Oh. Good. Lord Whatsit there is a not exactly spammer. I don't think you can call it spam, anyway.
I'm not a violent man, but I'd love to really harm the person who came up with that outwar shit.
It strikes me that what is dying isn't so much the independent bookstore as the small book store. Last I checked, large independents (Stacy's in the SF Bay, The Seminary Co-Op and the Powell's in Chicago, and of course the vast and mighty Powell's City of Books in Portland, OR against which all other books stores are but sad little imitations) were all doing just fine. Its the little guys that are getting crushed; they don't have the shelf space to be an intersting browsing experience, and if you just want *that book* you can go to Amazon. But its not something that singles out the independents -- I don't see alot of B. Daltons or Waldenbooks around anymore either.
It likely makes me an ass, but I can't find it in my heart to much mourn this trend that seems to me to replace not very good book stores with mostly better bookstores with more and more kinds of stuff. (I do kind of mourn that seems to be hard on specialty stores as well, though).
Jill: I'm not sure its fair to lay the Jane Austen Doe bit on JAD, tempting as it is. I think its at least as likely that Salon's editoral staff thought it was clever as it is that she submitted it like that.
Incidentally, can anyone explain how an article like that one would get shopped around and/or solicited? Does Salon go looking for someone who will take the tack they like, or does the author submit a proposal, or something else.
James: Yeah. Salon did the first (George Lucas is a Space Tyrant!) David Brin piece, which I don't really agree with but kind of enjoyed, and the Caleb Carr piece, about which I remember exactly nothing beyond its existence. I can't even remember if there was more than one peice, or if I'm interfiling a book review or two. They then followed up with David Brin's Tolkien piece, which I think we can mark as patient zero in a strange new Brain Eater plague.
This most recent bit seems the oddest though. I can't believe that the editors don't expect scathing responses to this stunning display of inferiority complex.
And its just so incoherent. It was like reading something by someone who's read too much David Foster Wallace, but failed to grasp that DF Wallace is best when he is writing prose that is least like archtypical "DF Wallace prose," which prose starts, after a few unrestrained paragraphs to resemble nothing so much as the text blocks spammers are attempting to use to bypass my spam filters.
Its not just me, right? Salon really has gone to shit, yes?
(note: Teresa, I tacked in a thought that finished gelling after I posted this in slushkiller. I think I'm safe in assuming you don't mind, but I thought I'd be even more safe and ask).
James: Yeah. Salon did the first (George Lucas is a Space Tyrant!) David Brin piece, which I don't really agree with but kind of enjoyed, and the Caleb Carr piece, about which I remember exactly nothing beyond its existence. I can't even remember if there was more than one peice, or if I'm interfiling a book review or two. They then followed up with David Brin's Tolkien piece, which I think we can mark as patient zero in a strange new Brain Eater plague.
This most recent bit seems the oddest though. I can't believe that the editors don't expect scathing responses to this stunning display of inferiority complex. And its just so incoherent.
Its not just me, right? Salon really has gone to shit, yes?
So, has anyone taken a look at this Salon peice yet?
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/03/22/midlist/
It's written in a style I find extremely difficult to read, but it seems awfully topical.
Simon: Which browser? The quicktime crashed both Mozilla Firebird and IE for me, but after I upgraded Realplayer and restarted Firebird, that went fine.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 8 |
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