Levenger journal entries

My friend Ben doesn't live with me anymore. This is a shame, because he's a great guy. But his mail still arrives at the apartment, which is how his copy of the "Levenger: Tools for Serious Readers" catalogue fell into my hands.

Ben actually is a serious reader, but he can't be described as a serious spender. In fact, the last time we spoke, the availability of gratis frozen pizza was the prerequisite for him to make the long 10-minute trek through the dangerous slum of Cambridge, Mass., to his former abode. But the pizza was unavailable, and so, as a result, was he.

This sort of practical thinking puts most of Levenger's fanciful offerings squarely out of his price range. They include "slightly wild, microbrewed inks" ($39.95), leather wallets for those little colorful sticky things you use to mark pages ($24.95), a "Winston Churchill" lamp ($569) and small leather boxes that hold up to four watches ($259).

Most of the catalogue, in fact, seems to be designed to prevent rational people from making purchases, what with the leather this ($169) and the Euro that ($399).

But the most interesting items in the catalog aren't knickknacks, geegaws or gadgets. They're the entries penned into two display versions of expensive leather journals.

The catalog photo for the Stanley Journal ($49.95) is heart-rending. Written in the sort of handwriting one might expect from an 8th-grade girl who is getting straight As but will never enjoy The Big Lebowski, it reads as follows:

One less bell to answer. One less egg to fry. Isn't that how the song goes? Not that I fry eggs anyway. Too much fat and cholesterol. But I digress... I'm just trying to keep my mind busy with other thoughts, I suppose. I'm not meant to live alone, to have everything to myself. Some would say I am lucky now, but all I do is cry.

All I do is cry. The reader — of a writing accessories catalogue, mind you — is immediately led to think of a pert Manhattan socialite, weeping all over an Ikea chair, too unhappy to go to yoga and gorging herself on a small ramekin of creme brulee left over from last week's baby shower. David has gone to Costa Rica, and he isn't coming back. The dreaded anthropology dissertation has finally come between the two soulmates who loved cats almost as much as they loved each other.

But what are the Levenger people thinking? That by pouring out the innermost thoughts of shallow fictional people assumed to resemble their customers they can increase sales of $50 journals? That by turning Levenger into an emotional funhouse for yuppies they can prompt people to pass the thing on to friends? "Please, Chad, you have to read this — some of the journal entries are truly moving."

Less emotionally overwrought but equally powerful is the entry written (in the same hand) on the pages of the Medici Journal:

An interesting topic was brought up at dinner this evening. If you could naturally be talented at one thing, what would it be? Also, other questions must be taken into thought and consideration. Would you want this talent to please others, to make money, or just for the sheer joy of being able to do it, whatever it may be? Of course, the conversation was very light on the subject, but it has stayed with me, and I have been thinking about what my talent would be.

How fascinating! Not only is this journal writer consumed by powerful emotion, but a channel of surging intellect courses through her mind. What talent would she choose? In fact, what talent would any of us choose, given the enormous range of possibilities? Not since the "if you could be any kind of animal, what kind would you be" question divided Voltaire and Newton has a single theoretical query so riven great thinkers around the world.

Incidentally, Voltaire chose to be "a Great Panther with Claws of Steele." Newton countered that "One must not choose Adaptations which Nature Herself cannot provide," adding that he would like to be "a Swallow, with Delicate Wings and a Cunning Beak."

That's the sort of backstory that Levenger's skimps on, sadly. One can only hope that subsequent catalogs will address this edition's historical shortcomings — and keep producing new passionate revelations from our mystery diarist.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)