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From the How Are We Going To Generate Buzz Dept comes this news: Mo. Man Burns Books as Protest (David Twiddy for Associated Press).
The gist: A Missouri used bookseller decided to burn a portion of his old stock as a protest against “society’s diminishing support for the printed word.”
“This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today,” Wayne told spectators outside his bookstore as he lit the first batch of books.
Of course, there’s a ripple of discontent at this news on the literary blogosphere. Google searches for “Wayne Prospero” and “book burn” since the story broke turn up almost two thousand blog posts, enough to fill a (bad) book.
(Challenge: try reading through those links to isolate the original thoughts, and you’ll know what it’s like to read the slushpile.)
Now, let’s try to look past the point that this is obviously a publicity stunt — not only to drum up business for the clearance sale, but to promote and fundraise for the bookseller’s self-publishing company. The bookstore’s press release (on their front page, as of now) states that:
For $1 a book (+ postage), you can save these books from the flame. We will not take these $s as profit, but will use them to publish new books.
The first book listed on the publisher’s website is a poetry collection written by one of the co-owners of the bookstore. (Not the one named in the AP story, but his name is on the press release.)
But we’re going to try looking past that.
The booksellers can bluster all they like about how their act of book-burning is “art” and/or “protest” (the two are not synonymous). Perhaps they’ll raise enough money from the ransom of random titles to print yet another volume of poetry. But for anyone who loves the (well-) written word, the process of reaction goes something like this:
Book Burning = Censorship = Nazis = Holocaust
While the adage “any publicity is good publicity” can seem true in theory, I doubt that the booksellers were prepared to be known as “the book burners” for the rest of their lives. In this world you are forever judged by your worst public act — if they followed this stunt with a cross-country murder spree, they’d still be known as “The Book-Burning Killers”.
But let’s look past that to the heart of the matter: our misplaced horror at the idea of book-burning.
What’s really going on here is not art, nor protest. It’s merely a creative solution to the problem that faces all used booksellers: overstock. Secondhand bookstores are not run by astute entrepreneurs. They’re run by readers, obsessive-compulsive collectors, and as Paul Riddell has observed, by frustrated writers desperate to pretend that they’re connected to publishing business. Under the ubiquitous “exchange for credit” system, they always have more stock coming in than going out. If the store survives the owner’s staggering fiscal incompetence, eventually the stock will fill the shelves, floor to ceiling, in double rows, and spill over into cardboard boxes, storage rooms, attics and crawlspaces, adjoining buildings, shipping containers, warehouses and (always) the owner’s house.
In the past, the typical solution to this was the cleansing warmth of an insurance fire. On some occasions, the books have to be destroyed because the owner died under the consequences of his own poor stacking technique, and only the hardiest of collectors are prepared to buy a book that smells of dead guy.
And what’s really being destroyed? Copies of written works, not the works themselves. Is anyone really shedding a tear at the destruction of one of the millions of copies of The Hunt for Red October? If the only surviving copy of some long-forgotten work is in a warehouse adjoining a used bookstore in Missouri, perhaps the fire is the best place for it.
The world is no poorer for the loss of a few battered copies of uninteresting books. The real crime is the exploitation of our fear/repulsion of censorship to make a few bucks, and to put more poetry into the world.
(Thanks to Paul Riddell for the link.)
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Well said.
There are times when I look at my own shelves, mystified as to what to do with some of the books that have found their way there… the landfills don’t need them, and I like my friends. I suspect my enemies might catch on after awhile.
Alas, though, I live in California where there’s certain to be some sort of ecological ordinance against burning of any kind. The only solution I’ve been able to come up with has been to consign them to the recycle bin, but that involves braving the evil stares of husband and neighbor–not something I’m willing to suffer on a frequent basis. And the recyclers won’t take covers, either paperback or hardbound, so a certain amount of work is involved, as well. There must be a better solution for tomes that tempted then disappointed (or non-fiction that has grown hopelessly out-of-date).
“In the past, the typical solution to this was the cleansing warmth of an insurance fire.”
Upon reading that line, I had to laugh about the circumstances involving a local used bookstore. The owner was guilty of many bits of ridiculousness (the children’s poetry competition that amazingly gave the first-place prize of a new PlayStation to the owner’s son so the owner could write it off on his taxes, the branch store run solely so he could keep his girlfriend employed and his wife unsuspecting, and his demands for years that the store never categorize anything in its sections in alphabetical order because he wanted customers “to browse”), but the fire that took out his first store was completely blameless. In that case, blame the barista at the coffee house next door, who figured he’d make a mess and inadvertently burned down the whole block in the process. (Even so, the “unwanted books expand to fill the available space” theorem applied, because when the owner of the property rebuilt the block and demanded that all of the tenants displaced by the fire move back into their old spots for the duration of their remaining leases, he filled that store with overstock he’d had in warehouses since the early Eighties. Oh, and since he’s more worried about the self-importance of bookstores than in economic issues, the local chain used bookstore gleefully sends their problem customers to him to sell their complete collections of Cosmopolitan. “You’ll give me ten cents for this copy of The Way Things Aught To Be? But I paid TWENTY DOLLARS for it!”)
Gay- it’s rare for me to separate from my beloved books, but when I need to cleanse, I phone up my bibliophile friends, and donate the rest. We have a local Re-Uzit that has a decent sized book section, and since it’s where I first found several of my favorite authors I feel that it’s a good place for them.
You can also donate to the library, since if they don’t use them, they’ll sell them at their annual book sale for much needed funds. It still involves effort, but at least you won’t get the nasty looks.
I’m guilty of dumping out of date or not liked books on local libraries. If they toss them, well then at least *I* didn’t do it.
But this is just ridiculous. I knew there was something more to this story the first time I heard it.
Our local library has the most AWESOME fundraiser for all of those unwanted books. It’s their biggest moneymaker of the year, even after renting a warehouse to house it!
Throughout the year, they collect used books. Then, once a year, they hold a massive four day used book sale. And trust me, when it’s over? There’s usually less than 30% of those books still on the tables. It’s wonderful mayhem, and a true treasure hunt of the best kind.
I often buy books, read them, and donate them for next year’s sale… they don’t even have to re-price the books! I think at last count they were selling over 500,000 books, and people come from all over.
It’s great, because you can unload your boogers, and support the local library. Maybe some of you with libraries that don’t do that could suggest it or help organize it?
Just leave ‘em wherever you happen to be when you finish them. I’ve left books on the train, in hotel rooms, on the bus, in restaurants, etc. Someone will decide to pick it up and read it or pick it up and pass it along to someone else. Or just throw in the trash. Who cares!
I used to keep books, but mostly now I just toss ‘em as soon as I read them. I hardly ever reread books I’ve already read unless they are spectacular and there are few of those in print.