December 8th, 2009
Galley Friend M.C. points us to Stanley Fish doing a very fair impersonation of Lorne Michaels in his assessment of Sarah Palin.
The lede, though, is what’s really striking:
When I walked into the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan last week, I headed straight for the bright young thing who wore an “Ask Me” button, and asked her to point me to the section of the store where I might find Sarah Palin’s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” She looked at me as if I had requested a copy of “Mein Kampf” signed in blood by the author, and directed me to the nearest Barnes and Noble, where, presumably, readers of dubious taste and sensibility could find what they wanted.
A bookstore that purports to be the best of its kind refusing to sell the book of the moment simply because they don’t like the politics of the author? Some businesses deserve to die.
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C'mon, that's pretty funny. I just went to the Strand's website, and as of this writing, they only have one copy in large print, and three audio books, so the sales clerk may have legitimately sent the guy to the B&N a few blocks north in Union Square.But the writer really should've known to go to the basement where the 50%-off review copies lurk.
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Interesting post. The easy part is to set up a blog, the hard part is to make it interesting so people will visit it…Well done!Term papers
Ben December 9, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Jay Nordlinger's been writing about this phenomenom in bookstores for years in his "Impromptus" column. It is pitiful that even living in the Golden Age that is Hopenchange the need to condescend still persists.