Leather Goods

Melissa Ginsburg is reading from her new book of poems DEAR WEATHER GHOST at Off Square Books tomorrow. DON'T MISS IT! Recently, Melissa told me about a book I should read because it has some interesting stuff in it about Emily Brontë, my fave. So I bought it at Square Books, natch. It's a book of "lectures" called MADNESS, RACK, AND HONEY, by Mary Ruefle. Hey remember how I love to say dumb things like "this book is like Sam Shepard's 'blog'" or "that book is like Clarice Lispector's 'blog,'" and it's never true? Well, I want to say that this book is like Mary Ruefle's "blog," and it's still not true. She IS irritated (fascinated?) by commercials the way someone with a "blog" would be. Take the print ad for leather goods featuring Albert Einstein's great-grandson sitting under a tree reading a book called WISDOM (!). Ruefle quotes the ad copy: "Paul Einstein is an accomplished violinist who enjoys reading literature, philosophy, and fine poetry." Fine poetry! Ha! Ruefle has a lot of fun digging into that, in a way that transcends any "blog"... though if she knew, as I do, that Einstein's granddaughter married a bigfoot hunter, I feel in my heart she would bring it up in this essay somehow, just like a "blogger" (me!). I feel absolutely safe in saying that Einstein's granddaughter marrying a bigfoot hunter is Mary Ruefle's kind of thing. What else? I was just over at Ajax, having a chicken po-boy, or as I now call it, "The Osborne," because Kent Osborne ate so very many of them on his recent visit. And there was a guy at the bar who COULD NOT STOP TALKING! It was okay, because most of his talk was entertaining. He talked about varieties of apples and his prowess at tic-tac-toe, to name just two of his many subjects. He yelled, about tic-tac-toe, "If I'm playing defense, YOU WILL NOT WIN! YOU WILL NOT WIN!" (See also.)