Taking the whole spine to write the title

I came home from the bookshop

yesterday with Miss Madison's

thrillingly learned Vegetable

Literacy and Anne Applebaum's

decidedly undelectable Gulag,

having somehow eluded the po-

etry section, entirely. There

had been no known object to

this foray but a purchase of

viticulture's finest period-

ical, whose latest issue had

not yet arrived; but the new

Madison hadn't been expected

and I blamed myself for Anne

Applebaum, whom I encounter-

ed in History, Europe, while

hoping to make it as far as

Spain, where I did ultimate-

ly find Mr Beevor's reliable

study of the civil war which

I'd not revisited since col-

lege (Borkenau, Brenan, Fra-

ser, and naturally, Orwell).

But I stray. Probably every-

one remembers John Hersey's

interesting nightmare novel

from 1974, out of Kafka and 

Malthus, My Petition for 

More Space, on appealing to

the bureaucratic gods for a

little more room, which the

publishers of Gulag seem to

have found it timely to a-

ward to Applebaum's title,

leaving no square cm of her

spine unstamped with that

grisly acronym of roughly,

State Camp Administration.

Lucky for her, Denisovich

had already been taken, or

she'd yet be at her lathe.

Now, this is said to be a

worthwhile frame of refer-

ence for the late Soviet

project in the productiv-

ity of enforcement; and no

connoisseur of the crimes

of its era can do without

it. But I can't say enough

for the printers' offense

against the good order of

one's library, by allocat-

ing 1.25" of font height,

and 0.5 of width, to each

and every letter of this

five-figure neologism set

within a spine of refrig-

erator white.

Who could reasonably ob-

ject, do you suppose, to

discerning the thoughtful

face of Alexander Pope at

twelve paces from a shelf

-- laid into Yale's spine

for his collected poetry?

You could say, a library

might do worse in a lode-

star for true north. But

this extremity of noise,

for a monstrosity upon a

monstrosity, only leaves

a library feeling like a

chamber of horrors.

Someone will tell us all,

one day, why Steve Pincus'

enormous white 1688, also

from Yale, doesn't manage

to roil the metabolism of

assimilating information,

with the gasp which must

always greet Anne Apple-

baum's embonpoint of text.

She is a graduate of Yale,

summa cum laude at that;

but, alas, her publisher

is Anchor, who must still

be striving to vindicate

their name. Possibly they

could consult J. Press on

discretion, at least with

projects from New Haven.