Waldenblog.

The Waldenbooks on Washington Blvd. next to the Marquette Inn is closing. I’ve never been much of a fan of Waldenbooks, which has always struck me as a C-minus/D-plus sort of book store—the Jack in the Box or Long John Silver’s of the book trade—but I hate to see any book store within walking distance of my office close, for any reason. It isn’t clear whether this store is being closed as part of a retail chain’s ongoing house cleaning (stores open, stores close), or whether it lost its lease, or what.

I rarely bought anything there. More often I would stop by just to look around. Early this afternoon, I saw a sign on the door that said that said that the store was closing. Oh, boy! A big closing sale! True to its mediocre nature, however, the sale was limited—remainder table items and a few other things, half price. I did pick up a not-too-old copy of DeLorme’s Illinois Atlas & Gazetter for about $10. This is an excellent, highly detailed series; I’ve had one of Michigan for some time, and used it when visiting that state. If each atlas didn’t cost about $20, I’d have dozens, maybe all 50.

The Waldenbooks brand, indecently, is owned by Borders. From my office, it’s about a 12-minute walk to a Borders, a hulking three-story facility on State Street. Both chains were briefly owned by Kmart in the mid-90s, but that didn’t take, apparently. I still harbor a vague grudge against Borders and its ilk (B&N) for killing off a worthwhile Chicago book chain, Kroch’s and Brentano’s, but I still buy things there, especially remainder table items.

There’s a smaller bookstore that I can walk to--from my office desk to the elevator to the lobby to the street to the front door of the store it's two minutes, if the elevator’s prompt. Stewart Brent Books, an independent. I could write a whole other blog about that store, but I will say that it has the best remainder table downtown.

Kerouac blog.

You’d think the time of your life to read and appreciate On the Road would be in your 20s, since it’s a young man’s tale. I picked it up then, early in my 20s, not long after reading The Sun Also Rises for the first time, but I didn’t stick with it. I tried again some years later, in my 30s, but that didn’t go either.

Late last week I put a copy of it in my bag, and now I’m about half way through. I’m hooked this time. Maybe it’s good that I’ve put some chronological distance between myself and that book, so laden with times and places I did not witness. Or maybe I had to wait for the invention of the Internet to fully apprehend the multitude of ripples the book caused. If words are spigots for Google, “Kerouac” and “Beat Generation” and “Kerouac Traveler” and “Kerouac Essence Jack” gush forth pages and images and links and more pages on his books, his life, a half-dozen minor Beat figures, all the other major ones, the 1950s, the quarrel over Kerouac’s estate, City Lights, the Beat Museum (SF), the Beat Museum on Wheels, Lowell, Mass., and on and on: an endless tank of information inspired by a fellow who drank himself to death decades ago, but left behind books.

I typed in “Kerouac Essence Jack,” because the last time I spent much time thinking about him was when I saw a one-man play called Kerouac: The Essence of Jack, at a small theater in Chicago shortly after I moved to the city in 1987, starring Vincent Balestri, who was superb. The Internet also tells me that Balestri has reprised the role, sort of, in a movie called Beat Angel, an independent now making the film-festival rounds.

After he did his one-man show, Balestri stepped out of Kerouac’s character for a discussion with the audience, and one thing he said struck me as particularly funny. “Not everybody understands the concept of this show,” he noted, smiling at the thought of it. “Not long ago, during the discussion after the show like we’re having now, one guy told me I should seek therapy for my problem with alcohol.”

Arthur Miller RIP blog.

Here’s the punch line of an Arthur Miller-Marilyn Monroe as she-wolf at costume-party joke my chemistry professor told his class years ago: “Gee, who were Romulus and Remus anyway?”

It wasn’t funny when he told it, either, but he had the added disadvantage of being a tedious lecturer in a tedious subject, so he had a tough audience—one he’d toughened himself by numbing us three times a week. I thought of that joke (I only remember lame ones) when I read on the elevator that Miller had died. There’s a small screen on our office building elevators that supplies passengers with news and ads, and I’ve learned a remarkable number of news bits like this from it over the years.

Ms. W., a high school English teacher I disliked—a mutual feeling, I think—was a big fan of The Crucible, which she taught, so that one was ruined for me. I’m glad she didn’t teach us Death of a Salesman, which I’ve seen filmed versions of, to my benefit, without any pedagogic guide. When I was younger, I puzzled the most at why Willy Loman turned down his friend’s offer of a job when he badly needed one, but of course people really do that kind of thing, and often. And it was death of a salesman, after all, so he needed to die tragically by his own hand, not subsist on Social Security after turning 65. Subsistence Retirement of a Salesman just doesn’t have that dramatic ring.

The only Arthur Miller play I’ve actually seen staged was All My Sons, which I saw in Chicago back when I used to go the theater every month or so. It had a tragic suicide, shattered family and a Big Dark Secret (ultimately revealed), so who says you need to read Southern gothic fiction to get all that?