I don’t wear a pince-nez. If I’m not mistaken, no one in the world does any more, unless time warps are real — an abandonment that seems to have taken place just a little before the mid-century. The only people I can imagine wearing it would be the whimsical , the glamorous, the eccentric, the art people.
But just because I don’t wear one doesn’t mean I won’t ever! I admit to being reduced to groupie mode when I see photographs of some fin de siecle culture heroes wearing pince-nez like nobody’s business (no rhyme intended) e.g. novelist James Joyce and world chess champion Emanuel Lasker to cite two. And I’m citing, speaking, for myself here. The girl-next-Scooby’s-table will be chortling if shown the photos of those, er, dudes. Change chortling to swooning if it’s George Clooney or Pierce Brosnan in sunglasses.
Pince-nez is to sunglasses as book is to e-book. Book, they say, will eventually go because of e-book. You can’t stop progress. Even the late cult literary figure J. G. Ballard said virtual reality will eat television alive.
I think I’ll pose for a photograph wearing pince-nez and reading a book before the New Year is here.
And I know exactly where to execute this exercise in Narcissism — at the Dumaguete City Public Library.
I visited the library last week, right after the fiesta. It had been two decades since I last stepped into its premises in the late 80s. The place was so dusty then — books in disarray, many kept in boxes and cabinets and plastic containers, if Homer wasn’t nodding. It was a transitional time — the library was about to morph from what it was then in the years of neglect and virtual dereliction into what it is now — just visit it.
The DCPL librarian, Mrs. Gima Cornelia, told us it’s only right that the library is conscious of its bright future: Dumaguete is a university town.
Indeed!
I told her of a possible resource where/how to obtain more books. There’s a bookstore in town that sells books really cheap. Some so cheap you can’t believe your luck if you happen to be the one who gets hold of them first.
Consider this: Marcel Proust’s seven-volume novel, The Remembrance of Things Past (the English translation from the original French) at only P35 hardbound edition! Lucky me in English. In Tagalog Nanglaki ang mga mata ko. That was last year. Only a couple of weeks ago or so, a student of mine at Silliman bought for only P50 The Collected Stories of Heinrich von Kleist. Who he? Only Germany’s greatest writer.
But perhaps there is no need for sniper tactics. The library counts on support from the American Embassy (the Thomas Jefferson Library in Manila) as well as the Rotary Club. Books from God’s plenty coming — if trekking — in.
Moreover, Chiquiting, Mrs. Cornelia says, has assured the library of his, the City’s — support. Soul food this time from the good Mayor! What could be more right?
But even that old derelict in the 80s astonished me — with just one book: The Signature of Things by the German mystic, Jacob Boehme. That book I couldn’t find — in neither of the two only universities in Dumaguete then. In fact not in any of the other universities I’ve taught in — UP Baguio, Ateneo de Zamboanga, and Maryknoll College. As a matter of fact, nowhere else that I’ve been to albeit I am not a well-traveled man. Neither in the libraries nor in the bookstores.
DCPL. Hmm. Appears to be code for ‘disciple.’ Jacob Boehme’s perhaps?