Where can one go to cogitate?
Let me think about that for just a minute.
OK, I’ve got it. The answer is: anyplace. If you’re determined to reflect, recall, contemplate, consider, analyze, integrate, weigh options, rank alternatives or solve problems–among the delicious variety of things the brain does while simultaneously barking out silent orders to the body to walk, talk, breathe, chew gum, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight — then there are many venues in the Chicago area at your disposal.
Thinking, of course, is not always a solitary occupation. Nor a quiet one. And thinking doesn’t always have to mean the pipe-smoking, tweed-wearing kind of activity only done in libraries and elegantly appointed parlors in stately manors.
The following is a highly idiosyncratic and richly subjective list that I call Keller’s Three Rules on Venues That Promote, Protect and Promulgate Thinking.
Meaning no disrespect to the many perfectly adequate book emporia in the Chicago area, a bookstore is not just a place in which to find books for sale. Some possess all the charm and ambience of an auto parts store. Only a few manage to suggest that their products are some-how special, touched with magic and fire.
Sadly, one must occasionally trade magic for a good cup of coffee or, even more important, for a good back list. Smaller independent bookstores–the ones whose owners and employees truly seem devoted to literature–often lack a Starbucks on the premises, and they may only be able to keep a limited number of books in stock. The behemoths known as Borders and Barnes & Noble–chains with multiple locations in Chicago–feature appealing coffee choices and snacks. And they also have great depth on their shelves.
For incisive book-related thinking, however, you can’t do better than to stroll the aisles of The Book Stall at Chestnut Court in Winnetka, (811 Elm St.; 847-446-8880). The staff has read just about any book about which you’d care to ask, and many more books about which they’re just yearning to tell you, and the place has a pleasant, kick-back-and-browse-to-your-little-hear t’s-content feel to it. You also can’t go wrong with the Seminary Coop Bookstore in Hyde Park (5757 S. University Ave.; 773-752-4381), whose catacomb-like location infuses its copious bounty of books with a Cask-of-Amontillado ambience.
Used books inspire a different kind of thinking: a chin-stroking contemplation of days gone by and books gone bye-bye. Used bookstores are supposed to be dark, cluttered, moody places where life’s inherent inequities–but why is Sylvia Townsend Warner’s work almost forgotten? It’s isn’t fair!–seem to hover gloomily in every dusty corner. Myopic Books, (1564 N. Milwaukee Ave.; 773-862-4882) is the place to brood upon the short shelf life of most literature.
No. 2: Well-Begun is Half-Done.
(Or: Sometimes a gorgeous entryway can make up for so-so innards.)
Listening to smart people talk about the books they’ve written is a great spur to one’s own intellectual delvings. The location of the lecture, though–especially that first glimpse–makes all the difference.
Look to The Newberry Library (60 W. Walton St.; 312-943-9090) for lectures on fascinating topics. And climbing those wide, welcoming steps to that magnificent foyer is an intellectual odyssey in itself. It puts one in mind of the French aphorism about walking: “Every step is a debate between what you are and what you might become.” The rooms in which the Newberry’s guests speak often are ordinary, but no matter; the entrance is entrancing enough.
The same is true of the Harold Washington Library Center (400 S. State St.; 312-747-4080), frequently the scene of lectures by speakers bound to get one’s neurons firing on all cylinders. The auditorium in the lower level is blandly comfortable–but, oh, that entrance! The gargoyles! The steep brick sides that look like random thoughts piled atop one another to form a single sturdy vault of the imagination!
No. 3: A Rolling Stone Gathers No Randy Moss.
(Or: Expand your definition of what’s “intellectual” to include sports).
The brain is stimulated by all manner of things, mental and physical. Far too often, though, people think “thinking” means books and paper and history class and algebra problems. They think it means homework.
Yet anything that challenges and inspires and perplexes and instigates, anything that transforms an inert state of matter–that’s a subtle, oblique reference to your gluteus maximus–to a moving state of matter is good for the brain. That can include participating in sports or even just walking at a brisk pace.
The intellectual benefits of exercise is an old story, though, and we’re don’t want to sound like your middle-school gym teacher. (“You, there! Keller! Drop and give me 20!”) We simply want to remind you that when writer Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), known for his mammoth novels thick with poetic description, put down his pen at the end of a marathon writing session, he’d storm out of his Greenwich Village apartment in New York and walk until dawn, muttering, “I wrote ten thousand words today. I wrote ten thousand words today.”
The next day, thanks to that dark march, he would be rejuvenated enough to sit down and start writing all over again. And as luck would have it, Chicago is one of the world’s great walking cities.
Don’t say, “I’m going for a short walk.” Try: “I’m going for a quick think.”
