It has been awhile since my last post in this series. The first three installments dealing with music, books, and movies, respectively, I thought I would branch out into retail – an adjacent category and subject near and dear to most.
I rarely pay full retail for books anymore; there is no point to it. The opportunity to buy used, in excellent condition, is available all over Manhattan. Spending $15 or more for what could otherwise cost $2 or $3, is hard to justify. It isn’t necessarily the amount, but the principle. And besides, the authors I read tend to be dead anyway, so that $1 of royalty they might have been entitled to at retail would only end up contested in the courts.
Of course, you can’t wander the streets blindly searching for used books; you have to know what you’re doing. You have to know the going rates, the titles, the degrees of staleness. You have to know how to differentiate between the tourist trade and vendors who cater to the locals. The tourist trade set up their vending tables near the touristy places, and are known to wrap yellowing paperbacks in plastic baggies for protection… as if. The selection is limited, and prices are inflated on account of real estate, G&A, and (cough) market demand. (Let’s face it, we call them tourists for a reason.) But no, those tables are not for me, might as well go to Barnes & Noble.
The ones that I gravitate to are usually managed by some guy in a lounge chair, who sits about 30 yards away and is listening to a transistor radio, chatting with his buddy and eating whatever is hidden in that paper bag. He can’t be bothered with ripping folks off, life’s too damn short, and besides, these books are all a bunch of hooey anyway. Amen, my brother. There are a few of these establishments lined up along upper Broadway, north of 72nd Street, which I can’t recommend enough. And tell them I sent you.
Recently I have discovered what may be my new favorite literary locale, though, and it is on the corner of Houston and West Broadway. I could spend hours there, but don’t. There are five, six tables, and not a single bad book among them. No doubt I exaggerate with that remark; still and all, there is a big selection. Last weekend I bought Susan Sontag’s (rest her soul) Illness as Metaphor there, which is not nearly as serious a title as it sounds. The book is about the misconceptions civilization has held about certain diseases, and about how these misconceptions have influenced our language, behavior, fashions, character, politics, interactions, perspectives, and etc. You’re bound to come across such gems on vending tables.
This book was originally published in the late 70s, and perhaps we are less attentive to illnesses now. Or maybe our perspective has matured. In any case, I think what might have been interesting to see, and I have no doubt that Ms. Sontag would have been equal to the task, would be a study on excess: an analysis of how excess has influenced our language, behavior, fashions, character, politics, interactions, perspectives, and etc. I’d pay full retail for that, no question about it.
