Titles, Inc.

Books, Every Size and Color

Some Saturdays are busy. Three giggling high schoolers, two girls and a boy, drifted into the shop.  The tall girl wore sheer patterned lace panty hose which today are called leggings.  The hose went up from the short boots to meet the bottom edge of her tee shirt which although short, did barely cover her, umm, private parts.  I think it’s described differently on the fashion page.  Quite compelling, so I felt compelled to comment.  “Gorgeous lacy hose.”  That’s when I found out, no, they are leggings.  I didn’t mention she forgot to wear a skirt, another fashion statement probably.  I went on, “Nice legs.”  She smiled happily, but her girl friend applied censure.  “I don’t look at girls’ legs.  I look at boys’ legs."

The three of us turned to look at the boy’s legs.  He looked down too, and obligingly squatted slightly so that his knees jutted through those strategic slits in his denims.  Pause.  “Naw,” I said, “they are just legs.”  I walked away and let them browse, but admonished them when they opened a book too carelessly, giving my usual lesson about not turning these crisp books into used books.  A man in the Signed Entertainer’s section growled to me, “You’re too patient.”  I took it as a compliment and said I was glad to see young people interested in The Book, even though they didn’t have the respect (or my reverence) for the physical object.  The kids didn’t buy anything but waved a cheerful goodbye.  The cranky man didn’t buy anything either.  Didn’t even wave goodbye.

But the next lady bought.  A lot.  Three long shelves full.  She was decorating her new “study” and had measured how much space she needed to fill.  I immediately started for the leather sets.  No, she wanted books, good books that she might read, for the shelves.  Hey, we can do that.  “What do you like to read?  Would you like to look around a bit?”  What she had in mind were books to pick up the color of her wallpaper. “I want to put a group of one color together, and then another group of a different color.”  Dear God.  We started with Blue.  Dust jackets were good, not necessary.  I guided her away from my wonderful signed first editions – I couldn’t bear to think of them as merely decorative.  We found a clutch of blue, different shades of blue, and moved on to green.  Some red. And black.  A three volume set of Freud ended up in the group of black.  Was he embarrassed?  Or sublimating his outrage?  There is some comfort to all this.  These are on borrowed time, visiting in her house, until the next venture when they will be dispersed again.

A young lady came in with her mother.  The mother said, “Do you have any Shakespeare?”  The young girl hung back, but I understood the request was hers and told  her I had a lot of Shakespeare.  I took her along and pointed out the three-volume boxed set, and getting no reaction, we walked through the store and I pointed out all the sets, and the single volumes, and saving for last, the wonderful three-volume set in leather for $750.  Eight varieties of Shakespeares in all.  No response.  She didn’t reach out for any of them.  I said, “You walk around.  Think about it.”  I went back to my desk while her mother trotted after her.

She came up to the desk, finally, with Shakespeare I had forgotten about.  They are slim, little 3” books with soft leather wrap-around bindings, called The Little Leather Library.    She had selected five plays at $3 each.  Her mother handed me the $15 plus tax.

So, happily, I still have my favorite three-volume Shakespeare published in London in 1855 in elegant leather.  It looks great here on my shelf even though it is not blue, green, red or Freudian black.

----Florence

No Words Needed

Doesn’t everyone have friends they see only now and then, like every four or five years?  It happens in the shop.  Someone will pop in with a big Hello and a hug, and we chat as if it were only yesterday since we were together.  Sometimes, though, I can almost place them, but not quite.

The other day, an effervescent trim young woman with a blonde pony tail and long bangs came in with a sparking smile and a big hug.  And I hugged back, equally enthusiastically while scrambling through my mind for the connection.  Some day I may get the courage to say, “I remember I like you, but remind me, who are you?”  Instead we engage in conversation that usually leads me to the person’s identity, but this time it wasn’t working.  So I said, bravely, “I forgot your name.”  “Laurie,” she said, “Laurie Willets.”  Good grief, still nothing.

I tried, “So what have you been doing lately?”  She said she performed at Ravinia ( a local theater for major summer music concerts.)   A clue!  I said, “Remind me, what is your instrument?”  She looked at me oddly, and said, “We perform to the music.”  I’m thinking, what? what?  Helpfully she added, “Mime.  With T. Daniel.”

Explosion of recognition!  Laurie!  Of course!  Darling Laurie!  She and Dan are T. Daniel Productions, creators, and performers of mime.  They live in Chicago but tour the world with their shows.  They had been in the shop a few times many years ago and even then we lamented the apparent demise of Mime as an art form.

They trained with Marcel Marceau, considered the Grand Master of mime, in Paris and were his protégées and friends.  I had met Marceau socially, too.  He  knew Nelson Algren and Art Shay, and when he visited Chicago the three of them “hung out.”   Alas, Marcel and Nelson are gone.

Laurie asked about Art and I told her about his show at the Thomas Masters Gallery and that we were going there the very next day because my NJ nephew was coming in just to see the exhibit.  I invited her and Dan to join us there.  And, yes, they did.

They were happy to meet Art, and I introduced our performing artists to Tom Masters and bragged about their international acclaim.  It was an amiable group.  We ambled around looking at the photos, and I soon noticed that Dan and Tom had disappeared.

Later Dan said to me, “Tom just told me he wants to change that other room, to turn it into a space for performing art.”  “What!” I exclaimed, “What a marvelous idea.  Let’s look at it again with that in mind.”  We walked the length of the gallery and at the end it makes a turn into a huge space which now displays paintings and sculptures.  Dan pointed, “He will put in a raised platform for performances.  We can’t work on a cement floor, too slippery.”  “Look,” I said, “there is even a door on the back wall for entrances and exits.”  And we looked into a large storeroom appraising it for its new role.   “Will Tom put in folding chairs to make it a theater?”  Dan said, “He’s thinking of small bar room tables.  Drinks.  We are meeting to discuss this new idea.”

Back in the exhibit hall, I told Tom I loved his brilliant new venture.  He beamed.

Later I thought:  If Laurie hadn’t walked in, if Art didn’t have his show mounted, if nephew Michael hadn’t chosen that day to visit the show, if I hadn’t introduced the T. Daniel Mimes to Tom – why, nothing would have changed.  Tomorrow would just follow today as it did yesterday.  But something did change the landscape.

It’s too strange to call it happenstance.  Or serendipity.   I like that lovely Jewish word, Besheert – it was destined.

----Florence

Picture Perfect

The fans were fun to watch.  They love Art’s photos.  The new show is at the Thomas Masters Gallery running through December, 2010.  I looked at the photos as though I had never seen them before – and I hadn’t, not as these large 17 X 22s, and now matted in black and framed.  So dramatic. 
 
There were forty pictures hanging, and the first two sales were of the same photo.  It was of  Nelson Algren, one of five men standing with backs to us, lined up along the curb, waiting for a bus.  On a very dreary day.  Strong pattern, moody. 
 
The Opening Reception is also a social event.  The part I loved best is being hugged and kissed by so many men and I even knew most of them.  I met the wife of one of Art’s printers who says of her husband, “I worship the ground he walks on.”  Can you believe this?  I told her to cut it out, she’s raising the expectations of the other husbands.  It’s unnatural. 
 
Darling Dan Blue, sculptor of huge metal works, brought a celebratory bottle of champagne, so we stopped drinking the “house” wine to sip his bubbly.  Jane had come in from LA just for the show, and turned around the next day, the new snow delaying her return flight by only an hour.  Tony Fitzpatrick, artist/playwright/actor and who excels at all, had just returned from Istanbul in Turkey.  Dr. Irwin Silverman, cardiologist who had had his hands inside Art’s chest many years ago, and now has his medical walls covered with Art’s photos, was beaming at the new display.  Son Richard Shay’s camera was capturing it all.
 
Paul Berlanga, of the Stephan Daiter Gallery, had just returned from Paris where they participated in an international photo show at the Louvre.  Two of Art’s Simone de Beauvoir nudes were exhibited there.  Art’s black and whites are represented at the Daiter Gallery.  Paul was looking with critical approval at the Shay color hangings.
 
Victor Skrebneski, noted photographer of fashion and portraiture, walked around the show with Art.  Skrebneski laughed as they viewed the picture of Oprah.  The picture captured a much younger Oprah, early in her career.  On assignment, Art was photographing her walking down the street.  She stopped at a newsstand and opened a magazine.  Art’s picture captures her joy as she displays the magazine portrait of herself, holding it close to her face.  Skrebneski was laughing because he had taken that magazine portrait of Oprah!
 
We started looking at the clock at 9PM, and could only move the guests out by putting on our coats.  A small crowd of family and friends moved on to eat some Italian food.  Nobody was tired.  Success is exhilarating.
 
----Florence

Prestigious Literary Evening

It was the first of what promises to be an annual Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.  This first celebration of deceased Chicago authors honored Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, Studs Terkel and Richard Wright.
 
This is the way it played out.  Rick Kogan was the program host.  Rick, himself, had been named Chicago’s Best Reporter in 1999 and inducted in the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame in 2003.  He has a weekly feature in the Chic. Trib, a radio show, and a new book with a collection of his Chicago columns.  I am proud to say I was allotted a page in that book.
 
Kogan introduced a Presenter of the award.  Those Presenting were themselves recognized writers who might well receive this award if living writers are included in the future. The Presenter said wonderful things about his/her assigned author.  Then Kogan introduced the Acceptor who received a statue of a hand holding a quill on behalf of his Hall-of-Famer, and then said wonderful things about this same author.  The person accepting the award was a family member, a son, a daughter, a sister, a niece.  Nelson Algren, alone, had no family member, so his close friend and documenter of a good part of his adult life, Art Shay, was asked to join the ceremony to accept Nelson’s award.
 
Each of the assigned twelve speakers had been asked to limit his speech to five minutes.  Art  practiced reading  his speech out loud until he reduced it to five minutes.  Sara Paretsky hit five minutes, Audrey Niffenegger said she timed hers to three minutes.  Many of the other nine spoke as though the clock were not invented.
 
Oh, yes.  As each honored name was announced, someone either read from the work, or a skit was enacted, or a guitar was played, a song sung.  There were other little performances intermittently.  Someone mentioned that many in the audience of about 300 in this handsome auditorium at Northeastern Illinois U. did not reappear after intermission.  What?  The program was only half-way through?
 
Art Shay delivered his speech about Algren.  I am happy to report he was masterful, entertaining, and it was by far the best speech both in material and delivery.  There was an impromptu interchange between Rick Kogan and Art as Rick recalled a ludicrous event he was involved in:  Art got the Chicago police to stop traffic on the expressway so that Art could take a picture of the air space on this expressway that had been the now demolished building Algren lived in. The audience laughed.  Rick’s delivery is professional – hey, he’s a radio show host.
 
There was finger food before the show, and finger desserts after the show.  The audience mingled while eating the desserts – everything chocolate was gone immediately - and we   talked about important things: someone admired my jacket, I admired someone’s hat and lamented that I look dreadful in hats, and we commented on a stunning ruffley leather purse another person was carrying which she admitted getting at an absolutely fabulous sale.
 
Yes, of course we referred to the program which was slated for 2 hours and ran on for 3 ½ hours.  Everyone said Art was wonderful.  I told someone I was grateful we got out before tomorrow, and he said, “Oh we are grateful we got out before Christmas!”
 
Unless Art is tapped again, I’m not going next year, never mind how exalted the event is.  Besides I already have the statue.  I’ll put it in the book shop.  Nelson Algren would like that.
 
----Florence