Quote of the Day (Christopher Caldwell, on the Decline of Borders)

“Borders became one of the hottest corporate chains of the 1990s because it didn’t do things by halves. Its bookstores were of an unheard-of size and sophistication. They stretched not just from coast to coast but around the world. Since it filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection in mid-February, it has shown the same thoroughness in dismantling its empire that it did in building it. The Borders bookstore down the block from my Washington office, where I have browsed almost weekly for the past decade and a half, looks gutted, sacked. At least 200 of Borders’ 642 stores are to close. Those that remain will continue the chain’s drift away from books, and towards cat calendars and stationery.”—Christopher Caldwell, “A Fate Written in the Stores,” Financial Times, March 5, 2011

I took the accompanying photo of the Borders Books and Music store in Fort Lee, N.J., only a few miles from where I live. Once, this Borders possessed every bit—and more—of the vitality that Caldwell mentioned in his piece—not just brimming with all sorts of books, CDs and DVDs, but also hosting author appearances and all kinds of groups (including a writers’ group to which I belonged).

But the last few years, as digitization cut into the market for CDs and DVDs, the shelves devoted to these became depopulated and the store had far more space than it could afford. The coup de grace came with the onset of the e-book, for which the chain was not prepared.

In the weeks since the closing announcement, the Fort Lee location—at least on the weekends—has been filled with people hoping for great bargains—lines I hadn’t even seen the past Christmas or two.

Undoubtedly, many former independent bookstore owners are shedding no tears over the fate of Borders. That megastore, along with archrival Barnes & Noble, knocked off numerous smaller stores that couldn’t compete, in much the same way that former behemoth Blockbuster (until last year, in the same shopping center as the Fort Lee Borders) had crushed mom-and-pop video outlets.

But I felt a sense of sadness at the closure. Borders provided a place to come to--not just a vast bookselling emporium, but also a spot to meet others--authors, fellow bibliophiles, friends. (Even up to the last weeks before the closing announcement, you couldn’t get a seat in the Borders coffeeshop. Too bad more of those kids weren’t using the space to read books and magazines instead of making it a de facto homework hangout.) I’m not sure that the loss of such a space compensates for the greater convenience afforded by digitization.

In this case, digitization might only lead to the further atomization of a society that doesn’t need to be broken down any more than it has already into small, solitary units.

Quote of the Day (Christopher Caldwell, on the Late Stanley Kaplan)

“Kaplan launched his tutoring service as a young man in his Brooklyn bedroom. He built it through post-examination pizza parties, at which he listened in on students’ descriptions of questions on the top-secret exams. By the time he sold it to the Washington Post in 1984 for $45m, it was a vast enterprise. It now includes an online law school and a range of programmes for all kinds of scholastic and professional examinations. In recent years its revenues have been more than $1bn. It is a larger part of the Washington Post Company than the Washington Post.”-- Christopher Caldwell, “The Opposite of Education,” The Financial Times, August 28, 2009

Quote of the Day (Christopher Caldwell, on Americans and Poetry)

“Americans believe that what separates poetry from normal speech is either pomposity or pseudo-intellectualism. Today they are almost always right about this. There is no longer any widespread understanding of how poetry works, or what function it is supposed to perform in the lives of individuals or societies.”—Christopher Caldwell, “Official Rhyme Without Reason,” Financial Times, January 24-25, 2009

The occasion for Caldwell’s blast against modern poetry is Elizabeth Alexander’s reading of “Praise Song for the Day,” at Barack Obama’s inauguration. Personally, I had no problem with that poem—but then again, after Maya Angelou’s performance at the first Clinton inauguration, my expectations for poetry at occasions of state have been permanently lowered. (The latter sounded like a politician’s attempt to touch every base in an electoral coalition: “So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew/The African, the Native American, the Sioux ... ”)

Still, Caldwell’s larger point, I think, is on target and fair. Contrast the position of poetry with that of songs—almost any songs—which Americans have taken to heart. I think that part of the reason for the latter is that the lines in the latter rhyme.

For centuries, poets were, in Shelley’s words, “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” A big reason why was that rhyming schemes helped engrave their words in people’s memories. Poets lost their centrality when they forgot that, fact much like jazz ebbed in the affections of Americans when be-bop musicians forgot that one of the things that people loved about jazz was that they could dance to it.