How Things Change

Readers of my blog know that I think, and write, a lot about change. In particular, I like to contemplate how things in our everyday lives have changed and evolved over the course of my lifetime. An easy way to do this is to read, or re-read, a book that was written 20 or 30 years ago.

I recently re-read "Presumed Innocent," in anticipation of the sequel that was published a few weeks ago and I was struck by the fact that Turow's devilishly clever plot couldn't even have been written today. (Warning: spoiler ahead.) My extensive crime-fighting knowledge, gleaned from watching shows like CSI and Without A Trace, tells me that the book's hero would have been wrongly convicted of the murder based on DNA evidence gathered at the crime scene. There was no DNA analysis back in 1987.

This week-end I re-read "Scruples," the gossipy fashion and retail book that was published in 1978. There were several "Wow, isn't that quaint" moments in the book, including a lawyer sending messages from London to his Beverly Hills office via Telex, another character receiving (and "tearing open") a Cablegram, and a pub where patrons could amuse themselves by playing with "all kinds of those new pinball machines, the electronic ones." One female character who traveled a lot was described as someone who "flew only Pan Am."

For me, however, the true Wow moment came when the author was describing the Christmas shopping season: "Most retailers find that December 10, not a day earlier, is the magic moment for the Christmas rush to begin." Obviously this was back in the days when Christmas decorations didn't appear in stores until after Thanksgiving, and to me it sounds like it was three lifetimes ago.

There's lots of snarky blogging to be done about the overly commercialized, politically correct "holiday" season we all have to endure today so I'll probably have lots more to say about this. For now I'm getting ready to start reading "Scruples Two," which was written in 1992. If there's anything really interesting in it, I'll let you know.