The Pleasures of the Door by Francis Ponge

This is my first Wellington Square Bookshop blog post!
Here is a poem about the satisfaction we get from doors (our new shop will feature doors). Translated very quickly by my friend Mackensie from Le French.

The Pleasures of the Door

Kings do not touch doors.

They don't have this happiness: to push in front of the self softly or roughly one of these great, large familiar panels, turning it towards himself, to put it back in place,-- to take hold of a door in his arms.

...The happiness of grabbing one of these high obstacles to a room by the stomach on the knot of porcelain with one's fist; from a rapid body to a body in which the step is detained for an instant, the eye opens and the entire body accommodates itself to its new apartment.

With a friendly hand he still holds it, before decidedly pushing and closing it, -- this which the click of the powerful but well-oiled spring agreeably assures him.

Great News

Emma Alpern, Henry James scholar in residence at Bard, will soon be contributing to the WSB blog. We can't wait. She is witty, has a sardonic sense of humor and beautiful red hair. Keep watching, but beware!

My Detachmant

I read My Detatchment last night, by Tracy Kidder.  It was about his year in Viet Nam.  The most unusual aspect of this book was that he was honest enough to portray himself a dweeb and a coward during the war, when he was in the oxymoronic intelligence division of the U.S. Army.  He was a second, then first lieutenant, overseeing a motley crew of disrespectful and journeymen grunts who had neither respect nor military obedience toward him.  He, throughout the book, lies, grovels and rationalizes.  It was a courageous act to write this book, and he didn't have to now that he is 60 years old, and semi-famous!  I guess it is now 40 years later.  It wasn't exactly uplifting but it reminded me of the difficulties inherent in being a 23 year old nerd.   Being an officer in Viet Nam at that age is unimaginable to me.