An afternoon at the library

There are so many advantages to being an old man that I wonder why I put it off for so long . One is that the Proust Reading Group has stopped inviting me to join and another is the number of dreadful stories in the news that for a man my age come under the heading "Not My Problem" such as the shortage of goods due to shipping backlogs, freighters lined up for miles waiting to unload in ports, people unable to find what they need.

I have the opposite problem: too much stuff, need a ship to come up the Hudson River to 96th Street and haul it away. We have twenty fancy dinner plates though we live in a two-bedroom apartment and the days of grand dinner parties are far in the past. She and I now form a majority. Four is a family, six is a crowd.

I chose the right parents, evangelicals, so, yes, I am haunted by guilt and regret, but on the other hand, there was no fetal alcohol syndrome and for a kid who aims to be a writer, the King James is excellent tutelage, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, beat out Disney characters and crime novels.

Garrison Keillor is a bit off his rocker politically. Let’s just say that despite the advantages of an upright, stable upbringing, exposure to classical values and practices, he managed to fall down the wrong chute and was not an asset to the American nation. At his comical core, he hated America especially his fellow white Minnesotans. Yet for the most part people raised in a traditional stable setting of family and educated in the classical manner have an advantage that far ouweighs almost everything else.

There was always the undercurrent in Keillor’s commentary that conservative Lutheran values were the underpinnings of Minnesota nice, eh, and the Scandinavian social welfare state. But social welfare undermines, degrades, and ultimately destroys the conservative Lutheran values in a generation or two. Keillor enjoyed the benefits of Luther conservative values without being bothered by its burdens of personal responsibility and accountability. He was as much a free rider on the social welfare state as any Somali fraudster.

I wonder what Garrison Keillor is doing living in Manhattan, particularly in the 96th Street area of the Upper West Side? A midwestern Lutheran residing in the wealthiest Jewish neighborhood in the city?

If he’s taking the train out of the 96th Street station it’s probably the 1, 2 or 3 IRT down to 42nd Street, a short walk from the main branch of the New York Public Library. His description of the long tables with the shaded lamps perfectly describes the NYPL’s Main Reading Room, the sanctum sanctorum of New York’s literary scene. Fifty years ago I spent a lot of time there myself, passing through the massive catalog room to spend a day researching some assignment typical of an English major in one of New York’s many colleges in hopes of achieving my goal of becoming a PhD full professor at a major University as my favorite uncle had. Of course, thank God, I avoided that fate, opting instead to marry, have children and making my career their safety and providance.

Now though, I wonder if during my time sitting at those long, polished wood tables and scoping out the incredibly attractive young women instead of concentrating on my actual purpose of being there, if any famous authors had been sitting next to me all that time? Good times…

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