Lost Journal

Humor Column
by Tim Mollen
February 15, 2007

It’s All Water Under the Bookbridge

Journal Entry:  March 6, 2004 (age 34)

Note:  This Saturday, February 17, 2007, the doors will close for the last time on the Bookbridge bookstore on the Vestal Parkway.

Except for a few weeks at the beginning and end of each semester at Binghamton University and Broome Community College, it’s pretty quiet at my job at the Bookbridge, a college bookstore.  I spend some of my afternoons at the front counter trying to come up with a good jingle for our little business.  Yesterday, I had just come up with “Like a Bookbridge over troubled bookwaters,” when my manager, Peter Checkett, interrupted me.  “Tim, I need you to do some extra cleaning today.  I just confirmed that Senator Chuck Schumer will be holding a press conference here tomorrow.”

Apparently, the senior senator from New York is concerned about the skyrocketing cost of college textbooks, and is pushing for passage of legislation to address the issue at the federal level.  I guess he chose our store as a backdrop because we sell extremely expensive textbooks, instead of the REALLY extremely expensive textbooks at the bookstores on campus.

The whole business is something of a racket.  We act as middlemen for mammoth textbook publishers who flagrantly gouge students with expensive new editions of textbooks that come out far more often than is necessary.  “Yes, people, you need to buy THIS YEAR’S guide to ancient architecture, because it comes with a mandatory CD-ROM that you will never use.”  But at least our store offers a slightly better priced alternative.  And I can tell you from personal experience that the people who work here are not getting rich.

Despite the low pay, this is a nice place to work.  I am responsible for ordering all the books that aren’t textbooks, to sell to the general public between rushes of textbook purchases.  This allows me to spend some of my time flipping through book catalogs and reading The New York Times Book Review.  I am overqualified for the position, but who isn’t in a bookstore?  Bookstores are almost universally manned by intellectuals, artists and voracious readers who put up with the drudgery of retail for a discount on volumes of Foucault.  People like that, from the managers to the seasonal student employees, are fun and interesting to be around.

Our assistant manager, Jonathan Caws-Elwitt, is a good example.  Jonathan is a Harvard graduate who made his mark as the lead singer and songwriter for a 90s indie-pop band called The Silly Pillows.  He is also a 14-year Bookbridge veteran, which, in a just world, should qualify him for a free, first edition collection of the complete works of Foucault.  Then he could sell it back to the store, and go for an afternoon of bowling with the proceeds.

Today, as Schumer finished a short question and answer session, my mind raced with all the things I should have asked.  “Are there better systems in place in other countries for keeping textbooks affordable?  What are the chances that the Congress will act on such an unglamorous issue?  Do you feel awkward when an oldies radio station plays ‘Chuck E.’s in Love?’”  Not having that last question resolved will haunt me for the rest of my life.

© 2007 Tim Mollen

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