Bastille Day

Five French people I like:

* Claire Denis

* Fernand Braudel

* Pierre Mendès-France

* Franck Ribéry

* Jacques Vergès

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page

There are a lot of reasons to like this book. Michael Hofmann, reviewing it in the LRB, liked it so much he had to use two foreign terms to label it. "The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is vast fun and a vast life," he writes, "a Kulturgeschichte and a roman à thèse."

Edwards's book convinced me of something I'd never truly believed in the past: that it is possible to lead a full, complex life without leaving home. Ebenezer Le Page leaves Guernsey only once in his long life, for a day trip to neighboring Jersey; and he only reads one book, Robinson Crusoe. Yet his life, as Hofmann writes, is vast.

Of course, I'd encountered this idea before, but I didn't buy it--not from historians, and certainly not from anthropologists. Spending one's life in a single place, I thought, was a curse (think of Bodie in The Wire, who doesn't realize that the radio stations are different outside of Baltimore).

In part, this was why I had trouble getting used to Philadelphia, a sedentary city where even rich people stay in the same neighborhood for generations, and where newcomers are regarded with distrust, like the Englishmen in Le Page's Guernsey. The book of my own life will still be a Bildungsroman, not a Kulturgeschichte, but at least I understand Philly a little better than I used to.

Bookshelf from Staples

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about bookshelves on publishing and book criticism blogs. People talk about how to deal with overflowing bookshelves, how to make amazing bookshelves that double as staircases, and the etiquette of displaying unread books. What I don't see a lot of is praise for particular shelves.

I have a wonderful shelf that I bought at the Staples in University Heights, Providence, in August 2002. It cost me $20, and I have used it ever since, over six years and in six or seven different residences. What distinguishes this extraordinary shelf from all the other cheap bookshelves? Two things, really:

1. Shelves made of real (albeit cheap) wood instead of particle board with a "wood effect" exterior. This means that the shelves don't sag from the weight of the books.

2. A collapsible structure (the shelves swing up and the sides swing in to cover them). When moving apartments, this factor separates a $20 bookshelf that is taken along from a $20 bookshelf that is trashed or given away. I don't understand why Ikea and the suppliers for Target and Wal-mart continue to design non-collapsible shelves that require assembly AND cost the same amount as my shelf from Staples.

Cafeterias

Yesterday I ate at the cafeteria in an Ikea store. Like most things at Ikea, the concept was better than the reality, but it was still a memorable experience. Best of all, it made me think about my love of cafeterias as a means of distributing food. In elementary school, I eagerly awaited the cafeteria's weekly pizza lunch. One of my family's favorite dinner destinations was Souplantation, which is cafeteria-like in its setup. In college, I stayed on the school meal plan longer than most of my peers, and actually looked forward to eating at the dining hall. Now, I sometimes fantasize about working for a large corporation (or at least, a government agency) with its own employee cafeteria. Here are some reasons why I enjoy cafeterias:

* I love to eat, and I like to exercise total control over the content of my meals, but I don't enjoy cooking.

* Busing one's own tray and plates is a reminder that someone has to clean up, even if it's not the person eating.

* I'm not a big stickler for knowing where my food came from, or whether it was produced locally. In fact, I think the current tendency to view food consumption as an urgent political matter is a bit misguided.

* Cafeterias are associated with large institutions--schools, corporations, museums, hospitals--and I am fond of large institutions, probably because people love to complain about how faceless and impersonal they are, which I think is stupid.

* The constraints established by cafeterias provide a ready-made framework for expressions of creativity in consumption.