May 28, 2007
Burning the Burning Booksellers
You're familiar with the owners of Prospero's Books, burning their collection of used books because no one wants to read them anymore?
There were two reactions I found enlightening and amusing.
Enlightening: Frank Wilson over at Inquirer, Ink., suggests "I give away thousands of books a year to the Philadelphia Prison System, senior centers, and schools. The guy should have looked harder." Very concise and true. I'm sure there's a few prisons out there that would have accepted them.
Amusing: Tod Goldberg goes for the jugular and proclaims them Fucktards of the Year. " He points out that at their website, they're caging for money and promoting their self-published books. "I find this distasteful on a lot of levels, particularly since it smells less like a protest and more like a business decision/publicity stunt. If you were doing it in real protest, would you send out a press release? Would you ask people to call their local TV, radio, newspaper, and blogs (don't any of you motherfuckers call this blog...I'm warning you...I have blog caller ID...) if there wasn't a way to make a buck? (And if TV and radio and the internet are to blame for all of this book burning, as Wayne suggests above, isn't it hypocritical to turn to them to save the books from the pyre of pretension?) If you were doing it in real protest, would you call it "fun?" If you can't sell the books, why the fuck did you buy them in the first place and why are you continuing to take in hundreds of books a day?"
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