In Chicago, the first of every month is a special day. No, not because it’s pay day. Powells book store, the finest second hand book store I have ever been in, offers twenty percent discount. So off we go, on the first of every month, to enact the ‘first’ ritual. Even on January 1st, when the store is open between 9 AM and 3 PM.
Buying a book is as much a ritual as reading it. Perhaps, it is more elaborate. As in all second hand bookstores, one doesn’t get all one needs. But in these days of Amazon and online book buying, when we could buy books for a dollar, if we are willing to pay $3.99 for postage and handling, Powells still makes it possible to browse through the stacks and find books that we always wanted to read and own. Do we not want to hold a book, feel it and experience its mateirality, before buying it? Indeed, we build special relationships with our bookstores and get to know them intimately.
Although, it has a huge online presence and a bigger store in Portland, our Powells is a Hyde Park and University of Chicago institution. Regulars are mostly philosophy, social theory and theory nuts. But it also has a pretty good collection of literature, history and social sciences too. In fact, it reflects the intellectual interests primarily of the University of Chicago students and teachers. Not surprising. Me and my friends have bought more books there than in any other bookstore.
Rows and rows of high shelves, stacked with books, organized according to subject and then alphabetically. We know every single shelf intimately. Some books have been there for years. After a while, we learn to spot the presence of a new book quickly and efficiently. New arrivals are piled up on the front desk. We perfect the art of pouncing on those yet to be priced books, keep on them on hold and return on the first to claim our discounted bounty. In fact, after the fifteenth of each month, we visit Powells several times, to browse our shelves quickly, scan the new arrivals, build our pile and put them on hold for two weeks. Only ten books can be kept on hold for a maximum of two weeks, but occasionally, as our stash grows, we are bound by our book love to assume multiple identities. This week, I was myself and my housemate, who indeed is a real living person. It’s a tricky business though, and the assumption of new identity can only be practiced when an unsuspecting new clerk is manning the cash register.
It’s not only for the discount that we keep books on hold, but to postpone a dilemma. The prospect of 20% discount on a half priced book also makes it psychologically easier to buy a non-essential book on the first of every month. Indeed, that moment of deciding on what to buy is a major part of the ‘first’ ritual. The question ‘what should I buy’ is always governed by a well worked out book buying philosophy. OK. No need to laugh at the nerdiness of the University of Chicago graduate students. We are simply too poor to buy all we covet. The bottomline for many of us has always been texts of philosophy and social theory. Books we shall read again and again, for the rest of our lives. Plato to Foucault, if you will. Then literary classics. Books on South Asian history and civilization. Texts necessary for classroom teaching. At the end of the list, cookbooks, books on music, sports and such.
Still once all the classics are bought, which you will, if you spend enough time in graduate school and live in the same apartment for several years (remember, moving apartments frequently prevents book buying), then one begins to look at other works. Yesterday, I was debating: should I buy Joseph Franks’ classic biography of my main man, Dostoevsky? How about David Levering Lewis’s superb biography of W E B Dubois? I didn’t buy either of them, which means I revisit the question again next month.
The ‘first’ ritual is both personal and collective. Bonds of friendship and love are forged and strengthened by the hours spent at Powells than at the Pub. Finding a book and keeping it on hold is perhaps more significant an act of friendship than buying a glass of beer. We never go alone to Powells. We don’t buy books just for ourselves. The joy of discovering and buying books is always shared. But even when we go there alone, we always think of absent friends, who would have liked a book that we discover. If they are in Chicago, we keep those books on hold. If they are elsewhere, we simply buy and send it to them. Yesterday, I came across Henry Petroski’s ‘The Pencil - A History of Design and Circumstance‘ that Krishna Prasad would love to read.
If I miss anything of Chicago, this ritual will probably be it. Yesterday, I made good though. Sepoy overslept and bailed out on me but my stash got replineshed. Anthologies of Bedouin poetry, Japanese literature, African American slave narratives, Civil Rights movement documents. Simone Weil, Proust, Arendt, Paul Valery, Neruda, Vico, Spinoza, Soyinka. Then, I went back with friends again, late at night for a second time, thinking this might one of the last opportunities for me to stock up, before I leave Chicago for good.
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