I hated it. Or anyway, I thought so at the time.

I was 14. We’d moved from Hyde Park — the South Side Chicago neighborhood lovingly recreated in To Love Mercy — to Park Forest, a barren mud flat full of tract houses 35 miles south of civilized society, i.e. Chicago.

My parents were part of the “white flight” from Hyde Park in the early ’50s. Most Hyde Park Jews fled north but we fled south, partly because my dad’s office was south of the Loop and he didn’t want to commute through Loop traffic each day, and partly because he could get more home for the money in “PF.”

I don’t know about my sister Judy but I’d have voted NO. All my friends had fled to Winnetka, Wilmette, Highland Park. But Judy and I weren’t consulted.

Anyway, there I was, a member of the first class to go all the way through a full four years at then-new Rich Twp. High School. I was lost and adrift in a sea of strangers. White strangers (more about that below).

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but those others were mostly strangers too. Park Forest was a social phenomenon, a place where Phil Klutznick’s American Community Builders threw up 500 houses at a time, pretty much along the Henry Ford philosophy that you could have any color you wanted as long as it was black. You could choose from about half a dozen basic house configurations. Park Forest was case-studied in The Organization Man, a famous pop-sociology book of the time. But this midwestern Levittown had terrific schools, and it was cheap cheap cheap. Postwar families with kids flocked to “PF” from across the nation.

Even though those others were strangers too, they appeared more comfortable than I felt. Jocks, and the cheerleaders who adored them, ruled the school; even the teachers kowtowed to them. The rest of us were worms.

And boy, was it white. Among some 25,000 PF residents, not a single black.

In due course, I made friends — nerds like me. I slacked through classes. Some time around junior year though, I started getting a bit excited. I had a sensational American History teacher, Roy Larson, who went on to become principal. I had a goofy English teacher, name forgotten, who saw that I could write and kept pestering me to read Maugham. Then in senior year, I had two redoubtable instructors — Willis McNally for English and Will Hemeyer for Western Civ — who
actually were teaching college courses in high-school guise.

Flash forward.

Those nerds who were my buddies? They’re still my buddies and they aren’t nerds (nor, as Dave Rosenthal is at pains to point out, were they ever, except perhaps in my mind). We get together nearly every time I visit Chicago, and we’ll be together again Sunday night, Oct. 8, at the Mill Rose Brewery in Barrington — Rosenthal and his wife Anne, Dave and Jan Ensminger, the long-lost Dave McIntyre, and me. Last time we did this, we were joined by the fourth musketeer or fifth horseman or whatever, Bill Roth, who flew in from Carmel CA just to have dinner with us. Bill won’t be there this time, sorry to say, but any other Richites within earshot can stop by anyway and join us for a drink after 6 o’clock.

In high school, you could tell your closest friends what was on your mind without censorship or self-consciousness; they are the people who stay friends forever. I love these guys. I feel closer to them than almost anyone I know.

And the rest of those Richites? A lot are within earshot. When we were puzzling out the marketing To Love Mercy, I got the bright idea to send an e-mail to everyone from high school who might remember me. This, it turned out, was both brilliant (lots of book sales) and warming. I’ve re-established email contact with such dear people as Marion Levenson (Ross), Mike Dotten, Joyce Rotman (Brengle) and Lynne Rotman (Ansfield), Steve Radin (who’s cooking up a Vegas Class of ‘58 reunion), Charlie (then Chuck) Albright (who I’m hoping to meet for dinner when I appear at Borders in Columbus OH Oct. 22), Elaine Jacobson (Collins), Joe Livingston, Janet Hills (Wilkinson) and Bob Glomb (who both showed up at my Park Forest Library appearance last April), and undoubtedly others whom I’m forgetting and whose forgiveness I beg.

Park Forest evolved. In the late ’50s, while I still lived there, a black family tried to move in and a cross was burned on a lawn. I’ll say it again: a cross was burned on a lawn — not in Mississippi, but 35 miles south of the Chicago Loop. Then things went the way they always seem to, at least in the Chicago area: The neighborhood “changed.” Cheap housing and great schools a 10-minute drive from the new Ford stamping plant in Chicago Heights: Why wouldn’t African-Americans want to move in? As of the 2000 census, “PF” was 39.41% black.

And I have come full circle. On Friday, Oct. 6, I will be addressing two assemblies (the first at 11 a.m., the second at 1:15 p.m.) at my high school (now known as Rich East). My host is Traci Toth-Skievaski, Language Arts curriculum coordinator.

What am I going to tell these kids? This stuff, maybe.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Much to report:

• Leonard Lopate is TOMORROW. Tune in WNYC-AM (820 AM) or WNYC-FM (93.9 FM) at 1 p.m. Friday, Sept. 29, when I’m interviewed on this popular arts-and-culture show. If you aren’t in the New York tri-state metropolitan area, tune in at www.WNYC.org.

• ABC Channel 7 Chicago (WLS-TV) is SUNDAY. In the Chicago area, turn on your TV at 11 a.m. for “Chicagoing” with Bill Campbell. I am the first of three authors to be interviewed.

• Also Sunday, I’m on a panel of first-time authors at the CityLit Stage of the Baltimore Book Fair (4 p.m.). Earlier in the day, I’ll be at the Maryland Writers Assn. table signing copies of To Love Mercy. (How I get from Chicago to Baltimore in the blink of an eye is my secret.)

• Then it’s back to Chicago yet again. The first appearance will be Thursday, Oct. 5, 7 p.m., at the Roden Branch, Chicago Public Library, 6083 N. Northwest Hwy. Next day it’s that Rich East High School extravaganza; the school is (still) at Sauk Trail and Shabbona Drive,Park Forest IL. There’ll be further appearances in Naperville, Arlington Heights and Woodstock, but I’ll post again before they occur.

• Finally, this past Tuesday I spoke about the making and marketing of To Love Mercy to an audience of my fellow Washington Independent Writers (WIW) members. I made a low-quality tape of the event and sent a copy to the WIW office. If you’d like to hear it, contact me or WIW Executive Director Donald Graul, (202) 775-5150/info@washwriter.org.

Recently I included Barnes & Noble among big corporations that have brought us together and improved the quality of our lives, at least in some small way.

That posting focused on Starbucks, which I called our new Town Square. Well then, Barnes & Noble is our new Living Room.

What could be more pleasant, of a rainy Saturday, than popping by a B&N (or one of its big-box competitors)? There are easy chairs to relax and read in (usually taken, unfortunately) … a coffee bar with snacks to refresh and stimulate you … Wi-Fi for the workaholics and electricity for their laptops … and of course books. Lots of books, at low prices. Lots of magazines too.

There’s live entertainment — an author signing, often a famous one. You can buy an autographed copy but you don’t have to. There’s no charge either for the reading or the face time. Indeed, I’ve never felt any overt pressure to buy anything at any B&N (or Borders or Books-a-Million) I’ve ever visited.

I can hear the critics tuning up. The big boxes are heavy on recent titles but light on more serious stuff, they say, and it may be true. And the big boxes (Amazon.com too) helped kill the independent bookseller, critics add. This seems valid and it’s a sad loss indeed.

But hiding behind these critiques, I sense a degree of book snobbery. If anything, the advent of the big boxes mean MORE people are visiting bookstores now than before. Maybe they aren’t buying the classics, but they’re reading something. The criticism seems knee-jerk to me too — small good, corporate bad. But critics take note: If it’s books you want, most small stores just don’t have them in stock. They simply aren’t big enough.

Ah, but you don’t need lots of books, the critics will respond, if you have knowledgeable booksellers. Yes, independents are famed for having knowledgeable, well-read booksellers who’ll steer you to the book your heart desires. But here’s Barnes & Noble’s little secret: so do they.

Their booksellers are damn good. Maybe not the equal of booksellers at a good independent, but a lot better than critics credit them for being. I make this claim on the basis of appearing in more than 20 bookstores since March, from big boxes to small independents.

Helpful, knowledgeable booksellers. That’s why I put B&N above Borders, whose staff generally does not impress me. (I don’t have enough experience with Books-a-Million staff to make the same comparison, but BAM is a somewhat different animal. Their greatest strength is regional, the South, for one thing; and some of their stores are not big boxes.)

Full disclosure: B&N has been our great friend and supporter. B&N’s Small Press office in New York gave its seal of approval to my novel To Love Mercy. More B&Ns have hosted me than any other chain. They’ve put posters in their windows and some have even built “end caps” for my book. (Until you’ve seen a dozen copies of your novel in a stately pyramid at the end of a row of B&N shelves, you haven’t known ecstasy.)

A B&N assistant manager, Debbie Smart in Arlington Heights IL, has singlehandedly done more for To Love Mercy than almost anyone alive. Her most recent act of kindness was to put the book before her school district; and one of those schools, Wheeling High, has responded by placing To Love Mercy on the reading list for the Multicultural Lit class. I’ll be making my third appearance at Debbie’s store at 13 W. Rand Rd., Arlington Heights IL, on Sunday, Oct. 8, 2-4 p.m.

Borders has been a mixed bag for us, welcoming us in the Pittsburgh region but slamming the door in our face in the Chicago area. I’ve been in four BAM stores — including a personal-best signing at the BAM in the Chicago Loop, where they sold 16 copies in two hours — but BAM has canceled four other scheduled appearances in the DC area because my publisher is not an approved BAM bookseller. (Not for lack of trying either; he keeps applying, and BAM keeps not processing his paperwork.)

B&N, Borders and other big boxes have wrought other fundamental changes in the book business. Now they even behave like publishers, having a say in what your book looks and read like. Their purchasing clout has turned them into the tail that wags the bookselling dog.

But have the big boxes undercut the American public’s taste for good books? Visit any of them, note the crowds, then tell me what you think.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Leonard Lopate next Friday! Tune in WNYC-AM (820 AM) or WNYC-FM (93.9 FM) at 1 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 29, when I’m interviewed on this popular arts-and-culture show. If you aren’t in the New York tri-state metropolitan area, tune in at www.WNYC.org.

P.P.S. And speaking of high schools … my alma mater, Rich East in Park Forest IL, has invited me to return to the scene of the crime Friday, Oct. 6. I’ll be addressing two student assemblies. Revenge of the nerds!

P.P.P.S. Finally, hear about the making and marketing of To Love Mercy at a Washington Independent Writers “PubSpeak” next Tuesday. Date/place: Tuesday, Sept. 26, 7 p.m., La Madeleine, 7607 Old Georgetown Rd., Bethesda MD. WIW members: $5 in advance, $7 at the door. Non-members: $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Reservations required: (202) 775-5150 or rsvp@washwriter.org.

The results of the corporate sweepstakes are in and here are the winners and losers.

I go first.

• Amazon.com. How could I have overlooked it the first time? Amazon has truly invented something unique — the computerized cognate (look it up) of the bookstore. Adding innovation upon innovation, Amazon has simulated key features of the bookstore experience and piled on new ones of its own. Examples:
• The “Look Inside” feature lets you browse before you buy
• Customer reviews give guidance (but take them with a grain of salt)
• Recommendations, based on what you’ve bought (sometimes annoying but often useful)
• Capitalized phrases, concordance and text stats for more guidance
• Gaggles of additional features — “plogs”, customer discussions, general forums, “product wikis”, tell-a-friend, “listmania” and others — I haven’t even tried yet

Amazon also offers authors and publishers fab-o sales tools — “Search Inside” (huge!), keywording, tagging, search suggestions, and probably others I don’t know about.

Amazon is easy to use. And it’s cheap. What’s not to like? (Except if you’re a brick-and-mortar bookseller.)

Your reactions to my Starbucks posting were most interesting. Got a lot of love-hate re Starbucks … ditto Wal-Mart (mostly hate) … My daughter Shawn Goldstein nominates Martha Stewart for “Good taste and style for the masses” … Anne Core loves “TiVo!” … Barb Kaplowitz is mad at Nordstrom’s for being so wonderful Back in the Day, then turning merely ordinary … Pippin McGowan loves White Castle (Sliders! YECCCHH!) but condemns Best Buy. And Pip loves Borders (watch for my next blog, Pip).

Ken Seibert gets the last word. Ken’s mad for …

“Apple. One of the best companies on the planet. Why? Because they are unswervingly dedicated to providing the absolute best user experience in every product they make and every service they offer.

“Their retail directive is ‘Surprise and delight’. And how does one achieve this? By hiring the best of the best. Training them in the skills they need to be great. Ensuring that each and every staff member has what they need to support them in doing and becoming their best.

“Apple is a tough place to get a job with and an even tougher place to work (if you’re a slacker.) There are rules to follow and very high standards to meet. And managers who instead of criticizing and yelling when you do something questionable, simply begin by asking you how you came to the decision to do it the way that you did. And then suggest a mutually beneficial change.

“I learned this as a ‘Mac Specialist’. Essentially a sales clerk making $11 an hour in one of the Apple Stores. And I have never had so much expected of me while simultaneously being treated with the utmost respect. I’ve always appreciated Apple’s products. But after working with them for a few months, I’m even more impressed with their clarity and thoroughness of purpose. They are crystal clear about their mission and providing whatever resources are necessary to achieve it.

“That it’s resulted in ‘only’ a 3 to 4 percent market share of computers is SO not the point. They are not a competitor with Microsoft or HP or Dell or Gateway. Billy boy won the who’s-going-to-sell-the-most-operating-systems decades ago. He’s a master at it. One of the all time greatest business people ever. But he’s peddling mediocrity.

“Oops, I seem to be standing on a soapbox. Sorry. But may I just mention that the t-shirts they require retail staff to wear are made in a union, American shop instead of a child labor sweatshop.

“I think Apple is changing the culture by providing products and services that are a surprise and a delight instead of a struggle. It was the original promise of computers after all.”

Thanks, Ken.

Next time: Barnes & Noble.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. To Love Mercy has been added to the recommended reading list in Multicultural Literature classes at Wheeling (IL) High School — yet another coup for the redoubtable Debbie Smart, Barnes & Noble bookseller extraordinaire.

P.P.S. I’ll be meeting booksellers this Sunday (9 a.m.-noon) at the Mid-Atlantic Book Publishers Assn. It’s at the Valley Forge Convention Center, 1160 First Ave., King of Prussia PA.

Then, a week from Tuesday, I’ll be talking about the making and marketing of To Love Mercy in a “PubSpeak” sponsored by Washington Independent Writers (WIW). Date/place: Tuesday, Sept. 26, 7 p.m., La Madeleine, 7607 Old Georgetown Rd., Bethesda MD. WIW members: $5 in advance, $7 at the door. Non-members: $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Reservations required: (202) 775-5150 or rsvp@washwriter.org.

Starbucks coffee has a burnt taste and it’s not just me. A lot of my
friends agree. Yet we go there.

I go to Starbucks (or an imitator) after tennis. To read the paper. For
a snack (or for the coffee — yes, I drink it). For meetings. To be
with people. To be alone.

I go there with my laptop to write; it’s a great anonymous place, and
you know they won’t kick you out or bug you for your table. It offers
wi-fi too, so I can fall victim yet again to e-mail, The Great
Distractor. My publisher, Patrick Grace, goes there to edit new books.
My daughter, Shawn Goldstein, practically lives there. If you’re oot and
aboot, Starbucks is usually the best place to pee — even in Manhattan,
the hardest place in America to take a leak. (Except skip the Starbucks
at 53rd and Harper in Chicago, which doesn’t have a bathroom.)

Fact is, Starbucks is not about the coffee. It (and its imitators) have
changed our lives. They offer us a gathering-place for the new era, a
safe and friendly Town Square, with overpriced coffee (but economists
call this an “affordable luxury”), Frappuccinos, low-fat baked goods and
other quasi-healthy fare (at least around here — we stopped in a
Starbucks in Milwaukee and there was nothing even comparable).
And The New York Times, God bless ‘em.

And no booze. Bars, which we had to bump along with until Starbucks and
its imitators came along, are principally places to drink. Social
discourse occurs, to be sure, but you know. Not the same.

I could go on about how Starbucks is a countervailing force to the
atomization of our culture, and I will a bit. We’re all cocooning in our
little niches these days, busy on our cell phones, isolated with our iPods,
wasting hours each night catching up with our favorite websites or
watching Channel 1,943. I’ve done my bit to help this trend along,
earning my living creating and marketing niche business-to-business
news to business-to-business niche audiences. Starbucks or anything
that brings us together to communicate face to face … or even be silent
in the presence of other 98.6-degree organisms … is a good thing.

So here’s to you, Starbucks, for changing the culture in a good way. I
lift my grande half-decaf leave-some-room-for-cream to you and other new
jewels of the American corporati, including, in no particular order:

– Barnes & Noble (more about this one in a coming e-mail)

– Stores you like to shop in even when you don’t need anything,
including Home Depot and Costco (and my wife Carol would add Target)

– Netflix (Watch what you want, when you want, keep it as long as you
want. Isolating, sure, but what the hey — I’m part of the culture too.)

– XM Satellite Radio (Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for
free? Because the cow stopped giving milk; all the cow gives now is
commercials. My pal, new-media guru Gary Arlen, thinks Clear Channel
Broadcasting and its greed singlehandedly killed broadcast radio, thus
paving the way for XM. Tune in “Fine Tuning” [XM Channel 76] and
rediscover radio as it was meant to be.)

– Trader Joe’s (to die for) and Wegman’s (to die in)

And, because it wouldn’t be fair to list good companies without also
listing those that suck:

– Verizon
– Blockbuster
– Comcast
– Comcast
– Comcast

Which companies do YOU think have changed the culture for the better
in some small way? Which do YOU think suck? Let me know and I’ll post
the best answers (i.e., the ones I agree with). Rules: Must not be local
companies, and those that suck must have PERSONALLY dissed you,
broke a promise, let you down, or otherwise stuck a metaphorical finger
in your eye.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. LEONARD LOPATE! Friday, Sept. 29, noon-2 p.m., WNYC-AM and -FM, New
York City. WNYC’s signal blankets the tri-state New York metropolitan area.
I’ll be on for 20 minutes, somewhere in that two-hour time block. Don’t know
exactly when, so listen to the whole show already.

AND … if you read and loved To Love Mercy, please nominate it for The
Quills Award. From the website description:

“The Quills, an initiative launched by Borders Books & Music with the
support of Reed Business Information and NBC, is an industry-qualified
“consumers choice” awards program for books. The Quills celebrates the
best adult and children’s books of the year in 20 popular categories,
including Book of the Year, plus an committee-selected award for best
Book to Film.”

Anyone can nominate anything. Visit www.thequills.org. Do it today, as they say.

Why do I rise in defense of the English major? Heck, it wasn’t even cool when I was one.

For one thing, it was gay. (Well, not masculine. Back in that day, “gay” meant “happy.” Also, most English majors were women. In the present day, as men get ground into the dust of college life by newly empowered women, miseducation, bad role models and terminal testosteronicity, I can only imagine.)

For another, the English major was seen as impractical. We undergraduates were reminded regularly that the highest-paid starting jobs would go to the engineers, followed by the business students, with us liberal arts graduates bringing up the rear. (If English was seen as an impractical major then, how much moreso must it seem today?)

In truth, English was not as impractical as, say, philosophy. Among other occupations, you could teach; you could become a writer or editor; you could become a reporter. I did the latter.

In the early ’60s, a fair number of working journalists still didn’t have college degrees of any kind, let alone journalism degrees. You learned on the job. Now the “J” degree has become something of a credential; but what’s the point of taking editing classes when, on that first job, they’re just going to teach you to do it their way? I thought, and still think, that a degree in English Composition (mine) plus a lot of social science courses (mine) were a dandy background.

I liked being an “English Comp” major. For one thing, the “Comp” part meant I could take whatever Lit courses I fancied. (The Lit majors had to take one from Col. A, one from Col. B, etc. — 17th Century Continental literature and suchlike godawful drudgery.) “Comp” majors also were required to take one year of writing workshops, which didn’t differ significantly from the workshops I took decades later at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda MD. (Big plug for the Writer’s Center: 8 sessions, $275 members / $300 nonmembers. That’s $35 a session or less, and many instructors are big-time talented. Fall workshops forming now; check out www.writer.org.)

And I loved reading those great novels — books I’d never have read otherwise. A partial list of the ones I loved most: Anna Karenina, The Way of All Flesh, The Magic Mountain (grit your teeth through the first half), The Red and the Black, Madame Bovary, and, yes, Ulysses. I remember sitting in the student union, reading Ulysses and chuckling. Other students would walk past me, eyeball the cover, and register shock. But trust me, Ulysses is a lot easier than its reputation; it is also one of the funniest novels ever written.

So I was having fun. Only dimly did I realize that they were teaching me how to think. Papers and exams were exercises in left-brain critical skills. The masters’ prose was shaping my own skills of expression. And the ideas and truths expressed via literature, both directly and indirectly, hit harder and sink deeper than ideas and truths expressed in most other ways.

I realize it now though. My dear son Sam is a theatre major at NYU, studying the same kinds of things I did as an English major at Northwestern (except Sam is reading plays instead of novels). He reports that most of his classmates are careerists who want only to be Hollywood stars. Whenever he tries to start a discussion of ideas, they look at him funny. At this supposedly elite school, political correctness runs rampant these days, and the ideal of a liberal education seems pretty dead.

Poor kid. With my old-fashioned ideas about a liberal education, I’ve ruined him.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Coming big event: The Leonard Lopate show on WNYC-New York City. WNYC is the nation’s largest public radio station. It blankets the NY metro area with both an AM and an FM signal. Leonard Lopate’s weekday-afternoon interview show is influential. All thanks to publicist Michele Sobota of MediaConnections, who bugged the Lopate people into acquiescence. (Yeah, they like the book too.) They’re considering whether to have me on air for 20 or 40 minutes — not bad! No date set yet but the appearance is confirmed. Watch this space.