Posted
4:45 PM
by Gene
Today I was at my local Annoy-'Em-With-Lousy-Customer-Service-and-Foreground-Muzak emporium (the local A & P -- er,
SuperFresh) when I noticed it was selling remaindered books. Two of them struck my eye: the first
an anthology of "letters" by the bootlegger, fornicator and fascist Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., each one drably written and full of its own self-importance, as if to say, "Testing, testing! 'S the mike on? Can you hear me? Boomboomboom HELLOOOOOOOOO OUT THERE! THIS LETTER IS HISTORIC!" It bore suitable cover-jacket endorsement lies from Arthur "Reagan Will Go Down as Our Worst President" Schlesinger and Michael "The News Hack's Historian" Beschloss. The second was
an authorized "biography" of Payne Stewart, printed like a grade-school reader: 250 pages of a hundred words each. These pulp wastes constitute so much of what our booksellers misrepresent as literature the republic would scarcely notice if whole bookstore chains were remaindered. Trees should stand up and demand their rights.