Do you know whether you have any books by Christopher Hitchens?
"What does he write about?" asked the clerk.
(I'm thinking, What doesn't he write about?—or used to, before he got cancer.) I'm looking for his books on atheism.
"Well," she said, "they might be here," indicating what I gathered from several copies of Gary Zukav's Seat of the Soul might be the New Age section. "Or over here, in the Religion section."
Okay.
"But," she added, "if you don't find them in either of those places, try Fiction."
Oh, how I would love to have found a copy of God Is Not Great or The Portable Atheist in the Fiction section! Confirming the local assessment of atheism.
That I'd try to share with the author. But it might hurt him to laugh that hard.
In the small suburban California town where I spent my formative years, the library shelved the Leonard Nimoy autobio I Am Not Spock in the science fiction section
ReplyDeleteAl, thanks for your comment!
ReplyDeleteThat example seems somehow less "judgmental" than the one from Mebane, though. It might even be quite reasonable; I can imagine fans of "Star Trek" going to the SciFi section in hopes of finding Nimoy's autobiography.
But I really can't imagine anyone's going to Fiction to find either of the books I mentioned (unless, as in my case, the bookstore clerk suggested it!).
By the way, Al, I spent formative years in various California towns myself. Petaluma and Tulare in particular.
ReplyDelete