“
I spent many afternoons in the store, surrounded by books I’d hauled down from the shelves, reading and whiling away the day. I bought a few of the books, but not many. If you plotted the dollars I spent at the cash register against the time I spent reading books there for free, Borders probably made less than a penny an hour off of me. I was living proof of a doomed business model.
- Susan Orlean on the occasion of the Borders bankruptcy, recalling her college years in Ann Arbor.
Fully aware of how goofy it is, I can’t hold back the Christmas Carol part of my brain that summons The Ghost of Literature Yet To Come. He points a spectral forefinger at the deadbeat undergrad with her Didion and her Joseph Mitchell and whatever else is in that slapdash stack of never-to-be-paid-for books and rasps, “Today she is taking words. Someday she will give them back.”
I hate the ghost a little when he’s so cryptic. Can’t he just link? Can’t he just send me to this lede and this passage? Then he wouldn’t have to rasp anything. He could just point, and I’d say “she’s gonna write that?” He’d nod, and I’d get chills.
