Whither the Classics In Mass Market Paperback?

I own a mass market paperback copy of The Grapes of Wrath, but only because a teacher who was retiring a few years ago left it on a table in our work room with a note saying that his books were free for us to take. 

I own a mass market paperback copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls, but only because I found it left on the floor after a meeting once, and nobody responded to my email asking the rightful owner to come pick it up. 

I own a mass market paperback copy of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, but only because I bought it a year before Oprah picked it for her book club, after which it has only been available as a more costly trade paperback. 

That last one, I think, is the key to understanding why so many great classics are no longer available in mass market paperback and, indeed, haven’t been for some years.  The cheap, durable, accessible mass market paperback started going the way of the dodo, as I recall, in the mid nineties, just as things like $5 cappuccinos at Starbucks were becoming trendy.  See where I’m going with this?  As our society’s appetite for overpriced luxuries reached its fever pitch, we also acquired a tolerance–even a demand–for fancy, expensive versions of things that had previously been more common and affordable. 

Try this: go to Amazon.com and search for “Sound and the Fury mass market paperback.”  Look at the years next to the entries that come up.  Sad. 

Broke Means Nevada To Me

City Journal is in the process of posting articles from its Spring issue.  Most of what’s appeared so far is great…which makes it only average by City Journal’s standards.  This publication so regularly soars beyond excellence that to be an above-average issue it must transcend the mundane limits of reality…which it has, more than once.

Looking at the table of contents, I’m fascinated by an upcoming article by Alain de Botton (author of one of my very favorite books, How Proust Can Change Your Life) apparently about Roman pessimism, and of course I’m eagerly awaiting the upcoming appearance of Theodore Dalrymple’s newest foray into social criticism.  As always, the requisite article about the economic situation taught me plenty.

But the standout so far is this one: “Spendthrift Sunbelt States.”  Nicole Gelinas is one of City Journal’s best writers (remember, that’s saying a lot), and her talent for synthesizing a diverse universe of facts, and distilling them into a concise and incisive analysis, is on display here in full glory.  Like her colleague Heather MacDonald, Gelinas could find a pattern that offers meaningful commentary in phone books from all the state capitals, and compose a report on it with all the eloquence and precision of Lincoln imitating Montaigne imitating Cicero. 

Seriously, why isn’t the staff office at this magazine messing up the Earth’s magnetic poles because it’s so full of metal from their monopoly of Pulitzer Prizes?

But back to “Spendthrift Sunbelt States,” I was drawn to it because I live in Nevada, one of the three nouveau riche states that have squandered their wealth in their desperate attemtps to impress the older kids who get to sit at the cool table: New York and California.  Gelinas breaks down the spending trends and the evidence would be irrefutable, if I hadn’t already been observing the shift toward profligacy with my own eyes over the last twenty years.  (Hey, Nicole, have you heard about Mayor Oscar Goodman’s latest bit of windmill tilting: his obsession with building a new city hall that we don’t need, can’t afford, and which won’t permanently help the economy?) 

After reading it, I sent an email that I hope to see printed in the next issue, sharing anecdotes about home prices and foreclosures in my area, as well as one of my favorite illustrations of our slide from hardy, independent libertarians into big-government dependency: the sign that used to stand at the state line in the 1940’s that said, “No income tax, no sales tax, no inheritance tax, no corporation tax, no gift tax” and “A debt free state welcomes you.”

Animated U.S. Map Shows Job Losses

Scary.

America’s Finances Stabilize: USA Wins Lottery, Gets Inheritance, Sells Stuff On E-Bay

SATIRE

In the face of staggering, record-breaking trillion-dollar deficits for this year and the foreseeable future, America was understandably worried about its financial future.  Luckily, several unexpected windfalls came up and helped America break even.

“I was all sweating about these bills I got coming up, you know, infrastructure and social security and stuff, but then I got this call and it was like a miracle…I totally won the lottery!” an elated United States told the Associated Press yesterday. 

The fiscally irresponsible country will get $10 billion as a reward for picking the right ticket in a scratch-off lotto from a nearby gas station.  The international superpower will, however, have to share their winnings with two housewives from Omaha, who also picked the winning numbers by playing their children’s birthdays. 

Of course, ten billion dollars hardly covers the debt that America, like many impulsive, short-sighted consumers, has racked up in recent times.  The calls from bill collectors were still troubling the distraught democracy, threatening to repossess the volunteer military and bicameral legislature that it got at the mall when the economy was riding high, but against all odds, the U.S. got another fortuitous surprise.

“My great aunt Agatha died!” said America in the same interview.  Trying not to sound too excited about the demise of a relative, it explained, “She wasn’t really close to anybody else in the family–she and Australia haven’t even spoken in, like, fifty years–but she wanted to leave me her life savings.  I guess she thought I had potential or something.”

Aunt Agatha’s will left a plum $50 billion to the spendthrift republic.  “But there’s a catch,” America said.  “She didn’t want me to blow it all on pork and stuff, so I can’t get it until I can show a balanced budget.” 

Such a task might sound daunting for a country that now throws out the word trillion the way it used to say million, but America now sounds more confident.  “I have a plan.  I’ve been saving up my old baseball cards for a rainy day, and I’m totally gonna sell them on E-Bay for, like, a hundred trillion bucks.  Dude, I’ve got a Daryl Strawberry rookie card.  Seriously.”

 

NOTE: The joke being, if our financial woes aren’t solved this way, then what exactly do we expect to happen?  Isn’t this actually the most realistic hope we have?  Also, I liked comparing America to a dumb kid who needs an adult to help it pay the rent, and this time’s the last time, honestly.  I had a really good interview at Burger King, so I’m totally gonna have a job next month!

Defining Frugality Down

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency features some of the most clever, literate humor out there today.  However, one recent piece, “This Recession Is Awesome!“, where a young kid is happy that his parents’ financial problems are making them give up the expensive things that he hates in favor of the cheap things he loves, had two fatal flaws.

The first flaw is that the “cheap” things he celebrates are hardly all that cheap.  They are:

• three meals of junk food a day
• “as much McDonald’s as I want”
• mini golf, go-karts, and batting cages
• pizza at “Gilbert’s Goofy Park”
• Cooler Ranch Doritos
• Xbox

That’s the author’s idea of scaling down a lifestyle?  Awww, did poor little buddy have to go from middle class to upper-lower middle class?  Wow, our Depression-era grandparents are just super impressed.  One is only left to wonder just how exclusive the author’s gated community must be.  As this recession continues, some of us are going to need to do a lot more adjusting than that. 

The other fatal flaw in the piece, of course, is that it just wasn’t funny.  McSweeney’s must be getting hard up for material. 

On a related note, two days ago I saw this post about all kinds of frugality for the times.  And, don’t forget about Provident Living.

Blame Enough To Go Around

So the passage of President Obama’s stimulus package–the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009–has passed, to the tune of $789 billion, and fiscal conservatives around the country are howling mad.  “Tea Party” protests are sweeping the nation.  One blog post I happened across this week featured a graphic of a tombstone for the United States, giving the “death” date as November 4, 2008, the day of Obama’s election.  (You’re late, by the way–I had the same idea months ago.) 

But is that really the day that history will remember as the tipping point towards financial ruin for our republic?  Did Obama suddenly come in and drastically change course for the government, or is he just continuing business as usual? 

Or better yet…where were all those tea party protests before now? 

Where were the protests on October 3, 2008, when the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 ($700 billion) was signed into law?  Shouldn’t that be the date on the tombstone? 

Where were the protests on September 30, 2008, when the “Big Three” automakers got a $25 billion loan? 

Where was the coordinated network of national protests on September 16, 2008, when the Federal Reserve gave insurance giant AIG a $75 billion bailout?

Where were the fiscal conservatives rising up and demanding results on July 30, 2008, when the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 ($300 billion) became law? 

So if we’re going to become especially indignant about Obama’s “porkulus” package, we’re very much a conservative pot calling a liberal kettle black.

Future News Headline, Thanks To Congress Throwing Our Money Away For Bailouts

“Last Rich Guy Finally Broke: Befuddled Congress Scratches Head And Wonders, ‘Now What?’”

School Budget Priorities And A Satirical Analogy

So my school’s budget for this year was cut by six figures.  Other schools had even more cut than we did.  This trickles down to my English department, among other ways, in the form of getting far less paper for copies than we have had in the past, which was pretty meager to begin with.

Meanwhile, one of the several videos that every school district employee was forced to watch this week featured a custom built, three foot tall remote control bus with multiple moving accessories.  It helped to teach us, seriously, how not to get hit by a bus.  They can afford to waste our time with this kind of thing, but we can’t afford paper?! 

I responded to this outrageous farce on our school’s email bulletin board in my typical idiom: satire. 

 

In this election year, I know we’re all worried about our constant need to fill up on that supply that we need to function, especially since it’s getting much harder finacially to do so. Therefore, I want to offer this plan for our future…my Paper Plan.

 

 

First, we need to unlock our leaders’ stockpile. It’s time to dip into the Strategic Paper Reserve.

 

 

Second, we have no choice but to engage in offshore drilling. Studies have shown that areas off the coast of Florida are rich in crude paper, and we need to get to it before China does. We also need to start getting paper from our federal lands in Alaska. The caribou will just have to adapt; the Alaskan Paper Pipeline will be able to alleviate our shrinking paper supply as soon as 2025.

 

 

Third, we need to wean ourselves from our dependence on foreign paper. The terrorists in PPEC have had us on a leash long enough. Besides, they’re all in bed with the corporate fat cats in Big Paper who are getting rich off our desperation to have fuel for our copy machines to run smoothly.

 

 

Fourth, we need to find a new resource to replace paper completely. Research into alternatives like solar paper and wind turbine paper are promising, but we have to admit that hydroelectric paper just won’t work. It ends up either getting too soggy to use, or catches on fire.

 

 

Fifth, copy machines need to become more fuel efficient. Japanese engineers have perfected a smaller, hybrid model that combines a sheet of paper with creamed corn to get more material printed on each page. It’s the wave of the future. Sorry, but those cool Sport Utility Copy Machines are no longer in style.

 

Don’t forget to make sure the wheels on your copy machines are inflated properly. That alone could save us thousands of sheets of paper a year.

 

Regarding those several mandatory videos that each employee is subjected to (what a great use of our time as we try to prepare for teaching new students–and haven’t we been told by countless administrators that showing people videos is not an effective method of teaching?  Why use it to teach us something then?), the subjects covered included the following:

 

Anything that you say that any student chooses to feel offended by is an “aversive intervention” and will get you sued and fired (after endless paperwork), try not to spread disease by coming into contact with, quote, “blood and semen” (I swear I am not making this up), and, apparently, according to our intensive trainings this week, you’re actually not supposed to sleep with students.  Huh.  Well, glad they cleared that up.  No doubt that some pedophile saw that and cheerfully changed his mind.

 

Your tax dollars at work.