Literature a la carte

Today's random thought explores one way that books are different from other forms of human expression.

Books are alone among creative works in that they demand such a great quantity of time to absorb them. A typical book -- say, the 'Brothers Karamazov' -- might take several weeks to read, and that's with few distractions. But most other works of art come packaged in forms designed to be taken in at one sitting. Most works of music clock well under an hour, and all but the longest operas are done in an evening. Films don't often go beyond a couple of hours.

A painting, however large, is designed to be seen at once, unless it's one of those extra long "cyclotron" paintings they used to do in the 19th century, like the Civil War one I remember they had on display at Gettysburg, Penn. when I was a kid.

Even in the world of words alone, full-length books are the odd man out. Short stories are, well, short. Magazine articles are, too. Poems are usually downright pithy. But books, real books that take days to digest, aren't.

So what to make of this distinction? Is the very length of a book, and the amount of detail that it contains, the reason for the form's persistence? Is that alone what makes a book a singular thing? Or is that one reason why the importance of books is declining, and that few people read them. We just don't have time.

So wouldn't the pressures of our age, then, lead us to a literature where brevity is indeed the soul of wit, and everything else, for that matter? If we're going to have a literature, isn't it worth trying to tell stories and rearrange life in print in a form that limits the reader's commitment to two hours, just like a good movie?

And to expand on that further, maybe the way to go is to create a set of stories, all of which clock in at the two-hour limit. They'd all have to stand alone, on their own. But they would also be interconnected, with common characters and locations and themes, though it wouldn't matter which one you read first. That way you can allow for people's reading habits and tolerances in the contemporary age, but also still create an extended feast that could take advantages of all the power and sweep of a typical book's length. Read as much as you want. Literature, buffet style.

Just to drive home the point, set some action in one of those multi-ethnic all-you-can-eat buffets that have popped up in towns around New England, and presumably elsewhere, with Chinese, Italian, Thai, and other cuisines gracing the steamer trays. Ice cream, too!

How to ruin an airline terminal

I first saw United Airlines' Terminal One at Chicago's O'Hare Airport in April, 1989, when I changed planes there on the way from Manchester, N.H. to Minneapolis. I found the then-new complex exhilarating.

I loved the way the glass and steel and vaulted ceilings all seemed to say "We are a classy airline and this is our home base." I loved the way the noses of aircraft came right up to the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the main concourses; I remember staring in wonder at the sheer size of a nose of a Denver-bound DC-10 parked right against the glass.

I loved the underground pedestrian walkway, with its 750-foot-long jazzy neon sculpture "The Sky's The Limit" accompanied by a new age reinterpretation of the Gershwin 'Rhapsody in Blue' melody that was a big part of the airline's marketing; the cumulative (and brilliant) effect, I thought, was to calm harried passengers even as the moving walkways sped them to the satellite concourse. I really responded to the gestures to train station architecture in a terminal that somehow seemed to celebrate travel itself, complete with views not only of planes close-up, but also the vistas of tailfins slicing past as aircraft conducted takeoff rolls on a nearby runway.

Terminal One was all movement and excitement and precision, designed to allow tens of thousands of passengers to switch planes at once and also coordinated with the airline's recent redesign and then-new blue/gray fleet paint job. It made me feel like changing planes was a highlight of the journey, like I was part of something that really worked, that my trip mattered enough for my planes to connect in such an impressive place. Hubs, with banks of flights arriving and departing virtually in unison, were still a relatively new thing then. Terminal One made me think United had not only found a way to make hubbing work, but transform it into an experience that put some of the lost magic back into air travel. It was something on par with Eero Saarinen's great "TWA Flight Center" built in the 1960s at New York's JFK Airport.

I've changed planes in Terminal One many times since, and also flown in and out to visit in-laws. And though I always enjoy passing through, over the years I've noticed a gradual erosion of many elements that made the place memorable. United Airlines itself has been in dire financial straits for much of the time, and I'm sure that's a factor. Knowing that, I guess we're fortunate that so much of architect Helmut Jahn's original conception actually still survives. But alas, this once-grand structure stands diminished, in some cases drastically, by changes that ironically act as a reflection of the reduced circumstances of Terminal One's patron.

I went through Terminal One on Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2010 and took a few photos that show how to ruin an airline terminal. Here goes.


Above is a view of a bank of Internet access kiosks topped by a promotional banner set up along the corridor on Concourse C. This serves to block the once-exciting views of aircraft, both close-up and out on the busy tarmac. Instead of the windows involving you with the action of one of the world's busiest airports, you are instead in just another shopping mall.


Above is a view of a 757 parked behind the kiosks. To get this image, I had to push my camera through a narrow opening and hope for the best. And so a building once designed to connect people with aircraft ready to carry them to the sky above now has all the impact of a bus station.


Above is another view of how retail kiosks have metastasized throughout the Terminal One's glass corridors, turning the place into more of a shopping mall than anything celebrating transportation or promoting the idea that United Airlines is different in any way from any other airline. Well, I suppose revenue is revenue, and if ways can be found for an airline terminal to generate it (especially for a financially troubled carrier), then whaddaya gonna do? It's just a shame it has to be done at the expense of ruining one of the building's distinctive elements.


While some kiosks block the view, others are just plain ugly. Don't these harmonize nicely with the terminal's blues and grays and red accents?


And if it's not kiosks, it's banners and billboards. Terminal One's impressive vistas are now spoiled by banners plastered everywhere. This one is particularly depressing, as it not only spoils the view to the outside, but also degrades the experience of the escalator ride down to the moving walkways.


Is this any different from the notorious Kodak billboard that defaced the interior of Grand Central Station for so many years? Wasn't it a cause for celebration when the Kodak thing was finally removed, helping Grand Central's original beauty come forth?


Back at O'Hare: Even worse are oversized video screens that now hang from the terminal's vaulted ceilings. These spew a constant stream of visual noise at passengers, replacing intentional majesty and dignity with random hype and tension. They cheapen any encounter with Terminal One just as much as another ubiquitous addition to the air travel experience...


The constantly blaring gate area televisions. Turn them off! I hate these things, which are now inescapable. It's like we have no reason to think or converse or read. Same with commercials at gas pumps. Please, please leave me in peace!


And right across from the blaring TV was one of the most uninviting Starbucks I've ever seen. How did this come about? The whole front is taken up by a billboard for another company; the store itself is accessible only through a narrow door with crash gates still in view at mid-day. It just looks creepy, on par with those big box pharmacy stores with large windows that are all blacked out. What's that all about?


Terminal One was built prior to the current level of passenger screening, but luckily the B Concourse was spacious enough to accommodate a big retrofit without too much trouble. There are some rough edges, however, such as this really, really ugly temporary wall and door that shout "We don't care!" to passersby. Hope they're removed soon.

Down below, the "Sky's the Limit" kinetic neon sculpture continues to wink on and off above passengers' heads, and is in surprisingly good shape after nearly 25 years. The new age Gershwin soundtrack is still pinging away, too. But a closer inspection reveals problems: some sections of the neon lights are stuck permanently on, while others (like this one) don't light anymore, diminishing the affect in the same way a broken tooth diminishes a smile. Get it fixed, United.


Here's another mystifying situation. For years, United used these bulky counters in the gate areas, which I always thought looked ugly and blocked the views. In recent years, the airline has installed a network of plasma screens that serve as the dispenser of all relevant info at each gate, eliminating the need for the bulky kiosks and their destination lists, etc. So why are the kiosk still there? Get rid of them, or if agents still need work areas, replace them with something minimal.

Despite all this, there is still plenty to admire about Terminal One. Check out this view of the connecting corridor linking Terminal One with the rest of O'Hare, gussied up not with marketing banners but colorful artwork that lends a festive touch. Nice!

I guess ultimately it'll take more than neglect (the roof was leaking in one gate area the day I passed through) and bad incremental decisions to do in Terminal One. Despite the metastasizing retail kiosks and visual noise and clutter, it's still one of the best examples I know of a for-profit corporation (well, allegedly for profit, in the case of United) investing in something that celebrates the experience they're selling.

Dogs and consciousness

Dogs, I think, are repositories of consciousness.

I believe that our sense of self-awareness, of being alive and knowing that, is the one magic thing we can point to about being human. It's our consciousness, and more specifically our self-consciousness, that makes us in some way sacred in terms of the cosmos. Whether or not we're alone in that regard, or part of a club of "intelligent" creatures that may or not be all that exclusive (and we may never find out), it's hard to say.

And dogs, I think, function as repositories of consciousness that's being stored and carried on through generations for some higher purpose later on. Right now, it's certainly underutilized: they scratch themselves, they chase things, they goof off. (So so a lot of people, too.) Perhaps all this reserve consciousness is being held back until it's needed for some unimaginable future purpose. Perhaps dogs are kept as man's best friend because we are somehow programmed to keep them close as a back-up reserve of consciousness for some higher purposes to come. Sort of like spare batteries.

I will someday write a piece about stray dogs and time travel that will employ this concept. In the meantime, I have to go feed the spare batteries.

If everyone gave me a penny...

The population of the United States is 300 million people. If everyone took a moment to send me just a penny, then I'd have $3 million. And that's enough to retire and live in comfort and not do anything useful for the rest of my life, and with enough to contribute generously to my favorite charities.

And would anyone really miss the penny? I doubt it. When we drop them, we don't even pick them up anymore. Clerks sneer when you ask for them in change. We regard them as orphans, tossing them into ubiquitous "Give Penny Take A Penny" cups, even as our nation professes to scorn socialism.

So send them to me.

I thought of this while pondering Kool-Aid, which was created in Hastings, Neb., not far from where I am right now. A fortune was created by little packets of powder that cost 10 cents each starting in 1927, later reduced to five cents a packet in the depths of the Great Depression. Tiny packet, tiny profit. But then comes the magic of volume. In business, Kool-Aid shows the power of high volume, even on a small price item. Starting in 1927, everyone really did give Edwin Perkins a penny, sometimes over and over again.

And in the realm of ideas, it shows how a notion, however small, can easily take hold and circulate and become powerful and widespread without really much effort at all. Something to think about.