Yet another damned New Yorker cover
I visited the used bookstore nearest my apartment today. I don't go there as often as I used to. I find that their selection doesn't change much, so that the less often I go, the fresher is the selection.
I whittled it down to just one book, a nonfiction book copyrighted this year on whether gay men and lesbians should try to assimilate into society or whether they should maintain their separate uniqueness. The topic reminds me of the conflicting views of Martin Luther King Jr. (assimilate) and Malcolm X (maintain separate uniqueness) and the "good" X-Men (assimilate) and the "bad" X-Men (maintain separate uniqueness).
As you might guess, I lean toward the view of Malcolm X and the "bad" X-Men. Gay movement founder Harry Hay's essay "A Separate People Whose Time Has Come," in which the late Hay maintains that gay men aren't just straight men who like their pussy on a stick (I wildly paraphrase), but have a uniqueness, qualities and talents and abilities of their own, is one of my favorite writings of the gay movement, and as I read and loved that essay in my twenties, it has had a significant influence on my outlook on the issue.
Although I wholeheartedly support the legalization of same-sex marriage, which is an equal-rights and a civil-rights issue, when I see gay men and lesbians apparently trying to be just like straight people, I cringe. It's like the wizards and witches of the world of Harry Potter trying to be just like the muggles: why?
But, as I commonly do, I digress...
When I took my overpriced book (it was priced at $10 but probably should have been priced at no more than $5) to the counter, the woman who rang me up (she and her husband own the store) showed me a copy of the New Yorker magazine whose cover is shown above. She acted as though she was just sharing something funny or interesting with me, not as though she had an agenda in showing it to me. My guess is that she's been showing the magazine to at least every other customer.
"Yes, we're all pretty familiar with the New Yorker these days," I quipped. But apparently that wasn't enough.
It wasn't bad enough that the owner of the used bookstore, by showing me the cartoon, was basically telling me, "Don't shop amazon.com. Shopping amazon.com is evil"; when I apparently didn't react to the cartoon in the way she apparently believed I should react -- I guess that I was supposed to have voiced my utter loathing for those who would even think of purchasing a book via amazon.com -- she began to explain the cartoon to me, began to explain that the woman was receiving her package from amazon.com just as the owner of the brick-and-mortar bookstore next door was entering his bookstore.
"Yeah, I get it," I said of the magazine cover, realizing that I probably had sounded rude, but I hadn't intended to; it's that it's a fairly simple cartoon that didn't need explanation.
"Lots of businesses have been hurt by the Internet," I then remarked. I guess that if she was about to state the obvious, then I could state the obvious, too. And if she was going to lecture me indirectly, I was going to indirectly lecture her right back. What I said to her, in effect, was: "Times change. You're not the only one who has been affected by changing times. Get over it."
The interaction left me thinking that it's rather pathetic when people resist change. The horse and buggy fell wayside to the gasoline-engine automobile. The gasoline-engine automobile is going to fall wayside to the electric automobile, although the many subsidiaries of the oily BushCheneyCorp (which includes not just Dick Cheney's Halliburton but also all of the oil corporations and the gasoline-engine automobile manufacturing corporations) have been fighting the electric automobile tooth and nail because their oily profits are much more important to them than is even the fate of the entire fucking planet.
I can tell you why amazon.com is beating used bookstores.
I remember when used books used to cost no more than $1. I remember when used bookstores would charge only 25 cents to 50 cents for a paperback book and only 50 cents to a dollar for a hardback book. I remember when paying even $5 for a hardback book at a used bookstore was paying a lot of money for a used book.
At the bookstore I went to day, you'd be lucky to find a typical used paperback book for less than $5.
And the used bookstore I visited today didn't have a single fucking book by the prominent novelist Hermann Hesse, when I'd gone to the bookstore primarily on the lookout for a Hesse novel or two. He's written so many novels that at least one of his novels should have been on the shelf.
I would have no problem finding every fucking novel that Hesse has written on amazon.com, and not only that, but I could get a brand-new copy of a Hesse novel on amazon.com for no more than a few dollars more than what the used bookstore would have charged me for a used copy -- had they even had a single fucking copy of a Hesse novel.
And I wouldn't condescendingly have been lectured at or scolded when I checked out at amazon.com. I wouldn't have been shown a cartoon on the evils of overpriced used bookstores that don't have the books you're looking for -- and then been further insulted by having had the cartoon explained to me.
And maybe those who actually purchase books at the woman's used bookstore don't really need to be shown that cartoon. Duh.
So now I'm even less likely to return to my neighborhood used bookstore than I was before I visited it today. I mean, let's recap:
- The used bookstore didn't have a single book by the prominent author whose novels I was looking for
- The bookstore's prices are exhorbitant
- The bookstore owner insulted me by first basically telling me where I may and may not shop, and then compounded the insult by beginning to explain a simple cartoon to me
Strike one, strike two, strike three. If this used bookstore goes under, yeah, it's all amazon.com's fault.
Anyway, times change. We adapt or we go the way of the dinosaurs. I read that the British empire fell because it was reluctant to let go of coal when the gasoline engine started to take off -- and that the American empire, if it does not let go of the gasoline engine and adapt to and adopt cleaner, more efficient energy sources, is in danger of going the way of the British empire.
I remember, when I was earning my fairly worthless journalism degree in the late 1980s, being taught that newspapers were secure for decades to come! Less than 20 years later, newspapers are folding left and right; the Internet is killing them, not just in offering free news content, but in advertising revenue. Who's going to buy a classified ad in a newspaper when you can post a classified ad for free on craigslist or elsewhere on the Internet?
In my days of selecting Associated Press and United Press International wire stories for newspaper publication in the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, never did we newspaper editors believe that one day in the not-so-distant future, news consumers wouldn't need us "gatekeepers" to select the news for them, but would be able to select and read wire stories on their own via this thing called the "Internet."
The Internet isn't killing only used bookstores and newspapers. It's killing adult bookstores, too, by offering porn (even free porn) at our fingertips and by allowing us to discreetly buy things that we might be too embarrassed to buy at a brick-and-mortar store. I hardly ever buy CDs anymore, now that I download music to my MP3 player; my guess is that the Internet is killing record and CD stores, too. And my guess is that e-mail has cost the U.S. Postal Service a lot of revenue. (I'm just waiting for the lecture on the evils of e-mail from my postal carrier...)
And my guess is that one day even the book printed on paper will fall to the wayside to e-books, spelling the doom for even amazon.com. The trees will be happy, but amazon.com won't.
And I suppose that this change to paperless print media eventually will mean no more New Yorker covers.
That's change that I could live with.
1:59:54 PM 
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