Let’s call this a requiem for a retail friend.
Oh, Borders, I’ll remember you.
I remember buying an anthology of literary journalism from your store in Evanston as a freshman at the renowned Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. I greedily read the writings of Calvin Trillin, Susan Orlean, Tracy Kidder and others. I was convinced I would follow in those paths, creating amazing, long-form narrative non-fiction that helped explain the world to my readers.
As a senior in college, I picked up a copy of John Gardner’s “The Art of Fiction” from one of your establishments in Cincinnati while I was working an intern for a writing magazine. I was still going to be a writer, but, now, I was going to write a great American novel, possibly about the threat of the corporate American to the identity of the individual. I never even finished reading the book. It turns out writing, especially fiction, requires a lot of discipline.
Shortly after starting my first newspaper job in Aurora, I picked up a copy of “The Golden Bough” by Sir James George Frazer. See, I had started to study socio-cultural anthropology during my final two years of college. I was convinced I could still read the classics of the field while working as a journalist. Maybe I’d chuck it all to go back to graduate school to really study the field. I was wrong. Instead, video games, the Internet and bars were far more attractive than 100-year-old theories on the meaning of culture.
A few years later, I was living in the Milwaukee ‘burbs and I picked up a copy of “The Boys of Summer” by Roger Kahn. Then I was freelancing as a preps writer while working for a magazine publishing house. Maybe I could get back into newspapers as a sports reporter. I was still young enough to start over and, someday, cover the NCAA tourney or the Super Bowl. Still haven’t read that book.
Finally, in Houston, I picked up a copy of what are considered the canonical texts of Tai Chi. I had a job with stable hours. I had just finished an introductory Tai Chi class. I was convinced that I’d get my mind and body in harmony. This book, I actually read, but I haven’t been to a Tai Chi class in four or five months.
So, Borders, goodbye. I can chart the things I’ve always sort of wanted to do through what I purchased inside of your amazing stores. Sure, none of those worked out as I imagined. I’m OK with that. I had fun vicariously living potential dreams through your texts. And, even though you’re shutting your doors forever, I’m pretty good with how things have turned out for me.
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