanky in one of the farmhand's back pocket, for example. The photo has a satisfying gravitas; It reminded me of the nineteenth-century French painter Géricault.

Another fine piece, a few walls down the way, was an oil painting of a vase of peonies. The subject is conventional, of course,  but in the folds of the petals and the shadows beyond the stems the artist takes us beyond appearances into melancholy depths that had me returning to it several times. Like Fantin-Latour, only better.

As we moved through the exhibition, I noticed at a certain point that the images I was drawn to most often presented patterns—usually organic—rather than representations.  I was mesmerized by drops of water on a dead leaf ...

and enthralled bye a Zen-like script that was actually a photo of bent reeds on a still pond.

One image offered a colorful vision of my favorite state in the manner of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the sixteen-century master of vegetable art.

  Another consisted of three rows of individual tree leaves—aspen?—particularized by variations in shape and insect pattern.

Yet another piece consisted of an enormous zany doodle. Who knows? A section of it might show up one day on the masthead of the print edition of Macaroni!

I seemed to be taking a special interest in leaves, but this little piece had a subtle modulation between the various greens and a relaxed ambiance.

Alongside the zany, we also need to make room for the whimsical.

 And near the end of the show, I was impressed by a panorama photo of pre-dawn light on a frozen lake.

I happened upon my favorite political statement amid the cookies in the handicraft building.

 But here, even more than in the art building, it seemed that "pattern" was the order of the day. Well, that's what knitting and quilting is all about. Nez Pas?

Yet the works that I liked best often had a modern slant.

Back on the street, we stood  in line for 12 minutes to get our hands on one of the Star-Tribune's highly-rated new foods, the Heirloom Tomato and Sweet Corn BLT. Food critic Rick Nelson writes:

"The BLT is God’s gift to sandwiches. In the hands of Birchwood Cafe chef Marshall Paulsen — and his vast network of Minnesota organic farmers — it’s elevated into a heaven-sent fair experience. No detail is left to chance in this ingenious and obviously labor-intensive effort, from the swipes of basil-kale-sunflower seed pesto and chipotle-fueled sweet corn purée, right down to the sturdy focaccia, baked by Baker’s Field Flour & Bread in Minneapolis. Truly spectacular. $12."

Indeed, it was good.

We climbed the fire tower but skipped the all-you-can-drink milk stand, and later we ran into our friend Cindy Purser in front of the grandstand, where she was tending a booth for the public library association.

The day was cool and clear, and the scene was colorful and not too crowded. A perfect day. A heavenly day. We even bought some Norwegian cardamom cookies from a woman in the Osakis Bakery booth that we'd met this summer out in Osakis. (I can see this becoming a yearly tradition.)

We listened in passing to a hoe down violin-cello duet in front of the MPR building, and also endured some excruciating karaoke in a beer garden in the food building while we ate some delicious wood-grilled elote topped with jalapeno powder.

But we never made it to the animal barns and didn't see a single chicken or goat!