An evening somewhat, but not entirely, wasted
The Harvard Coop announced it was hosting "an evening with the authors of Bored of the Rings," which sounded like a neat trick seeing as Doug Kenney died in, what, 1980? So, being a great fan of the book back in the day, naturally I went to find out. It was much less than it sounded like: a reading by about a half-dozen current undergraduate 'Poonies, in front of about two dozen fairly empty chairs. The first 'Poonie read the first couple of pages of BotR, and three or four others read short pieces in still much the same Lampoon style*-not cringingly sophomoric, but nothing epic either. They were giggling out of all proportion to the humor of the readings, probably thanks to artificial ingredients. It took all of half an hour. There were three, maybe four, of us in the audience, in those two dozen chairs; me and one other guy had brought our copies of the original 1969 edition, which they all stared at in a wild surmise, having apparently never seen it before. (Here's a little-known fact: according to Wikipedia, BotR has never been out of print since it was first published.)
* Added: "same Lampoon style" not meaning "same as BotR" but "same as when I was in college." Just disambiguating.
So if it sounds like I was unimpressed by the reading, that I was. But the Coop! I was way impressed by the Coop. The Mass Ave storefront is only half the size it was in my day, but it's all bookstore (including cafe) and a very classy bookstore at that. Not all bestsellers, serious content, wide aisles, curving (not quite spiraling) staircases-even a whole green-and-red double bookcase of the Loeb classics! Must go back. (When was the last time I had gone into the Coop? Probably sometime since I was last working in the Square, in 1986, but obviously not lately.)
And can't leave you without harking back to the Good Old Days when BotR was part of the barony's active cultural vocabulary, when we could toss off quotations like "Look! The Winged Victory of Samothrace!" in the middle of a tourney bout, or say of Patri's dancing "Sure can dance" "Sure gonna die!" or the eternal classic "He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. It's a pity I've run out of bullets, he thought." There: I'll stop at three quotes, although I'd love to go on and on.
* Added: "same Lampoon style" not meaning "same as BotR" but "same as when I was in college." Just disambiguating.
So if it sounds like I was unimpressed by the reading, that I was. But the Coop! I was way impressed by the Coop. The Mass Ave storefront is only half the size it was in my day, but it's all bookstore (including cafe) and a very classy bookstore at that. Not all bestsellers, serious content, wide aisles, curving (not quite spiraling) staircases-even a whole green-and-red double bookcase of the Loeb classics! Must go back. (When was the last time I had gone into the Coop? Probably sometime since I was last working in the Square, in 1986, but obviously not lately.)
And can't leave you without harking back to the Good Old Days when BotR was part of the barony's active cultural vocabulary, when we could toss off quotations like "Look! The Winged Victory of Samothrace!" in the middle of a tourney bout, or say of Patri's dancing "Sure can dance" "Sure gonna die!" or the eternal classic "He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. It's a pity I've run out of bullets, he thought." There: I'll stop at three quotes, although I'd love to go on and on.