By Oliver B. Pollak
POINT REYES STATION, California — I had heard on NPR that Steve Costa and Kate Levinson wanted to sell a bookstore they had owned since 2002 in this delightful Northern California coastal town, and get on with new life opportunities. In 2016 they interviewed prospective buyers. Karen and I looked at each other in 2016 and silently said no. We had a small book business in the 1960s, not again.
Steve and Kate settled on a young couple in the book trade, Molly Parent and Stephen Sparks who had worked at Green Apple Books in San Francisco. Stephen longed to own an independent bookstore. A good deal all around, for Levinson and Costa, Sparks, Parent and Point Reyes.
Recently, I went in. Looked around. Place was busy. Asked my usual question, I write for a Jewish paper, is there anything in the store that would have a Jewish angle? It was not obvious at first. Well that was a challenge, how do you identify Jewishness?
Here is the Jewish identity punch list: First name, last name, be alert to name changes from Goldschmidt to Goldsmith or Gold, and by marriage, subject of the book, where was the author born, where do they live now, where educated, profession (doctor, lawyer, writers, academic, finance), Wikipedia – mother and father, spouses, who they married, names they gave their children, interviews, languages they speak, Hebrew, Yiddish, speaking engagements, honors, what groups they belong to. Could be Jewish by birth and heritage but are atheists, agnostics, unaffiliated, outside the fold.
The Nazis checked birth records – don’t go there. Who is a Jew controversy in Israel – don’t go there. Rhinoplasty, don’t go their either. DNA, 23 and me, not a chance.
What happens when you can find nothing and nobody Jewish? Inconclusive, and why does it matter? If I am going to spend 20 hours reading a book I want to know about the author. Despair, there’s gotta be Yiddin somewhere. Maybe the people buying the books. Text and expressions, throw a ways, Oy vey, putz, Israel. Keep looking! Change you angle of vision.
So here is this attractive round table with colorful alluring titles, like Fucking Apostrophes; The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck; Fuck That, an honest meditation; Does it Fart — Animal Flatulence, two books entitled The Book, and How to Break up with your phone, and Ten Arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now. That is 8 books out of 26.
Thoughts entering my mind and purse, how much did I want to spend, how could my local library satisfy me? My 12-year-old grandson sat on a small stool in the back and consumed three graphic novels, I think comic books. Priceless.
The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (2017) by Robert Dijkgraaf and Abraham Flexner, published by Princeton University Press — of renown for also having published On Bullshit (2005) by Harry G. Frankfurt — struck me as appropriate at $9.95 and it included a 1939 essay by Abraham Flexner who by convincing the American Medical Association to adopt the German medical education system revolutionized medical education in America. I know this because I read Iconoclast: Abraham Flexner and a Life in Learning (2002), and knew the author, Thomas Neville Bonner, fairly well, giving some input to his own autobiography. He died before it was published. Lesson, very hard to push your autobiography if you are not around to do it. My grandfather was an early 20th century graduate of a German medical school with a 21×36 inch diploma. And guess what, Bonner’s work is not mentioned among the 16 titles in the bibliography. If I’ve ever felt dissed for not being included as a footnote, in the bibliography or Wikipedia bibliography, I am over it.
Now as to the total array of 26 titles, none on the face of it had Jewish themed content. Jewish authorship stood at 15 percent; Flexner, Alberto Manguel (one of my literary heroes, I have four of his books), Jaron Lanier, and Amaranth Borsuk, who according to a website is fluent in English, French and Hebrew, and a UCLA graduate. 15% is five times the Jewish 3 percent of the American population, but 15 % is still lower than I would have expected. There must be some hidden Jews.
As the people of the book, not our moniker alone, and people of the prose, I will read The Book(s) redux soon. An anomaly, same title, different authors, Burkhard Spinnen and Amaranth Borsuk. I left the store after watching people look at books, listening to conversations, observation. I concluded that ‘Well-read people, even of the same age and perhaps faith, but of different gender, have read different books than me.”
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Pollak, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska Omaha, and a lawyer, is a freelance writer now based in Richmond, California. He may be contacted via oliver.pollak@sdjewishworld.com