Sad comments in yesterday's SF Chron from the owner of a lefty bookstore who says his sales are down. For one thing, he finds people are going to mass-market booksellers for hard-swinging criticisms of the government that used to be available only in specialty stores like his. But then he also finds something that might be just as big a change, and possibly a worse one:
Sales of books on such subjects as health care, AIDS, genetic engineering and feminism have "dried up in the past year; it is as though people are at such an emotional pitch that they have no room for anything else. Cultural theory? Forget it.''Whatever you may think of lefty bookstores per se, that's a sad sign of cultural flattening. It correlates with something written in 1940 by Cyril Connolly, who may or may not be a patron saint of this place but who anyway said some interesting stuff.
Michael Shelden's Friends of Promise says this:
"...Connolly regarded Horizon as his 'war work', and was defiant of philistine critics who dismissed the reading and writing of 'highbrow' literature as frivolous, escapist pursuits in a nation at war. In 'Comment' he insisted that whatever demands the war imposed on the country, it was vital for writers and artists to continue producing art in order 'to make our culture into something worth fighting for'. Art was a necessity, not a luxury, he argued, and could not simply be pushed aside until the war was over. 'Art occupies in society,' he wrote in 1940, 'the equivalent of one of those glands the size of a pea on which the proper functioning of the body depends, and whose removal is as easy as it is fatal.' At Horizon it was Connnolly's self-appointed duty to remind the country that the survival of its culture was threatened as much by philistines at home as by hostile armies overseas..."Of course it's misleading to make direct comparisons between the present U.S. troubles and the much more dire 1940 UK experience. But, well, do we again have this problem of people feeling too badly wrung out by the daily news to maintain a serious cultural life that is not about current events? Posted by Martha Bridegam at May 15, 2004 03:31 PM
The Amazon.com top-selling 25 non-fiction list does seem, with a few honorable exceptions, depressingly fixated on current affairs to the exclusion of most other areas of human activity:
Freethinkers : A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby (Author)
Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward (Author)
Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush by John W. Dean (Author)
Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror by Richard A. Clarke (Author)
The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush by Peter Singer
Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry, and the Bush Haters by Bill Sammon (Author)
Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts (Author)
Rewriting History by Dick Morris (Author)
House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties by Craig Unger (Author)
When God Winks : How the Power of Coincidence Guides Your Life by Squire Rushnell (Author)
The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir by Joseph Wilson (Author)
Brainwashed : How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth by Ben Shapiro (Author)
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken
Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East by Rashid Khalidi (Author)
Bicycling Science : third edition by David Gordon Wilson (Author)
Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times by Bill Moyers
Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future by Michael Barone (Author)
Colossus: The Price of America's Empire by Niall Ferguson
Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich (Author)
MoveOn's 50 Ways to Love Your Country: How to Find Your Political Voice and Become a Catalyst for Change by MoveOn.org (Author)
Why Courage Matters : The Way to a Braver Life by John McCain (Author), Mark Salter (Author)
In Defense of Globalization by Jagdish N. Bhagwati
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (Author)
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jean-Yves Leloup (Editor), et al
1912 : Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs -The Election That Changed the Country by James Chace (Author)
Posted by: Alan Allport at May 15, 2004 04:35 PMThere's something kind of pornographic -- or anyway, formulaic, boilerplatish -- about the many political criticism and tell-all titles. Haven't had the heart to spend much time on any of them myself. I read a while ago in some Advice For Writers thing that one way to interest readers and publishers in one's work is to present it as "The Things They Don't Want You To Know." But that's not a nice pattern. Encourages paranoia and ideas about holding exclusive patents on the truth.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 15, 2004 04:43 PM