Come On In...We're Hoping

I had no intention of writing this piece. Another semester is down; I have ongoing contracts, exhaustion, and my summer of scrounging for money to cover the bills I will have to handle. I know that there will be no real break for me until mid-June, and I am trying to enjoy any spare time without staring at a news crawl or wondering if Canada will ever have a team holding Lord Stanley’s finest silverware. And to save money, I have been using libraries, secondhand bookstores, and the occasional Livre-Service box (thank you, Montreal). One of the interesting things about those boxes is that I have often found things in them that could not be mistaken for a book: t-shirts, pens, pencils, highlighters, magazines, newspapers, videotapes (!), and even the occasional DVD. This past week, I found Merchant and Ivory’s “The Bostonians,” not a film that I would bother with, but it is physical media and the creation of a pair of filmmakers whom I admire. And then I made the mistake of bringing it home, opening up the case, and noting where that movie originated.

Boite Noire.

Now, that might mean nothing to you who reside outside of the city of Montreal, but for those of us who have memories of rentals and browsing for films and, occasionally, movies, this was a haven and a source of cinematic history that was a true miracle. I found a film I ended up using for my thesis at university after many weeks of thinking that I would have to abandon my topic. And I became a devoted client…until the inevitable end.

So, what does this have to do with the book I want to tell you all about?

Jason Guriel is a fellow Generation-Xer who waxes nostalgic about a Canadian youth moment that I recognized. He begins this book with a study of how important the video store was, moves on to the record store, and ends up at…the Walkman. To be fair, this covers articles that were written over various periods of time and for different online and print journals (do those still exist?). Certain chapters are entitled “Second Spin,” “Against the Stream,” “Late Adopters,” and, as a natural conclusion, “Coda: A Program of Resistance”. I felt less alone just from the Contents page…and from the section on secondhand books.

He found the name of “The World’s Biggest Bookstore” inside of a book that had gone out of print. He found that he could write an entire chapter about this experience of used literature. He wrote this…and I read it just before I had my particular epiphany.

A little spooky? Oh, yes, and I am grateful for it. I had no choice but to write this up and think of old bookshops (“Mike’s World of Books”), record stores (“In Yer Ear,” “Rave Records” – the owner of the latter liked me so much that he gave me a free t-shirt), and video stores (“Video Land,” right between bus stops on my way home from school). But those are just memories now. Guriel, like me, is not a fan of the entire streaming world, and thinks that we have lost a lot by our screen addiction.

But he knows that time is not kind.

“Every paradigm has…its stubborn loyalists.”

Indeed, but also…

“Knowledge tends to stick when you’ve toiled for it.”

And one of my favourites:

“A paperless future would be a dystopia.”

Okay, okay, this all feels very disjointed, like entering the clutter of a shop that you have avoided for unspoken reasons. You may have the occasional cobweb or allergic reaction to the dust and odd odours. But then you begin to see that there is a pattern, several methods to the madness around you, and that maybe – just maybe – should give it all a shot.

Go out and find this book (yes, he is online), and then…find that little bookstore or die-hard record store that is still trying against common sense to bring in customers devoted to nostalgia. This is a jeremiad to the ones who know what has been lost and what we may be able to get back.

Time to check out that DVD…

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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