Flashback 2001: Younger Brent keeping dad's bookselling alive

 

    When I first heard that someone had spent $10 million to locate the wreck of the Endurance, Ernest Shackleton's famed ship, on the bottom of the Weddell Sea since 1915, I couldn't understand why someone would go to the trouble. They can't salvage the wreck—by law a historic site—but only take pictures, using submersible drones. And the photos from the Endurance, taken from glass plate negatives, are some of the most haunting and beautiful in the history of exploration. How to improve on that? Then I saw the video. Astounding—you can read the name on the stern, see the wheel, all preserved in the frigid Antarctic waters. It's money well-spent, if you've got it, and reminded me of when I first encountered Alfred Lansing's classic book, back when there were independent bookstores on Michigan Avenue, and in the Loop, and people actually went downtown and visited them.

     The most thrilling book I ever read in my entire life was placed into my hands by Adam Brent. This was years ago, back when he was working at his father's famous bookstore on Michigan Avenue. I had gone in looking for books about Mt. Everest, and this young guy, whom I had never met before, suggested I might enjoy Endurance, by Alfred Lansing, the tale of Shackleton's star-crossed voyage to the South Pole. "Enjoy" was too weak a term--it is the sort of book that you not only read while walking, but walk into walls while reading and don't care.
     What young Brent did is called "hand selling." It is not the sort of thing mega-bookstores do well, but rather the personal alchemy that cleaves a certain group of people to independent booksellers, permitting us to patronize stores even if they don't also sell coffee and stuffed animals, and makes us fret over their futures like a worried mother hen.
     His dad's store, Stuart Brent Books, went out of business in 1996. And while I disapproved of the shriek of moral outrage that Stuart Brent emitted when he went under—a bookstore is still a business, after all, and ya gotta make money, cultural landmark or no—I was sorry to see him go, and rooted for his son, glad that he is trying to keep the Brent name alive in Chicago.
     Adam Brent has two stores, one in the Loop on Washington Street and another newly opened in Highland Park. He tried to make it on Michigan Avenue, in the commercial kill zone south of the river, but was quickly driven out of business there, which made me worry about his Washington store. I quick march by there nearly every day, hurrying to and from the train. When I have a moment I stop in to buy books or shoot the breeze with Brent, 37, who is the antithesis of his father, personality-wise--subdued and pleasant with none of the chest-thumping that, to be frank, did not make his dad universally beloved.     
     "I don't think I'm really as outspoken as my father," said Adam, as we sat on folding chairs in his store. "Give me another 10 years."
     My plan was to bring out the violin and play a sad song of Brent desperately trying to copy his father's success while gazing at an empty store. It always seemed I was the only customer in the place. But the truth turned out to be that 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. are not peak business hours. Despite a downturn in the industry, he says he's doing great.
     "This store gets mobbed," said Brent. "Lots of office workers have been coming for years--it's part of their ritual."
     After Sept. 11, Brent worried that books would be one of the luxuries people crossed off their lists.
     "I thought I was going to be roasted," he said. But it turned out that the opposite occurred--people suddenly craved information, and titles that slumbered for years, becalmed on the backlist, suddenly were in demand--books about Islam, about terrorism, about Afghanistan.
     "One of the most amazing things about the book business is that, in times of crisis, one of the best places you can go is a bookstore," he said. "We are repositories for the knowledge of a civilization."
     I had assumed that Brent Books came out of the demise of his father's store, but actually it is a phoenix risen from the ashes of another grand old Chicago icon, Kroch's & Brentano's.
     "When Kroch's went bankrupt, I saw a vacuum," said Brent, who bought the shelves and fixtures from Kroch's La Salle Street store. "I talked it over with my dad and a potential investor."
     I'm fascinated by men who go into their fathers' professions. My father was a physicist, which killed off any interest I might have in science. As an outside observer, I would have guessed that having Stuart Brent for a dad would inspire a person to become a longshoreman. But Adam Brent says that his own quiet demeanor meshed well with his father's—"My dad and I never clashed," he said--and the passing years have only increased his admiration.
      "I'm in awe of what he was able to build," he said.
     That sounded swell, but I couldn't resist phoning Stuart Brent to get his version. At age 89, he has lost none of his leonine pride or reflexive verbosity. Barely had I introduced myself and my topic, when he said:
     "Considering the tragic consequences of a culture that is in a terrible situation, he's staying alive primarily, I think, because I taught him that if he gives a valentine to everyone who comes in he can make it."
      In a brief talk, Brent managed to call his old shop both "the greatest bookstore in the past 50 years in this country" and "the most precious" cultural landmark on Michigan Avenue, quite a statement considering that the Art Institute and Symphony Center are just down the street.
     But give Stuart Brent credit. When it comes to his son, his legendary self-regard dissolves, replaced by the most admirable paternal pride.
      "I'm very proud of him," said Stuart Brent. "The boy has done a magnificent job. There's absolutely no money in bookselling. It's a disaster—the very last thing a boy would want to spend his life on, selling books. But as a child, he was thrilled with the idea of books. Totally committed. There was a magic in the way he behaved, and I told him that, unfortunately, he was not doomed to be a great stockbroker or a brilliant journalist, but to try to help others get the value and the beauty to be found in the written word. I told him to 'keep that independence of spirit, and that smile, and believe me, Adam, you'll make it.' "

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 21, 2001

‘Why don’t we DO something?’

     “Why don’t we do something?” my relation said, in a tone of anguish over the telephone.
     Ukraine, of course. All news dwindles away in the face of war in Europe: missiles slamming into apartment buildings; desperate refugees picking their way across demolished bridges.
     We wanted to forget COVID; but not like this.
     You know a situation is really getting under people’s skin when your extended family starts calling to talk about it. Reaching out to me, I suppose, the same way you’d call a cousin who’s a plumber when you have a leaky faucet. I’m in the trade, this thinking-about-stuff business; maybe I can share the inside story.
     I tipped back in my chair, put my feet on my desk. This would take a while.
     “Well...” I began.
     It’s human nature to want to insulate yourself from horrors. To exile them safely to the past — hard enough to contemplate cities being bombed in 1944, never mind to think about cities being shelled last Thursday.
     We also like to segregate suffering, not only in time, but geographically, as far from ourselves as possible. The genocide in Myanmar furrowed some brows. But it was in the former Burma. Way off. Not so much video, and what photos was got, to be frank, were not of white folks. That part gets unsaid. But it’s true. Human beings have a proven track record of toughness when it comes to shrugging off the sufferings of anyone unlike themselves. Which is not that easy an option for our kind when forced to see a cute little blonde Ukrainian girl in a bomb shelter singing “Let it Go” from “Frozen” in a small, piping voice.
     “It’s extra upsetting because it’s people like us carrying cell phones,” is what I actually said. My relative agreed: We’re all basically displaced Eastern Europeans. This is too close to home.

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Going to the dogs

     For a supposedly smart guy, I can be pretty thick sometimes. I suppose that's true for everyone, in one situation or another. But each specific instance nevertheless comes as a surprise. Our private defaults must assume we're perfect. No wonder life can be so disappointing.
     I was trucking to my gate in O'Hare a few weeks back, heading to Colorado, and I passed this gate.
     Gate K9. Like the K-9 corps in the Army, thought I.
     Established in World War II. Known as "Dogs for Defense." Training German shepherds and sheep dogs and such for sentry duty. The hope was to also use dogs to sniff out wounded soldiers on battlefields, but that never worked out.
     Also in police departments.
     And here I had the thought that I can't quite believe.
     I wonder how they came up with the designation "K9"?
     Why that particular letter and number? What was their significance?

     I chewed on the puzzle for only a moment.
     And then it struck me.
     Oooooooo. "K9." CANINE. Latin for "doglike." Now I get it.
     How could I not realize that until now? It seems almost impossible. Maybe I did realize it but then forgot. Which might even be worse. Either way, I don't see any harm in admitting it here. In fact, I see a benefit. Admitting mistakes is important, because even though we all make them, many people just can't seem to do it preferring to cling to error, out of habit, despite overwhelming evidence. Because they think that makes them look better, to be in the Never Wrong club. I refute that. Like any skill, admitting error should be practiced, as a kind of intellectual exercise, to keep our minds limber. 

‘The goal is to impact women more positively’

 

Patricia Dzifa Mensah-Larkai

   When it is 9 a.m. in Chicago it is 3 p.m. in West Africa. A fact I learned Friday, chatting with Patricia Dzifa Mensah-Larkai, an administrator at the Ghana Boundary Commission, which tries to keep that nation’s borders and internal boundaries where they are supposed to be and settle disputes.
     “Most Ghanaians speak or understand nine major languages,” she said, ticking them off: Twi, Fante, Akuapem, Ewe, and such. “That doesn’t mean it’s all smooth sailing. Not everyone is able to understand all the different languages.”
     Mensah-Larkai also speaks French and English, which is how we could communicate. As to why we were talking, thank Toastmasters International, which sent an email introducing “five inspirational females” to commemorate International Women’s Day, which is Tuesday. The holiday was established by the United Nations in 1975 to “honor the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women.”
     Toastmasters held their 87th international convention in Chicago in 2018. Regular readers might recall I went and discovered a touchingly sincere, upbeat global organization that seems to exist on a plane apart from the grim chaos of daily life, which goes double for both International Women’s Day and the UN.
     That could be reason to either embrace them or ignore them. I chose the former, asking to speak with the inspirational female in Africa because, really, how often do you get the chance?
     “I love to empower women, in terms of giving value, making sure the skills are God-given, not just on certificates but putting them into practice,” Mensah-Larkai said. “To say, ‘I’m not going to settle for less. I’m going to work and try, not to attain the average, but always strive for excellence.’ To ask myself, ‘What I can do better?’ and then look for the answer.”
     She grew up in metropolitan Accra, a city of 4 million people, in what we’d consider a cop family — her grandfather was a police officer, as was her mother. Her father — both her parents are deceased — was career military.
     I wondered how the public and law enforcement get along in Ghana.

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Dick move.

Did the mayor channel her inner Jeff Spicoli?

    Did Mayor Lori Lightfoot really say, "You dicks! What the fuck were you thinking?" on a Zoom conference call regarding one of the city's controversial Columbus statues? Followed up with the even more astounding, if true, "You are out there measuring your dicks with the Italians seeing who's got the biggest dick...I am trying to keep Chicago Police officers from being shot and you are trying to get them shot. My dick is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest dick in Chicago.”
     Ahem. Let's consider the evidence.
     The claim surfaces in a lawsuit filed Wednesday by former Chicago Park District deputy general counsel George Smyrniotis. Which in itself means nothing. Anyone can sue anybody claiming anything. Though the charges are plausible enough that the Sun-Times reported them, in dashed form. 

     The natural assumption is that, were the allegations purely fictional, their creators wouldn't have conjured them up then placed on a conference call involving numerous real people who could either confirm or deny the claims. 

     Until those people are able to do that, we are left to conjecture; belief that Lightfoot actually said this certainly does not require a radical shift in the perception of the mayor as a thin-skinned, foul-mouthed bully who frequently browbeats opponents and underlings. That's Lightfoot's brand. 

      Funny that the paper would dash "dick," one of those sometimes risque, sometimes not words, like "cock," which EGD explored in 2015, neither among the seven dirty words that can't be said on television. More of what I consider "The N-Word Effect," trying to pretty up reality for the 1 percent who claim not to be able to stand it. Before long our news stories will be a Mad Libs maze of dashes and redactions: "——!" said [a political figure]. "Why don't you —- —— your—-?"

     "Dick" is not a common slur, but one of those words hardly heard outside of teen movie comedies. I'm wondering if it's a cultural thing. Lightfoot was born in 1962, two years after me, and grew up in Massillon, Ohio, 50 miles southeast of where I grew up in Berea. So we can be considered roughly equals, in our linguistic milieu. "Dick," as an insult, strikes me as having a certain juvenile, 1970s quality, certainly less current than "asshole" which in my mind came to replace it among adults. Her "You dicks!" ejaculation is a near quote from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," 40 years earlier, and it is odd to see the mayor of Chicago channeling Jeff Spicoli. 

      It's also interesting that Lightfoot would use it in both its metaphorical ("You dicks") and literal ("I've got the biggest....") senses in the same rant.  I can't recall ever using it in its literal sense, but this is an area given to euphemism.

     So how long has, umm, dick been around? Long a generic term for a man ("Every Tom, Dick and Harry...") it's tough to tell how long it has been used to describe jerks and anatomy.  My trusty Wentworth and Flexner Dictionary of American Slang drops the ball, dick-wise, focusing on the word as a synonym for detective, with citations, and only at the end of the entry flopping out "4 [taboo] The penis. Colloq."

Patridge's 1961 "A Dictionary of Slang 
and Unconventional English" traces
the penis definition of "dick" to 1860s 
military slang (thanks to Tony Galati)

    The Oxford English Dictionary, surprisingly, picks it up, not in my full set, but in the Supplement, labeling it "coarse slang" and tracing the word in print only to 1891, including, among its citations, Henry Miller's 1934 Tropic of Cancer, "That circumcised dick of his."

      What it doesn't have is Lightfoot's first meaning, as a synonym for "idiot."  Here Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang traces it only to 1966, to Norman Bogner’s novel, Seventh Avenue: “He’s a dick. I don’t know from respect, except for my parents.”

    The mayor issued one of her trademark non-denial denials.

   “I am deeply offended by the ridiculous and outrageous allegations in that lawsuit," she told WBBM, going on to call the lawsuit "without merit" which is not quite the same as "I didn't say those words."
       Though even if she did say it, baldly denying things that make her look bad and are later found to be nevertheless true is another one of her go-to moves. To me, the more damaging statement was "Where did you go to law school?" which is almost as bad as "Don't you know who I am?" (Lightfoot graduated from University of Chicago Law School, whose prestige is in inverse proportion to the number of graduates you know personally).

     She doesn't have much reputation left to lose at this point, though it'll be interesting to see how much this sticks with Lightfoot.  Sexual metaphors applied to oneself tend to echo for a long time — I would imagine that those who know anything about disgraced former Cook County Commissioner William Beavers know he once described himself as the "hog with the big nuts." Hard to get that one out of your head.

      This episode had one unexpected effect: it might have pushed me beyond the typical head-scratching puzzlement and bedrock scorn that most observers have increasingly felt for Lightfoot over the past year into a kind of pity. She's so bad at this. It makes a kind heart want to start rooting for her, a little bit. Almost.

     

    

Wilmette Notes: Survival

     Last week, several readers didn't grasp that EGD's Saturday post was written, as it has been since April, 2020, by North Shore Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey. So I've added her photo and bold-faced byline as subtle clues as to whose work you're reading.

By Caren Jeskey

     As Russian tanks roll into the beautiful country of Ukraine while a deranged homicidal maniac embarks on a plot to take over the world, we stand by helpless. The only thing I can think to do is call my representatives and weigh in about where I stand, spread the word about how to get some help out there, and continue focusing efforts on rehousing our new Afghani neighbors. I just hope that we will have the same chance for many Ukrainian survivors when they make it to our shores.

   I’ve been thinking a lot about the children and people with disabilities in Ukraine. It’s impossible not to think about the nightmare they and their families are enduring, but it’s also dangerous to ruminate upon.
     In the summer of 2020 I recall being overcome with grief while biking in Austin Texas where I was living. I got off my bike, leaned it against a tree, took my shoes off and stood in the grass. I doubled over with sobs, an ambulance whining past. I lived a block away from a COVID care center and would hear those sirens for many more months, along with Life Flight helicopters whirring overhead. That level of grief leveled out for the most part, save the occasional good cry I have while contemplating the enormity of this global situation. So much fear, dread, sickness and death in such a small period of time.

     I am dismayed at the prospect of a new spike in the coming weeks and months.

     Balancing the distance and horror from far away is closeness and connectivity here.
     A child nuzzled my fuzzy gloves the other day. I was jauntily bouncing down the sidewalk on a long walkabout, which I have resumed after a sedentary period of winter blues and blahs. I came across a man, a boy, and a friendly golden lab. The lab beelined towards me, wagging his tail and smiling, so I held my hand out to say hello. Before I knew it, the school aged boy with him took my gloved hand and held it to his mouth. I laughed and said “oh no, you can’t eat my gloves!’ and pulled my hand away.
     He picked my hand up again, gently lifted the back of it toward his mouth, and placed his lips on it. He did the same with my other hand. “Oh! You’re kissing the backs of my hands!” I said, which prompted me to give him a warm side hug. His father clarified. “He’s drawn to soft things.” “Oh! I see!” I said, and introduced myself. They told me their names and we chatted a bit. I assured his father that I am vaccinated (and yes, of course I had the afterthought of "that's more physical contact I've had with a stranger in years,") then we set off on our separate ways. I still recall the child’s name and the dog's name, but not the adult’s. This seems to happen often. I have a special affinity for children, animals, and elderly people. I always have. My grandma Marie was like that too, and so is my father. An affinity for the vulnerable.
     As I set back off on my luxuriously solo miles long ramble, a couple free hours stretching in front of me, I felt extra grateful. I thought “I should hang out with that kid some time.” I envisioned his parents getting a break while the child and I hung out in his living room with the sweet lab.
     The boy would be surrounded with his softies and we'd quietly coexist. I imagined telling his folks that they needn’t worry, since I have experience with neurologically-diverse children and adults from my many years working in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Not to mention that my first yoga certification was at Yoga for the Special Child where I was taught how to massage and manipulate overly toned (Cerebral Palsy) and underly toned (Down syndrome) muscles into more comfortable positions. I also provided 1:1 therapy for a girl with autism back when I was in college- she was a little older than the fuzzy glove lover.
     If you’d like to learn more about autism, I recommend the delightful movie Autism: The Musical, and Act 2 of this episode of This American Life. Love On The Spectrum is quite illuminating and enjoyable too.

  

Haters harm themselves first

     David was walking his 14-year-old puggle, Dakota, down his quiet street in Glenview Tuesday morning when he noticed a plastic bag at the end of his driveway. Inside, a smorgasbord of antisemitic flyers. He called the police, then took a photo and emailed it to me.
     “I reported to the police and they are aware that it’s been happening in West Glenview over the last two weeks,” wrote David — I’m not using his last name; given he’s already received his ration of hate for the week, I didn’t want to invite more.
     He wasn’t terrified.
     “I didn’t feel threatened,” he said.
     Nor do I. Antisemitism is an odd brand of hatred. Usually, bigots try to shore up their broken selves by sneering at those they consider beneath them. But antisemites jeer at a group they imagine simultaneously beneath and above them, both rats and world dominators. Vermin who nevertheless run the banks, the government, the media. (I sometimes hear from readers whose careful analysis of this column detects a subtle Jewish influence, particularly when concerning subjects like Yom Kippur.)
     To be honest, I took only the most detached interest in the screeds; mostly, because they are an example of vanishing print media.
     ”That’s old school,” I told him. Almost nostalgic, like finding a Tony Alamo pamphlet on a bus station men’s room urinal.
     Normally, I wouldn’t magnify this stuff. It’s just dull. But distribution of antisemitic material is at “historic levels,” according to an Anti-Defamation League report issued Thursday, up 27% in 2021 over 2020.
     And I do have a personal insight I’d like to share, if you’ll journey with me back almost 30 years, to 1993. There was a Neo-Nazi named Jonathan Preston Haynes who murdered Dr. Martin Sullivan, a Wilmette plastic surgeon, because he gave patients what Haynes dubbed “false Aryan beauty.” As the case unfolded, it came out that Haynes had sent form letters seeking white supremacist subjects for a book.

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