The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Ogre-Eyed:

Honestly, I've found more Barnes and Nobles and Borders that I've liked than small bookshops. In fact, my first memory of a small bookshop comes from when I was six or so and accompanying my father into a little bookstore...the owner, a crusty old woman in a dirty sweater, freaked out, since kids weren't allowed in her store. So I waited out in the car. Yes...the "dusty and the unique", indeed. Dave Barry once wrote something to effect that malls often crush out Small-Town Businesses because the malls don't have window displays featuring dead bugs and crepe paper that hasn't been changed since the Eisenhower administration.

Granted, it's totally unfair to characterize something from one experience. However, I remember when I was a poor college student and took the bus everywhere. Naturally I took my backpack with me, since it's the easiest way to carry stuff on the bus. Once in search of textbooks I went to a huge used bookstore, three floors of stuff (stank of cat urine, incidentally, as the owner was rather fond of cats and less fond of cleanliness). The owner actually called the cops on me, since I had a backpack on and, for some inexplicable reason, was convinced that I was shoplifting from his pornography section (in fact I was shopping for a medieval history textbook). Never got hassled for carrying a backpack when I went to a Barnes and Noble or a Borders. So admittedly my bias is somewhat against independent bookstores.

But then again, I have found some superb little, independent, and used bookstores. Renaissance Books in the Mitchell Airport at Milwaukee is the best I've found...used and new, and a prime location, being in Milwaukee.

It was also a small bookstore that got me started on Stephen King. While a poor college student, I took the train to Milwaukee to visit a friend and within a matter of hours was totally lost. I found this neat little store called "Little Read Book" somewhere in the suburbs and asked the propreitor, a gracious middle-aged woman, for directions and if I could use the restroom. She graciously provided directions, but said if I used the restroom, it was considered only polite to buy something in return. I agreed and bought, at random, a copy of "Salem's Lot". On the ride back I started reading it, and later neglected all work for a day as I finished reading it. "LOOK UPON ME AND DEEESPAIIIR!" indeed.

So I suppose the moral is that indepedent bookstores can be a lot of fun, provider the propreitor isn't a crazed, embittered tyrant.

>What will we lose if writers like me stop writing?

Not a lot, I'm afraid. Noisy salon.com articles, mostly.

This article was vastly annoying on several levels, but the sense of needy entitlement that shines (or oozes) through seems the most annoying of all. How colossally foolish! Most writers I know would love to get a 25k advance. Heck, most writers I've met would be well-pleased with a 5k advance. And EVERY writer I've ever met would probably have a heart attack of joy at a 150k advance. (Every writer I've ever met, without exception, has a day job, wife/husband, kids, car insurance...and no time or money for this lazy luxurious bohemeian lifestyle Ms. Doe seems to prefer).

And here's another thing: it's possible her book didn't sell because *it wasn't very good*. After all, if she populated her book with the sort of pompous needy windbag characters in the salon article, no wonder it wouldn't sell well!

Comedy, thy name is Kip Manley.

>I think we're in the bad timeline now. Someone go build a time machine. The event that needs to change is left as an exercise for the reader.

This would prove unwise, as it would create a dystopian Orwellian world-state where I ruled over brainwashed masses as Big Brother, issuing my proclamations from 1000-ft high video screens. I would live in a gargantuan neo-Gothic surrealist palace, decorated with Art Deco and velvet Elvis portraits, and surrounded by legions of uniformed and uninformed syncophants who sang, on the hour, the "Big Brother Is Great" song to the tune of "Mule Train".

If science-fiction has taught us anything, it's that time travel results in nightmarish futures ruled by eccentric overlords (or dinosaurs, one or the other) and so must be avoided.

I've concluded that writers are, by their very nature, insane. I think the brain acts like a digestive system...information comes in, and digested excrement comes out. Most people have natural release valves for this mental excrement, such as talking, singing, etc. Writers, however, suffer a genetic defect or an evolutionary mutation that renders them unable to safely release mental excrement. So, therefore, they are compelled to dump it out onto the page. As a side effect of this condition, their brains are often unbalanced.

So, therefore, the sane writer is the exception.

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