The Books of Magnolia Market at the Silos: Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Monument to Decadence

Photo by Carlapendergraft via Wikimedia Commons

“Pardon my sanity in a world insane.”

― Emily Dickinson

Magnolia Market at the Silos gets almost everything right.

Attractive white shops and colorful food stands surround meticulously kept gardens and green lawns made of synthetic turf. Large contemporary-rustic pavilions give visitors a break from Waco’s heat while relaxing on bean bag chairs or picnic tables. Situated next to a quaint renovated 19^th century church is a small but immaculate wiffle ball stadium where kids run the wrong way around the bases and fathers try to hit their full-grown son’s best “curveball.”

The friendly staff bustle about their posts at the shops and concession stands, offering a warm welcome to every visitor who comes their way. Up-beat, unobjectionable music plays over speakers everywhere throughout the complex.

By all appearances, Chip and Joanna Gaines have successfully capitalized on their customers’ desire for “good things” that seem to amount to a blend of trendiness and nostalgia. They almost got everything right.

Sitting on a decorative mantle among plain clay vases, a bronze clock, and dried plants are books with their spines to the wall. The rustic look of aged off-white pages interrupted by slivers of faded color from the covers fits right in with the general feel of everything else. But, sucker for old books that I am, I could not help but pull a couple off the shelves.

Expecting only to find fake props or obscure old cookbooks, I discovered hundred-year-old editions of masterpieces from renowned authors including Flaubert and Dickinson. These books were not alone in the complex. I found a beautiful old copy of Goethe (facing the correct way) among other ornate old works of German literature in a women’s apparel shop. Sitting as props on a bottom shelf in a furniture shop were two-hundred-year-old volumes on law with the former owner’s signature still inside the covers. Inside another shop were shelves stretching to the ceiling with old books, some of which had evidently had their spines ripped off for the aesthetic value.

Bibliophiles will undoubtedly take offense at this treatment of great works, and normal folks will roll their eyes at us bibliophiles. While strangers on the internet with too much time on their hands will debate the significance of how Chip and Joanna Gaines treat their books for the sake of the books themselves, sitting on Magnolia’s shelves with its spine inward will be a copy of The Ring and the Book by Robert Browning, a Victorian poet.

About a mile away from Magnolia Market is the Armstrong Browning Library which serves as a museum for the work of Robert Browning; his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning; and other important 19th-century artists. With soaring stone columns, intricate woodwork in the walls and fixtures, stunning paintings and portraits, a practically inexhaustible library of great works, and the world’s largest secular collection of stained glass (each window worth appreciating in turn), the Armstrong Browning Library serves as a monument to the transcendent. But in contrast to the crowds at Magnolia Market, the Armstrong Browning Library sees few visitors except for the occasional student who knows a good place to study when they see one.

Both Magnolia Market at the Silos and the Armstrong Browning Library claim to promote good and beautiful things. One markets and sells mass-produced wooden utensils and $16 jars of matches. The other offers for free once-in-a-lifetime works of art to any who will spare the time to step through its heavy metal doors.

Despite this disparity in the riches they offer (one making the owners rich while the other enriches its visitors), Magnolia remains the attraction in Waco. Thousands flock to Magnolia from all parts of the country each week and obliviously walk by a volume penned by an artist whose elegant library and museum sits mostly ignored only a short distance away.

Why is this worth fussing over? People, of course, need to decorate their homes. There is nothing wrong with wholesome nostalgia, fun attractions, or good food. Trends will come and go, and we can hardly fault successful businesses for capitalizing on them. The issue is not Chip and Joanna Gaines. They are only supplying what is demanded.

The real trouble is that a fulfilling life of the mind is not in very high demand these days. People still love the thought of intellectual sophistication. The great books serving as baubles on Magnolia’s shelves speak to this fact. But the hordes of consumers eager to part with their money buzzing around unnoticed books serving as decorations while an invaluable center of real culture escapes the notice of Waco’s newfound tourists is the perfect representation of a serious flaw in our culture.

A culture’s aesthetic development is important (there is room for debate about how well Chip and Joanna Gaines really advance this cause), but its roots in the intellectual lives of its members give it life. A culture devoid of intellectual vibrance will inevitably decay. Our culture’s aesthetic taste has become a mockery of intellectual life; and Magnolia Market, with its decorative books’ spines facing the walls, is a monument to our culture’s decadence.

P.S. The bibliophiles will be happy to know that, in quiet protest, I turned the books right-side-out during my most recent trip to Magnolia Market.