Not just a pretty face...

"I hate to use an ugly word like 'hypocrite,' so picture it in a lovely floral typeface."

Randy Cohen, "The Ethicist," The New York Times Magazine

I don't recall what thorny dilemma evoked this comment; I was too captivated by the notion that changing the size, shape, and color of a word or phrase might render it less objectionable.

I figured it was worth a try, so I opened my word processing program with its many, many fonts and typed a few words, including proper names, that get on my personal wick.

It's kind of fun: highlight the word, scroll through the typefaces, look for the least apposite to its real meaning, and pick an inappropriate color. The last entry in the list above, for instance, is a face called "Jokerman." (In retrospect, I should have used Bankers Gothic for "poverty" and colored it the green of newly printed currency.)

Originally, I had planned to see what George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can't Say on the Radio" would look like in the aforementioned "lovely floral typeface," but I can't remember what they are. Although I'm sure they're out there on the Net someplace, don't look for them here anytime soon.

Of course, there are many varieties of distasteful language, many words that make our individual toes curl, whether they are universally deemed unpleasant or not, and they aren't the same for each of us. I invite you, therefore, to give it a try with your own list. (Considerately, I have left "Rush Limbaugh" and "Ann Coulter" up for grabs...)

What 'City of No Illusions?'

This past Sunday's Buffalo News business section brought me an absurdly cheering bit of information: the city often called "The Buckle on the Rust Belt" and by other depressing monickers is the home of Milk-Bone dog biscuits, America's No. 1 doggie treat, and the company is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary.

That got me thinking about the businesses that haven't decamped from Western New York: a whole lot of them make people (and their pets) happy, or at least give them a whole lot of enjoyment. Consider these:

• Cheerios (General Mills)
• Perry's Ice Cream
• Anchor Bar chicken wing sauce
• the kummelwick roll
• Righteous Babe Records
• Rich Products frozen eclairs (and other goodies)
• Fisher-Price toys
• Ford gum balls
• kazoos
• New Era baseball caps
• QRS piano rolls
• the Sunday comics pages (Quebecor)
• Harlequin romance novels (U.S. distributor)
• Dyngus Day (Poles in most other parts of the country never heard of it.)
• and last but not least, the new headquarters of Labatt's USA

Say what you want about our lack of illusions---we know how to have a good time!

Notes from Hamada, Hamada, Hamada, CPAs

Every fiscal year, when at last I sit down with the many-paged questionnaire provided by the accountant who prepares my taxes, I feel as though I have been taken over by the spirit of Ed Norton. Not the actor Edward Norton, the unforgettable character Ed Norton portrayed on "The Honeymooners" by the equally unforgettable Art Carney.

A classic "Norton" schtick involved his elaborate preparations to sign a document---typically an agreement into which Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) was attempting to inveigle him. Shooting non-existent cuffs and adjusting equally invisible lapels, he stretched his fingers, cracked his knuckles, squared the paper just so, picked up the pen, and made several passes and flourishes in the air before getting it anywhere close to the dotted line, ultimately driving the short-fused Ralph beserk.

As a writer, I know all about procrastination and its uses, and believe me, I've used it. There is something about those official numbered forms, receipts, and year-end statements, however, that bring my inner Norton to full, fluttering flower.

(Please note: Norton and I are both clients of the noted Wall Street firm, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Ziggy.)

First, I select an auspicious day and clear my calendar, opting always to begin in the forenoon. I like to think my mind is fresher then, particularly if I've greeted the sun with yoga stretches. A nutritious but light breakfast ensues. (Hmm, will coffee make me more alert or just twitchy?)

Now I assemble the materials: legal pad, mechanical pencil with eraser (which I should fill with leads and replace the eraser, if I can find any), a pen (which could also use a refill), mini binder clips bought specially to attach documents to pertinent pages, color-coded file folders, solar-powered calculator (which needs charging, so put it on the window sill), and the bulging folder into which I have been tossing receipts for charitable contributions, property tax bills, and all those envelopes marked "Important Tax Documents Enclosed" that I never bothered to open. Sticky notes! Where's the stapler?

Now I need my checkbooks and registers for the past year. Wow, this file box is a mess! It would take just a sec to put these registers in order---where are the rubber bands? Oh, and look here, it's time to re-order checks.

As long as I have the checkbooks out, might as well take care of some bills; the mail carrier will be here soon. Speaking of whom---I probably should shovel the front walk and put down some ice-melter; the walk looked slippery this morning.

Okay, I'm back. I fed the cats, moved the wet laundry to the dryer, started the dishwasher, and wound the grandfather clock. I've earned a Diet Pepsi; if I'm working at the dining room table, I need a coaster. And I need music. Who is more conducive to financial computation---Oscar Peterson, Tony Bennett, or P.D.Q. Bach?

I'm getting awfully hungry; I can't think on an empty stomach. Do this after lunch? Or start fresh tomorrow? Norton was always up for a nosh; he'd understand.

Light my fire, but don't Kindle my books!

In my last post I wrote of some reading I'd recently enjoyed and am now impelled add that a good part of the enjoyment came from the fact that I had done it the old-fashioned way: sitting, sometimes reclining, in a comfy chair or on the couch, holding an ancient but ever-marvelous object called a "book."

I point this out because lately every time I go to Amazon.com in search of more such objects, Jeff Bezos tries to sell me something he thinks I'll like a whole lot better. The Kindle, "a wireless reading device," weighs a bit more than half a pound and measures a tad smaller all around than your basic trade paperback. It has a screen, a keyboard, and a button that allows you to move from page to page. The text appears as black on white, and you can change the size but not the font. There is no color capability yet, so forget art books, graphic novels, and Martha Stewart Living.

In short, it's a oversized GameBoy with boring graphics.

The big deal about the Kindle, which some digital gurus have called "the iPod for books," is that it holds up to 200 titles and can deliver The New York Times and other major newspapers, as well as magazines, via a high-speed data network, which is also how you download the books from Amazon's Kindle Store. Reportedly, if you find yourself wide awake at midnight and have nothing to read, you can download Sue Grafton's latest mystery (or any other author's) in less than a minute. And you don't even have to get out of bed to do it.

Given my oft-repeated experiences of running for a plane with a cumbersome bag of books banging against my hip, the Kindle could be the answer to a reader's prayer. Except...

Like all electronic marvels, the price tag for the Kindle and its peripherals is almost as big as the device itself: $399 plus another $100 or so for memory cards, power adapter, reading light, battery, USB cable, and a cover (to protect the screen and to prevent your seatmate from peeking at the racy passages).

Oh, and then there are the costs of the contents, something to consider if, like me, you're fearful of getting marooned on a desert island or in Cleveland. Most books are $9.99 a pop, so if you want to take the full complement, that would be nearly $2,000; The Times will cost you $13.99 a month, almost as much as a month of Sunday editions on the newsstand, not to mention you can't do the crossword puzzle. Such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, Fortune, and Time will run $1.99 a month. Each. Ouch!

For a person who believes a day without reading is a day without sunshine, fresh air, food and drink, it might almost make economic sense. But not to me. Call me a literary Luddite, for I can get neither my head nor my senses around a book that is not a "book" in the traditional form. You may indeed be able to absorb yourself in "Pride and Prejudice" by scrolling and clicking; I prefer the richer experience of settling myself with my gently used copy (hardcover, illustrated) and leafing quietly through the story of Elizabeth Bennet's romance.

I love the look and smell and feel of books, old and new, used and fresh from the book club; I love the seemingly infinite variety of typefaces and the way they subtly enhance the words on the page. I love the color of the paper: whitest white, browned around the edges, speckled with foxing, and (in the case of "Pride and Prejudice") an antique ivory. I love the varicolored bindings and slipcovers on shelves, stacked on the floor, lying on tabletops, arranged spines-up in a wooden crate. I love the inner walls of books I have built in most of the rooms of my house. (The crowded shelves in my bedroom give it an unofficial R-30 rating.) I love the perfume of paper, ink, glue, binding, and---often---the faint whiff of mildew that tantalizes with the hint of an old and wonderful tale to be discovered.

Most of all, I love the feel of a book in my hands, its binding tight from the bookbinders or comfortably loosened by long and familiar use, its weight, the texture of the cover or the slipcover under my fingers. And the pages---oh, the pages, smooth as silk, rough as linen, thin as tissue, thick as parchment! With all the senses engaged the pages become a part of the story, one with it, in a way text on a screen never can.

I remain devoted to this "wireless reading device," this time-honored creation of ink, paper, hardboard, glue, and thread.

Fortunately, I am not alone. Writing of the Kindle a couple of Sundays ago in The New York Times, Randal Stross, who reports on digital matters, contradicted alarmist social scientists who say Americans don't read anymore thus, "The book world has always had an invisible asset thatmakes up for what it lacks in outsize revenue and profits: the passionate attachment that its authors, editors, and most frequent customers have to books themselves."

Epilogue: Coincidentally, in the same edition but in a different section of The Times in which Stross reviewed the Kindle, I found a far more elegant solution to the problem of taking your library on the road, Tom Stoppard's book satchel. The British playwright was photographed with his case crafted in bridle leather by Manhattan luggage maker T. Anthony, purveyor to the carriage and Cunard Line trade.

Slightly larger than a bread box, it holds a small shelf of books.

Said Stoppard: "If I am on a journey where I only have time to read one-and-a-half books, I never know which one-and-a-half I feel like reading. So I bring eight." Me, too.

Yes, you must check it through. No, they don't make them anymore. Sadly.

About this week's picture: it was taken in the stacks of the library at Trinity College, Dublin, and appears in "A Glimpse of Erin: Photographs of John Francis McCarthy and Words of Sean O'Casey." An Irish friend tells me it must have been taken before the windows in the stacks were painted black to protect the bindings from sun-fading.

Giving Just His Due

I recently and happily made Ward Just's acquaintance while browsing the Nearly New shelf in the public library. It was an introduction long overdue, something like finally meeting the mutual acquaintance whom friends insist you will find charming. Even though his work is not the sort that makes The New York Times best-seller list or merits Book of the Month Club selection, critics consistently praise his fiction and frequently remark that he does not receive the notice he deserves. I kept him on my lifetime list of authors to sample, sometimes adding a mental asterisk or underline when I read yet another glowing review. "Must check out Ward Just," I'd think, then move on to the latest chart-topping novel.

My "handshake" with Just was his latest novel, "Forgiveness," which probes the emotions of an expatriate artist (and sometime CIA operative) after his French wife is left to die in the mountains by a quartet of Middle Eastern men entering the country illegally. This is Just's first novel set in post-9/11 Europe, but the politics are nuanced and underplayed, and the stateside Americans who make brief appearances do not come off as either sympathetic or admirable. Sometimes the view from abroad can be salutary.

Since our first meeting went so well, I wanted to experience more of Just's milieu and decided the quickest way to get the broadest sampling was to lay hands on as many of his short stories as I could. To the best of my knowledge, there is not yet a Collected Stories of... volume, so I requested "Twenty-One: selected stories by Ward Just" and "The Congressman Who Loved Flaubert," a previous compilation, from the library. (There's a fair amount of overlap, but I would have missed a half-dozen good early stories if I hadn't asked for both.)

It was probably the best fifty cents I've spent in a long time.

Just, a former Newsweek editor and war correspondent in Vietnam, tells the tales of journalists and military officers, congressional aides, State Department analysts, CIA apparatchiks, and the occasional elected representative, in pre-Bush-Clinton-Bush Washington and on their assignments overseas. His characters are complex, conflicted, and---a rarity these days---conscience-stricken. (In "Noone," for example, a Roman Catholic congressman agonizes over the wording of a news release announcing a separation from his wife and the obligatory phone call to the archbishop in his home district.)

Many of them are midwesterners educated in the Eastern U.S; they are American to the core, even when (like Just himself) they live abroad a good deal and are well-read, well-spoken, and well-versed in the arts. They smoke, drink whiskey and gin martinis, and are for the most part honorable men.

Lord, how I miss them!