Bad things happen to bad people. I was reading Andre Schiffrin’s The Business of Books (subtitled: how the international conglomerates took over publishing and changed the way we read).
And it came true.
The itinerary for the forthcoming vacation to the West coast would have included a visit to “Midnight Special”, a specialist (read: leftist / critical) bookshop in Santa Monica. But it stands no more! One of the best bookshops in the LA region - and easily one of my favourites - has succumbed to the forces of global capital. Read more here in the Santa Monica Mirror. By the way, this closure follows that of the Waterstones’ specialist philosophy branch at Charing Cross and “Compendium” in Camden Town.
On days like these, one regrets being an Amazon associate. Imagine a world inhabited by chains such as Border’s, stocked with best-sellers donning oh-so-ugly covers. Imagine that world with Harry (book 1 thru 6) at the top of each reader’s consumer’s “to read” lists. For the inhabitants of this make-believe world, that Code book is somehow “better” than The name of the Rose.
A monster of our own creation. We are all responsible and we’re all going to hell for this.
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Sigh. I used to work for Barnes & Noble. I thought it would be the perfect job for a lover of literature. All it did was educate me as to the evils of the publishing world and the shortcomings of the general reading public. I was labeled a ‘literature snob’ because I refused to hawk whatever rubbish happened to be on the NYT bestseller list that week. I still shopped in my favorite local used book stores, but, sadly, they are slowly succumbing to the corporate rot of our supersized society.
Where do we go from here?