Woe is the independent bookstore?

Click image to enlarge.

Reporting on the impending closure of every local bookstore we've ever heard of seems to be a news trend that won't die. Yes, some of these magical places do close and it's devastating. I've written about it before and I am a huge supporter of local, independent bookstores and booksellers. That said, I hate the articles that come out when a bookstore is in trouble. Just like the wonderfully satiric comic above, the problem with professing outrage only when a store is on the verge of closing is that it doesn't help it pay the bills after the outcry dies down.

Last month, the wonderful Toronto institution This Ain't the Rosedale Library found itself in trouble. The little Kensington Market shop was having trouble paying its back-rent (accrued because of the recession – to my mind, a perfectly reasonable explanation). I mention this simply because the issue of bookstores closing is often equated with foundering sales, but it's often more complicated than that (which is nicely pointed out in this well-written, though oddly titled article from Saurday's Globe and Mail: Will the last bookstore please turn out the lights?)

Nevertheless, when TATRL was in trouble, book bloggers and magazines came out in support. It was awesome. People were outraged. But then, when the store didn't close, the furor died down and people assumed everything was right with the world again. Well, it's that kind of complacency that leads to these problems. There are some good ideas out there though, which is extremely heartening.

What we need to do is figure out a way to make sure these community institutions stay alive and viable. Buying our books there is certainly part of it, but it's not really enough. Buying books doesn't keep rent from going up. Neither does it keep big chain bookstores from moving in and offering fancy discounts. (Note: I am all for getting people to read, so generally I don't worry too much about discounted books, just like I don't worry too much about used bookstores undermining publishers and authors, but for a few extra dollars, supporting an independent bookstore is much better for your community.)

This is getting a little ranty. But it's mostly meant to be positive because deep down, people care about bookstores, they're just not sure how to show it on an everyday basis – most people don't buy books like they buy milk, after all. The good thing, though, is that people do buy books, lots and lots of them. So our favourite little bookstores might have to adapt a little to maneuver the rising cost of rent, but if we help them out by word-of-mouth publicity and attending special events, they should be alright in the long run.

Image shown from A Softer World by Joey Comeau and Emily Horne.

Winding Down, Revving Up

It's National Poetry Month, so every Friday in April I'm writing something about Canadian Poetry.

Well, today is the last day of of National Poetry Month and it's been a pretty good month, I think. And, even though the emphasized, focused look at poetry is winding down (not in all circles of course), it looks like this month has spawned some pretty good things to help keep poetry in the spotlight for a little longer.

First, the Poet Laureate of the Internet project. It was a democratic process, but in the end, the Internet couldn't decide and it was a tie: Canadian poet Sina Queyras and American poet Robert Lee Brewer. Both poets have blogs where they post not only poetry, but also about poetry and poetics and influences, etc. It makes for good reading and they both work to engage people in the greater discourse of poetry, as well as in the poems themselves. So congratulations to both Sina Queyras and Robert Lee Brewer; I'm interested to see how this year of Internet poetics will unfold.

The other post-April poetry movement I'm excited about is Influency Salon, an online poetry magazine. The magazine/website just launched its first issue, featuring reviews of poetry books, essays and poetry discussions. The site itself looks really sleek and the content is well crafted, with many of the contributors published poets themselves (Sina Queyras pops up here as both a reviewer and a reviewed).

So, National Poetry Month may be over after today, but poetry (and poets) don't seem to have any interest in giving up the attention they've been receiving this month. And neither should they. New and interesting things are happening in the world of poetry (Canadian and otherwise), and confining our attention to just one month would be a waste.

Playing at Optimism and Succeeding

It's National Poetry Month, so every Friday in April I'm writing something about Canadian Poetry.

Not very many people are asked how optimistic they are about they jobs. Usually, we take those kinds of things for granted. We like them or we don't (or it depends on the day), but optimism and pessimism aren't usually things we feel toward ourselves as teachers or lawyers or administrative assistants or whatever. Poets, though are different.

The Optimisms Project (hosted by books.torontoist.com) is asking young poets to be optimistic about poetry. And if they aren't optimistic, they're asked to fake it, just for one day. The project is being managed and run by Toronto poet Jacob McArthur Mooney, who says he isn't really optimistic either, but is willing to fake it for a whole month just to see how it goes.

Six days a week (every day but Sunday) for the whole month of April, The Optimisms Project presents the ramblings of a poet explaining why they're optimistic about poetry. It sounds like it might be silly, but it's actually really good. And every day you know you can go back and read about what makes people optimistic enough to do what they do (despite the general appearance of cynicism). To be honest, when reading some of the missives I actually wondered how many of these poets actually convinced themselves with their words - more than a few, I hope.

There are lots of things to be optimistic about as a reader of poetry in Canada. Is it harder to be optimistic when you're a poet? I guess that depends on what day of the week it is.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Becoming a pop culture writer is a pretty gutsy move, I think. Everything you write, whether about music or movies or fashion or whatever, will immediately date you. And thus, date your publications. Your work may be cutting-edge when it comes out, but if you endorse the wrong band, in ten years (when everyone knows they were the wrong band) your work becomes giggle-worthy and irrelevant. If you're Chuck Klosterman, though, you embrace that potential and run with it. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Klosterman's "low culture manifesto" is a little dated now, but it's dated in the best way possible: it reminds you of what it was like to be there, in the late-'90s, early-'00s, and then gives you Klosterman's perspective on how we got there.

What I like most about this collection of essays is how argumentative they are. Klosterman has an opinion on most things, it seems, and he goes on the attack for every one. When you agree with him, it feels a bit like you have a champion in your corner ("Yes! There is relevance to country music! You tell 'em Chuck!"); when you find yourself disagreeing, you find yourself talk to a book ("Well that's a stupid reason not to like Coldplay"). Either way, though, if you have any interest in pop culture (mostly music and TV in this collection), you will be engaged.

A lot of what makes this book so successful, though, isn't the subject matter, it's the writing. Every once in a while I'll pick Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs up off the shelf with a hazy idea of rereading one specific section whose name I've forgotten. So, flipping around, skimming pages for key words, I'll stumble onto something like the essay on Saved By the Bell and end up reading the whole thing - completely abandoning my previous goal.

Incidentally, what Klosterman says about Saved By the Bell is that it's a reassuringly bad show. The audience doesn't expect it to mean anything or make any sense; rather, we watch it because it's predictable and that somehow validates our own ideas about growing up and going to high school, etc. It's when the show tries to be creative, he suggests, that we see through it. But at the same time as he's deconstructing what made the show so bad, he's also admitting that for a period in his life he watched it four times a day and goes on reminisce about episodes in pretty specific detail. Klosterman critiques and comments on pop culture from the inside, taking himself and his nostalgia down with everything else, which is a refreshing perspective.

In between each essay, Klosterman includes a little "interlude." They're short (usually less than one page in length) and meant as a kind of palate cleanser, so you can move from reading about the porn myth to a brief ode on cereal without being jostled too hard (a short piece about socks kind of softens that transition). As a whole, the interludes are probably my favourite part about the whole book. I like punchy little tangents, though, and sometimes I flip through and just read the interludes, skipping all the essays. The book is better as a package, but if I don't have an entire afternoon to indulge my nostalgia, I'll take the little wordbites I do have time for.

And that's what this book does really well. It takes you back and lets you have a nice, nostalgic conversation with someone who cares as much (or more) than you do about whatever '90s or '80s phenomenon you miss. Apparently my generation is experiencing an early nostalgia for our youth (many theories as to why that is hinge on the rapid pace of technological growth and 9/11), and although I'm sure we aren't the first group of people to harken for a simpler time, reading Klosterman sometimes reminds me that it's alright that we've moved on.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

by Chuck Klosterman

First published in 2003 (cover image shown from Scribner edition)