McSweeney's Issue #19

On Saturday, I went to Fourth Street in Berkeley, a small but growing shopping district that used to be more of an outlet destination, but is now rushing headlong toward upscale, up-priced boutiques. Despite this trend, some of my favorite stores are there: the Crate and Barrel Outlet (!!), Sur la Table, and now, Paper Source. I spent a modest $27.19 at Paper Source today, though I did eye the drop spine box kits, fingers itching. But I didn’t feel like getting into the world of book cloth and methyl cellulose today.

Cody’s is also on Fourth Street, but I don’t usually go in. I don’t know why, but this is the only bookstore I have ever been in that makes me feel uncomfortable. I actually experience a feeling of loss whenever I step in. It’s like a small dark hole in my chest that expands into a profound loneliness as I walk farther into the store. Part of it is that the store design is very cold. The bare cement floors and exposed ceiling do not exclaim, “Welcome! Stay for a while!” The shelving is oddly spaced—the aisles in fact seem too wide. And more than half the books are displayed face-out, as if they were embarrassed by their own meager numbers and are trying o hide the bare backs of the bookcases.

I didn’t stay long. I was there to buy a Moleskine notebook, but they didn’t have any. I bought a linen-covered spiral journal instead and hastily escaped back into the sunlit street bustling with life.

I was trying to get out so quickly that I hardly looked at anything. I only remember very clearly seeing two things: a Harper’s Bazaar magazine with a picture of a pregnant Britney Spears, naked, on the cover, and a recent (but not new) issue of McSweeney’s sitting on the counter of the information kiosk.

The McSweeney’s caught my eye because it is the issue that comes in a cigar box. I’ve never seen one in real life before, but I had read about it online. Here is what the McSweeney’s website has to say about it:

Our first issue of 2006 turns toward earlier and equally uncertain years, traveling back by way of pamphlets, info-cards, and letters addressing bygone conflicts and still-constant concerns. Expect, among other recovered works, carefree strategies for insurgencies in Nicaragua, astrological advice for the Nixon/Agnew campaigner, sanguine guidance for the soldier stationed in the Middle East at mid-century, and commonsense reinforcement for the doughboy drifting toward a gonorrhea infection. Also: T.C. Boyle's feral child novella and additional quasi-historical work by new writers.

The concept sounds really cool, though not cool enough for me to buy it. Because I know that after a leafing through of the items inside, I will have lost interest, and that the REAL reason I even thought about buying it was that I wanted the box. I recognize that I have a rare mental illness that makes me want to acquire anything that is box-shaped. It is a constant and terrible struggle to keep myself from filling my house with empty boxes. So I did not buy the McSweeney's cigar box issue.

After I left Cody’s I went back to Paper Source.

McSweeney's Issue #19

Tags: cody's+bookstore berkeley mcsweeney's paper+source