If Friedrich Hegel had been a modern-day independent bookseller, the period between Christmas and New Year’s would have been his favorite time period. It is the most dialectical week of the year, I mean to say. Consider the sudden extinction of momentum, followed by the retrograde motion of reflection and exhaustion arcing back around and then upward toward restoration and re-invigoration. Consider also the spiraling vortexes of inventory taking and replenishment, alongside the retrograde action of accounting and tax preparation. It’s Reason in History made flesh, and I’m certain Hegel would have loved it. Speaking for myself, I cannot claim to be so lofty. I find it to be the oddest, most disorienting week of the year. That being so I sought some guidance from Friedrich Hegel himself.
Brechner: One thing I wonder about is whether to bring Plenty More back in with numbers. Normally cookbooks don’t sell much outside the fourth quarter but that one is just so exceptional.
Hegel: Oh indeed. I think you should. Eating vegetables is hardly a seasonal event, and the book’s novel organization, aligned with its stunning graphics, give it every indication of being a world historical cookbook.
Brechner: Thanks. Was there any strong seller this season that you do think was very holiday-specific despite not having an overt holiday theme?
Hegel:  This may be hard for you to hear but I’m going to speak of Crap Taxidermy. I know you did wonders with it but with the holiday season gone by it will go back to being a fun thing to flip through at the store and cease to be the perfect gift for anyone with a sense of humor.
Brechner: I hear you. But what about the bigger picture, that subtle sense of transition, of the store’s identity shedding a skin and needing to be slightly reinvented at the very moment one feels most inclined to coast and preserve its culminating annual moment? How does one embrace the annual mundane year-end pressures when one is least disposed to them?
Hegel:I can understand your sentiments, but movement has no sentiment.  And whether you direct it or are simply subject to it is your province. But think, does the helmsman ride the storm only to run upon a reef in calm waters the next day due to inattention?
Brechner: Good point. Well, thanks for sharing your perspective with us.
Hegel: Not at all. And do bear in mind, as you move forward, that our epoch is a birth-time, and a period of transition. The spirit of man has broken with the old order of things hitherto prevailing, and with the old ways of thinking, and is in the mind to let them all sink into the depths of the past and to set about its own transformation. A very happy New Year to all of you.