¶ In New York’s taxis these days, the default setting on the video screen that’s mounted on the partition behind the driver is some sort of news show. But if you press the right button, this annoyance gives way to a a still and silent photo advertisement. Until just the other day, the only ads that I had seen were for the rival taxi-summoning apps, Arro and Curb, but on my way to Lincoln Center on Saturday afternoon I saw something new, a generically attractive living room arrangement of sofa and — do they still call them coffee tables? And while we’re asking questions, is there a word for a box from which two parallel sides have been removed? That’s what the table in the photograph was. The front and rear sides of this low box table, richly finished but faux-crude, were open. On the top of the table, there was a vase of spider mums and a carafe of water, with two tumblers. On the bottom of the table, a shelf of sorts, there were four large books, two stacks of two. All you could see was the tops of the books, so you could imagine that they were the kind of large volumes that you either have or aspire to have, and not somebody else’s choices.

My problem is that those four books, or however many there are, will lie there eternally, undisturbed, possibly even forgotten. They will cease to be actual books and become actual furniture. If I had an intern, the books would be changed every month, and I might actually pull one or more of them out, just to see what was there. And I could count on the intern to tell me where last month’s books might currently be found. But when I do this myself, it’s just make-work. 

The idea that visitors are going to leaf through these albums is a fantasy. No one is abandoned in our living room long enough to start looking for something to read. Which reminds me: magazines. The art director for the furniture ad evidently knew that four substantial books send a very different message from two stacks of magazines. We’ll save magazines for another day, when I am wiser. 

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