The Crepuscule
Twelve Reasons for the Death of Small and Independent Bookstores
by
John Usher
Ever thankful to those who made the effort before us, with
heartfelt apologies to those who are still in the fight and the few who support
them--offered upon the closing of Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston.
1. Corporate law (and the politicians, lawyers, businessmen and accountants who
created it for their own benefit)--a legal fiction with more rights than the
individual citizen, which allows the likes of Barnes & Noble and Walmart to
write off the losses of a store in Massachusetts against the profit of another
in California, while paying taxes in Delaware--for making ‘competition’ a joke
and turning the free market down the dark road toward state capitalism.
2. Publishers--marketing their product like so much soap or breakfast cereal,
aiming at demographics instead of people, looking for the biggest immediate
return instead of considering the future of their industry, ignoring the art of
typography, the craft of binding, and needs of editing, all to make a cheapened
product of glue and glitz--for being careless of a 500 year heritage with
devastating result.
3. Book buyers--those who want the ‘convenience’ and ‘cost savings’ of shopping
in malls, over the quaint, the dusty, or the unique; who buy books according to
price instead of content, and prefer what is popular over what is good--for
creating a mass market of the cheap, the loud, and the shiny.
4. Writers--who sell their souls to be published, write what is already being
written or choose the new for its own sake, opt to feed the demands of editors
rather than do their own best work, place style over substance, and bear no
standards--for boring their readers unto television.
5. Booksellers--who supply the artificial demand created by marketing
departments for the short term gain, accept second class treatment from
publishers, push what is ‘hot’ instead of developing the long term interest of
the reader--for failing to promote quality of content and excellence in book
making.
6. Government (local, state and federal)--which taxes commercial property to the
maximum, driving out the smaller and marginal businesses which are both the seed
of future enterprise and the tradition of the past, while giving tax breaks to
chain stores, thus killing the personality of a city--for producing the burden
of tax codes only accountants can love.
7. Librarians--once the guardians, who now watch over their budgets instead--for
destroying books which would last centuries to find room for disks and tapes
which disintegrate in a few years and require costly maintenance or replacement
by equipment soon to be obsolete.
8. Book collectors--who have metamorphosed from book worms to moths attracted
only to the bright; once the sentinels of a favorite author’s work, now mere
speculators on the ephemeral product of celebrity--for putting books on the same
level with beanie babies.
9. Teachers--assigning books because of topical appeal, or because of their own
lazy familiarity, instead of choosing what is best; thus a tale about the
teenage angst of a World War Two era prep school boy is pushed at students who
do not know when World War Two took place--for failing to pass the torch of
civilization to the next generation.
10. Editors--who have forgotten the editorial craft--for servicing the marketing
department, pursuing fast results and name recognition over quality of content
and offering authors the Faustian bargain of fame and fortune, while pleading
their best intentions like goats.
11. Reviewers--for promoting what is being advertised, puffing the famous to
gain attention, being petty and personal, and praising the obscure with priestly
authority--all the while being paid by the word.
12. The Public--those who do not read books, or can not find the time; who live
by the flickering light of the television, and will be the first to fear the
darkening of civilization--for not caring about consequences.
Thus, we come to the twilight of the age of books; to the closing of the mind;
to the pitiful end of the quest for knowledge--and stare into the cold abyss of
night.
[From THE HOUND by John Usher, copyright 2004. Reprinted with
permission.]
[Sadly, Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston will shut its
doors for good in May. The year long attempt to save the store in a new location
will come to an end. A loss of former customers who thought the store had closed
at the end of 2002, compounded with an overall loss of business to chain stores,
and to the changing shopping patterns on Newbury Street, made continuing the
struggle impossible. Despite lower overhead, a large stock of over 100,000
volumes, and a good location only steps from where it originally opened almost
thirty years ago, the shop has finally succumbed to the prevailing trends in the
book business.]