Roscoe Street

I can't get over buying remainder books. I'm starting to have quite a stack that I never should have bought in the first place, even if they did cost $3.95 or less. But when the mail comes, if there is a flyer from the cheap books people, it's the first thing I look at--comfortable armchair shopping, not much money ventured, titles that intrigue me. Thus it happens that I am now reading a book of essays entitled "On nature". This didn't seem like a risky title for me. Nature's my big thing and many of the authors of the essays are people whose writing I've admired. But as I read along, it's been getting weirder and weirder. One essay, "Killing wolves", is indeed about killing wolves in Alaska with graphic descriptions on how they're skinned. Then comes Joyce Carol Oates' contribution. Well, she always has been a little odd. Her essay starts with her lying flat on her back on a path in the park, looking up at the sky. She is having an episode of tachycardia that started while she was out jogging. Perhaps that explains why her thinking seems a bit hard to follow. The gist of it seems to be, 'nature writing sucks and nature's not much better". The next essay is by a young lady who says she's scared of nature. She feels much safer in a city. Here's a sample: "They say you'll see everybody you know if you stand long enough at the corner of State and Madison. I see Louis, that is all that matters. I am talking about a building. I am talking about Carson Pirie Scott designed by Louis Sullivan. The green and rust filigree ironwork. The design is inspired by organic shapes, the same energy of nature that animated Whitman. This ersatz vegetation fills my heart, the way that Sullivan's first view of a suspension bridge shook him up as a boy. An exhilaration. The same feeling I get from walking down a certain street in my neighborhood, Roscoe--the pedestrian scale of the two-flats and three-flats, the undulation of the brick fronts, the Italianate eyebrows on the windows, decorative carvings on graystones--the way someone must react to the undulations of corn, cloud, furrows." Hey--Roscoe Steet! That's where one of my sons used to live. Maybe one day, when he was out walking with his dog, Morgan, he passed Miss Sandi Wisenberg walking down Roscoe, safe and happy as a clam. (He, however, once got mugged on Roscoe.)