May. 30th, 2008 05:01 pm
Farewell, you won't be missed!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Kate the Great's Bookstore is closing. I know the reaction--even you other Edgewater types are scratching your heads saying There's a bookstore there? That's the number one reason why this comes as no surprise. The number two reason is that they're having a half-off sale to clear the shelves, so I spent a goodly amount of time last night scrutinising the stock; in the end, I bought one thing (Nuala O'Faolain's first autobiography). And I'm not sure if this counts as #3, because I don't remember it ever being so egregious before, but the whole time I was there, the clerk was having a loud phone conversation with her brother in Texas. How do I know who it was? Because when she rang off to ring me up, she cheerily told me, "That was my brother. He's driving through Texas and he has a headache." "I'm not surprised," I wanted to say, but instead I gave her the weak smile that says And I give a fuck about that because...?
Every day, in every way, I'm becoming more crotchety. My entire progression from work to home last night was a losing battle against the forces of inane, disruptive chatter. I was doing a decent job shutting it out on the el ride by burying myself in a book until a young loudmouth who seemed to have no filter between his mind and his mouth (the result of too much "medication", or too little?) stationed himself next to me and I gave up trying. Later, O'Faolain in hand, I went to a local low-end Mexican joint for a milanesa and the whole store was dominated by the very vocal horsing around of three mature women at a neighbouring table. Is the distinction between private and public space really breaking down in our society or am I simply becoming more annoyed to the rudeness that's always been there?
I've been trying for some time now to distill the code of behaviour instilled in me by my petit-bourgeois upbringing into a single guiding principle and I think I may have found it: Restraint. Don't draw attention to yourself. Better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Sein mehr als Schein. Don't spit. Don't fidget. Don't talk to strangers. Don't talk with your mouth full. Don't talk; listen. Leave some for the next person. Etc. Since this is a negative virtue--you're evaluated on what you prevent yourself from doing--I'm toying around with the idea that the middle class defines itself primarily in contradistinction to the working class. That is, we do these things not because "they make life more pleasant", but because they are what Ethnic people do. And if there's anything we are not, it's low class beasts like them. So to prove it, we avoid loud colours and loud noises, demonstrative behaviour and excitement--any of the things children are naturally drawn to.
Every day, in every way, I'm becoming more crotchety. My entire progression from work to home last night was a losing battle against the forces of inane, disruptive chatter. I was doing a decent job shutting it out on the el ride by burying myself in a book until a young loudmouth who seemed to have no filter between his mind and his mouth (the result of too much "medication", or too little?) stationed himself next to me and I gave up trying. Later, O'Faolain in hand, I went to a local low-end Mexican joint for a milanesa and the whole store was dominated by the very vocal horsing around of three mature women at a neighbouring table. Is the distinction between private and public space really breaking down in our society or am I simply becoming more annoyed to the rudeness that's always been there?
I've been trying for some time now to distill the code of behaviour instilled in me by my petit-bourgeois upbringing into a single guiding principle and I think I may have found it: Restraint. Don't draw attention to yourself. Better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Sein mehr als Schein. Don't spit. Don't fidget. Don't talk to strangers. Don't talk with your mouth full. Don't talk; listen. Leave some for the next person. Etc. Since this is a negative virtue--you're evaluated on what you prevent yourself from doing--I'm toying around with the idea that the middle class defines itself primarily in contradistinction to the working class. That is, we do these things not because "they make life more pleasant", but because they are what Ethnic people do. And if there's anything we are not, it's low class beasts like them. So to prove it, we avoid loud colours and loud noises, demonstrative behaviour and excitement--any of the things children are naturally drawn to.
Tags:
no subject
no subject
There are several bookstores in town where I have to set an arbitrary cap (usually $100) before I can go into them. This was never a problem at Kate's. Whenever I went with a particular title or author in mind, I always left disappointed. A female-run bookstore in Chicago and you've got no Willa Cather?
Once, when the clerk actually asked if I found what I was looking for, I confessed that the particular Faulkner novel I was looking for wasn't in stock. She offered to take my email address and notify me if it came in, or if it was available at their other store. About a month later, I got notification that they had gotten in an anthology of his short stories. (I own a comprehensive edition.) Never tried to make use of this "service" again.
no subject
I liked Kate's for a Friday nite or Sunday afternoon visit. Sometime after my coffee, but before the ennui set in. They had a nice children's section, some good fantasy, and decent history. For awhile they were doing poetry readings with local authors, but I never showed up.
Sidebar: Female-run does not mean feminist, or progressive.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Now you've mentioned it, it occurs to me that these cartoon characters are promoting exactly the sort of quiet-death-in-life that Indian authors deplore so, when they reminisce about their granny in poor Old Delhi and her down-to-earth wisdom and fiery cooking. Perhaps it's not merely a class thing, but a colonial one - as forceful in America as in any European country, when manners were being set, in the 18th and 19th centuries.
no subject
That works, but so does: shared spaces either develop some sort of norms or they're dominated by the most obnoxious behavior as it drives out or outshouts everything else. (The evidence being an exercise for your web browser.) People with means can move out of those spaces and impose norms, which often involve some degree of mutually agreed restraint of things that one or more parties might find obnoxious-- I won't paint my house eye-burning colors and you won't blast metal out your windows at 3AM. Still more means can buy either more freedom or more restrictive norms as preferred-- both stereotypes are applied to different segments of the wealthy. (Who can be either rock stars who trash hotel rooms every week or Margaret Dumont cutting someone for wearing white shoes after Labor Day.)
Those with fewer means have no choice but to share space with those who can't or won't restrain themselves, and learn to adapt, cope, and/or how to outshout the unrestrained. At least until/unless they acquire enough means themselves to make their own decisions about how much self-expression they want to impose and have imposed on them. (Most middle class Americans are Ethnic people, or their descendants, after all.)
Not that I can think how to falsify that either. It's pretty much a just-so story. But I'm skeptical that my annoyance that someone's not even considering whether I want to spend my L ride having his phone conversation, music, or TV show pounding into my head stems primarily from my economic interests, rather than a more basic sense of what's comfortable, tempered by fairness. (If we get to impose an environment on everyone else without regard for the last, after all, I could come up with my own list of preferences that would be at least as annoying to them as their actions are to me.)
no subject
no subject
Children also seem to have strong intuitions about fairness pretty early on, though they're certainly educated in particular details according to the culture they grow up in. (Though even if the culture spends a lifetime explaining to the younger brother that it's fair that the oldest get the biggest piece of pie and the bulk of the estate, history suggests that it's not reliably successful at wiping out the younger brother's intuition that this isn't fair. Culture's a factor, but it's not working on a blank slate, and it can't go in wholly arbitrary directions.) Those cultural details don't immediately strike me as primarily economically determined. Of course it's an element, but the frequent existence of intuitions of fairness that run counter to people's economic interests at least suggests otherwise.
no subject
no subject
(At that, Esau got off easy compared with the Shechemites.)
no subject
no subject
As for the intuition of fairness, there is very likely something there: all sorts of other social animals manage to divide limited resources among themselves, such that no group member starves. With humans, though (and arguably with animals) I don't think you can come up with extra-cultural explanations; culture is there in the mix, whether it supports or undercuts economically driven rational actor behaviour in any given case.
But I think you know this and we probably agree, and we are, in any event, deep in unfalsifiable terrain. As for the specific case of noise levels in public spaces, we see wide variation between cultures (whether geographically-based, class-based or even age-based), and I think muckefuck's point may well be valid. I know I tend to ask "why are they so noisy?" rather than "why am I so quiet?"
no subject
There's also an inherent asymmetry that favors the more intrusive custom over the less, such that the only way to even approach a balance is with some sort of fairness-based norm or other culturally negotiated settlement. Given a world evenly divided into a loud culture and a quiet culture, then perfectly mixed, you'd still get vastly more people asking "Why are they so noisy?" than "Why are they so quiet?" One custom obtrudes into the enjoyment of the other, where the other is barely noticeable to its counterpart until/unless it asks to be accommodated.
Not unlike smoking: a given culture can be smoking-tolerant or smoking-intolerant. But a train car with 99 active smokers and one nonsmoker is a smoking car, and a car with one active smoker and 99 nonsmokers is a smoking car. Same with loud cell phone use, strong perfumes, etc.: the inactive trait by its nature loses to the active trait unless an accommodating norm can be established. Fairness being presumptively identified with the active side getting its way 100% of the time strikes me as close to a reductio ad absurdum, suggesting that justice (however broadly defined and disputable in its details) almost certainly demands some concession to the other side once they're both acknowledged to exist. (Certainly I'd settle for a single enforced quiet car per train.)
Which isn't to say that the accommodations can't be pushed too far the other way. (While it's invariably to my increased comfort, I'd say smoking restrictions have long passed that point.)
no subject
no subject
The inherent paradox of the "socio-economic/learned behavior" thesis is that those at the bottom of the totem pole are forced to show the most restraint if they are to exercise any choice or agency where their standard of living is concerned. Capitalism can be unforgiving to such honest folk whose estates may necessarily erode when their fortunes are not large enough, their voices not loud enough to overcome the beast next-door. This is degrading in domestic, business and civil arenas.
Best wishes to the owner, staff, and friends of Kate the Great's.
no subject
I picked up the prequel trilogy to the prequel trilogy to "Dune" at Kate's("The Butlerian Jihad" et al written by Frank Herbert's son which was much better than his first prequel and almost all of the original Frank Herbert-written sequels). And in one of Kate's rare comics offerings, I picked up most of the run of Marvel's "Alias," a Max mature readers title from 6-7 years ago about a failed super-heroine who becomes a chain-smoking, chain-swearing private detective. Decent condition and $25 less than the hardcover collection. After a brief impulse that I should read more "real" books, I bought a collection of Noel Coward plays which I have yet to open two years later.
Sorry Kate's closing, in part because I had hoped to recycle Dune, Coward and others on my cramped shelving there. Ah well.
Subject2
Bye