OMGWTF Genji!!!!!
Jul. 12th, 2008 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdymonkeyI was going to stay home and work on project-y things. However, when I woke up this morning, I didn't FEEL like it, though I did deal with the monthly development of my "skunk stripe".
I decided to get out of the house and make a pilgrimage into North Berkeley because I hadn't been to Black Oak Books in ages and ages.
I have discovered the secret to good parking karma in Berkeley - cut up a side street and a couple of blocks over, park in an un-metered neighborhood (cars without resident stickers are OK for up to two hours most places) and walk back in to your destination. Anything else just guarantees frustration.
Now I remember why I don't hit Black Oak very often. For one thing, I have not had good luck there.
For another, Black Oak is not Moe's. They don't have fiction, they have "literature". Sorry, Anne Rice is one, but not both. Even the big box bookstores know that if you're going to put fiction and literature together, you call it "Fiction and Literature." And where, I ask you, was the Austen? I would've tossed a couple of bucks towards a copy of Northanger Abbey, but there was no Austen to be found. No Salman Rushdie I have not read.
Moe's will shelve their new books separately and mark said shelf "New Art" or "New U.S. History," because they sell a LOT of used stuff. B.O. does it the other way 'round. For some reason a shelf labeled "Used Shakespeare" made me think of men in cheap ties making sales pitches in iambic pentameter. And what good is poetry that ISN'T used, I ask you?
Their "rare" books are all behind glass in cabinets in the front room, whereas Moe's has an art and antiquarian room where you can take stuff off the shelves and look at it yourself (particularly if they've gotten to know you because you come in and pay homage to the expensive textile books about every month or so), or ask for help from the A&A guy when you want help. Seriously, the sort of people most likely to buy rare books are the ones who are going to want to pet them. Reverently and carefully, with clean hands, of course.
I also did not see a single step stool in the back room, which pretty much guarantees that nobody is going to bother with anything on a top shelf unless they are interested enough in what they can see from floor height to go off in search of assistance.
Someone thought it would be cool to mount, frame and hang poems and quotes from books on the wall along the ramp leading into the back room. Unfortunately, if you hang something in 12 point (or even smaller!) type on the wall, putting it 7 feet above the level of the floor pretty much defeats the purpose. I think it was something from Ishiguro's Remains of the Day way up there. If I was a Berkley-ite, I would've asked a sales clerk for a step stool so I could read it. And take my time over it.
The regular art section was kind of disappointing. Then I moved down and found that they'd stuck the non-Western art books in a bookcase split off from Western art by Photography. ???? Only half a shelf of titles on Japanese art. Normally, I would find this equally disappointing, because at Moe's you're likely to find half a shelf of random volumes just from the Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art. A book in Japanese on Noh masks, props and costumes, nice but I can't read it and it appears to overlap most of what's in Miracles and Mischief. A big one with glossy photographs of Tamasaburo Bando, the onna gata kabuki actor, also in Japanese. Some woodblock prints of the 36 Immortal Women Poets by one of the
ukiyo-e masters, only $10 - hm, maybe.
Then I saw a gold slip case with a title I could not read. Specifically, a slip case decorated with what appeared to be medieval Japanese paper decorated with random bits of gold and now blackened silver foil.
It was Genji. Specifically, it's the 12th century Genji Monogatari Emaki (picture scroll) belonging to the Tokugawa Art Museum, reproduced in full on fold-out color pages, with additional color plates of most of the illustrated sections and a huge section of black and white plates of the calligraphed text. In fact, I think the print beneath the calligraphy plates is the text of the manuscript itself, rendered in modern Japanese. No, I can't read it, which is too bad, but I was able to match hiragana characters at the tops and bottoms of each line, so that's my theory and I'm sticking to it. (The only thing I CAN read is the ISBN number).
Anyway, I sighed and oohed and tried not to jump up and down as I examined it and winced at the $50 price tag. Then I tucked it under my arm and went up the ramp into the "back room." I did the sidestep cha cha around a man browsing the math section to get to the history section and began browsing methodically. Someone's toddler came tearing up the ramp, making the kind of noise only a kid that age can on an old hardwood floor. He wove in and out of the bookcases at top speed, giggling all the way. I knew how he felt. I had Genji under one arm and nothing else was even tempting me to have to decide between it and anything else.
An incoming fax or something delayed processing of my debit card at check out, so while I waited I pulled my prize out of its slip case and geeked over it with the cashier, an anthropology student interested in folklore and oral tradition. An older man who I presume to be the owner said, "Oh, you got that one, perhaps you can tell me more about it." (Which begs the question, how did the store establish a price for it? ISBN number in a database somewhere? Estimate based on condition and number of color plates? I don't know.)
I hope I didn't bore him too much.
I decided to get out of the house and make a pilgrimage into North Berkeley because I hadn't been to Black Oak Books in ages and ages.
I have discovered the secret to good parking karma in Berkeley - cut up a side street and a couple of blocks over, park in an un-metered neighborhood (cars without resident stickers are OK for up to two hours most places) and walk back in to your destination. Anything else just guarantees frustration.
Now I remember why I don't hit Black Oak very often. For one thing, I have not had good luck there.
For another, Black Oak is not Moe's. They don't have fiction, they have "literature". Sorry, Anne Rice is one, but not both. Even the big box bookstores know that if you're going to put fiction and literature together, you call it "Fiction and Literature." And where, I ask you, was the Austen? I would've tossed a couple of bucks towards a copy of Northanger Abbey, but there was no Austen to be found. No Salman Rushdie I have not read.
Moe's will shelve their new books separately and mark said shelf "New Art" or "New U.S. History," because they sell a LOT of used stuff. B.O. does it the other way 'round. For some reason a shelf labeled "Used Shakespeare" made me think of men in cheap ties making sales pitches in iambic pentameter. And what good is poetry that ISN'T used, I ask you?
Their "rare" books are all behind glass in cabinets in the front room, whereas Moe's has an art and antiquarian room where you can take stuff off the shelves and look at it yourself (particularly if they've gotten to know you because you come in and pay homage to the expensive textile books about every month or so), or ask for help from the A&A guy when you want help. Seriously, the sort of people most likely to buy rare books are the ones who are going to want to pet them. Reverently and carefully, with clean hands, of course.
I also did not see a single step stool in the back room, which pretty much guarantees that nobody is going to bother with anything on a top shelf unless they are interested enough in what they can see from floor height to go off in search of assistance.
Someone thought it would be cool to mount, frame and hang poems and quotes from books on the wall along the ramp leading into the back room. Unfortunately, if you hang something in 12 point (or even smaller!) type on the wall, putting it 7 feet above the level of the floor pretty much defeats the purpose. I think it was something from Ishiguro's Remains of the Day way up there. If I was a Berkley-ite, I would've asked a sales clerk for a step stool so I could read it. And take my time over it.
The regular art section was kind of disappointing. Then I moved down and found that they'd stuck the non-Western art books in a bookcase split off from Western art by Photography. ???? Only half a shelf of titles on Japanese art. Normally, I would find this equally disappointing, because at Moe's you're likely to find half a shelf of random volumes just from the Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art. A book in Japanese on Noh masks, props and costumes, nice but I can't read it and it appears to overlap most of what's in Miracles and Mischief. A big one with glossy photographs of Tamasaburo Bando, the onna gata kabuki actor, also in Japanese. Some woodblock prints of the 36 Immortal Women Poets by one of the
ukiyo-e masters, only $10 - hm, maybe.Then I saw a gold slip case with a title I could not read. Specifically, a slip case decorated with what appeared to be medieval Japanese paper decorated with random bits of gold and now blackened silver foil.
It was Genji. Specifically, it's the 12th century Genji Monogatari Emaki (picture scroll) belonging to the Tokugawa Art Museum, reproduced in full on fold-out color pages, with additional color plates of most of the illustrated sections and a huge section of black and white plates of the calligraphed text. In fact, I think the print beneath the calligraphy plates is the text of the manuscript itself, rendered in modern Japanese. No, I can't read it, which is too bad, but I was able to match hiragana characters at the tops and bottoms of each line, so that's my theory and I'm sticking to it. (The only thing I CAN read is the ISBN number).
Anyway, I sighed and oohed and tried not to jump up and down as I examined it and winced at the $50 price tag. Then I tucked it under my arm and went up the ramp into the "back room." I did the sidestep cha cha around a man browsing the math section to get to the history section and began browsing methodically. Someone's toddler came tearing up the ramp, making the kind of noise only a kid that age can on an old hardwood floor. He wove in and out of the bookcases at top speed, giggling all the way. I knew how he felt. I had Genji under one arm and nothing else was even tempting me to have to decide between it and anything else.
An incoming fax or something delayed processing of my debit card at check out, so while I waited I pulled my prize out of its slip case and geeked over it with the cashier, an anthropology student interested in folklore and oral tradition. An older man who I presume to be the owner said, "Oh, you got that one, perhaps you can tell me more about it." (Which begs the question, how did the store establish a price for it? ISBN number in a database somewhere? Estimate based on condition and number of color plates? I don't know.)
I hope I didn't bore him too much.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-13 03:55 am (UTC)Another part of me is misquoting LOLcats and saying "Oh noes... maple syrup!"
OTOH if the owner is there she'll be fascinated...
We could banish the syrup to another table until we're done looking...
Not you too with those illiterate cats!
Date: 2008-07-13 03:59 am (UTC)Now I just have to decide which yukata I want to wear. Checks or stripes, checks or stripes......