Last Chance

Way back I obtained a discount card from Barnes & Noble. Its structure is simple. I pay a relatively modest amount for the discount card each year. Thereafter I enjoy a regular discount on all items I buy at the store. I save money because my purchasing volume is high enough to earn back the price of the card every year—plus some. The plot now thickens. A while after I got used to the B&N card, Borders offered a free discount card and, of course, I got one. Free is good. But these two book chains have quite different approaches. Borders’ card is retroactive. After you’ve made some purchases, you get discounts coupons for future purchases. But these are often limited to certain items and certain periods.

In both cases, the stores try to get you to be a frequent buyer. Someone at B&N imagines that I sit about at home thinking like Rodin’s The Thinker, worrying: “Have I purchased enough books from Barnes & Noble to have recovered the fifteen, twenty-five dollars (forget the amount) I spent on my discount card? Let me stop thinking and consult my discount diary NOW.” Then, seeing that I still have three, two, or one dollar unredeemed, I rush out to acquire the latest best seller. The folks at Borders imagine that I find e-mailed coupons irresistible. These arrive after I’ve been to the store to buy something. Borders thinks that urgent e-mails with deadlines can move me. The upshot here is that I buy my books at B&N by preference although the B&N store is farther away. B&N’s program is more rational.

Today I get an e-mail from Borders titled: Last Chance: Up to 40% Off at PETCO Up to 70% Off at The Home Depot. Now here is a wonder. What does buying books have to do with PETCO? You know the place, don’t you? PETCO is—Where the pets go. And Home Depot, while certainly a close acquaintance, only sells how-to-do-your-plumbing kind of titles. Well. This particular e-mail promotion offers me nine, count them, nine different coupons—and all because I’m the proud holder of a Borders Reward Card. Almost all have expiration dates, some tomorrow, some the day after tomorrow. I can buy shoes from Nordstrom, hotel rooms from Pricelines, skincare products from Philosophy (Philosophy??). Of the remaining four—The Container Store, Sephora, Staples, and Gilt Groupe I only recognize Staples. I honestly haven’t a clue what the others have on offer—although the Gilt Groupe actually names two items. One of the is Marc by Marc; the other is Zac Posen. Even after I resume my The Thinker pose, I cannot for the life of me remember if I’ve run out of Zac Posen or not.

Last Chance? I think I’ll miss it. The gates of the heaven of the Kingdom of Commerce are closing on me. And the choice is all mine, too.

Bookish Musing

Not to generalize too much, but others may have the same experience this time of year. I do pop into bookstores, particularly the two big chains (Borders, Barnes & Noble) quite a few times during the year, but those visits usually have a purposive character. At Borders I head for the nearest free computer to see if the book I’m seeking is in the store. At B&N I go straight to the category region (I know that store better); then, if that fails, I apply at the help desk. The visits tend to be in-and-out. Purposive.

My experience at Christmas time is different. I’m not at all sure quite what I want. I wander and at least superficially see the whole. Almost always, in addition, I also shop for music with a slip or two Brigitte hands me. In the slower, surveying mode, I’m always overwhelmed. Every year this or that image presents itself to me from “out of Spiritus Mundi”—as Yeats characterized the source of spontaneous inspiration. This year, despite the fairly careful arrangements of materials practiced by both retailers, nonetheless the image of an overwhelming flood came to mind, a flood that, as its waters finally recede, leaves behind in mixed and close proximity incongruous objects—the discarded fender, dead squirrel, lost doll, plastic bag, the broken beam. That feeling arose especially at B&N this year. The store nearest our house groups books on tables in the aisles by such labels as “new and recent,” “bargain,” “special interest,” and yet other collective categories. In these arrays vastly different kinds of books are mixed; the incongruity therefore is great.

For decades now—but with increasing force—the commercialization of publishing has become ever more evident. The concept of “book” as it exists inside me—unrevised from its formation in the 1940s—has enormously expanded. I resist updating my concept and therefore book stores have become strange spaces. It amazes me what people will read and, if not read, exactly, what they will expend their money on. But visible amidst the random mixture of everything imaginable left by the great storm of money are patterns; these are also produced by commercial calculation.

These patterns—which I first noted two decades ago but which probably began much earlier—is that every year now, unfailingly, all authors with high name recognition will have, must have, another new opus ready for sale. And these books, competing with new stars in publishing (Sarah Palin, for example), are on conspicuous display as you enter the stores.

A distant relative of mine, A.L. Gabriel, a priest, wrote Student Life in Ave Maria College, Mediaeval Paris (1955). In that quite fascinating and indeed entertaining history (let us not be deceived by titles) I first encountered mention of books so equipped that they could be chained to walls as they sat on lecterns. We’ve come a long ways, baby…