"Talk about mudflaps..."

So obvious, and yet how long did it take us to get here? H/t to BoingBoing.

Twelve Blackfeet Stories, by Mary Scriver

When Jehovah brought back those that returned to Zion,
We were like unto them that dream. - Psalm 126:1

And you may say to yourself,
“This is not my beautiful house!
This is not my beautiful wife!” - Talking Heads, Once In A Lifetime

Everyone experiences moments when their grasp of reality suddenly seems tenuous. Lately mine have occurred during nighttime journeys by car. Particularly when I’m travelling a well-worn path, I’ll suddenly look around without comprehension. Did I take the turn east, or am I still driving north? Where am I? Eventually I’ll recognize a landmark, and reassurance settles back in.

The reassurance itself is illusory, of course. Taking the familiar for granted is everyone’s peculiar and inevitable act of hubris. The next visit to the doctor could change everything. So could the next trip to Wal-Mart. So much changes; so little changes.

Still, there are social systems and communal coping strategies that we rely on and place some faith in, no matter how tenuous. How was it for the Native Americans as they watched a familiar landscape they already regarded as dreamlike become surreal to the extreme, overturning and supplanting every tenet they held sacred until their very identity came into question?

The train was much bigger than it had seemed from a distance and there were clouds of steam as the engine labored to pull. He ran alongside, a bit weak from lack of exercise. Then it stopped again and a man came along with a lantern. Horse saw that the boxcars were painted with strange animals — long necks and impossible noses, strange ruffs around the neck. Extraordinary people were pictured on there as well — very fat women and men with drawing all over them. They must be very powerful.

The man with the lantern was ordinary enough. “Better get back on board, Chief. We’re only gonna be here a few minutes more. This fort ain’t big enough for the circus.”

The Indian Man got onto the flatcar, snuffing up the strange smells. A great ripping trumpeting sound came from inside the train. His heart leapt in him and he grabbed the handle of the knife in his belt. “Stumiksatosee!” he muttered. “Medicine bull.” Then he laughed. It was all part of the dream-like experience of being free again and going home.

This passage comes from Horizon, one of the Twelve Black Feet Stories by Mary Scriver. The historical setting is sometime in the mid-1800s, and the Indian Man — Horse — has just been sprung from an asylum. His sense of freedom is temporary; the people he is riding the rails with know his “home” is now a reservation. The dreamlike experience which began at the asylum and has worn down Horse with its immeasurable tedium and indignities will continue to grind on without relief.

Scriver’s stories encapsulate just over 200 years of Blackfeet history. Those two centuries prove to be an unwelcome revolution for the Blackfeet, as they’re repeatedly driven to the brink of extinction. They manage to survive, however, as does some measure of their spirit — but both are beleaguered, reconnoitering an alien reality.

This is tremendously compelling reading. Scriver knows the people and their history (the book is an exceptional value just for the Blackfeet timeline she provides in her endnotes), and her patient attention to physical detail and its effect on character heightens the disturbing, illusory quality of Blackfeet life as it’s strained to the breaking point again and again. The ordinary is juxtaposed with the extraordinary, and her characters summon what they can to deal with the roiling sea-change around them. Against all odds the stories generate a quiet sense of resolution and hope — although when pointedly set against a present-day Montana and its arsenal of Minuteman missiles these spiritual achievements seem slight and tentative. Certainly a cultivated sense of irony and a willingness to laugh will help, and as long-time readers of Mary’s blog already know, she possesses both traits in abundance.

In genre and artistic achievement, Twelve Blackfeet Stories sits comfortably next to the fiction of Guy Vanderhaege and Joseph Boyden. Along with Scriver, this is a trio of literary names I would like to see reach the same public recognition as Cormac McCarthy or Larry McMurtry. This is a wonderful book, a charter tour of a world in which we are all, to some measure, alien. I look forward to exploring more of what promises to be a very stimulating and culturally necessary body of work.

Yanked

The previous post has been yanked, due to quality control. I'm still smitten with the notion that inspired it, so you'll be seeing it sooner or later.

Paramount Takes "Customer Service" To A Whole New Level

A couple of customer service stories, the first two from my not-so-recent past:

1) Back when I was working in the book store, we invited the local police to give us a few tips on how best to discourage shop-lifters. Two officers came by to give us the lecture, which included advice we immediately put into effect. Midway through the lecture, however, one of the officers offered this somewhat less than helpful bromide: "You basically gotta assume that anyone walking through that door is a potential thief." Hoo, boy — talk about a paradigm shift! Prior to that, I'd assumed anyone walking through the door was a potential customer for life (silly me).

2) Waaaaay back when, prior to working in the typewriter store, I worked in a camera store. Our crew consisted of two young pups (including yours truly) being "managed" by an older fella who took lengthy breaks. We're talking about a management style that was casual to the point of laissez faire. Consequently, it wasn't uncommon for us to get a little surly, a little Basil Fawlty if you will, with the occasional customer. One episode stands out in my memory of my co-worker getting huffy with a customer who'd come to make an exchange. The customer took it for a bit, then said, "You know, I have my own business, and I am here to tell you that if I took your attitude to any one of my customers, I would not be in business much longer. Now if you and I are going to get anywhere, your attitude simply has to change." He gave my friend 30 seconds of silence to digest this, then they got off on a fresh start.

Okay, now that I've regaled you with a couple of encounters that left a lasting impression on my professional demeanor ... who feels like going to a movie?

Some story, huh? When it comes to movies, music, books, etc. I'm one of those people who makes it a point to pay as I go. I have enough friends in the performing arts / publishing world to realize it's not (usually) the artist who's getting rich off the scheme, so I try to shunt the funds to them in any way I can. Consequently, I've never done the file-sharing thing, I'll take the physical book over a PDF file, even computer programs are something I'll shell out for because I figure it could mean the difference between peanuts and beer, or just plain peanuts for the artist in question. (Tangential observation: artists, particularly musicians, are some of the scurviest pirates on the planet. A sense of entitlement seems to come easily to performers.)

But the entertainment industry isn't primarily populated by performers: it's chiefly, overwhelmingly populated by business people. Given the seachange in digital media, these folks are facing some very tough questions. But rather than taking an honest stab at good answers, they'd prefer to visualize each and every potential customer-for-life with intense suspicion. I ask you: with customer service like this, how long do you expect them to stay in business?

H/t to TLD for the story. It puts me in mind of this anti-piracy send-up ad.

More Typewriters

My wife and I watched Stranger Than Fiction this weekend, a pleasant little movie that had me dabbing at my eyes when the end credits rolled. I'm among the multitude that thinks Will Ferrell could read the phone book and get people laughing, so this wasn't a difficult movie to enjoy. And lately meta-movies have revealed a flash of genuine heart within all those layers of meaning and context: contrast Stranger Than Fiction with The Purple Rose of Cairo, and you'll see the difference between a filmmaker who cares for his characters, and a filmmaker intent on hammering home a depressing point of view. So, yes: this movie receives my gentle recommendation.

It was amusing to note that the writer, played by Emma Thompson, uses an enormous electric typewriter. The typewriter packs more visual punch than a computer does, and seems to carry some residual romance with it as well. Which got me curious: how many of our current productive writers use typewriters for their work?

It is a difficult answer to discern with any authority, but myTypewriter.com — a business committed to the preservation of the typewriter — maintains a list of writers and their typewriters. I can't help noticing that most of these people are dead, and that the youngest among them made the switch to a computer word-processor sometime in the 80s (although David Sedaris might be an exception: we don't know, because his entry has been confused with James Purdy's).

I don't think I could ever compose on a typewriter. There are a number of writers who compose with pen and paper, then transpose that with either computer or typewriter — that's a process I can understand. But actual typewriter composition? Man, that smacks of an immediately permanent record. I doubt anything could constipate my writing process faster than facing that prospect.

No, give me a blank screen and a program with a "Control/Delete" option, please and thank you. I might not be inspired to write a book professing my love of the word processor the way Paul Auster did to his typewriter, but I'll be a happier camper to have around. (Tip of the hat to the first person who can identify why this picture of Papa was obviously posed.)

Sound the Bagpipes

Bearded has returned to his blog! On the downside: his godawful job is taking a familiar turn.

Fave Thing #6

There's a young guy who works at the local cafe. He pours coffee, makes sandwiches and does the dishes. Every once in a while I freak him out with stories about "the old days". Last Saturday I really put the zap on him.

"Back in the 80s," I said, "I used to work in a typewriter store."

"Oh, wow," he said. "Ooo-o-o ... maaaan!" He followed this up with a run of laughter that used to be associated with Beavis & Butt-Head (remember them?).

It's true: a store devoted to typewriters was still a viable business a mere 20 years ago. In fact the billboard on the pre-Depression-era building advertised "TYPEWRITERS & Office Equipment", but the majority of the store's floor space was given over to typewriters and as a salesman typewriters were my exclusive domain. I did quite well by them, too.

A girl about to enter college would walk through our front door with her father in tow, the man's arms straining at the sockets from the hunk of iron he was carrying. We'd give him $15, relieve him of the burden and schlep it to our repair shop, then sell him something new for ten times the amount of his trade-in.

Our trade-in policy wasn't, strictly speaking, a ruse: we did sell reconditioned typewriters for $40. There was a tiny room in the back where an old guy hunched over and painstakingly repaired these old clunkers. He could be difficult to talk to, but he did good work.

Sales of new typewriters fluctuated with the seasons, but I averaged two or three used sales a week. We could have sold ten times that weekly amount for the better part of a year before we made so much as a dint in our stock of old typewriters. The building was lousy with them.

One weekend I was told to keep my dress clothes at home and report to work in my grubbies. I spent that entire day lugging old typewriters from the basement to the third floor of the building, one typewriter at a time. After just one hour of that I thought I was going to die, but things looked worse for my partner: he was nearly twice my age, and couldn't manage more than a few runs before he had to light another cigarette. That was the only time I saw the third floor of that ancient building. Rooms that had once been apartments were now filled — to the ceiling — with typewriters. The only reason we were going to the third floor was because we couldn't possibly squeeze another typewriter into the second. The place reeked of 3-in-1 oil.

It was a musty old building with plenty of musty old charm, set among an entire block of such buildings. To the one side of us was a cavernous pool hall. To the other was an ancient drugstore with a lunch counter. If you got to the drugstore before noon, you could order a "toasted" cinnamon roll — "toasted" in scare quotes because the old gal in the powder blue uniform would split the roll, smear a quarter-cup of butter on each side, then fry those babies on the griddle for a minute before she wrapped 'em in tin-foil and presented them to you in a greasy paper bag. I'm not averse to rich foods, but I generally took a pass on the "toasted" cinnamon roll.

The shop was a couple of blocks away from the university. One of my university buddies would meet me for coffee; when we were done, he'd clap me on the back and say, "Well, Rome wasn't built in a day!" O-ho-ho: this was the frequently voiced sentiment of the dotty old matron in Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge, whose cringing son sold typewriters and silently aspired (seethed, really) to be a novelist. Among the many crucial differences between me and the son was my overall satisfaction with my job.

In fact, if anyone was in desperate straits in that outfit, it was the typewriter industry. The computer was breathing down the industry's neck, and they were coming up with absurd computer-typewriter hybrids, hoping to stave off the inevitable. If you wanted to, it was possible to spend over a grand on a deluxe office model, but not one of those typewriters was good for more than five years, tops.

In my later incarnation as a long-haired, still-scrawny boho, I thought an excellent "author's photo" would be a B&W shot of me in one of the upper typewriter crypts. I took my wife to the store (now selling computers and software), introduced her to the staff, then asked if such a photo-session might be possible. "They're all gone!" I was told. "The fire safety inspector gave us one week to get rid of them, so we got the biggest dumpster available and chucked them from the windows!"

My, but the visions that inspires. I expect 99% of the new models I sold (hollow plastic shells, one and all) have joined their company, compressed deep within some enormous landfill.

I'm still irrationally fond of typewriters, though typically of a vintage older than the ones I sold. Here's a doorstop in our house (the keys were being hammered by a visiting kid as I was typing this).



And this beaut rests in our basement.



It works, albeit hesitantly. It's just waiting for a little tender cleaning and a new ribbon. This summer, perhaps?