- Farhad Manjoo
Slate ran this eight days after Manjoo’s “Don’t Support Your Local Bookseller,” which triggered many smart critiques like this one at towirr.tumblr.com. So I read the follow-up and wondered if Manjoo needed to go sleepless during all eight of those days and nights to find a straw man as hapless as this halfwit Will Doig, who apparently bet all his chips on “Bookstores provide a space to meet friends, cruise for a date, and hide out when you have nothing to do on a Saturday night.”
I mean, just look how easily Manjoo KO’d Doig: “many bookstore lovers agree with Doig, which is exactly why many of these shops are going out of business.”
The winner!!! And still champion!!! Farhad!!! Manjoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s a letdown to click through to what Doig actually wrote and find that it includes passages like this:
Unlike almost any other kind of retail establishment, bookstores operate as quasi-public neighborhood trusts that give city dwellers more than they receive in return. Like art galleries, they’re a free-of-charge indoor urban venue where you can make yourself comfortable without being expected to eat something, drink something, or even buy something.
This is why the most-loved bookstores tend to hang on: Kramerbooks and Politics & Prose in D.C., The Strand and McNally-Jackson in New York, Skylight and Book Soup in Los Angeles, Tattered Cover in Denver, Book People in Austin, Texas — the list goes on. Their patrons are numerous enough that even if only a fraction of them make a purchase it adds up to a profit.
… They provide a small slice of intellectual development in a retail landscape that’s otherwise dominated by denim, cupcakes and facial moisturizer. And they do so without asking much in return — just that we come in frequently, browse all we want, and occasionally buy a book at retail price.
Doig might be wrong about this “occasionally buy a book at retail price” path to profitability. If so, Manjoo should have challenged him. What Manjoo did instead — quote the least representative sample of Doig’s argument, while also ducking his most withering critics — is just shabby. Which is why I’m not linking to either Manjoo piece here. If that seems spiteful of me, I’d like a few mensch bonus points for not making a cheap joke out of Manjoo being the actual author of an actual book called True enough: learning to live in a post-fact society.
