Stoop or stretch to slightly uncomfortable levels. Just go to new sections of your superstore (the best popular book on geology, gardening, or basketball is very good, whether or not you like the topic). It’s an overwrought assertion by Cowen at best, which plays upon a prudish impulse to discredit the supposed morality of indie sellers.Ĭowen writes: “f you don’t like the superstores, it is easy enough to expand your viewing horizons through other means. I’ve been to a very few bookstores that sold risqué books under the counter I suppose, but before the Internet, most porn was sold by mailorder and in magazine shops in dicey neighborhoods, not in bookstores. Well, having made a point of browsing through used bookstores in every city I visited from the time I was a teenager, I have to say, this secret gray market in porn keeping indies afloat is totally news to me. One indie owner quoted in Reluctant Capitalists notes that he keeps book prices high ‘not from greed but as a way of reflecting what he sees as their worth as cultural artifacts.’ (On that basis, how can he possibly sell a paperback volume of Proust for $15.00?) Many of the smaller indies have financed themselves by selling, in a separate part of the store, pornography indie stores are not all intellectual powerhouses like Powell’s in Portland, considered by many to be the best bookstore in the United States.” The indies themselves aren’t always paragons of cultural virtue, either. He writes, “Bolstering the indies will not reverse any of these trends, nor are the chain stores to blame for their spread. But a few of Cowen’s assertions are either thinly supported or outright bogus. I’m a huge Amazon fan, and online ordering has mostly replaced my visits to used bookstores so I can hardly be called a Luddite.
0 kommentar(er)
