Bookstores and political discourse
If you hang out with me long enough on-line or off, I eventually give you my rant about how music stores categorize music: a small but significant part of the music I buy doesn’t easily fit into categories. Further, some of my favorite artists cross genres but music stores generally leave them shelved in whatever category they think the artist belongs in, rather than the category I think they should be in based on the one or two songs I heard. The point of the rant isn’t that music stores are dumb and I’m smart, but that it would be a lot easier to find these artists if there was no genre-based shelving in music stores.
This is one of the reasons why, when I’m looking for something on the fringes of genre, I go to Amazon first, and then only go to local stores if I don’t like the prices I find there or if the album is no longer available new. But that’s not what I came to tell you about. I came to talk about politics, and how to find political writing in bookstores.
I walked down to Border’s today to look for a collection of essays by George Orwell• and a collection of essays by H. L. Mencken. The most obvious section seemed to be the one titled “Politics”. There I could find essays by Michael Moore and Michael Medved; there were books by Michelle Malkin, Dick Morris, and Trent Lott. Chomsky and Nader were there, as were Marx and Engels. There was even Ruth Kinna’s Anarchism: A Beginner’s Guide•. If I had wanted to purchase historical works, Thomas Paine was there, as were the Federalist Papers.
I could even have purchased The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus• and Nineveh and Its Remains•. Honestly, they look fascinating (especially the latter), but unless there is some secret message there, they were probably misshelved.
But no trace of either Orwell or Mencken.
I eventually tracked Orwell’s essays down: they were in the fiction section, next to Orwell’s novels. Now, I’m not saying this is wrong, per se, but it clearly isn’t exactly right, either. Mencken I couldn’t find at all. According to their online catalogue, there was no H.L. Mencken in stock. If he had been, his essays would have been shelved under either Philosophy or History (United States). I’ll probably pick up either The Vintage Mencken• or Prejudices: A Selection• at Amazon.
- A Collection of Essays by George Orwell•
- “Given the right thinker/writer, today’s journalism actually can become tomorrow’s literature.”
- George Orwell at Wikipedia
- Orwell is among the most widely admired political and cultural commentators of the twentieth century. He is known for his insights about the political implications of the use of language, decrying the effects of cliché, bureaucratic euphemism, and academic jargon on thought.
- H. L. Mencken at Wikipedia
- “Mencken was an outspoken defender of freedom of conscience and civil rights, an opponent of persecution and of injustice and of the puritanism and self-righteousness that masks the oppressive impulse.”
- The Vintage Mencken•: H. L. Mencken
- “A master craftsman of daily journalism in the twentieth century... the native American Voltaire, the enemy of all puritans, the heretic in the Sunday School.” Alternating between exquisite writing and outlandish overreaction, Mencken is a very odd duck.
- Prejudices: A Selection•
- “Here is Mencken at his hyperbolic best--from his thundering blows against politics, through his piercing deflations of pious reputations, to his tireless fusillades against the American plutocracy. He tallies the dubious merits of farmers, professors, economists, congressmen, and preachers.”
- Anarchism: A Beginner’s Guide•
- “Ruth Kinna goes to the heart of the anarchist ideology, explaining the influences that have shaped anarchism, and the tactics and strategies that anarchists have used to bring about their goals. Kinna assesses the claim that anarchy is preferable to the state.”
- The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus•
- “The astounding discovery sixty years ago by an Egyptian camel driver of a jar filled with ancient papyrus manuscripts, known collectively as the Nag Hammadi library, was one of the archaeological finds of the century. These fragments at Nag Hammadi, painstakingly restored and translated, reveal a fascinating alternative perspective on Jesus and the beliefs of many of his earliest followers.”
- Nineveh and Its Remains•
- “The classic journal of an archeologist’s journeys in Persia.”