The Great Social Recession of 2020 hit me just as hard as anyone else, but I've been lucky that The Corona Lockdown hasn't imposed the same damage to my individual concerns. I didn't lose my job (and working from home is actually a huge improvement), Haymarket has remained open on weekends, and I've kept up with my Three R's - reading, running, and writing. On the surface I've been doing fine, or about as fine as it's appropriate to be these days, but I must admit it's hard to remain fully confident in the future despite knowing we are probably past the worst of the pandemic.
It was therefore a huge boost to see libraries at the bottom of the Phase 2 reopening plan, which began last week. Nothing dramatic happened on June 8 - with doors and windows still shut, the books remained closed. But the whispers, oh the whispers, they tell a different story, indicating that a lot of behind the scenes work is going on to ensure the fastest possible return for borrowing services. The most recent news came in last night (editor's note - June 11) when I learned that the main branches in both Cambridge and Boston will reopen within a week of today for their version of curbside pickup. Would you like fries with your Maniac Magee? YES PLEASE. Asking for a friend here, but how many books is too many to request during a pandemic? Let's set the over/under at 16.5.
I split my seventeen books evenly across the two libraries - nine and nine. You may be wondering, how is that an even split? I decided to request Eureka Street at both libraries, just to ensure I get it ASAP. I am unusually impatient to reread Robert McLiam Wilson's novel. Its enduring lesson - there is a difference between a politician's actions, and a politician's supporters - does not require my elaboration in this election year. But events from the past month or so have cast new light on this lesson, particularly from the angle of how inaction is its own form of complicity. I think the time is right to read this book again and mine it for new insights. I'm looking forward to reporting back with my conclusions.
Interestingly, the book I'm currently reading - Hannah Arendt's Thinking Without A Bannister - is making some timely commentary of its own. In Arendt's mind, inaction and complicity have a stronger link than I recall being suggested by Wilson. I wonder if there is a clean explanation for how the authors reached their respective conclusions. One idea is that experience counts, Arendt having lived through WWII in New York City as a refugee from Germany via France while my understanding is that Wilson was in Belfast during The Troubles. But as I noted Sunday, it might be another case of how fiction and nonfiction serve different purposes, with the latter giving Arendt the distance necessary to make firm, decisive statements about her subject matter that Wilson could not afford in a novel he focused around people.
