In my adolescence, I was fortunate to meet the right person at the right time. I’m speaking of my mentor, Rich Roesberg.

There’s no one who has made a greater influence on my cultural life.

Growing up in the Pine Barrens and surrounding environs of southern New Jersey made artistic and intellectual engagement hard to come by. People who, last decade, abhorred the encroachment of big-box chain bookstores, to the supposed detriment of small independent bookshops, had no idea what it was like growing up in a place with no bookstore nearby. If there had been a Borders bookstore anywhere near me when I was growing up, it would have been a godsend.

As it was, though, I had my own godsend. One day my mother went into a Hallmark greeting-card store in a strip mall to buy some cards. The store also carried books — in fact, it was called Blatt’s Books — and I found in the back some secondhand comic-books. What I discovered when I took them to the front counter was the assistant manager, an elder in his late 20’s named Rich Roesberg, and a conversation about comic books that over the 35+ years since then has broadened into art, music, politics, and much, much more. “Uncle Rich,” as my gang and I started calling him, became my oasis.

Here’s an abbreviated list of what I found through him during my impressionable adolescent years:

1. A deep admiration for Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks and the Beach Boys
2. An appreciation for dada and surrealism
3. R. Crumb
4. John Cage
5. Cut-up (Brion Gysin’s technique)
6. Soupy Sales
7. The Bonzo Dog Doodah Band
8. Jean Shepherd
9. Bob & Ray
10. Steve Ditko (it was Roesberg who made me see how wonderful his work is)
11. Bill Irwin
12. Ernie Kovacs
13. Steve Allen
14. Uncle Floyd
15. Charles Bukowski
16. John Fante
17. Alfred Jarry
18. William S. Burroughs

DC Comics has a plan to “evolve” digital comic-book storytelling. Take a minute to read this, then come back here.

This commercial, for a transmission shop here in Burbank, beats anything Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce has ever done. And for obvious reasons.

Joe Stafford. A man of taste.

(I didn’t say good taste.)

Is this a vision of those boys’ future?

The photo above is of three delighted new subscribers to Mad magazine, courtesy of me. They arrived home from whatever it is they get up to during the day — who knows? could be anything — and found this surprise waiting for them alongside stacks of bills and mail appeals intended for their parents.

Who are those parents? They are my niece and her husband. Which makes these three my Great Nephews. Used in this way, though, the term may be misleading — I think they’re really pretty good, but “Great” seems like overstepping — so better to say that I’m their Great Uncle. (Much better.)

Why did I buy them an unsolicited subscription to Mad magazine? To ruin their youth, that’s why. Mad magazine has been a thumb in the eye to parents for 60 years and counting, and I’m proud to help continue that tradition. (That, plus I got a great deal on gift subscriptions.) Look again at the burst of excitement etched across their faces. I wish I could go back in time and do it again! It’s sure to be pandemonium in that house for quite some time.

It’s not just my niece I’m bedeviling with my mischief. Here’s a photo of another happy new subscriber, who was also surprised with a subscription that began on the same day:

Clearly, the derangement took hold immediately. (The leering Mexican demon masks in the background of the photo can’t hold a candle to this lunacy.) Here’s another shot from the same milieu, taken later that night:

No video games in sight. The Usual Gang of Idiots must be proud. Later, I saw this boy’s adolescent-anxiety-drenched sister reading this copy of the magazine, and then when I went looking for it later it was gone. I found out that my wife had taken it to read at work. Where does she work? She’s a respiratory therapist. At a hospital. (I have visions of patients dropping like flies while co-workers struggle to do the Mad Fold-In.) Seems everyone in our family is mad about Mad.

Here’s what hyperbole looks like: Mary McNamara’s over-the-top encomium to Maggie Smith, in today’s Los Angeles Times.

Choice bits:

“…a performer of such consistent, elastic and unique fabulousness that, well into her eighth decade, she’s practically become her own genre.” (Given that elsewhere in the same piece, the writer extolls Ms. Smith’s virtuosity of range, I can’t imagine what the genre would be. Except, perhaps, “classy old British actors in movies and television.” Is that a genre?)

“…the lift of an eyebrow, the tilt of her chin, and the world cracks open in her hand.”

“Smith is one of those women who has looked essentially the same since she was 20…”

Here is Maggie Smith in 1969:

Here is Maggie Smith in 2012:

Now, I too like Maggie Smith. A lot. But I don’t believe she is a genre unto herself, I doubt that she can sunder the forces holding together the globe, nor do I think she can arrest the progress of time. I just think she’s a really, really good actor.

As part of my continuing advocacy of the pleasures of reading, I offer this link. It’s to a blog run by young women who read books. Young women who happen to be topless. While reading those books. In public. Again, I offer this as a further means to spreading the joy of reading.

Here’s Andrew Sullivan on the death of the print edition of Newsweek. Or, as I’ve spelled it for years, Newsweak. Because by the time it was in there, it was over.

Which, for me, raises the salient point: In print or in digital form, who needs Newsweek? It’s not just the format that is dying — and to which Sullivan says good riddance — it’s the underlying concept of a regularly issued magazine intended for cover-to-cover consumption. Sure, I still get The New Yorker, but I’m not reading it front to back. Why not? Because unlike during the heyday of magazines (and newspapers), there’s incredible competition for my time from other information sources — most notably the Internet. Here’s how I’ll read Newsweek onscreen: If I’m searching for something and it comes up, or if something from it comes across to me in another way (through social media, let’s say). Otherwise, I’ll be reading Newsweek online the way I’ve been reading Newsweek in print the past 20 years: not at all.

In paper format, anyway.

Take a look at the slide below; it tells the story.

And yes, I’m still reading from paper. And I will miss the paper books too. And I suspect that moving from paper to screen will mean a further decline in reading. And remember the NEA study from about eight years ago that found that the number one factor behind whether children were readers or not was the presence of books in their house? The presence of screens translates into the further presence of video and games, not “books,” such as they’ll be. So I’m concerned about this.

But here’s the disturbing photo, and here’s the story about it.

Larry McMurtry is selling his books. Here’s how the Dallas Morning News reports it:

ARCHER CITY — This is Larry McMurtry’s hometown. Take one look around the hardscrabble landscape, meet a few of the town’s 1,850 Texastough inhabitants, and you’ll discover the inspiration for “The Last Picture Show” and “Lonesome Dove.”

McMurtry has been defining Texas for more than 40 years.

But, he admits, it’s time to get his affairs in order.

“I’m 76, and I’m thinking about my mortality,” he said.

“I’ve just started thinking about these things recently.”

The first step is “The Last Book Sale.”

McMurtry is not only one of the 20th century’s greatest American novelists. He also has spent the past 25 years buying, selling and collecting high-quality hardback books.

About 450,000 volumes, the fruits of his labor, now sit on the shelves of Booked Up, a retail store that consists of four buildings in downtown Archer City, in North Texas.

“I do not want to leave 500,000 books to my son and grandson,” McMurtry said.

“They are literate people, but they are not book people.

It would be a terrible burden to them. They don’t know the trade, how it works or any of that stuff. I do.”

McMurtry is not going out of business. He plans to auction off 300,000 volumes in separate lots of 100 to 200 books today and Saturday. The more valuable books will be sold individually — a first edition of Elmore Leonard’s “The Bounty Hunters,” for example. Or “The American Scene” by Henry James.

“If we get $1 million from the auction, I would be very surprised,” McMurtry said. “People come to auctions to get a bargain, not to pay top dollar.”

If he sells all 300,000 books, three of his four stores will become empty. The remaining, Booked Up No. 1, a former car dealership, will still display 150,000 books on its floor-to-ceiling shelves.

Books priced at $50 to $75 are McMurtry’s bread and butter.

Book dealers from across the United States descended on Archer City this week to survey the merchandise. Few of them were aware of the backstory that explains why a famous author tried to add books to his hometown’s traditional economy of cattle, crops and oil.

McMurtry first opened a bookstore in Washington, D.C. He wanted to acquire more inventory, but commercial real estate prices made space unaffordable. The same was true in most big cities. In Archer City, however, he could buy downtown buildings for $30,000 or $40,000 apiece.

Thus was born the experiment to transform Archer City into “a book town.”

McMurtry and his wife, Faye, divide their time between Archer City and Tucson, Ariz. She was the widow of Ken Kesey, who wrote the classic “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Kesey died 12 years ago. She and McMurtry got married last year.

Over the years, townsfolk and the author have carved out an uneasy peace. Those who once saw him as an uppity richand- famous guy have mellowed. And he has mostly ceased to paint himself as unappreciated for the artistic patina he brought to a blue-collar town.

“I feel very good about everything,” he said this week. “We have customers from all over the world. We probably have more customers in China than in Archer County. We have what a book town should have.”

I have somewhat fewer than 500,000 books, but I too have begun thinking of them as a burden. I enjoyed reading them, and I enjoy the thought that I could reread them (however unlikely that possibility), and I enjoy that people can come over and see them on my shelves: It sparks conversations and gives me the obvious thrill of their thinking me literate.

What I don’t enjoy is storing them.

The bookcases long ago became too full, and I’m disinclined to add more bookcases, and however often I’ve tried, it’s been emotionally almost impossible to part with any of the books.

At the same time, I’m just not an on-screen book reader. I’ve tried. There’s a book I want to read, a business book called “Secrets of the Hunt,” that I almost bought as a download. Two problems: I discovered just from reading the samples that I didn’t want to read it as a download; and I also couldn’t make peace with the notion that this download, for a non-physical item, was $12.99. In 2012, that seems preposterously overpriced for a download of creative content. I can get an album — or what we used to call an “album” — for $9.99. Or less. And listen to it over and over. Or I can download this one-time read for $12.99.

So here I am, stuck in this quandary: an inveterate lifelong reader, still buying books, letting them pile up, while I resent their presence in my house and put off the decision about what to do about all this.

It’s interesting to read this piece about Larry McMurtry and pick up the subtext: “In preparation for death, I’m unburdening — and I don’t want to burden my heirs with all these books.”

By the way — I’m in precisely the same morass with regard to my comic books. Every week, more arrive, while storage space remains limited. Worse, they require storage by title and issue number, which is more time-consuming. I also tried reading these online — I had a subscription to Marvel digital for a year — but found the experience utterly different from reading a comic book. (The panels move; there are no “pages”; there’s no tactile or olfactory involvement; the colors look too bright; etc.) And what I want to do is read comic books, not some digital simulacrum.

It feels strange to me to be in the camp with Neanderthal Man, viewing these new forms of humans with suspicion and dislike. But when it comes to reading digitally, there I am.

Finally, this: Two weeks ago I was eating my lunch in our conference room at Counterintuity office, and reading the Wall Street Journal while doing so. Our 20-something social media manager walked in and saw me and said, “Wow. I haven’t seen anyone do that in years.” “Do what?” I asked. She said, “Read a newspaper.”